Qatar Airways – Turknoy Travels 100!

“Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.” – Paolo Coelho

Low Cost Airline to Europe! — Travel is cheap depends on the comfort you want! 😍

If you think travel is expensive, then most probably, you never really had an adventure just yet. Our family can say that with conviction because we have been there.

The family who follows routine and “saves for the kid’s future.” The family who doesn’t define what is important for the family members, but tries very hard to “fit in,” such as attending birthday parties and then throwing birthday parties or play groups with lots of freebies!

In no way, we are claiming that these parties are bad or waste of time. It’s just that, at birthday parties, you always see that one awkward group of people who look like they are trying to have fun, but can’t because it’s not in their DNA to be around people. When we attend parties, that’s how our introvert family looks like.

Parties make some extrovert people happy and contented. Throwing lots of parties is awesome if it is your priority in life and if that makes your family happy.

That’s our main point really. Do what makes you feel alive. Know your priorities. Make sure it’s what matters to you and your family. Not the routine priorities of our lives.

The moment our family said our priorities out loud (or through this blog!), we started to experience realization of our travel goals in no way we thought possible, most of them for free. It’s because our eyes are laser-focused on what’s out there to make our priorities our realities.

To name a few examples:

· Our Qatar Airways family ticket to Munich is free-of-charge using Qmiles.
· We got Qatar Airways return trip for free, again using Qmiles for our trip to The Netherlands.
· We got free upgrade from economy to business class from Istanbul to Doha.
· We always stay in the business lounge at any airport, even we always travel economy. For free.
· We always have room upgrade at any hotel/ hostel we stay in because we always book for two adults only (and yes, we are actually five!) Again, free of charge, because we have a “business class” status in the online travel booking community.

Yes, we do spend money for traveling. The value for the money we spent is sky-rocking-high and that’s what makes it cheap.

Way back 2009, we spent the same amount of money for our first daughter’s 4th birthday party at Chili’s and our second Europe trip. Add in the birthday gifts we gave to the birthday parties we attended for that same year and that would be the same as our trip to Nepal.

When we didn’t travel last year over Eid holidays, we ended up spending more than when we travelled to Denmark and Sweden for the second time over the 11-day holiday. Living costs is relative. We just need to decide which (and where) perspective to look at!

It takes courage to define our priorities in life. It also takes courage to say “No” to things that doesn’t make us as happy. It does cost us financially and before we knew it, it will give us lots of should-have beens.

Travel is not expensive. Not having goals is.

“We are all part of the free world! Free to dream, free to travel, free to live!” – Turknoys ‘ Mum

“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.”

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.

Category: Qatar Airways

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