The Dubai Diaries
My life as a flight attendant in the Middle East!

London, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai – this month’s destinations!

The last time I posted (was that really 10 days ago already?!) my friends had just left Dubai and I had a flight to London. That was pretty uneventful; it’s an easy night flight and the hotel beds are to die for! I made the obligatory trip to Primark and stocked up on a few maxi skirts and dresses (essential in Dubai!) and of course, plenty of work tights.

Back in Dubai I had 2 days off, and to be honest I can’t remember what I did – probably lots of sunbathing and eating! That seems to be what I do best at the moment! 😀

After that I was back to Kuala Lumpur for the second time this month. We arrive at the hotel just in time for the start of happy hour, so of course a few of us made out way down to the pool and tried a couple of the buy one get free cocktails in the sun before dinner. A group of us took the metro two stops to the street restaurant area and all shared lots of delicious food!

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After dinner a couple of us stopped off at the market area and I got a new watch for work. The next morning a few of the girls were going to the caves and I had originally planned to go with them but I ended up sleeping in and then going to gym. Before the wake up call in the afternoon I decided to go to the Petronas Towers and have a browse around in the shopping mall inside. I also got some chicken satay for lunch overlooking some lovely fountains!

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After KL I had 2 days off again and then another trip to London. I was flying with Jess, one of my batch mates, which was great 🙂 Once we arrived at the hotel we decided to go straight out and go to Primark and also go for a big food shop at Asda! I stocked up on lots of bacon, sausages, crumpets, English muffins and wine! 😀

Once I arrived back in Dubai in the evening I got the bus home, showered and got ready as quick as I could and headed straight out to the Shangri La to meet all of the girls! I think this was the first time since training college that all of us were together! We had a really great evening and it was so lovely catching up with everyone together!

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On Sunday my friend Bruno invited me and a couple of his friends round for dinner – roast pork! It was so delicious and definitely just what I needed, washed down with a few glasses of wine and some cocktails!

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Yesterday Sally and I spent the day relaxing at Emirates Towers pool (free entrance for FACE card users, yes!) and getting a bit of sun. Even though it wasn’t the hottest day ever in Dubai, it was a refreshing change to have a bit of a breeze and some clouds! I still managed to top up my tan slightly!

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Thursday early morning I’m back off to Kuala Lumpur again, and then the May roster will have come out, which is very exciting, I can’t wait to find out which new destinations I’ll be going to! 🙂

How to be my favourite passenger!

So I’ve now been flying for almost 2 months and I am still absolutely loving it, and feel like I am going on holiday every time I go to work! However I have had the chance to notice a couple of things that are slightly irritating on board, and decided to write a blog post about it! So here goes…:

– Don’t bring hundreds of bags onboard! Do you really need a suitcase, laptop case, handbag, neck pillow, duty free shopping, etc etc etc? Save yourself the hassle of lugging 50 bags down the aisle and just check it in!

– Walk quickly! You have a boarding pass in your hand which has your seat number on it, so go directly to that seat and don’t take half an hour to get there! Also, you definitely do not need to stop at every single row on your way!

– Put your stuff away and sit down! The longer you take to put your bags up in the hatracks the longer boarding takes, because everybody is waiting to go past you. So put your bag up and sit down! It’s not going anywhere and whatever it is that you so urgently need, get it out after the seatbelt sign has gone off!

– Please don’t start asking me for things before we have even finished boarding! As you can see we are very busy and the aisle is still full of people, so if you are really that desperate for a drink you should have brought your own bottle of water! We do actually serve food and drinks, and they are free!

– Sit in your assigned seat. You would think this would be a given, but so many people just take a seat wherever they fancy and then I have to sort out swapping people around to make sure everyone is in the right place.

– Keep your children under control! Obviously I am not talking about crying babies, because they don’t understand what is happening and why their ears are hurting, but I mean screaming children who run up and down the aisles and get in our way!

– Last but not least, don’t ask me “How long til we get there?” or “Which country are we flying over?”….do I really look like I have any idea?! Oh yes wait a minute, I’ll just look out of the window and tell you which street we just passed!

That pretty much concludes my few rules on how to be my favourite passenger apart from one last thing….BE NICE! How hard is it to smile and say please and thank you?! 🙂

Next months roster came out a few days ago, and I’m going back to Kuala Lumpur (3 times!), I’ve got 2 London Heathrows and Beijing. And apart from that, about 18 days off!

 

Last weekend at home!

With only 3 days to go now (actually only 2 full days as I will be leaving early Friday morning) I definitely needed to make the most of my last weekend at home. A couple of weeks ago I decided to organise a little leaving party, and told my best friend Lucy about it. She lives in England, so she checked Ryanair flights and believe it or not booked them a few minutes later, for less than 40 Euros return! So this Saturday I drove to the airport (one thing I’m not going to miss – driving on snowy and icy roads!) and picked her up. In the evening a group of friends came round and we cooked Mexican food, and then all went out into town, where a whole load of other friends came and met us.
We had such a good night out and it was definitely a great way to say bye to all of my friends!

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The next day (surprisingly we weren’t as hungover as we were expecting to be!!) my mum drove us up to a place called Magdalensberg for a late lunch. There is an amazing restaurant/guesthouse on the top of this hill, which serves traditional Austrian food and is all family run. It was the perfect day to go up, as although it was pretty chilly the sun was out and there was a beautiful clear sky. 
As we were having our meal the sun was setting, we even went out between courses to take pictures of the sunset! 

