Exactly a year ago, I was welcomed into the wondrous world of planes, pilots and passwords.

It’s been a year since the day an awkward me, in skirt and heels, got lost outside the Etihad back entrance not knowing how to get inside the glass walls. After 10 minutes of yanking immovable doors and walking back and forth like a schizo, someone came to the rescue and opened a door for me with his ID.

It’s been 365 days since I shook the hands of the man (farthest left) who I’d be calling boss from that day on.

I love my boss. 

I have a lot of bosses, but let me focus on this one for now. While half of the world scream their hatred towards their bosses, I am favored to have a manager who is more my friend than a commander. He is the kind of boss you respect out of admiration and not of fear.

I think my boss is special, in both senses of the word – exceptional and mental. Here are proofs that there is none like him.

He makes us pose in pictures like this:

And this…

We formed a weight-watch team, me and him, but the partnership died instantly because of how unreliable my crony is…

This is his idea of a formal ID picture.

He is 90% bonkers, 9% superhuman and 1% spicy.

Dullness flees in his presence. He is so funny, my mornings start with a cup of laughter and my day ends with a tummy of toxic air. Along with other people in the department, they can turn the office into a circus.

He calls himself “greater genius” and calls me “lesser genius” but everybody knows it’s the other way around.

I love it when he goes for duty travel (which is a lot) because he brings home treats like this:

 I just wish he could bring me with him sometimes.

He is the boss you can comfortably eat lunch with or play sports with or steal from when he’s away. I squat in his corner, kidnap his tech-stuff and plunder from his tissue box.

If not for him, I would have been forever clueless about the science of flights. He taught me almost everything, patiently explaining aviation complexities, making sure this layman clearly understood. My mistakes are corrected in the most professional manner –  each blunder equal to a number of pizzas.

How do you know you love your boss?

When you don’t dread going to work everyday and when you look back to the first day you shook his hand and it doesn’t feel like a year has already gone.