Fascination

So, I’m on my way to New Delhi and have just made a stop in Dubai. My transfer flight is in 4 hours, but the Dubai airport is fascinating enough to keep me busy till I get back on to the plain. Its no the glitz and glam one might except from the airport of such a luxury-orientated and customer-focused city as Dubai that fascinates me, but rather the “human activity” that is going on here.
As I researched for the gate for my transfer flight, I was immediately distracted by the duty free paradise that stretches out in an aisle, centering between the gates on either side. Although it was around 6am local time, people were flooding the stores. The first thing that caught my eye was the parfumerie duty free store of course. There, I tried out multiple perfumes, and after having already filled me nose with thousand of different essences, young advising ladies would come up to me and offer new scents to try. Very friendly girls, and there were also surprisingly many men working at the parfuemrie, something one practically never sees in Europe. Maybe has something to due with the gender issues here. Men presence needed in perfumeries. But maybe Im just over interpreting. Anyways, what fascinated me most was the diversity in nationality between all the women working at the parfumerie. I was expecting solely Arabian women but instead probably only a tenth of the women there were from Arabian origin, while the rest seemed to be dominantly Asian and I also noticed an East European women. I heard more Chinese spoken then Arabic between the workers there. But, of course, English was the dominant language. It was also fun the watch all the people walking around in the store. One observation was particulary funny, when there was a man probably in his 40s with cargo pants till his knees and those trekking sandals, who asked in broken English (probably German) if he could leave something at the counter and come back alter to pick it up. The women at the counter naturally obliged. When I observe such situations I always have to laugh when I think about how the communication between eboth of these individuals reaches the other end. What thoughts crossed their minds about the other during this encounter. Till these day I am still fascinated by the fact that two people can have an encounter that only lasts 10 seconds and never see each other again in their life. I just find this crazy.
While roaming between the perfume aisles, a women of oriental background with perfect English asked me whether she could show me some Arabian perfumes. Curious as I am, I willingly smelled some of them. Very strong scents. But quite nice actually.
One scent did catch my “nose” while testing through multiple perfumes. Love in Black by Creed. Very interesting smell, quite unusual. But also quite expensive unfortunately. 119 euros.

That simply seemed too much for me to pay for a perfume. At the thought of buying it an image of my dad scolding immediately crossed my mind. Better leave it, I thought. Maybe if I spend very little money in India, I can buy it on my flight back.

Simply felt like sharing this.

Nadia