Right, methinks this site is long overdue on an update.

I've finally managed to 'redecorate' my room. As in painting it a very calming 'Antique White' instead of the grossly offending orange I've lived in since March!
Yesterday then saw the clearing out of my wardrobes... producing only two Tesco-bags full of papers and general unneeded stuff. Even though no one ever looks into my wardrobe, apart from myself of course, I always feel so much better when it's done, just makes it easier and clearer to pick out clothes to wear in the morning.

Speaking of clothes.
I ventured into central London today for a wander around the shops, as you do, although today being possibly August's warmest day, it wasn't all that pleasant, anyhow, I digress.
Walked into numerous clothing stores, hoping to find some additions to my wardrobe, as I've grown tired of half of the clothes I own. The other half I don't wear, mostly because they simply don't go with upper 20s temperatures!
So off I went, had to get some tidbits like moisturiser and a book, no problem with that, that's one thing I don't seem to have a problem with, that and socks.
I must have tried at least 10 pairs of trousers.
Didn't matter where it was. GAP, Selfridges or H&M, nothing seemed to work.
And it didn't. I ended up giving up with trousers, and the only item of clothing I ended up with was a lovely wool cardigan from GAP. Yes, and that on the month's hottest day, how messed up am I?!
However, it will come in handy when I go to Iceland tomorrow! Giving the arctic temperatures over there! It's summer, and all they manage to come up with is 8°C and rain!

I'm taking my HongKong-ese friends over there for 5 days.
We're all flying over tomorrow evening on Icelandair, then coming back Tuesday.
Promises to be fun... although when I went up to Birmingham to visit them a couple of weeks ago they'd made a list of places they wanted to see including Hornstrandir, Látrarbjarg, Dynjandi and Jökulsárlón.
Bless them, how were they to know those are situated at different ends of the country!

True to form, I now need to add something about flying!
My last trip was a 4-day Beirut with a Khartoum shuttle.
I love Beirut.
Although I had a lovely crew, no one was interested in going shopping (exactly... WEIRDOS!).
So off I went on my own and had a brilliant time. Went to the massive Virgin Megastore and got meself the latest Arabic tunes, a totally fantastic CD, nuts from Al-Rifai and some other indispensable items!
I know I've said it before, and I've no qualms about repeating it...
Beirut is totally fabulous.

Did the flight out to Beirut on the newest aircraft in our fleet, a little Airbus A320, with the best inflight-entertainment system ever, not that I got to sample it much, but it was obvious.
And you can control all sorts of things from a huge touch-screen in the front-galley. My personal favourite is the boarding music... especially the classical option playing the BA theme tune (they play it on every BA TV advert), so cool.

Well girls and boys, have a good September!

"British Airways Cancels All Flights at London Heathrow"
"Öllu flugi British Airways á Heathrow aflýst - 20.000 manns strandaglópar"

What a day.

Woke up all happy, as I was supposed to be going to Beirut, taking off at 14:35.
Went to the office, checked-in, briefing, lovely crew.
Got on the aircraft, did all our stuff, poured the Business-Class drinks and folded the newspapers.
Passengers boarded, everyone happy and smiley.
14:35
The captain made an announcement:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, a very warm welcome onboard this British Airways Airbus A321 operated by BMED. I do hope you've made yourself comfortable onboard, as it looks like you'll have to be sitting comfortably for quite a while, as due to today's strike by those at Gate Gourmet (the catering company), the ground staff have decided to pose a sympathy strike, meaning all bus, towtruck-drivers, and baggage loaders are now not working, effectively putting the whole of Heathrow Airport to a standstill..."

Then he went on explaining how wed have to sit on the ground until any news had reached us... and sit we did, for approximately 7 hours.
Since we were on what's called a remote stand we couldn't bus the passengers back to the terminal, as the bus drivers weren't working.
So eventually we did the whole service on the ground, drinks, meals and all.

Then finally, 7 hours after scheduled departure, a decision was made to get the passengers out of the plane and back into the terminal, as some busdrivers were now volunteering to work.
Our captain then got a ladder to get to the cargo-hold and retrieved our luggage (as passengers' luggage wasn't being offloaded, seeing as baggageloaders had striked aswell).
After all this, we then went back to the office and then home.
Every single crew-member is on standby tomorrow... seeing as nobody knows yet what the outcome of the abovementioned industrial action will be.

