Farewell Dubai
I’m at the Gate in Concourse B, with about 35 minutes till we start loading up. The trip across on the train from Concourse A was completely painless & easy, so I had time to stop in at a Dior concession and try a new lipstick. Which turns out perfect except they are low on stock. (Diorelle no. 023 if you were wondering.) I have not found a good new colour in my traditional MAC range, and the Diorific is a matte lipstick, which texture I prefer. So I look relatively glamorous right now. A security guard inspected my ticket in order to ask me if my scarf inspired my hair or the other way around.
Transit is very light on vegetables, so I was thrilled to see a juice bar in Concourse A that offers wheatgrass shots. I had one last night, and another this morning. Hoping this helps kill the sinusitis I brought with me, which has worsened a bit over night.
Note for next year, the pool in Concourse A hotel is closed for refurbishment, so check which hotel has a pool & book into that one. I have had very mixed luck with the pools in Dubai. It’s worth heading to another concourse to get one, but my timings didn’t work, so I prioritized sleep and the massage. Mmmmm Lomi Lomi massage by Lea was absolutely restorative.
As usual, I am charmed and humbled by the kindness many – most – staff show to transit passengers. We arrive, tired, rumpled, disoriented and harried, and they are professionally kind and add a little extra that seems to be simply human and generous. As anyone flying is bound to be wealthier than most staff, who work long, long hours, I find this amazing. Kindness and gentleness is something you value when navigating the world outside your home bubble. What feels like competence and mastery is mostly familiarity. Exit that space and you begin to feel a bit thick and find your surroundings a lot harder to understand. How much more challenging must it be if you are fleeing for your life? Victorian novels often talk about ‘casting yourself upon the world’. They make it clear this is a desperate choice usually only made by the almost suicidally adventurous. Or the utterly desperate. It’s true this kindness gets magnified if you are nice back. Today I was given a sample of perfume by the Young woman who served me when I tried to slip her a tip for going around the other Dior concessions trying to find my lipstick. She refused the tip. I said that I felt bad she had spent so much time and then didn’t make the sale. Perhaps all we all want is to be seen as humans and understood even a little?
