Of Ash, Flights & Food

It really is true today that no man is an island.....sitting in Dubai on a brilliant, sunshine morning, you may look at that newspaper which tells you on the front page that the cancelled flights due to the Icelandic Volcano Ash impairing visibility has set the Gulf and Arab airlines back by 67 million dollars....."WHO CARES?!" tends to be your attitude, and not unsurprisingly, you would not be even considered selfish for voicing those sentiments. But, like it or not, we all better care,it appears......hypermarkets in Dubai are voicing concerns about dwindling stocks of fresh food from European markets....so you may get up tomorrow, go to your neighbourhood Spinneys or grocery and find the shelves that are always replete with succulent fruit and meat and cold cuts from Europe, the gorgeous Australian pears and New Zealand apples all gone.....what then? Aha....now that is making you sit up and take notice, isn't it? Especially in markets like Abu Dhabi and Dubai, where we are so much at the mercy of the rest of the world when it comes to even our daily basic supplies, one just cannot underestimate the importance of the marvellous connectivity we share with the world, being such a geographical meeting point for the East and West.....so perhaps it is as critical for us to worry about when flight connections will be restored, as for those poor stranded passengers at airports in Europe or Dubai...