Author: turknoys

"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain Turkish Father + Filipina (Pinay) Mother = 3 Turknoys! To make family relationship more complicated albeit very interesting, Turknoys are bi-cultural global nomads living in the Middle East with two working parents who want to embark on the world of travel, homeschooling and entrepreneurship. It's now or never! Two religion, three places we call "home". One faith. One passion. One very explicit goal: To travel together as family and explore 100 countries for the next 10 years. Let the decade of exploring and discovering begins...

Family Satisfaction

by turknoys, posted in Family Satisfaction, Qatar, Travel Goals

“Knowing your own family and having a purpose makes the unit live and love their lives on your own family’s terms. You know you have your own family lifestyle when the family members “need to do” is defined by its own members not by anyone else telling them. “ – Turknoys

In her previous life, Turknoy Mum was a quality assurance guru in her field (subtly emphasizing here that she knows the theories of sound management in business and in life!). She used to facilitate training about “Customer Satisfaction.” Her training purpose would be to define ways how to achieve customer satisfaction in business settings. For management to be able to do that, the organization needs to articulate what the customers really need. Satisfaction comes from having the customer requirements fulfilled. Hence, the obvious challenge lies on how to define what the customers really need, directly or indirectly, stated or implied.

However, the real challenge and less obvious to most organizations before achieving customer satisfaction, prior to being fluent with defining what the customers really need is identifying who their real customers are, their target niche, who they want to satisfy in the first place.

Well, it should be obvious. Organizations can’t please everybody and they don’t have do. Their purpose is really to make money, not customer satisfaction (newsflash!). Organizations are concerned about customer satisfaction because they want to have more profit. Satisfied customers tend to be repeat customers. Plain truth, commercial businesses are not focused about how customers are treated or served, they want customers to come again for more business or want their customers to tell good things about their business to attract more customers.

Organizations have mission, purpose-driven. It should be the same for individuals. It definitely should be the same for families.

Mission and purpose which drives a unique individual should be unique.

Mission and purpose which drives a unique family unit should be, duh, unique! Every family has different requirements for their satisfaction.

Yeah, let’s talk about Family Satisfaction, traditionally known as Happily Ever After. It’s so happily ever after, it’s considered an end-game for all single eligible, smart, independent people.

Our strong and high opinion about Family Satisfaction – It’s not an end-game. It’s that “Other Level – not mandatory next level, not higher level, a different level!

It’s a choice we have to make, if we want it. Everybody can be qualified to have a family but not everyone should build a family! Not everybody wants it, we need the world to acknowledge this! Sometimes a person is destined to not have family or kids, but a lot of times, a person may not want to have family or kids! 

How do we know who wants to have a family? There, there you go!! KNOW THYSELF! Like, deep-from-the-gut, straight-from-the-heart know yourself hard! If family life is not something for an individual, no amount of activities, goals or mission with the future family can satisfy or be enough to obtain happiness in life.

Finding yoursef is not similar to finding a lifetime partner!

And if we do want to have a family, how do we know how we can satisfy every member of family, how we do get family satisfaction? There, there you go!! KNOW THY FAMILY! Like, deep-from-the-gut, straight-from-the-heart know every member of the family hard! 

Knowing our own self, and our own family is not an easy task. It means acknowledging our deepest desires in life, we were often instructed by almost every “superior” human beings and ancient institutions to hide and contain.

Finding ourselves is not a one-off process. As our family home educate, unschool, explore with kids and live our lives without worrying about non conformities, every day is a learning opportunity to get to know our passion and desires.

We are allowing our curiosity guide our way to find ourselves. So far, it has taken us to places we only imagined before.

Maybe it involves continued traveling, or maybe it involves something else. 

Our family. Our terms. 

We CANNNNNN GET …. OUR satisfaction. Oh, oh oh!

A family that sets goals together, stays satisfied together!

Let’s Be Busy Being Alive 

by turknoys, posted in Maldives, Philippines, Qatar, Sweden, Travel Adventures, Travel Goals

“He not busy being born is busy dying.” –Sings Bob Dylan 
 
Every time we visit a new country or a new place or do new activity together as family, we always have that feeling of vigor, of expanding our horizon, of being reborn (in a non-radical-religious-kinda-way!)