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On Monday we decided to do some shopping! We wondered round the Christmas Market in my town, but it was too cold to stay outside for long. Both of us managed not to buy too much in the shops, I have been having to restrain myself from buying winter clothes by thinking about Dubai every time I see something I want!

In the evening one of my good friends from work arranged to go for drinks, and when we got there a whole group of others from work had come, which was a lovely surprise! They also got me a book called “1000 Places to see before you die” – I’m hoping my new job will help me do that!

Yesterday evening and this morning Lucy helped me sort out my clothes – 1 pile to take with me, 1 pile to give to charity and 1 pile to keep but not take with me. Somehow I have a feeling I’ll never wear the “keep but don’t take with me” pile again, but I can’t justify getting rid of over half of my wardrobe! I don’t even want to know how many pairs of shoes were thrown away!

This evening after taking Lucy back to the airport, I started on the packing. I honestly have no idea how I am going to fit everything in! I’m allowed 50kg, plus hand luggage. One of my suitcases is already over half full and pretty much all it has in is shoes and underwear! 
Here’s a picture of me squeezing into one of my suitcases!
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Well, this was quite a long post! The next time I write anything will probably be from Dubai! Only 2 full days left, when did this even happen! I’m so nervous and excited at the same time – it’s crazy!

The interview process

So I thought I would tell you about the interview process I went through to get the job, as I know how helpful it was when I was looking for tips online and reading other people’s blogs and their experiences.

I applied online for an open day that was held in Munich (the closest city to where I live that an open day was being held in – about 5 hours drive away) and got an automated message back thanking me for applying online. It also said I would be contacted if they were interested in me, however I knew that anyone could just turn up to the open days, so I made my travel arrangements to go to Munich for the open day on the 15th of September. I got there the night before as the open day was being held in a hotel starting at 9am.

I got the underground to the hotel, and happened to meet a girl who was going there as well, so had someone to chat to. She told me that she had been to an open day before but hadn’t made it to the final interview. Once we got there (about half an hour early) there were already lots of people waiting around and filling out the forms. By 9 there were about 50 people. The two recruiters (whose names I have forgotten, one was Eastern European and the other I think was from Dubai) came out and welcomed us all, and we went and sat in the conference room it was being held in. They introduced themselves and told us a bit about how the day would progress, and we then were shown a couple of videos about what life as a flight attendant is like, and what living in Dubai is like.

After the videos we were all told to come up to the front where they were sitting, hand in our CVs and photos, and get a sticker with a number and our name on. I was number 28! I was also asked how many languages I speak (other than English, my mother tongue, I also speak German and Spanish fluently) and what I was currently doing (work, studying, etc). While everyone was handing in their CVs we had a chance to look at a couple of pieces of paper that were hanging up with some rules about dress codes, tattoos, and those kind of things. We were then split into two groups and the second group (which I was in) was told to come back in hour.

Once back in the conference room we were split into two smaller groups and told to take a seat in a circle. We were told we would be introducing the person to our right and had to tell the group what their favourite subject at school was and why. Not exactly a difficult task! While this was going on each person was called  up to the side and made to do a “reach test” to see if we could reach 212cm with our hand stretched out. This wasn’t a problem for me especially as I had checked at home beforehand! Some girls couldn’t reach, and were eliminated. After we had done the introducing we were all called back in, and given a little folded over piece of paper. They called out our numbers one by one and on the paper we were told whether or not they wanted us to come back for the next round. So nerve-racking!

About 20 people were eliminated after this first round. The next thing we did was another group task, we had to sit in the circle again and discuss what we would do if we were given 1 million dollars. We had to think of 3 things, and weren’t allowed to vote. After this round we were given more little pieces of paper. I was through to the next round! We then had an English test as the open day was being held in Germany. I was the only one whose mother tongue was English so I still had to do the test but was finished pretty quickly. Quite a few people had to go as their English wasn’t good enough, so we were left with about 19 people by this time.

After quite a lot of waiting around we were split up into two final groups, and I was in the second group again. We were all given a piece of paper with the names and details of 8 passengers on, and we had to decide which 6 would have to be downgraded from business class to economy. As a group we decided pretty quickly, and then the recruiters acted as though they were the passengers and we had to explain to them why they were being downgraded. 
6 people didn’t make it after this, so we were left as the final 13. As we went back into the conference room the recruiters congratulated us on making it to the final interview. We then had quite a bit of paperwork to fill out about ourselves and had to pick an interview time for the next day. Mine was at 11am.

The same night we had to complete an online personality test, which was I think 170 questions with yes/no/maybe answers. Not too hard if you are truthful.

The next morning I made it back to the hotel with plenty of time to spare and chatted to the other girl who was waiting for her interview. Mine lasted roughly half an hour, and it was a of of questions relating to specific things that I had done in jobs and how I had reacted, such as “tell me about a time when you felt you were treated unfairly by a colleague, and how did you react?”. I felt like it was going on forever and couldn’t think of any “good” answers, but I guess they thought I was alright! 😀

We were told it would take 4 – 6 weeks until we heard anything back, but I still checked online every day to see if my status had changed! Exactly 2 weeks later I checked my phone and noticed 1 missed call from a strange number, sure enough when I called back they had called to offer me the job!!
I will be leaving for Dubai on the 14th of December – so exciting!!