What I find extremely frustrating (apart from the obvious, not getting to Beirut) is how utterly stupid the Gate Gourmet staff are. To be honest, I have no sympathy for them whatsoever.
The fact is that Gate Gourmet isn't doing very well at the moment, and has been struggling for a while now. They decided to make quite a lot of people redundant (around 640 to be precise) recently, offering them generous packages, and further training opportunities to help them find other jobs.
But no.
Those people decided it wasn't good enough, instead they told Gate Gourmet they would strike (without Union approval, which is rather important in a case such as this one)... to which Gate Gourmet replied it would have to literally fire those 640, leaving them with nothing if they decided to do that.

So the obvious happened.
Those halfwits made the wrong decision, causing utter chaos for the whole British Airways operation, and subsequent multi-million pound losses.
Short-sighted &#%?$ is all I can say.

And as for those groundstaff (this does not include check-in and terminal staff, rather the oldies that drive the buses and push the aircraft back from stand aswell as the baggageloaders), they're a bunch of lazy twats that saw this as an opportunity to sit down on their big, white, fat behinds and have more cups of tea and watch telly.

Right. Some might think I'm pulling a stong reaction to this... but think a bit further ahead.
Because of today, British Airways and BMED have lost millions of pounds, and probably quite a few passengers, with flights not getting back to normal till probably next week if we're lucky. And this being the summer, with nearly every flight full, it's not easy clearing a big back-log like that.

To put it bluntly: at the end of it, it could be my job on the line.

Now, thanks for reading my venting-out statement for August 11th, one of the weirdest working days of my life.

Keep on flying with the World's Favourite Airline.

BMED Destinations: As seen on CNN!

Our in-house motto seems to live up to its name these days.
As it's now true, perhaps more than ever, that if you want to know where our destinations are, all you've gotta do is turn on CNN, BBC or any newschannel.

-A bomb exploded outside the British Airways office in Teheran, Iran (one of the infamous "Axis of Evil") a few days ago (the building was actually shared by other companies such as BP...)
-Sudan is currently on the brink of a civil war.
-The Uzbek government has asked the US to withdraw its forces from the country (they have a few bases in Uzbekistan, aswell as neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, where they conduct their War On Terror from in Afghanistan).
-Every other week or so a bomb goes off somewhere in Beirut.

Interesting.

Rumour has it we want to be the first Western airline to operate scheduled flights into Kabul.

Even more interesting.

Yes, the glamorous places an air hostess gets to see in her day to day working life!

Off to Tashkent, Uzbekistan on Friday, to spend yet another weekend in a former Soviet republic (last weekend I was in Tbilisi, Georgia)...
my next weekend will then be spent in my fav place of them all: BEIRUT.

Come fly the friendly skies.

The mirror dancing phenomenon

Best place to witness this weird practice is definitely in Yerevan, Armenia.
However, as witnessed by yours truly the other week in neighbouring Tbilisi, Georgia, this form of entertaining oneself through the mean of dancing to oneself in a mirror seems to have spread around.
From a non-local (quite obviously) perspective this is actually rather hillarious, but in a way a tad ingenious too.
Think about it. You go to a club with a girlfriend of yours. She/he finds someone to dance to, and there you are, left all to our own devices. And if you in turn can't persuade someone to wiggle themselves in tune with you, what better way is there than just to turn to the mirror?
At least the mirror won't give you a funny look when you pull that move you've been dying to try when Ruslana comes on... and, perhaps more importantly, your reflection will never be a better (or worse) dancer than you... it's a total win-win situation.
Of course the said mirror will have to be full-length and preferably totaly cover at least a whole wall in that particular club.
In any case, if somebody needs any help in kitting out their dancefloor, I'm sure the fabulous Björk Þ. (currently in the one and only capital of mirror-dancing, Yerevan) will be happy to share her thoughts, experiences and well-known expertise on the matter.
Brilliant.

There's me wondering if this is going to spread further west, or if this somewhat peculiar practice is doomed to stay in that area of the world.

Your thoughts are most welcome.