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Name: Melissa

About Me

Countries Visited (not including Turnarounds): Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Moldova, Monaco, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, North Korea, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States, Vatican City

My Perfect Day in -
London | Perth | Sydney | Melbourne

Site Feed -
http://tampaxtowers.blogspot.com/atom.xml

My Email -
tampaxtowers[at]gmail[dot]com

My Facebook -
Tampax Towers

My Twitter -
@melissaecholima

Links -
Airline Crew.net
Airline Uniforms
Airline Meals
Seatguru - Most Comfy Seats On Any Airline
Trip Advisor
Airtoons
pprune.org - Pilot's rumour network

Friends -
Kangaroo with a Sweet Tooth
Kronicles of Kris
The Adventures of Alle Malice
Joel's trek across Asia/Europe in a Hilux
Phil's Wine Site

Blogs I read -
Tray Table
Airboy
Lifehacker
I Can Has Cheezburger
The Flying Pinto
Girl on Raw
Things Bogans Like
Bobby at Up, Up and a Gay
Straight Guy in the Queer Skies

Credits -
Skin by Falter
BlogSkins


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Latest Updates
Friday, August 28, 2009
So at the moment I'm in Dubai and in a few hours I'll be boarding a flight bound for Tallinn, Estonia. I've wanted to go since 2002, and unlike some other leave trips, I'm starting to get really excited/nervous about the trip for some reason. Similar to what I felt like on my first layover to London - now if I get a London I just see it as a Marks and Spencer's run than a 24 hr holiday. The spring in the step is back :-)

I've been busy with flying lately, more so than I've ever had since I started this job. I'm going to list my trips in point form to show you all how crazy it really has been here.

  • Frankfurt on the 15th, which I swapped a Kuwait turnaround for. Arrive back on 17th at 5am.
  • Beijing on the 18th, departing 3am approx, so I had less than 24 hrs rest for the trip. I was so shattered I spent a good 18hrs in the hotel catching up on sleep. Arrive back on 20th at 5am.
  • Leave for Perth on days off on 20th at 10am. So I had about 5 hours to go back to my apartment, shower, re-pack my suitcase and roll aboard, check in and shop for Duty Free goodies. Loads were light so I managed to score 4 Y/C seats to myself and had a bit of a snooze. Arrive back on 25th at 1pm.
  • Leave for Melbourne on 26th at 2am. I'm surprisingly rested for this flight, sleeping 5 hrs on the plane and also 6 hrs in my apartment before the alarm went off. Also slept 2 hrs in the bunks during my break (which NEVER happens)
  • Came back this morning at 11am. Leave at 10pm to go to Tallinn/Helsinki for holidays.
The next time I'll actually spend a full 24 hrs in my apartment will be September 8th, then on the 9th I leave for Paris (woohoo!) so as you can see things have been hectic. My apartment is totally trashed - clothes everywhere from the crazy amount of packing and re-packing and washing without time to iron. I cleaned the fridge before I left for Frankfurt so that's looking bare, but the freezer is stacked with food brought from home - silly stuff like raisin toast and mango smoothie in-a-bag. As a result whilst on my Melbourne trip the freezer popped open as it was so packed and ruined a lot of my pork stash, so I cleaned that up today.

The trip to Perth was very last minute - work had given me 4 days off on my roster, and I had leave coming up that was being spent elsewhere. I received a text earlier in the month from my brother letting me know that I was going to be an auntie, so the need to be with family took over and I booked a flight home. The trip was good, cooked some dinner for my Dad, saw Mum a few times, shopped for food to enjoy back in Dubai, and caught up again with Traytable which was awesome. As far as blogger meet ups go I've now seen her more times than Ben, which is strange considering we're not in the same city.

So that's all that's been happening really. Of course at the moment it's Ramadan in Dubai (part of the reason why I'm spending so little time here) so roads around my apartment have been blocked by cars that have been randomly parked. There's quite a large mosque behind my building and I think both Dubai and Sharjah residents go there for prayer, so coming back from a 14 hr Melbourne flight this morning and seeing the roads blocked with cars (and people praying outside the mosque due to it being so full) was a first for me.

Stay tuned for photos!

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2 comments
Friday, August 14, 2009
I was absolutely gobsmacked when I saw my roster for August - 3 Long Haul flights, lots of days off, including 3 before my annual leave. A flight to Melbourne for some much needed catch ups with family and friends (I was born there after all...), only one turnaround which I've managed to swap for an afternoon Frankfurt. The best part of it all was that I didn't get what I had bid for and still had an amazing roster.

First up was Los Angeles, which is still a relatively new destination to many crew. It was my first time there, and I was hoping my mate Os (who's on the A380) could get days off so we could hire a car and drive around the city and avoid the main route the tours usually take. Unfortunately he had a LHR and so couldn't join me, which left me quite down on the flight over. Omar, our operating Captain, later mentioned that he was going to hire a car and take a road trip over to Las Vegas as he used to live in LA and like me wasn't excited about the layover. After asking the crew if they would like to join, Omar was lucky enough to get 5 ladies to accompany him on the 4 hr drive to Las Vegas.



First views of New York-New York


Front of the MGM Grand, the lion statue notable for being the largest bronze statue in the US


Photo of the girls whilst waiting for the Bellagio fountain show - and of course when it started we had the worst view...



The lobby roof of the Bellagio, with a collage of hand blown glass flowers by Dale Chihuly.


And we decided to get a room there, to freshen up and have 1 hour power naps during our stay



We ended up seeing a show called V - a variety show with strongmen and a hula hoop girl and gauchos and a juggling piano player. Was alright but it only lasted 70 minutes, though considering how jet lagged I was I would probably have fallen asleep if it were longer...


Mariana with the cast of V





Las Vegas strip at night - very pretty

In case you were wondering, I did end up in the casino at some point - some of the other girls wanted to go shopping and ride the roller coaster in New York, New York. Omar and I decided there was no way we'd take a 16 hr trip here and not gamble, which of course is forbidden in Dubai. Ended up winning $138 USD which will be nice spending money for the rest of my layovers this month.

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8 comments