David | Māngere
“My dad’s Tongan. I identify myself as Tongan. I grew up Tongan. Normally traditional religion. So I’d say I’m quite deeply connected to my religion all the time.
I was born in Sydney. I moved to New Zealand when I was about 11 years old. I currently reside in Māngere. By day I’m a fulltime flight attendant, and I’ve got another side job at Spookers. I do that kind of just for fun. Most of my life revolves around my work really. I feel like I’ve got no personal life because I’m so busy. Like, I’m here today studying for my job. Yeah quite busy, full-on life.
I think it’s so important to be kind in your everyday life, because you know, at the end of the day we’re all here for the same reason. You know? We just all want to get on with our lives. We want to be happy. We want to get there the nicest way possible, and I think the only way to do that is just to be a nice person. It doesn’t cost much.
A really nice thing that happened to me was I had a passenger on one of my flights that was just over the top nice. She really appreciated my service, and she made me feel that I was doing the right job, I was doing the right thing, and that I was in the right place at the right time. Yeah, and I felt really good about that.
Heart to heart
I connected with my best friend last night. We usually have deep heart to heart conversations all the time. She opened up to me about something actually really personal that had an effect on her overall life. I think we just have that trust and we built that relationship, and it’s just so easy to connect with her, and we do it quite often. So just last night actually we had that conversation.
Connected with someone you don’t know
The last time I connected with a stranger was probably at my job. I come across a lot of strangers all the time, and I had a mother with her baby who was just having a real difficult time. Imagine yourself in that situation, with a crying baby, and it was evident that passengers around here were getting kind of frustrated. She was obviously in a really uncomfortable situation. Travelling with infants isn’t always the easiest, and I was able to calm her baby down, and build a connection with her so that she could trust me, and she could just sit back and relax. I felt like if someone’s going to give you their baby to hold, there’s got to be some sort of connection. I wouldn’t just give my baby to a stranger that I wouldn’t trust.
It’s easy to be nice, and you just feel good about yourself. I want every interaction I have with people to be a nice one, and I kind of would love to expect the same back. I hope it doesn’t sound selfish of me to say this, but if I was in her situation I would just love if someone had done that to me. So, being in their shoes and expecting it exactly how you did it, is just the way I kind of go about things.”
