The New Me

I was on a bus today.  I was sitting on this bus, between the staff car park and the terminal, and I had a very strange thought.  My brain spoke to me, and it said "how did I get here?"  This was quite unexpected, and for a moment I didn't know what to reply.  In fact, I paused for so long that my brain added extra questions.  "Why am I here?" it demanded.  "Who sent me?  Who made me come?  What on earth was I thinking?" and then it tacked a few extra question marks on the end, like this:  ????????????

This stumped me, rather.  I think it's about four months since I decided to come out here, and funny (funny weird, not funny haha) to think about why I actually did it.  In fact, I don't really have a reason except that it seemed to be a pretty cool thing to do.  So I sat on the bus, and the eucalyptus trees passed me by, and I watched a random captain opposite me talking loudly on the phone in an extremely Australian accent, and given my state of mind, I found that particularly weird, (it's a bit like being detached from your body, seeing yourself sitting there and not being involved with the actual sitting part at all) and I thought about the questions that my brain had asked me.  Then the terminal, and I never actually got a chance to answer the questions as I met my particular trainer, and from then on it was down to business.

I suppose you think that I am going to answer those questions, here and now, on this blog.  You are wrong - I'm not, and neither do I intend to.

The last two days have been pretty intense.  Yesterday was my first day flying, and it was all incredibly new, remarkably different, altogether fairly overwhelming and pretty similar to what I imagine the Spanish Inquisition to have been like - without so much of the physical torture, that is.  Okay, scratch that, without any of the physical torture.  Suffice it to say, I have never ever been asked so many questions in such a short period of time!

The flying part of things has been really good, and I've really enjoyed being back in the aircraft, although it hasn't seemed as natural as I thought it would be, due to all the new procedures and having to actually think before actioning things.  When my mind goes away all on its lonesome it tends to go right back to what it is used to do, so if I'm doing a take-off brief and get distracted perhaps by our taxi route, I realise that I am chanting the previous company's spiel with absolutely no regard to what I am actually saying.  That takes a little bit of getting used to!  It's like forcing myself to write with my left hand when I'm used to writing with my right - and yes I know some people do that all the time, but I don't!

Once I was inside the terminal today, and got down to business, my brain stopped asking me stupid questions and I was able to focus on what I needed to do.  That was good.  Another thing that is good is that tomorrow is a day off, and it will give me a little bit of a head-start on the study front - it is quite hard to stay ahead of the game if you are flying every day and can only study while preparing for the actual duty.  Yeah, yeah I know, smallest violin and all that.

I think this particular blog post has gone on long enough!  Yes, I am happy that I am here.  Yes, there is an awful lot more work than I thought there would be - but am I willing to do it? yes.  Also, I recognise that it is their ball game so they make the rules!  However, bring on the day off tomorrow, that's what I say!

TTFN!!!