Traveling Is A Good Chance To Understand Yourself How Much You Can Respect Others

Last week I got a call from my 19 year-old cousin as she wanted to know the ‘techniques’ for flight attendant interview. I don’t have any techniques to tell her though. Who will be chosen from the interviewers all depends on their perspectives and the interviewees’ attitude, appearance and performance during the interview. Interviewers’ perspectives is still the most main reason of choosing you or not. They like you in the first impression, then you’re in. Otherwise, please go back home and chill.

Then, my cousin asked me what answer the interviewers hate the most if the question is ‘Why do you want to be a flight attendant?’. Just don’t answer them – ‘It gives me chance to widen my horizon and learn more new things when visiting different countries.' Interviewers won’t buy it because they totally understand not many of them really can put themselves into the local’s shoes and accept others’ cultures. Then how can they treat the passengers from different countries the same? Why not just honestly tell them ‘I need the cheaper tickets for traveling' instead?

Even until now, many crews from Hong Kong think that Hong Kong is the best place to stay and sometimes can hear how much they hate a foreign city or countries. It’s so easy to give an example. Many crews don’t like Indian passengers. They thought the Indian is dirty because they don’t use toilet paper and they eat food with right hand which is not civilized and uneducated; therefore, crews sometimes treat them quite rudely and never try to understand what the passengers need actually it’s so simple. Funnily enough is I spent 10 days in India during my annual leave and everyone was shocked because this is not good place for many crews to ‘widen their horizons’. After the trip I understood that Indian eat food with right hand because eating food with hands feeds not only the body but also the mind and the spirit. They wash their ass with water instead of wasting too many papers on wiping. It's their culture.

It reminds me a conversation I heard on the flight to Delhi. There was western father and son sitting in front of me during take-off and landing. When we all were seated and waited for the aircraft to takeoff, an Indian little baby cried so loudly suddenly and turned out she woke up all sleeping passengers. Her mum had no idea to calm the baby down and she was so embarrassed. That father told his son, “How uneducated and stupid the Indian is. They are not like us. Our kids (westerns) are much better than their kids...” It was nonsense…

You know people just don’t get it sometime because they are so used to their own culture and being stuck in their ideologies – ‘we’re the best in the world as we study a lot, we earn much more money than others blah blah blah…’ But for sure they don’t know one thing- respect others who are different from you.

So at the end, I didn’t give my cousin some useful advice. I know she won’t be serious to the job and probably will leave after two years if she passes the interview. And for sure, I know how her family educates her and I can see the shadows of that western father’s in her family.

Thank you for reading this post which reminds myself always respect and care others no matter where they come from and how different they act. It’s hard to practice but it’s good to remember it.

Much love,
Gladys
@gladysmak

_{Pictures are captured from Google.}