The feeling of excitement when we stepped out of the plane and enjoy the first breath of fresh air of the country! Lots of possibilities, places to see, lots of milestones to share with kids!

The feeling of accomplishment when we perform new activity together, no matter now trivial, the exhilaration of fresh ideas coming to mind, fresh feelings of tons of possibilities shared with kids! 

It makes all of us come alive.

When we arrived at Gangehi, Maldives from the seaplane to the boat going to the island, we can still vividly hear the gasps of WOW from all the passengers, it’s like we were almost in the paradise island! Well, the island is a paradise. Gangehi is one small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean isolated surrounded with nothing but water and white, fine sand. The parents were so busy admiring the islands that the kids almost fell off the ocean from the plane! (True story – but kids are good swimmers, no harm done!) Out of breath with the view, panting with excitement, every now and then pinching ourselves to make sure that it’s real, all nerves yearning to catch up with the logic of what is happening. Euphoria – that’s a nice busy feeling.

Setting foot on Gangehi Islands in Indian Ocean for the first time with kids!
Exactly the same feeling our family felt when we stepped out of the airplane from Stockholm to Kiruna, in the Artic part of the world. It was almost midnight, the snow everywhere, the freezing temperature, looking up at the bright sky hoping to see the Northern Lights. Again, the parents were so busy admiring the snow-covered airport runway that we didn’t notice the kids sinking their feet to the depth of the snow. (Again, true story! They did however, find this funny and kept running mindlessly around like their parents, despite being undressed in a very cold weather!) The faces of the kids, giddy moments together, definitely a treasure to remember for the rest of our living moments.

The morning after arrival at Kiruna – awesome moments with family!

Again, exactly the same feeling we had when we experienced our first family cart-carabao ride around the village in Indang we call home in the Philippines. Kids and parents shouting with joy and excitement looking at familiar green environment and feeling euphoric seeing goats, chickens and banana shrubs! The adrenaline rush, the blissful moment of being occupied with activity so routine and trivial for some, yet so special and memorable for our family.

Carabao Ride in Indang! Home Sweet Home Adventures!

 

That exact same feeling, although a bit challenging to replicate in our day-to-day life as expat family in the desert, we always try our best to feel alive, to be exhausted with happiness and not boredom. We find bliss in sand dunes, so we always seek the thrill of admiring the desert with kids especially at high temperature and humidity! In the desert, we feel busy dreaming, busy feeling the euphoria of experiencing life surrounded by sand and  dust yet with so much comfort magnified by love and blessings of the country we live in.

 

Brown is our Green when in Qatar! Exploring is always blissful
Every day we open our eyes are God’s gift. Each day we don’t do things that make us come alive is an injustice to this gift. 

Every day is too precious not to be busy living. Such a waste to be busy dying! 

Let’s Be Busy Growing Everday. It takes full commitment to growth!

Life’s An Opinion 

by turknoys, posted in Travel Goals, Why Travel With Kids?

“My life is your opinion, Mommy!” – said with conviction by our eldest Turknoy

 
One of the side benefits of traveling with kids is when there are idle time in between transportation schedules like waiting for the next plane schedule to the next city. During these times, open discussions with kids, whether parents are comfortable or not, is unavoidable. 

We were talking about diverse topics such as religion, home education and how people influence one another knowingly or subconsciously. Out of nowhere, she said it.
 
“My life is your opinion, Mommy!”

her opinions are deeprooted to every atoms in her body! 😜 Gheez, Thanks Mommy!

And wow! Never did a statement hit the mark so accurately.
It’s true. In a good, bad, intense and very scary way.
Our kids are living the life based on our opinions. We do not go to church or mosque, we don’t send the kids to school, we make exploring a habit and a lifestyle.

These are our opinions and we live by these. Not a popular choice by majority, non-conventional. Scary choices yet we stand by these opinions.

Just to be so clear – we are not claiming we are right. Nor we want anybody’s approval either. 

The Turknoy parents young age was so patterned with anyone else’s and we formed high opinions about it. We used to religiously go to church or mosque. We went to traditional schools and universities. We used to dream about high paying job with normal working hours and “settling down” to a nice cozy home with a garden.

