Holiday of a Lifetime - After thoughts

Europe is a place where everyone dreams of going at least once in their lifetime as somehow concluded from my friends and relatives. Even though it was another Ang Moh place but it was entirely different from Australia, United States and New Zealand. They have their own culture, language, style of living, values etc.

Somehow, the Europeans are more up-tight & do not embrace foreigners as readily as we hope so. In a certain aspect, Asians including Singaporeans and the Americans are more open-minded towards accepting people who are different from us. Yes, I am proud that we are able to have a more generous heart and mind to accommodate other nationalities ! Let's give a pat on our shoulders !

Switzerland society has somehow struck a seamless harmony with dogs which enable them to have their pets on the streets, restaurants and even trains ! We were often amazed by the good behavior of the dogs whenever we saw one on the street! They were definitely well-trained. Accordingly to my European colleague who is a German, he mentioned that the Swiss are more or less confined to their own community. That might explain why they are unfriendly to foreigners.

Paris is definitely one of the most interesting cities in the world ! The city is not only huge but it was crowded with interesting artistic folks who earn their keep by leasing their talents on the streets and trains ! You could tell that most of these folks are not Parisians. They are migrants from different part of the world. There are 2 distinctive groups of people that caught my eyes in Paris. One was a group of blacks consisting only men who sell souvenirs to tourists in places of attractions. One was a group of ladies (not blacks though) who worked in a group asking tourists if they could speak English or occasionally dressed up as "Mummies" or "Egyptian Queen" for donations . Somehow, looking at them, I felt so blessed to be able to walk freely and enjoying life as a tourist. I just had this feeling that these groups were under some kind of underground organisation which controls their lives and money they earned. I felt a heartache for them and how lucky we are compared to them ! We have to be truly grateful to what we have and the full rights of being a human being !

Being stranded in London certainly "opened" our eyes to see how some organisations took advantage of this unfortunate situation to "advertise" their trade. Unfortunately, our national airlines was one of them. It was pretty upsetting to know that the airlines was doing so much for the stranded passengers in Singapore rather than to help their fellow Singaporean overseas. So Singaporeans are considered second class than foreigners stranded overseas ? That's exactly how we felt in London. Somehow, we still considered Singapore as our home despite the fact that the airlines has let us down.

It was during this rather unpleasant situation that we got encouragements from our friends via Facebook, emails or phone calls. We were extremely grateful with every messages posted everyday. We gave our thanks to all friends who genuinely care about us. Thanks to Fang who call SIA for us which took her like an hour to get someone to talk to her.