Photographic tales of an ex Emirates flight attendant – Hot & Delicious Rocks: The Planet!

Do not try this at home. Sydney, Australia Photo credit: Dan Wilkinson (Hot & Delicious Group).

Do not try this at home, kids… 

One of the joys of working with an international airline is the diverse array of people you get to meet across a range of nationalities and cultures. Living away from home in an expat community like Dubai your friends become your family.

As a result, I became friends with a whole bunch people I met through Emirates, the Dubai Dragons rugby team and the Emirates Muppets (Emirates Airline rugby team) whom I had the privilege of touring with around the world to play in tournaments in Paris, Cardiff, Phuket, Johannesburg and more.

I became friends with pilots, lawyers, dentists, teachers, guys in construction and even a group of Sydney-based Emirates engineers who would travel up to Dubai every year to complete new aircraft certifications or renew old ones.

Many of those people I met in my time in Dubai became life-long friends and so almost every time I flew through Sydney on a 5-6 day DXB-SYD-AKL return trip, I’d catch-up with the Emirates engineer boys in the city or down at the seedy Cronulla establishment known as Northies. Invariably we’d spend the afternoon smashing beers and putting the world to right, then head back to one of the boys houses for more bevies and a BBQ, which is when this image was shot. It’s not too clever, but one of the lads was playing around with an aerosol can and a lighter after we finished our meal and me being me I had the camera out and I snapped this image. Looks impressive as a full colour photo, but I just love how the image came out in black and white and captured my imagination.

8 years on I miss jet-setting the globe on a weekly basis, being in a new city every few days with exciting new adventures, visiting the little hidden bars, cafes and restaurants that become your favourite regular haunts when you visit different capital cities around the world and catching up with some of my closest friends who are now spread far and wide across this vast planet of ours, but that’s also a big part of what inspires and drives me.

Ever since I left, I’ve been working towards getting that lifestyle back on my terms doing something I love. I’m close now… I can feel it. 🙂

DW

You can also listen to the Hot & Delicious: Rocks The Planet podcast series here.

Hot & Delicious: Rocks The Planet is a weekly podcast interviewing inspiring individuals and successful entrepreneurs from around the planet across a range of industries (incl. music, film/tv, fashion, travel, comedy and more) about what makes them tick as people and drives their hunger for success.

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