Yes, we have strong opinions about how we used to live our lives. Our Turknoy kids lives are now based on these opinions.
An immense responsibility we are taking on to ourselves and not on to anybody else.
When Turknoy Mum was young, growing up in the village (it takes a village to raise a child, right?!), the teachers and neighbors would praise how smart she is, and how successful she would be being an accountant (uh, yeah, that specific because during those times, being Certified Public Accountant is synonymous to being successful.) Study hard, graduate from university and get a high paying job.  

There are beautiful girls in the same village who were expected to be marry a rich man because they are “very beautiful.” Some of these beautiful girls turned into beautiful women waiting in vain for that rich men to come to their lives.

Well, Turknoy Mum is lucky she is smart and not that beautiful. She did finish her university and got a good job.

Opinions affect our lives. More than we allow it to. We are what we imagined but most of the times, we listen so much to what other people think should happen in our lives that it becomes our own imagination.

It is really important to hang out with the right people who will give us a good image of what we are capable of doing, of what future we deserve. Well-meaning people are usually parents, right? See, we are qualified to raise our kids based on our opinions! One of the reason we advocate strongly home education.

The other side of our family is not any different. When Turknoy Dad was growing up in his own village, he was raised to the very same ideals. Study hard, graduate from a university, get a job that would pay for his retirement, get married to a loving wife who will take care of him and kids in a very comfortable and clean (oh boy, do they clean their houses!) home.

Luckily, his inclinations to see the world prevailed and he didn’t marry a wife who will take care of his house. He did however, married a wife who can make him rich (not financially) beyond his dreams.

Yes, luckily, we were able to form opinions of our own so we can live out of our parents, our neighbors and society’s opinions.

We can still hear our eldest saying with conviction, “My life is your opinion, Mommy!

This we reply:

“Well, thank you, kids for living your life based on our opinions. For now. We sincerely hope that we are enabling you to make your own opinions and have the courage to live by these.”

Life is too short to live by somebody else’s opinions.

We are all winging how to live our lives. Nobody knows for sure, what is right. And what was right then, could be so wrong now. 

 Our lives, our opinions.

 Your life, your opinion. 

High respect and high five for that!

and she says: My life is my Mother’s opinion! Well, hope Mommy’s opinion is not as ancient as Parthenon!

Set Goals. It’s Necessary! 

by turknoys, posted in Travel Goals

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things … – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

Set goals! There are no petty things when you know how to make your family happy! 🤗
Do you set goals for your family? As in serious goals written somewhere and not just a hashtag #familygoals or #travelgoals ? Can you state your goals in a sentence or two?

In any business organization, profit or non-profit, the importance of setting the vision and goals are very important. Companies spend thousands of dollars making sure that their vision, mission, goals and objectives are updated and relevant. Turknoy Mum knows this, she spent more than a decade of her career in ensuring an effective system is in place to set the direction of the organization.

A person without goal is a like a kite without string, going to wherever the winds blows, until the kite gets destroyed in God-knows how, where and when.

As much as our family believes in destiny and meant-to-be-happy-ever-after, we believe in setting goals. It keeps the hearts and minds waking up with tons of excitement, not to mention, keeps the hearts and minds focused on what we really want to get out of this life.

The day-to-day living together becomes an agony if we keep doing the same thing over and over  only guided with society’ directions one of which is that is that ” Someday, kids will  finish school and “become successful.”

Successful means achieving goals, can’t really be a success without goals to rate it against, right?

Growing up, both Turknoy parents wanted to be rich. We earned our first thousand dollars successfully before we turned 30, got married, had kids, and kept our management jobs…. And then……… day in, day out.. wait for kids to grow up, keep the day jobs, wait for kids to grow up… And then…. Boredom. In other lives, it could mean drama here and there. How people without goals would welcome drama in their lives  if there is nothing to look forward to! Oh, that happens! 

Human psychology supports this. When the mind is not looking forward to something, it deviates from what is right or appropriate. Fights, affairs, murder, suicide. Okay, a bit exaggerated to get our point across, but that’s how it happens in real life.
 

