Sometimes we don't do ourselves any favours though...
Was coming back from Europe one night last week and one of my colleagues 2000' above was obviously trying his best to overtake us despite the fact that we were already at CI300, he was most put out when the UAE controller kept them high and his EAT was 5 mins later than ours despite the fact that he was slightly in front.
Started questioning the controller who politely replied, if you want to understand how things work here please come and pay us a visit...
Seems that he was kind of "sin binned" as he ended up in the hold for way longer than his original EAT.