Hair loss, New York and much more!

Today’s post is in English in honour of my dear friends who cannot read Portuguese and have already complained several times that this blog is getting toooooo ‘for the family’!

Quite a lot has happened in the past days but at the same time it feels that everything is still the same. My first flight of my reserve was to New York on January 27th and you cannot imagine how cold it was there!!! First of all the flight was a nightmare, as usual on the New York route. It is like running a marathon from Dubai to New York along the aisles of the economy cabin. Once we landed, at 14:00 it was -11ºC! Getting out of the Terminal, on the way to the bus, a wind blew me away and I could feel every square centimeter of my body shrink and shiver. Needless to say that -11ºC with the wind chill factor turns into something around -20ºC… The day was beautiful though, not a single cloud in the sky. However walking around Manhattan was a painful experience. My ears almost dropped out of my head, frozen like dead meat. I managed to go visit the new MoMA and all I can say is: AMAZING!!! (worth waiting outside to buy the ticket).

Back to Dubai and time to have a haircut! Awful experience to see the top of my head on the mirror and find out my hair is disappearing! I have also started noticing that the skin around my eyes is also feeling ‘old’. Could it be a psychosomatic result of turning 30? How come all was fine until my last birthday? What am I going to do without hair?

February started and I am still on reserve. Actually I have reserve until the 20th so there is no way I can make any plans until than! But good surprises happen! My brother showed up here for a full 24 hours in Dubai. We rented a car and went on visiting the new areas of the city and had a great time chatting and eating well. He is now in Paris, almost on his way back to Brazil.

On Thursday, 3rd of February I had airport standby. Airport standby means: report to the briefing centre at 06:30 ready to operate any flight. This means going to Australia for a week, to Moscow for a day or New York. It could also be a flight to Bombay and back or even a short Doha. Imagine packing for such a duty? I had swimsuits for Bondi Beach, boots to walk in the snow and even a sarong, in case the beach story could become true. So at 06:30 I sat on a sofa at the briefing centre and waited for a call from the dispatching officers. New York flight closed. Paris closed. Frankfurt closed. Vienna closed. And I began to think that it would be a good idea to actually go home at 09:30 (when the duty ends), with no flights but the whole day for myself. But than at 07:50 they called me and said I needed to go to Munich. That the whole crew was already on the plane and that I needed to rush because the departure time was in 15 minutes!!! So I rushed and was the last person to board the aircraft. Even the passengers were already all in!!! And off I went to Germany!

Cold and snow again! But at least Munich is worth it. A great city with a lot to do! This time I visited the Pinakothek der Moderne, which is the German version of the NY MoMA! Again: AMAZING!!! And even though the whole city was white and it kept on snowing, it was not half as cold as it had been in NY the previous week!

So now back to Dubai again for another standby duty tomorrow! Reserve until the 20th and afterwards a flight to Mauritius (which I hope to swop for a Nairobi in Kenya) and another to Johannesburg in South Africa!

One other amazing thing that happened on the flight back from Munich was that a passenger recognized me from this blog. Can you believe it? He said he found the blog before he moved to Dubai and read it for a while. Before boarding the plane in Germany he saw me walking at the airport and recognized me from the pictures on the web!!! So I am getting famous around the world!!! :-)

Guess this is all for today. Guess you are now tired of reading as well. Will post this and also a few pictures before packing my suitcase AGAIN!!! By the way Enjoy Carnival, specially for those in Brazil, where the real CARNAVAL is!!!