Settling down with family is not an end point. It is a status. Same as being in a relationship. Or staying “forever” with your one true love.
The sad and pathetic thing is when we consider “settling down with our family” and living our forever with the one we love” our one exclusive goal in life. There is really more to life.
Romantic as it sounds, it really is boring. Setting goals is an ongoing process. There is an end point to goals to determine whether we achieved it or not, but the process needs to be habitual aka “forever.” 
Our family’s goal is to travel. It is our family’s passion. It gives us adrenaline to deal with our day-to-day expat realities of petty and trivial things. It refreshes our mind seeing new things, giving happy sensations whenever we experience new places and meet new people.
Traveling is not the only goal for a family. However, the importance of setting goals should not be underestimated.
Family and setting goals is like life and oxygen.
So, do you have goals for your family? Let us know, in one sentence or two?

Life is a breeze when you have your goals set!

Kids Can Fly Better 

by turknoys, posted in Travel Goals, Why Travel With Kids?

       
Understanding the principles of aerodynamics has nothing to do with the experience of flying. – Northrop Frye

Our Turknoy youngest was almost one-year old when we started flying together as family. We can all vividly and fondly remember the trouble of flying with stroller, baby bags with milk and bottles, changing nappies in the crampy airplane toilet and most loved of all, the crying and loud baby in the mid-flight when all passengers sleeping! Oh gracious! 

We can hear what some of our fellow travelers and even family members think when we started traveling three years ago. It goes like – “These parents are insane, why do they subject these kids and their fellow travelers the agonies of carrying the kids to places to explore (traveling!). The kids won’t even remember these places they painstakingly took them to. Such trouble.” 

Traveling with our little ones is one milestone we will definitely not regret or forget!

Oh, when we look at our now four-year old now! How at home she is at airplane and how she is very insistent to watch the safety flight video and stay at the window seat to look down below when the plane lands or takes off. The extreme joy of watching the clouds when we are 36,000-ft. like all the life’s secret will be revealed to her alone is just too priceless to watch. During long flights, she sleeps like a grownup scrunched in the seat with a smile on her face. Most of time.

Our six-year old son never fails to shriek with so much delight during landing and takeoff. Such loud moments when we take off… “And off we go….. “ he always shout and claps loud whenever we land.

On the other hand, the parents are scared-shit of all the things that could go wrong when we land or take off. Adults know that the most dangerous part of flying are the landing and takeoff. There we are sitting so uptight while our kids are having the momentous joys of their life!

Kids enjoy flights better than adults. They say ignorance is bliss, but we don’t think it’s the ignorance. It’s the enthusiasm to experience and explore something for all the senses, not mainly for the brain and intellect.

That carefree feeling, the abandonment of what should be but what is. Not the moments what kids can remember.

Exploring new places, experiencing new adventures – those are not for the intellect. It is definitely way much more than that. It’s the foundation of our being, the things we will build our future memories on.

Foundations are built to last, built to be strong.

Foundations can also be built while having fun and being happy.

Kids should learn to explore freely. Kids can fly and travel better.

look at our little traveller being silly during a six-hour waiting time at the airport, time flies!

Set goals. Live the Life You Imagined

by turknoys, posted in Travel Goals

I’d rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed. – Robert H. Schuller

 
Our family can travel and not set goals. That’s actually how it’s usually done. We have 37 working days off for our annual leave not to mention the Region’s holidays. We can plan going on holidays for annually. We don’t have to set goals to traveling to 100 countries and 100 more landmarks for every country we call home – Qatar, Philippines and Turkey.

Dr. Seuss recommends setting goals! ❤️❤️

Yet, we believe that it is very important to define our quest, set our travel goals. If there is something we love more than traveling, it is setting goals.

Setting goals make us allocate our resources to our priorities. To be able to say No to all the good things that come along our way, and say Yes to what we really want in life.

Setting goals make us pick our own quest in life, not the ones dictated to us.

Setting goals is not going with the flow, it is realizing things no matter the flow, or the weather.

It makes our family look forward to a lot of things ahead. Waking up every day and monitoring our goal progress is a form of family bonding for us. The joy in planning, of what is possible, shared with family members, is happiness. It doesn’t have to cost anything at all.

It makes our family imagine all the possibilities. There are a lot!

It makes our family stretch our minds to what we think we are capable of doing. It makes us think highly of our future realities.

It also makes our family think of what we are NOT capable of doing and re- consider our goals every now and then.

Yet we stand firm to what we think we can accomplish. We can fail, yes, that could happen. However, we can also succeed and achieve our goals.

That would be something to be excited for every day.

Set goals. Live the life you imagined. It doesn’t have to be about travel. As long as it’s attempting to do something more than everyday life.

