Foxtrot-Alpha Livery

New livery sported by one of Etihad’s A330-300 (A6-AFA) aircrafts, promoting the Essential Abu Dhabi 2011 campaign. How magnificant are these colours?! After so much lacklustre pearly-white and beige on the general fleet, it’s a real refreshing pop.

Plastination

So….

I feel really amazing! Like, really, ya’ll.

Everything is falling into place! I’m finding out a lot more about my new job now.. it’s all good stuff! One of the boys downstairs just dropped off some packing boxes for me. I had the impression that the clearance procedures here were going to be unfair, but so far it seems really just, and generous! I get 120kg accompanied baggage (!), repatriation ticket valid 30 days after my last working day, and any ZED/ID tickets I can buy I can use 6 months after my last day etc. Hello, wonderful!

Plus, I’ve had a really nice past week. I had a layover in Melbourne for the first time ever, met with an old friend from Tasmania for a few drinks. The hotel was awesome, I took the city circle tram, went to Victoria St market, bought PC games that I’ve been looking for for ages (make-your-own-city type of ones, Sim City 4 and Cities XL), got a haircut, went to the Amazing Bodies exhibition (plastination!). A bartender from the hotel lobby that I talked with for all of 2 minutes sent a bottle of complimentary wine up to my room. Which was flattering 🙂 And I’m going back this weekend.. swapped my Toronto flight, hellsyah!

Some family friends were on the flight back from Melbourne and came to stay with me for a few nights – very happy I could be operating to look after them and make sure they had extra seats etc. Happy coincidence. And mighty good timing, as I got to take them around Abu Dhabi and see everything again just a few weeks before I’m due to leave the country.

I’ve leaving sooner than first planned, perhaps the second week of October now. All of a sudden they need me earlier, which is fine with me, just I want to finish up with everything here in the right way, you know? I’ve been corresponding with of the senior F/As there and she answered many of my questions about the accommodation and the job. The compound looks damn cool – there’s tennis, squash, a gym, bowling alley, library, pool, restaurant and mini market! I’ll be in a villa with 2 other girls. There’s free shuttles out of compound to the malls etc. It’s kind of exciting to think about being part of a community, I’ve never had anything like that, except maybe when I lived this kind of hippie compound in Tasmania for a little while as a teenager!

I want to try and see everyone before I leave. I’m flying this weekend and next though, which makes it difficult, as always! Sweaty is trying to organize a cruise trip early next year from Barcelona, which I definitely want in on! I mean, a cruise?! How gaudy, haha! Plus, by then I should be used to living like a goldfish (existing in a limited amount of space). 🙂

The Meerkat Man

Went out for drinks on the weekend with A, started in Coopers, finished up in Eight (Shangri-La).

A short, chubby guy in a shiny leopard-print shirt tried to sell us meerkats. He had a video on his camera-phone of them, which he showed us several times. Seemed willing to negotiate rates. Inquired as to our type of living arrangements (wildlife trafficker who cares about the welfare of his young ones?). And honestly, he wasn’t the strangest person we were approached by that night.

Suffice to say though- no sale.

New Spring Service

As of May 3, 2010, Air France will operate a new route between Abu Dhabi and Paris, connecting the capital of the United Arab Emirates to the rest of the world via its Paris -Charles de Gaulle hub.

The flights will be operated by an Airbus A330, seating a total of 219 passengers, 40 in the Business cabin and 179 in the Voyageur (economy) cabin.

* Flight AF 3849:

Departure Abu Dhabi at 00:30
Arrival Paris-Charles de Gaulle, terminal 2E, at 05:45 local time.
Five days a week

* Flight AF 3848:

Departure Paris-Charles de Gaulle, terminal 2E, at 13:45
Arrival Abu Dhabi at 22:25 local time.
Five days a week

I’ve only flown with Air France from Paris – Barcelona. But the FAs were cute, and honestly – I really like the idea of any major airline flying direct to Abu Dhabi. The more the merrier! Other airlines are such a curiosity for me. So now I have the option to take a ZED ticket with them and it’s not far home if I don’t make the standby. 🙂 I wonder where the French crew will layover here? Maybe the same place at Lufthansa (wherever that is..)

Press release.

A ‘Re-Wiring’

There’s an article on Planetizen about Abu Dhabi, nice! The author articulates really well how it is that the city can ‘reinvent itself based on placemaking’, in comparison to Western cities. It’s so good to read an explanation on this!

Abu Dhabi has a different political structure and does not face much public resistance to get things done. I found that the Abu Dhabi government is open to ideas and input from outside, but it is true that he level of democratic involvement in decision making is much lower than in Western nations.

Abu Dhabi is in a much sounder financial position based on the nationalization of their oil reserves. This wealth will certainly make a difference when it comes to rightsizing and adding traffic calming to existing roads, as well as creating the new transit system that is to become the backbone of Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi has only recently become a major city so its bureaucracies have not had the time to develop an entrenched culture.

