Hey my lovely family and friends,

I have just arrived home from my impromptu visit back to Brisbane and I have heaps of cool things to post on here. I didn't take my laptop so was unable to do it there. Unfortunately, I have to wake up in a few hours to go on my very first Hamburg/New York flight, and I am nervous and excited about flying again. It has been over 3 months since I worked as cabin crew - we'll see if I still have the Emirates touch!

Looking forward to updating you with all my New York shenanigans in a week from now.

Daniel

One week. One inch of sanity.

The new Emirates Training College opens next week -
amazing photos like this on every other wall

It has been a strange transition for me from the life of a cabin crew to that of a 9-5 (or in my case 7-6) man. I am now half way through my third group of trainees and very much looking forward to having a rest when I have days off the week after. It makes me feel very privileged to work in a job that is such an interesting and diverse mix of people and skills. Am I nervous about going back on to an aircraft? Absolutely! I have forgotten what to do! I have spent twice as much time on the ground than I ever did working in business class!

Here are some different pics of my last batch which, by and large, were a fantastic group of interesting and funny people - take a look...

The view from the cafeteria at the top of the new Emirates College - not a bad place to go to work every day!

Jeevan, myself, Holley and Belinda - the four of us started this job together.
Holley was my co-instructor for the first two batches, Belinda is stuck with me for the third...



Our ab-initio (1053) got together to surprise Holley for her birthday which made the whole day special



I was as sick as dog on their graduation day, so this is my last photo of them :(
Miklos, Kristy, Angelika, Kriti, Marit, Nelia, Khushboo, Gemma, Tando, Jo, Ziba, Michelle, Ingrid, Louise, Lucie

Letting loose at Shangas

The Shang-Ri-La.

In Chinese it means, shang-ri-la.

Nicole and I had BIG expectations for this evening. The sms and facebook invites went out and we waited. It's always hard getting a big group together with everybody's crazy rosters but a good group we indeed managed. The plan was to eat and beverage ourselves into a regretful stupor then hit Zinc (perennial cabin crew haunt) for a lesson in Embarassing Drunken Situations 101. I think if you follow the timeline of the photos you'll get the drift. Thankfully I was taking the photos not in most of them...

8PM

Daniel, Nic and Holley, and the gang

9PM

with Michelle and Nicole, and Ed (Michelle's boy) and Julian. I keep telling these guys they should come train with me at the gym but all they're interested in is staying home and eating junk food. Honestly boys!

10PM

My plate has become a penis, and Jen from Liverpool rocks up. Yes, the alcohol IS unlimited here!

2AM

When you have the two cutest ladies in the room on your arm, suddenly the drinks become free!

3AM

Cab drivers in Dubai could not possibly be paid enough for driving people like us home!

A little bit of Ginseng goes a long way

On a school night no less, Nicole, Franck and Holly managed to twist my arm and drag me out to dinner. Now as you know, I am ADDICTED to cooking healthy, fresh food at home and find the idea of spending unnecessary funds on restaurant food an abomination, so it was NOT an easy choice. However I relented and off we went to our old, pre-Shangrila haunt - Ginseng. I hear on the vine of grapes that the night went off after I had to depart for bed, but here are a few snaps of the team.


Nicole, Marcos, Franck, Holly and Daniel....and again sans Francko


Nicole talking about who knows what to Faisal and Shanna Banana; and Holly gets involved with the boys...