Hey guys, currently in Perth at the moment on my annual leave. I know I've been a little slack in the posting department. Quite a bit has happened, but they're not particularly exciting.

Flight 404 - DXB-SIN-MEL
The last time I wrote I was on my way to the 5 day torture flight. Walked into briefing having had fuck all sleep, for a 2am departure time. Most of the guys there looked pretty fatigued already. Purser walks in, says "Everybody take out their manuals," and I'm shitting myself because I know exactly what's gonna happen next.

She checks them to see if they've got the lastest updates. I KNOW I haven't got mine, as the Purser on my Kuwait flight asked the same thing and I didn't get the updates, ever since that flight I've asked admin if they've got a copy and they say no, they're out. I do so again after the Purser tells me to get a copy, admin tell me they don't have one, I tell the Purser I can't get a copy, and ask her if I'm gonna be offloaded. She hands me a copy of the revision, and I guess from that point on things aren't rosy between her and the rest of the crew. She's made it as the first entry onto my "Pursers and SFS's to call in sick for" list, a list that all cabin crew make when they fly with someone who makes hel for everyone for absolutely no reason. The Vice President even made a joke about the lists at our graduation! That's how common they are.

The flights were relatively uneventful. During handover I took over from a Melbourne boy who was quite a charmer, who I later found out was quite sick on one of the legs. When we took over from the crew for the SIN-DXB leg they were 5 crew short, 2 of which were taken to hostpital and one of which had to be injected with something out of the Emergency Medical Kit (EMK) they were that sick. Rarely is the EMK opened, only for serious situations and only with permission from the captain, so us crew were looking through it to see what goodies were available. We had a look at the Mortality Kit, Baby Delivery Kit, Nulbuphine, Epinephrine and Dihydrocodeine amongst others. I had a performance review as well, and they took this snooping round the EMK as an interest in the equipment on board, and so I scored some bonus points for that. :-)

One of the landings was very rough though. We landed into Singapore and Claire, the Senior Flight Stewardess, mustn't have secured a food container, because it fell from the very top onto the floor and made a huge crash. It was also full of water bottles, so there was water everywhere, and Claire and I were soaking wet. There were also crew who were supposed to be seated at L5a and R5, and instead were seated in passenger seats on the very back row, who were very lucky not to have been hit by the containers.

I didn't really do much on the layovers. The first Singapore layover I just shopped and shopped at the Bugis Street Markets and slept. The Melbourne layover I had full intention of heading to Brunswick Street and stocking up on some Alannah Hill skirts, but slept in instead and only had time to catch up with Chris. The 17 hours we were supposed to have in Melbourne got whittled away because the plane landing into Singapore was delayed. The second Singapore layover was a bit more tourist-y. Saw the Raffles Hotel, the likes of which have housed the President of Bahrain and Michael Jackson, and it looked pretty ritzy, the perfect place for high ranking dignitaries to have a drink or to talk politics over a pot of tea.

It was a very exhausting flight to do. When I arrived back at the briefing centre I was limping, cursing my shoes and wishing Clarks made a size 11 ladies. Ikram, the Purser from my Manilla flight, saw me and we chatted, and he said I looked "fresh". I wanted to deck him, but instead I went home and curled up into the foetal position, glad that I didn't have to do a flight for another 2 weeks. I really hope SYD-CHC isn't one of THOSE flights. 0 comments