I think using ‘oasis’ in the title is overly eager – and cheesy – but his optimism for the future of planning is admirable

For someone who leans more toward instant gratification, the required plodding of planning is frustrating for me. If things could progress about 4x faster, 10x faster – boom! hey presto! here’s an extensive underground rail network! – so much more the satisfying. For now I have to make do with this odd contentedness from seeing people from various socio-economic backgrounds take buses here. 🙂

Crew Transport is Always a Good Time for Contemplation

In the last few months the crew transport from the airport has been going via a new highway that opened in October this year – a bridge, and a 10-lane expressway that passes through Saadiyat and Yas islands. It’s beautiful – scores of vast construction sites and reclaimed land with huge multicoloured shipping containers, just like Singapore. I like the fresh perspective and the visual interest, because let’s be real here – most roads in this country are so barren and so monotonous it’s just like driving within one very unremakable, very blank, sand-coloured canvas. Most instances when I’m coming back from a flight we should be going that way now I think, and I’m going to be noticing and reveling in all the changes in the streetscape, yay!

In line with the urban development objectives specified by the landmark Plan Abu Dhabi 2030, Abu Dhabi marked a major milestone in its infrastructure progress […] The unveiling of the 1.4-kilometre-long bridge, which connects Saadiyat Island to Abu Dhabi for the first time, was named after His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, in recognition of his vision towards propelling Abu Dhabi to become a leading global capital of the world in accordance with the Vision 2030 mandate for the overall urban development of the Emirate.

Creamy Fields

Actually made it to this last night. Forget JFK, as they say. 😉

Underpass

Toy-Sized Landmarks

Saw a guy on Hamdan St tonight (the major street I walk along every day I’m home). A fat, balding Arab guy in his 30s riding along on one of those ‘Mall Cop’ two-wheeler vertical scooter things, carrying a huge KFC chicken bucket in a limp plastic bag. Bwahahahaha! How could he not realize how ridiculous he looked?!! Anyway, priceless sighting!

**

I’m going back in time!

That is, tomorrow, I go to a place in which the time zone is behind greenwich mean; zulu time. First time, and so correspondingly the first time to the American continent. A landmark for me! Surely the crew will organize a trip to Niagara Falls.. otherwise I can go alone, or use the 75 hours to see and do a bunch of things in the city. I made some quick notes for popular tourist stuff: lie face down on the glass at CN Tower, skate at Nathan Phillps Square, the Distillery district (Victorian industrial architecture!), Dundas Square, Yorkvills, Steam Whistle Brewery etc. I know a girl who lives there so maybe I can do something with her too? Weeeyahhh!!

**

Still 120 pounds, even though I’m going to the gym everyday for a minimum of an hour each time (with the 8th day as a rest day). I assume it’s just me gaining muscle mass? My shins are basically the consistency of stone now, and my shoulders are looking nicely toned etc 🙂 I just need to get more controlon what I put in my body now, since it all goes hand in hand. I read that you replace the calories you burn after half-an-hour at the gym with one bottle of Gatorade.. so that helps put it in perpective.

Thank god for hotel gyms, a fresh environment really helps shake up what could become a fairly mundane routine.

**

This month I operated a flight with the new IS coral service for the first time (toilsome!), and worked in business for the first time on the way back – 22 pax instead of a few hundred, and you focus on one side, so really it’s only 11 pax. I estimate it’ll be another year before I’m moved up to Pearl, so it was good to get a taste of what it’s like ‘at the  front’, heh. I was totally expecting a group of snarky cumbersome middle aged businessmen, but they were all wonderfully well-behaved, probably mostly because it was a night flight!

**

I discovered a new thrift shop the other day, right here in Abu Dhabi! On the photocopy with the  address (between a Mosque and Hamdan St, behind Sun & Sand Sports at the Sandesh Sweets building) it says “just like your ukay ukay”, which the owners told me is the Filipino equivelent of a thrift store. In regards to the development of the city this is definetly a landmark. Forget Yas Island and superstar concerts etc.. before this I’d never seen anything not new. They have a nice little bookshelf at the back with about 80 or so English titles.

NOV: BRU RUH YYZ JFK CGK

So.. I saw my roster for next month this morning.. pretty sweet, 5 flights only though (7 or 8 is ideal for me), thankfully no narrowbody sectors (319/320), and what will be my very first JFK! How long have I been waiting for this!? Hellls yah!

Then, I had changes to my roster this afternoon after training for the new coral economy service (that started yesterday on Paris and Brussels sectors) … They gave me a 75-hour Toronto..I’ve never been there either!! I had no idea we even had a layover there for that amount of time, pwoah. I’ll be a North American bandit.  But really, I feel so lucky to have this, I’d requested Toronto maybe three times, and now they decide to give it to me when I can’t actually make requests. Ohmy! 😀

I like the feel of things right now – my roster, the new service at the back, plus the F1 is coming up this weekend. I get back from Manchester on the morning of the 1st. I assume England doesn’t celebrate Halloween that intensely but it’ll still be the weekend and I definitely  intend to party and shop there at least! And though I’m not attending the F1, I hope I return to find complete madness, love the idea of an event completely taking over a city! I just saw a memo out for female crew that day to wear special F1 scarves that day. Nice touch.

Aiiight.. off to the gym. 🙂