Set goals. Live the life you imagined.

Travel and setting goals. Easy. Important. Lifestyle. 

Live the Life You Always Imagined! Set Goals!

 

One Family’s Logic is Another Family’s Crazy!

by turknoys, posted in Travel Goals

A fish cannot drown in water,

bird does not fall in air.

In the fire of creation,

God doesn’t vanish:

The fire brightens.

Each creature God made

must live in its own true nature;

How could I resist my nature,

That lives for oneness with God?

 by Mechthild of Magdeburg  (1207 – 1297)

 
It’s theological. It’s in the Holy Book (insert any religion.) Even obvious. It’s common sense. It’s cliché. Each one of us is unique. We all know this, don’t we?

Every vein of our body is like our fingerprints, whispering to our inner self our true nature, our passion, the reason we are alive. It consumes us whether we allow it or not.

Yet, our society is mass-producing us, submitting us to compliance and if we do not comply with their expectations like school, religion, eight-hour job, retirement funds, marriage, lifestyle, we are going to be labelled “crazy.”

Perceived crazy people used to get burned alive in the witches olden times. Lucky for our Turknoy family, the only fire we will experience is the fire of passion burning in our hearts, mind and entire being. We intend to live out of people’s expectations but chase our unique calling in this life. Together with our Turknoy kids.

When our family first travelled to Europe, we didn’t even tell any other family members both from Turkish side or Filipino side. There are a lot of considerations from both culture, involving financial and emotional acceptance factors mainly.

Turknoy dad just lost his job. It was in the middle of international economic crisis. We just had our third baby and new things brought about by the new family member didn’t even settle just yet.

We just wanted so badly to see what’s out there for our family. Living our family life became so monotonous of talking about living life. We wanted to stop talking and actually live our life.

There will always be reasons, circumstances which will stop us from doing what we love. We had to start somewhere.

We booked our travel, arranged visa requirements and just left to travel to our first family adventure. That simple.

For the three weeks we were seeing new places, our family couldn’t be happier. Laughter so loud we never even thought of possible of hearing from kids, fights we were happy to observe over trivial travel matters, awkward sleeping arrangements and deep, happy, contented slumber!

We were in bliss finding our elements. We were seeing new things. We were chasing our passion.

It does make a lot of sense for us. It doesn’t have to make sense to other families.

Being free from the thought of making society and people, family members included, understand why we do what we do is a huge step to enjoy and work towards our travel goals.

We are all unique. Our Turknoy family intends to travel to different countries and continents while celebrating our uniqueness as individual and as family.

Fish can’t drown in the water, birds does not fall in air. Crazy! 

The family with itchy feet explores the world together !

COUNTRY 1 – FRANCE AND THE MANY FIRSTS!

by turknoys, posted in France, Travel Adventures

“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux

 

Rain in Paris, Rain in Nice – Highlight of our France Experience !

The memories of France for our family is not The Eiffel Tower. There is much to this country than what the Turknoy parents grew up daydreaming about.

We stayed in France for a total of 16 days and nights! That is more than half-month as a tourist! Yes, newbie tourist family for few weeks, it’s like few weeks of being in first year high school. We didn’t know any better.
We spent 8 days in Paris, devoted tourists as we are, very good tourists, enjoying all the famous touristic attractions in the city.

Lots of photos with the Eiffel Tower, explored the peak view of the Eiffel Tower, after spending lots of time queuing, waiting for our turn to climb the peak, went to Louvre Museum and checked out Mona Lisa (twice!), enjoyed the River Seine Tour on a cold, windy day, Open Bus Tour for several days, spent a considerable amount of time at the Arc De Triomphe, climb the stairs of Sacre Coeur Church and enjoyed its religious rituals and magnificent views and was awed with admiration exploring the Palace of Versailles.

Phew, it sounded as jampacked as it is written.
Going out of the City of Love, we enjoyed Nice and the French Riveria, again on cold, rainy days. The feel of elegance and posh French Mediterrean is simply too gorgeous for our cheap travel mode. We enjoyed the very classy places in Cote d’Azur, Paul de Vence, Gourdon, Eze, Antibes and Cannes!

Snow and Eiffel Tower fun!

