Trolley Dolly

Zonked. Four weeks quickly flew by but not seamlessly. To move across time zones and lose sight of time and date bring episodes of anxiety and frustration. Haven't posted anything nor read those of friends - how pathetic. At the end of every day, I couldn't even turn on my laptop due to exhaustion from endless meetings and various social activities. Ironically, the latter could have been relaxing but weren't.

On the way home, I decided to take business class in order to enjoy little comforts that might assuage a tired body. This wasn't company paid nor provided complimentarily by my favorite airline [which has done that before] but purchased from mileage credited to my account. In effect, it was a purchased seat for which I deserved the appropriate treatment, convenience, and peace.

Alas, the expectation wasn't meant to be. The culprit: the trolley-dolly [aka air hostess/stewardess] and there were several of them on the flight. 

They have this bad habit of never leaving you alone -- even serving food is a disruption when you don't need it. Then they serve food like they'd like to announce it to the world by walking up and down the aisle, asking you details about your food preferences, and behaving as if they were in prepetual hurry. Why couldn't airlines simply lay out the food on some table and allow the passengers to pick whatever they wanted.

When they're rung for service, it would take an eternity for them to arrive because [as they said] there were just too many passengers. But hello, that was business class which ought to have an exclusive coterie of servers. Many of the females actually had passive aggression which I must say was borne out of training and attitude fostered on them by helpless passengers and which was manifested in the tone of voice and the smirk on faces. In one flight and as we were about to disembark, one of them had the courage to ask ma cherie if the shawl she had on was one of the airline's [while colours were nearly similar, the materials were different] and it was the seeming arrogance of the woman to venture asking without as much as an apologetic mien [to think that we were also on business class].

Asian airlines are often guilty of these offenses but the aggressive qualities are more often than not found in every flight. It is possible that this is a post 9/11 phenomenon which only contributes to the stress of travel. It is likely that complaints have been aired many times by countless passengers. These characters are ghosts on domestic flights in the USA which don't serve food or sell duty-free goods but they are highly visible on inter-country flights in Europe.

Be warned and be prepared!