My reserve month

Hello everybody.

It’s been a while, I think I almost passed a whole month without writing anything so I guess it is time to catch up. The reason I was not active is quite simple; I had nothing to write about. Do you remember my previous post when I wrote I would have reserve month? So I am already in the third week and it is very disappointing. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be too interesting but I did never expect this. This absolute boredom. This absolute nothing.

So after my Cape Town flight I immediately started with four days off in a row. Every day after 6pm it changed in my roster so I didn’t know in advance that I would have this many off days. On the fifth day I had airport standby from noon until 4 pm. I’ve got a very short Muscat flight on A340 which was okay. What happened next?

• 4 more days off in a row
•  Home standby from 5pm until 11 pm –> didn’t get a flight
•  Rest day
•  Airport standby from 00:30am until 04:30am –> didn’t get a flight
• Basra, Iraq flight: it just appeared in my roster for the next day. It was supposed to be A330 but they changed the aircraft to B777-200. Three of us in economy had reserve month and all the others had similar month than me (which means no flights).
• 3 days off in a row
• Home standby from 9pm until 5am –> didn’t get a flight
• Home standby from 5pm until 11am –> Around 5 in the afternoon a Bangalore, India flight appeared in my roster with 09:30 departure. I had time to get ready and it was one of the longest night in my life. On this day I woke up 07:30am, I went to the gym and I didn’t rest during the afternoon. I’d got into my bed at 08:00 am, so I was awake for 24 hours without having any nap.
• 3 days off in a row
• Home standby from 9pm until 5am: this is my duty for tomorrow, we will see, I don’t have much hope to get anything nice.

To sum up the last 22 days, I only had 3 flights, no more than 13 flying hours plus few more hours on ground. I had 14 days off so far. At the beginning I was very upset and frustrated about the whole situation. If I don’t fly that means I don’t make money. If I spend my days in Dubai that means I spend much more money than in an average month. I have to buy food everyday which can be very expensive. My next month salary will be very miserable and the lack of money annoys me the most. I am financially losing. Anyway, I try to get over with this bad feeling, money comes and goes, I am not gonna starve or anything, so one bad month is not the end of the world.

How I spent my days off? I started cooking on a regular basis. I made pumpkin pie, I made banana cake, I made Hungarian “kifli” (crescent) and right now there is a cheesecake in the fridge waiting to get completely chilled. For lunch I usually made Hungarian “főzelék” which is a vegetable pottage. I made it from zucchini,which became my favorite veg. Once I also made “shakshuka” which is an Israeli dish, it was just amazing. When I was not in the cooking mood, I steamed some mushroom and mixed it with mashed avocado, sliced olives and tuna. This is my fast but super delicious meal :). I eat much more vegetable than before and I start to “get back to life”. I used to be very lazy and tired in the last 2 months but it is gone. I also take very good multivitamins and almost every morning I make a morning boost fruit cocktail for myself; green apple, cucumber and fresh ginger.

Pumpkin pie

Banana-chocolate cake

We won a huge banana

Mr. Banana 🙂

Al Mamzar Beach Park

Pool time

Shakshuka

Shakshuka

Healthy breakfast

Kifli

My first glam box

Once I’ve been at Al Mamzar beach park with my Hungarian friend and I went to the pool twice with another friend. With the same friend we discovered a very good restaurant which is only 5 minutes away from my accommodation and we go there at least 2 times a week. This is “Piccolo Mondo Bay”, we always take grape shisha with some hummus or something else. The environment is very nice and unique, everyone is smoking shisha and drinking tea, it is full of Arabic people which is a very pleasant feeling after being always surrounded by fellow cabin crew.

I still have 11 days left from this reserve month (plus two days off at the end) and I just can’t wait to finish it. Somehow I enjoy this long rest I am having, it is good to have proper rest, proper food and work out but I also miss flying. I have already got the roster for next month, I am gonna share with you in my next post :).

Have a good night everybody!

IMPORTANT NOTE: MY POSTS ARE MY PERSONAL VIEWS. THEY DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF MY COMPANY.

Dorottya