 

It was all very fantastic and dreamlike, and not to be outshined was our three nights stay in Paris Disneyland Hotel. That meant three days of enjoying Disneyland Paris, including breakfasts and lunches with the Disney princesses and other Disney characters, of course, Mickey Mouse included. That also meant lots of Disney parades, Disney rides and Disney fireworks!

Paris Disneyland Highlights

 

It was indeed a magical holiday with family.

But, there is a big BUT, following that magical holiday statement. It was magical BUT there is a LOT more.
This is our first foreign country to explore together as family and there are a lot of “HOOPS!”, “Ohhh Myyy Godddd” moments.
Our top experiences may not be about France even, but hey… traveling is most of the time, not about the destination. We all know how the cliché goes – it’s about the journey, the memories, the mishaps, the memories!
I believe, when we are old, grumpy and grey and someone mentioned France to us, there will be lots of laughter in our head. It will not be because we walked the red carpet of Cannes with kids, it’ll probably because of our boohoo moments in the country.
Survived with rice cooker and lots of tuna. The first two days of Paris means lots of French bread and authentic French food like escargot (yuumm!) Then our Asian side won over our desire to explore new dishes, the rice cooker and tuna cans to rescue! The smell of tuna in our hotel room every meal, every day will make us vomit to this day. It was a lot cheaper, too. The image of my kids eating tuna straight to tuna cans or straight from the rice cooker while happily chatting away the days activities are simply too good an image to forget. Of course, we highly recommend to bring rice cooker and tuna cans when traveling with kids!
For sure, our Asian readers will understand.

 

Lost.  Everywhere. Missed metro stop. Missed bus stop. Missed boat stop. Missed street sign. Even got lost inside the Louvre museum. A lot of times. We swear, that Mona Lisa painting moved, when we tried to find the painting for the second time. We never ended up where we wanted to be, but most of the time, we ended up having fun. With new eyes and new places, everything is just amazing.

For what it is worth, France is really is one of the most beautiful city in the world.
Got Laid with Audience. Yes, that type of laid. We can’t really pass the chance of staying in France and not sneaking in “romantic” moments. Did you know that hotel rooms in France (and Europe in general) are really small and it’s hard to keep anything a secret when you share with three kids? Oh well, kids will figure out anyways. Better sooner than later. Example. Set an example.

Durex means I Love You and The Kids Enough Not to Want to Have More Kids

Enjoyed Rain and Snow A Lot. The kids enjoyed their first snow moments in France. Slip, fall, tumble, run, one snowball, colds and cough, happiness in snow.

Ahh, the rain! It almost didn’t stop raining when we were in Nice. The park, the beach, the no crowd day. Just us, the crazy Turknoy family with wet feet and warm hearts.

Noisy Kids Reported. We were almost thrown our of our first hotel. Two old European couple complained about the kids being noisy. Uuuggh! Who does that? And we found out the answer, two retired grumpy couple! We were given a warning, luckily, we were supposed to check out day after. We just stayed out of the couple’s way. The kids will always remember how we defended them, and how diplomatic we were (promise, we were, just a little bit sarcastic.)
France is glamorous. Our first family travel in France, glamorous as we wanted it to be, was definitely not.

Fond first memories together for all family members @ ages 37,35,7,4,1.

 

 

Turknoy Thoughts on Qatar Airways Safety Video

by turknoys, posted in Qatar Airways

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain
 

For this year alone (2016), our Turknoy family already flew with Qatar Airways to two destinations and there two return tickets for the family already booked with the airline in the next few months.

This means that we already watched Qatar Airways’s mandatory airline safety video eight times already (English and Arabic versions are different, four times for each return ticket.)

We are dreading the time we have to watch this video again during our next scheduled flights.

When the airlines announced its new creative safety video featuring Barca, we were very excited and proud. In his statement, Qatar Airway’s CEO explained that as the young airline company strives “to stay fresh, relevant and to have fun.” Those are great goals. We love Qatar Airways as our airlines, however, something is just plain wrong and very offensive with one part of the video.

It’s the part that where Gerard Pique, walks out of the airport, women screaming at his good looks and handsome grin making the women turn into a gaggle of breathless fans, only women. There are men at the back of the crowd but they are not shrieking mindlessly. And then several oxygen masks drop down to assist them in a “crazy-fanatic-woman emergency.”

