Believe it or not, today marks the official 5 year anniversary of Tampax Towers, my lovely writing home!

To be honest with you all, I never for a minute expected it to last this long. I thought it would be just a hobby that would die off with a lack of posts, destined for blog purgatory like many other attempts in the past by many of my colleges and fellow hosties.

So just a few statistics for you all –

• Top 3 commented posts – My Mother, Italy Extravaganza, Quick Update - Leave, Ramadan, Hours, bleh!
• Top commenters (minus the Anonymous tag) – Traytable, Sodwee, RinusRunning, AviationCrazy and Girl On Raw
• Total comments – 999 - just short of the thousand mark!
  
• Total hits, since I started adsense years ago – 275448
• Technorati Authority – 104. Which ranks as 71708 most visited site listed in their system. Not too shabby!
• Total Emails (Since November 2009) – 201 (Keep them coming guys and gals!)
• Total Blogger meet ups - 4!
• Number of crew who actually have come up to me at work and said "Are you the blogger? I was reading your site before I joined!" or words to that effect - 9, the most recent being just 8 days ago whilst I was in training college for my safety recurrent. A big hello to Sam, if you're reading this :-)

In 5 years of being a flight attendant...

• I’ve gone through 3 bottles of red nail polish, 8 bottles of clear polish, 7 bottles/compacts/sticks of Foundation, 14 tubes of Mascara. I cannot tell you how much red lipstick I’ve consumed... It must amount to something similar to a truckload...
  
• Survived 6 flatmates
• Only had 4 flights where the delays were over 3 hours. Pretty amazing that is!
• Operated one flight that actually made it onto CNN (but that's all you're getting out of me for the moment!)
• Gone through 4 sets of uniform and am currently on my second set of luggage.
• Had on board some cool famous people, including Angelina Jolie, Natalie Imbruglia, Salman Khan, Fraser Gehrig, Alan Fletcher Myriam Fares and Mostafa Shaban.
• Worked at 6 Business Promotion Events and met even more famous people, including Michael Schumacher, Tiger Woods, Henrick Stenson, Ernie Els, Michael Campbell, Greg Norman, Richard Quest, Franz Beckenbauer, Jane Turner and Gina Riley. Also saw Alan Fletcher AGAIN during another promo event, I swear I think he's stalking me... probably because I stopped watching Neighbours 5 years ago...
  

And some highlights of my Dubai Journey -

• The best part about flying! The layovers I spend in countless cities all over the world - including, but not limited to, New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, anywhere in Italy, Hamburg, Vienna, Moscow (despite my crazy flights), Bangkok (for a little reminder of my heritage), anywhere in Japan, Auckland and Singapore.
  
• My nephew being born - isn’t he cute?
• Learning German, and getting enough flights to the region so I can practise. Wish I could say the same about my Japanese
• Making an effort to spend my annual leave in places where I hadn't been previously, such as Prague, Amsterdam, Brussels, Tallinn, Finland and Stockholm.
  
• Spending leave last year in Oslo for Eurovision – By far the highlight of my 5 years, and meeting some fellow Aussies who are as passionate about the contest as I am, whilst also getting interviewed by ABC Norway, Nic and BBC Australia about what it's like to be a Aussie Euro-phile living in the Middle East. The downside to attending the Oslo contest is that now I'm totally hooked on it, I can't give up on this years contest in Dusseldorf!

So what can we expect over the next 5 years? Not a whole lot different I imagine. I have no desire to leave the job, I enjoy it too much! I would like to see myself concentrate on the blog a bit more, especially regarding a redesign, but alas my HTML knowledge has gone seriously downhill since studying it at university.

But to cap off an amazing 5 year journey, I just wanted to say one big massive THANK YOU to everyone who has ever linked to, read, commented, sent emails to, recommended and sought this blog for advice or juicy gossip. Without your constant support I would definitely have not been able to keep it operable for as long as I have. I can reassure you all that my years of banging knees with the meal and bar cart are still fun and enjoyable and I'm not going anywhere...

Here's hoping to the next few years of shenanigans!

Images courtesy of FashionPeach, N. Bruce

Labels: Airline Stuff, Around Dubai, Eurovision, Galley Gossip, Layovers, Random Thoughts

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