Dragonator;
I hope you turned down CX because you're not interested in flying. Otherwise, you'll regret, not in 10 years, but in 10 weeks.
You need to seriously get your life into reality. Working for Cathay has nothing to do with flying; it has everything to do with lifestyle, money and retirement. You do this job when you're finished "flying"; when you've done your time in the Airforce, when you've spent your 10 years flying miners into desolate places on a King Air; when you've seen a decade of winters on the north atlantic coast in a DC-9; when you've done your summers flying around the Serengeti in a Caravan. When you've done all that; when you've truly flown airplanes enough to kick back and take the office job; that's when you come here.
You will not be respected as an aviator for doing 4 years as an SO after a 180 hour course in Australia, followed by 30 years of ILS auto-lands diverting from the occasional typhoon. You are not signing up for flying; you are signing up for a lifestyle. If you truly have a passion for flying, then you will be very, very dissilusioned when you join. That I can guarantee.
I should know.