Gerard Pique walking out of the airport

Beautiful., intelligent women losing their brilliant minds over Pique

Forgive my eyes, a mother’s eyes rolling to this scene.

Watching this video several times, with our two girls and son, makes them see how trivial Qatar Airways think of women.

“Why are women screaming so hard until they need an oxygen mask, Mommy?”

How do I answer my daughters’ question? 

Being a home and world educating family, through travel, we attempt to open our kids’ hearts and minds on how the world think and empower them to be their unique selves, emphasizing to them that gender or race are not defining factors in our personality and our impact to change this world.

Watching how women reacted to a handsome man to the point of needing an oxygen mask suddenly raised a lot of questions about gender equality and current society’s prejudice towards women in general.
 
Okay, reality check, women do scream a lot when faced with gorgeous and hot celebrity men. Some of us, sometimes. And some men do, too. Some of the women, find screaming too shallow. Some men do, too.

People in general think not with our brains sometime but with adrenaline. People, not just women.

How about this scene instead:
A very intense game with Pique and Messi in it, causing the audience an extreme celebration making them all out of breath, hence the need for the oxygen mask for everyone. Then the queue to teach them how to use the mask in the event of the emergency.

Not only that scene depicts love for the game but does not downgrade women to a bunch of screaming lunatics.

The concept of the video is indeed creative. Creating situations outside the airplane to demonstrate the safety guidelines really require creative thinking. We applaud Qatar Airways for the initiative. Maybe, it just reflects too much of the reality?

Rant over. Ready to watch the video again on our next flights. Well, not really.
 
 

 

Keep Calm, Travel and Be Late.

by turknoys, posted in Nepal, Travel Goals

I am late. I am late! For A Very Important Date! – The White Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland


During my first few days as expat, together with my fellow newcomers and future colleagues, we take the bus from the hotel to get to the Head Office. There’s this person, tall, very handsome and kind fellow who is always tardy, always coming to the bus few minutes late. One day, he was left behind by the bus because he was exceeded the 10-minute late waiting period – he was that late! Serves him right, I remember myself thinking. He may be nice, but he has no respect for other people’s time and nobody should be forced to wait for him while he takes his own time.

That day when he was left behind by the bus, going back to the hotel, he had so many stories about the new place where we’re in. He was able to get to know the environment, shops, routes and transportation mode. Seemed like he became famous instantly because he was the most knowledgeable person in our group about the local culture. Because he was late, because he didn’t rush, he opened himself to other experiences destined to happen.

I ended up marrying the guy. That same person is the Turknoy Dad. Yeah, first impression didn’t matter for us, just destiny (and the fact, that he was tall, very handsome and kind, like I emphasized.)

This is the same person who will wait last minute for the final boarding time before actually boarding the plane. The same person who’s name will be called because he is sometimes late, “Mr. Turknoy Dad, you are now requested to please proceed to Gate X. This is your final call.” Great, now everybody at the airport knows who his name, instant fame all over again. He didn’t have to wait at all nor look at the Gate number! See the good pattern here? The airport staff is assisting to make things happen for him , to catch his flight.

This is the same person who will keep still and calm looking at magnificent view for hours, savoring every moment of solitude, who doesn’t need to meditate because he is subconsciously meditating.

This is the same person who will hang out with his wife (me, I am the lucky Turknoy Mum!) for hours and days (prekids time) without checking his phone or getting bored staring at my face, just listening to what I have to say. Gently talking, gently loving me in his calm, awesome ways.

This is the same person who travel with kids patiently waiting for tantrums to end, for wife’s hormones to subside, for certain activities which kids like to do to be completed so that he can proceed with what he does best, exploring very minute of the new place we are in and enjoy!

It does help to be calm and late most of the time. When we stop and take a look at it, life is meant to be savored, not be hurried through.

His calm and non-hurried ways became our family’s way of travel and living. It is natural for Turknoy Dad which he luckily passed on to the children. The go-getter career woman in me is most of the struggling but as our travel goals roll out, I am getting there, one travel at time.

Yes, there are train, plane or bus schedule to catch. But we don’t have to be defined by these timings. There are greater energy in this world that gives pull and push towards our destiny, if only we let it.

look what this dad found while trekking with kids in Nagarkot, Nepal – hemp plantation! 🌱🌿🌴
 

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get! – The same White Rabbit, in the same classic story!