Tips for a cabin crew interview!

I get a lot of comments on here and my social media sites asking for tips and tricks for open days and/ or interviews, so I thought I’d compose a little list with a few of my tips for the big day!

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  • Look the part!

This generally applies for any interview, however it is equally important if you’re going for an interview to become cabin crew.

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Exploring Shanghai

So yet again I have managed to go way too long without updating my blog….woops! As I was importing my pictures from my most recent trip to São Paulo I realised I had a whole load of pictures from my flight to Shanghai in January, and I haven’t even written a post about it! So São Paulo will have to wait a little, and first I’m going to write about my wonderful time in Shanghai.

The flight going out is not very long (compared to the way back), lasting around 7ish hours. However it leaves Dubai at around 3 o’clock in the morning, which generally makes me feel very tired and confused as to what time it is when I arrive at the hotel! I can’t actually remember what we did in the evening, so I think I must have just fallen straight to sleep!

The next morning a group of us headed down to enjoy the breakfast buffet which surprisingly was smaller and had less choice than the time before! But who’s to complain, full up and ready to go we split into 2 taxis and drove to the Underground Market. What we hadn’t really thought about was that it was Chinese New Year’s Eve and almost all of the shops were shut! Not to be stopped by that though we all managed to come away having haggled for our money’s worth with some new handbags (the other girls) and a new purse (for me, after nail polish leaked all over my last one)!

Two of the girls decided shopping was far too tiring and headed back to the hotel, so I and the other two hopped in a cab again to go and visit the Yu Gardens.
When we arrived we were greeted by some beautiful temple-style buildings and hundreds of people! I guess everyone was off work for the holiday and they were out in full force with their families. Everywhere was filled with awesome decorations for Chinese New Year which made it a little bit more special!

ImageImageImageImageThe whole square area before entering the actual gardens was filled with decorations.ImageImageImageTo get to the gardens you have to go over a bridge, and all along the water they’d put up scenes from different films etc, there was even one with the Seven Dwarfs!ImageImageImageInside the gardens there were lots of different pathways and secretive holes in the wall that you could go through to find other parts.ImageImageImageImageImage

After the Yu Gardens we headed back to the hotel to have a little power nap before getting ready for the flight home (about 10 hours). As I was getting ready there were fireworks going off all around the city, and whilst flying as it was approaching midnight the whole city was lit up with hundreds and hundreds of fireworks, definitely one of the most amazing things I’ve seen from the sky!

There’s so so much more I want to explore in Shanghai, but at the moment I’ve still got a lot of destinations that I haven’t been to that I’d like to go to as well! I’m just waiting for my March roster to be published, I’m supposed to be on reserve (a month of not knowing where you’ll be going!) but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll skip it! 

 

P.s. If you want more regular day to day updates of what is happening in my life, follow me on Twitter and Instagram @rachelwwilson!

 

Next month I’ll be going to…

My November roster came out yesterday. Roster day is always highly anticipated, and I was pleasantly surprised for November! I didn’t bid, and there are lots of mixed opinions on bidding. Some people do it without fail each month, some people never bid and swear they always have the best rosters. I didn’t bid in October either and only got 1 turnaround, and as I’m always hoping they’ll give me new destinations anyway, I decided to see what luck gave me! 

And luck was on my side! I’ll be going to: 

  • Seattle (so excited, my first layover in the States, and its 50 hours!)
  • Frankfurt
  • Frankfurt again (have to say these 2 aren’t my favourite, but never mind!)
  • Madrid (even though I lived in Spain for 3 months, I’ve never been to Madrid! Exciting!)
  • Jakarta

I also have 5 days leave as well as lots of days off! So far I don’t have any plans to go anywhere during my leave, but you never know something might just pop up! 

So there you go, just a quick post of where I’l be heading next month!

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Also thought I’d add in a little picture of my ever expanding magnet collection! I shall be adding to it later today when I fly to Hamburg! 🙂

 

P.s. If you want more regular day to day updates of what is happening in my life, follow me on Twitter and Instagram @rachelwwilson!

Graduation Day!

Yesterday was a pretty special day for me. After 6 months in Dubai I have finally graduated!

My job has taken me to so many different countries, I’ve served hundreds of meals and drinks to passengers from all over the world, I’ve tried food I never even imagined eating and made some of the best friends I could ask for.

Bright and early we got up to go back to training college, where we had spent so much time learning, writing exams, and practising for life in the sky. We all had our batch “photoshoot” on stage and then spent the morning going over what we had learnt, chatting with some of the SFS’s and pursers who were also graduating and taking lots of pictures.

After a quick lunch break it was time for the most important part, the actual graduation! After a few speeches we all went on stage one by one to collect our certificates from our managers and once our batch was all up we were told to take a bow (making sure our hats didn’t fall off!) After all the ab-initio batches had gone up the seniors went to collect their certificates and say a few words which was lovely to watch. We finished off the afternoon with a few more speeches and a video and photo compilation from training college. I spotted myself in a couple of the pictures!

