This is a final boarding call for...

1. Airline pilots aim for every bit of turbulence they can find, just to keep you religious.

2. The Namib Desert has no oil, but on the plus side, it doesn't have any Americans either. There is no better illustration of the stupidity of men than the fact that we actually fought a war over this place.

3. Windhoek is a city of 200 000 people and twice as many speed humps. If an animal dies in the road, they simply tar over it.

4. South Africa and Namibia have a lot in common. We both sell the same shit to tourists.

5. The kind of tourist who shops in Dubai could buy South Africa and Namibia.

6. Somebody, while shopping in duty free (Doha) will utter the words, "Just what I've been searching for, a diamond encrusted iPod!"

7. The same sentence will not be heard in Windhoek.

8. At Abu Dhabi immigration we had to have a retinal scan. I'd never undergone one of those before and much preferred it to the anal probe.

9. I was travelling with a friend who looks a bit Arabic and he was offered to go to the front of every queue... Obviously profiling is not always such an insult.

10. Everybody smokes. Everywhere. All the time.

11. In Dubai it is unnecessary to caution people not to drink and drive, but it might be a good idea to tell them to stop dropping acid and designing skyscrapers.

12. Local people in Windhoek are very friendly. This may be because they're pissed.

13. I wish I had met more local people in the UAE, but they don't mingle with the help.

14. On the plane home I open the British Esquire, GQ and Premier magazines I bought in Abu Dhabi duty free. Some pages are stuck together, because a censor has painted out nipples, etc, crudely daubing them with black ink. Flashback to the nipple stars and verboten pubes of 70's South Africa... I settle in for the flight and think about how far we've come.

Sharp,

Al