confirmed that i'll be leaving on the 23rd.

almost confirmed that i'll be quarantined starting monday.

confirmed that that stinks.

we'll also be confined for 10 days upon arriving in tw - two weekends burnt! but on the other hand there won't be any flying done during that period, so we'll be in oz a bit longer to make up for it. the confinement bit might be a bad thing, though, because i imagine they won't let us lobo the whole time away, but rather extend the ground school / mass briefs from the usual 2 days, so that it spans the entire 10 day length. and if they do that, the nasty instructors will expect more from us in the air, which would be bad.

but then again...although we're supposed to arrive in tw with zilch knowledge, its an open secret that we get notes to study while we're in spore. which results in the slightly silly situation whereby the instructors on the antipodean side know that we know stuff about flying, but they're not supposed to know. at least officially. and we're not supposed to tell them that the seniors here have told us what to expect there. but they compensate by giving you only 2 days of ground school before throwing you in the cockpit.

which reminds me -
Q: what do a woman and an aircraft have in common?
A: they both have a cockpit!

bada-bing!

about the nasty instructors...on the ground they're supposed to be pretty ok guys. but once in the air they become mean - they purposely make you feel like the biggest idiot this side of oz to see whether you can take the pressure. supposedly some of the female trainees can't hack it and start crying. hehehe...some of their mannerisms and the stuff they say ( the senior courses have told us all about them ) are really quite funny, though. as long as you're not on the receiving end, i suppose.

i would just like to reiterate that having to be quarantined sucks. i mean, during the day we're still going to come into contact with people who've been outside and got all SARS'd. so the whole quarantine thing is really so the higher-ups can cover their asses, the asses...