Even though I’ve been flying since February it was still pretty exciting to finally graduate and be able to officially say I’m a part of the World’s Best Airline (which happened to be announced the night before!). Once the ceremony was over we headed upstairs for some cake! Joey was enlisted as photographer and took lots of pictures of us!

That evening a whole big group of us went to the Shangri La for dinner and then us girls headed over to Mahiki! These 6 months in Dubai have gone so quickly and I have had such a good time, let’s hope the next 6 months and more are just as good!

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SIN – MEL – SIN

Sorry I haven’t been writing on here very much, I’ve been so busy lately that I just haven’t had the time to write a nice long post with lots of pictures!

After I got back from leave I had 2 short days off and then I left for a 5 day trip to Singapore and Melbourne! Once we arrived in Singapore, 4 of us girls (me, Kirsty from England, Kat from Ireland and Aneliya from Bulgaria) went out to get some delicious street food for dinner and decided to go to a place called Sentosa Island the next day. After dinner 2 of the girls went into Chimes bar, right next to our hotel, and I went straight up to bed!

The next morning us girls and Peter, a guy the girls had met the night before (who was also doing the same trip, but on his way home) squeezed into a taxi and drove to Sentosa. We picked up a map of the island and wandered down to the beachy area, stopping every few meters to take pictures!

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There were palm trees everywhere and it really felt like we were on holiday on a tropical island!

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As we were walking along the beach we saw another very small island which had a couple of little lookout towers on. We walked over (not without a quick stop at the 7/11 that was well placed for some cold drinks!) and found it was the southernmost point of continental Asia. We crossed a wobbly wooden bridge and climbed up to the top of one of the lookout towers. Luckily there were some chairs up there so we stayed enjoying the breeze and chatting for about an hour or so!

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Once we had decided it was probably time to start making a move back to the hotel, we walked back down to the beach and just as we were about to cross back over the bridge to the main island, spotted a horizontal palm tree perfect for climbing on and taking pictures!

It was a little less stable than it looked and actually quite scary once you were dangling over the water!

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We then headed back to the hotel (did have to run to catch the free shuttle bus!) for a little nap before the night flight to Melbourne. 

We arrived in Melbourne early morning and after checking in I headed straight to bed for a good few hours sleep. And then….. my cousin Sarah came to meet me! I packed my bag and we got the tram to her place where Aunty Mary (her mum) and Granny were waiting for us! They had driven all the way down from Canberra (8 hours!) just for the night, which was very lovely.

We sat and had a cup of tea and some biscuits and chatted until it was time for dinner. We went to a lovely Italian restaurant and I had pasta – surprise, surprise!

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After dinner Granny and Aunty Mary went back to their hotel and Sarah and I started getting ready for a night out in Melbourne! One of her friends from uni was having a little party so once we were ready we went over there. Later on we ordered a taxi and drove over to a club that was having a 90’s night (YES!) and danced until we were too tired to stand! (Very glad I decided not to wear heels!)

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 Back at Sarah’s we went to bed for a few hours sleep before meeting Aunty Mary and Granny for breakfast in their hotel. Real bacon!! 😀

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We said goodbye to them as they got ready for the long drive back to Canberra and decided to do a bit of shopping in Melbourne Central. We then walked over to Victoria Market which is an absolutely amazing market which has everything you could possibly need, including hundreds of fresh food stalls. We bought some ham (real pork, not turkey or beef ham!) tomatoes, mozzarella and bread for lunch and I got some fresh fruit to take on the plane. Sarah also did most of her grocery shopping and we walked back to hers with our hands full. 

After lunch I packed up my stuff and we hopped on the tram back to my hotel. Soon enough it was time to say goodbye and fly back to Singapore. We arrived pretty late and had made up our minds to go for a Singapore Sling (which originated in the Raffles Hotel, just opposite where we stay) but unfortunately it was shut! 🙁 The next morning Kirsty, Kat and I walked over to Bugis Street, a huge undercover kind of street market mostly selling clothes. We all bought a couple of things hoping they would fit as you can’t try anything on there! We then decided it was time for some lunch so we crossed the road to the “food court” and got some fried noodles and sat with the locals. Just as we were finishing we noticed that it had started to rain, and not just a bit of a drizzle, a huge downpour! We waited a while for it to stop a bit and ran over the road back under the cover of the market. 

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We saw a couple of food stands and decided on some dessert – I got a crepe (which was sliiiiiiightly larger than expected!!) and Kat tried some fried mars bars!

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As the Long Bar at the Raffles hotel had been shut the night before we had to try one of their famous cocktails before flying back that night. (we were probably only just legal within the flying time to drink, but shh!)

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Of course we all tried the Singapore Sling 🙂

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Kirsty and Kat decided to walk over to the Marina Bay Sands hotel but as I had been there on my last trip I just popped over to the supermarket and picked up some really fresh sushi for the flight home and went to get a few hours sleep.

By the time the flight came round we were all ready to get home, it had been a great trip but everyone always looks forward to getting back to Dubai!