Plane rude
(Our neighbour on a flight and the young boy from the seat in front: International airspace)
It’s been such a busy time since I arrived back in the UK, after arriving on Sunday night a week ago, I’ve been working every day and today was no exception. Excuses, excuses, but to make up for the lack of commentary yesterday, I’ll put up two posts today.
Ying sent me some images from his phone and I decided to include this one as I’d all but forgotten about the conduct of these two individuals on a flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam. As soon as we boarded the aircraft, the young lad in front of us was quietly curious about us and kept hanging over the back of the seat to grin at us. We’re pretty easy going people, especially where friendly kids are involved so Ying and I were grinning back and producing a range of amusing expressions to gain favour with the Chinese boy. The man in the seat next to us ignored our smiley ‘hello’s from the off, and once the boy began to giggle, his face turned positively thunderous. Soon after takeoff he proceeded to berate us for our bad behaviour in encouraging the boy to lean over. We had a brief discussion during which he called a hostess over to complain about the child’s ‘disrespect’ to him and about our rudeness.
Despite efforts to engage him in friendly conversation he refused to acknowledge us at all and remained completely silent throughout the flight, giving the poor child (who didn’t understand) evil glares. It is the first time I have ever had such an odious experience on a flight, yet experienced the sunny quiet behaviour of the two-year-old boy simultaneously. He was such a gloriously cheery individual and it contrasted so drastically with the gentleman to our left. One can only assume his time in China had been as uncomfortable as the flight; he refused noodles and rice point blank and was exceptionally harsh on the Chinese hostess, being condescending and bad-mannered. I was astounded that people can act in such a way in public without an ounce of embarrassment, but this man was amazing. He even sneered at us when he thought we weren’t looking. In return, we photographed him.
I felt I should at least attempt to protect this gentleman’s identity since he was perhaps out of sorts and surely would object to appearing here.
