Home coming...and reflections

It's hard to believe that after just over a year (quite literally) on opposite sides of the world, my husband is coming home :) It has been a long, hard 365+ days - but it has also not been without many a life lesson.

Fiji is not a place that many from Europe or Africa visit - there is the enormous distance, the cost of flights, the over inflated tourist hotel prices etc etc So for all the difficulties, I do feel privileged for the opportunity to have spent some time there - albeit only for five weeks. The people of Fiji have a fascinating history and an old culture that is slowly being stamped out by the modern world. There is deep embarrassment over their past - over cannibalism and believing in a variety of Gods and Deities. I find this rather gut wrenching - I would really rather learn about another culture than be told 'Look how far we have come - we have a Mcdonalds'.

Postcards of Fiji show the tourist hot spots, five star resorts that are so exclusive one has to take a second mortgage on ones home to pay the bill. However beyond the glitz and the glamour lies the real Fiji. The Fiji that reminds me of Africa. A country split in two with little in the way of the 'middle line'. There are the 'haves and the have-nots'. In Africa, in general, this has resulted in conflict, desperation, soaring crime, and general misery. Yet somehow Fiji manages to fight through the same difficulties with many still holding a smile on their faces. Yes there is crime, health problems, too many stray animals...but people still seem to try and look for the good.

There is a lot to be learned from that....is it really a crises that when you went to the shops and out of the range of 40+ brands of cereal they didn't have your favorite sugar-laden, mass produced, box of zero nutritional value food? Is it not a somewhat surreal feeling to know that whilst you bemoan this, someone, somewhere in the world is barely getting by with a couple of pieces of fruit and water from a river that is also used as a bath? Personally, I often wonder, what would life have been like if I had been born into a different family, under different circumstances....Perspective - unfortunately it's something that is often not easy to obtain when sitting in one place, especially in a comfortable place.

One million and twenty eleven flying hours

Ok so the heading of this blog post will really only be understood by South Africans, but I couldn't resist.

My husband is home soon from a really, really, REALLY ruddy long 'tour' on some exotic island in the Pacific. When I say long, I mean 310 out of 365 days away from home long. He went, because well, it was a pretty decent job, in a pretty decent company, on a pretty decent aircraft that he...you guessed it, had the opportunity to build some good hours on.

I worked in aviation and I am married to a pilot, and I really have to say that I have come to believe that if there is one absolutely unobtainable thing in this world - it is the perfect number of flight hours on the right aircraft at the right time. There seems to forever be a requirement to chase another number, get more flight hours on a turbo prop, get more command hours, the hours need to be on a heavier aircraft, you need jet time. Hours, hours, hours - the more you get of them, it seems the more you need. Only to get the jobs you need to increase your hours or to get onto the aircraft you want -  you need to have a certain amount of hours in the first place. It reminds me a little of our presidents attempt at reading numbers...a real struggle, with success generally only ever coming from a huge smattering of good luck!

I have the privilege of knowing a couple of guys sitting on 15 000+ hours on a variety of aircraft and I can pretty much guarantee they have at least once in their lifetime looked at a job posting for their dream job and gone 'Well dammit, I'm just 20 hours short to apply for this' 

Christmas ~ not always a time for family

It's Christmas...that time of year when everyone rushes about asking everyone else what they are doing for the holiday season, or Christmas lunch, or New years eve. People worn out by a long year of work suddenly have a little more lift in their step and hum along to Christmas songs blaring out of every shopping mall speaker.

It is the season of family, roast lunches and long dinners that stretch into the early hours of the morning. It is the time when people don't have to work and instead enjoy (or don't) time with loved ones - with holidays often planned months, sometimes years in advance.

However, for some - Christmas is not the picture perfect family adventure.Some may be sitting in old age home - alone, sad and cherishing bygone times of family being together. Others may be sitting in a childrens home - wishing and dreaming of the day they have a family of their very own to spend Christmas with, missing their own family they may or may not have ever known.

There are those working across the festive season - pilots, hosties, aircraft engineers, doctors, policemen, paramedics, military personnel, nurses, firemen...when one stops to think about it the list of those who will not be sitting at the family table is actually quite long.

So this Christmas, take a little time to think of those who may not be as fortunate as others in their celebrations.. If you are lucky enough to have some spare change, have a couple of chocolates in your car/handbag and randomly give them out, along with a big festive smile -  to policemen, paramedics, homeless people or old neighbors you know are alone...after all, it is the time to be thankful and a time of giving, and you never know - your smile could change someones entire festive season!

Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome

A lot of people you meet will wonder why, when they almost knock you out with excitement at hearing you are married to a pilot, your response is to mumble a barely audible & very unenthusiastic 'yes, fantastic'. The fact is that 99% of people truly do not understand the difficulties that come with trying to maintain a healthy relationship/family life when working in aviation, and explanations fall on deaf ears.

Marriages in aviation seem to be so difficult to maintain that even the community itself has coined a term for them failing - 'Aviation Induced Divorced Syndrome - AIDS'. Marriages are hard enough to maintain under 'normal' circumstances, let alone when you throw something like aviation into the mix. There are an enormous of pilot wife (and pilot, cabin crew) blogs on the internet covering the subject of how one can actually keep a relationship/family going. There are some who have jumped on the 'co-pilot' wagon with relative ease and others saying they would never again choose to go through it.

I think for a large number of the population they can only relate a pilots work and travel to the annual boys weekend, or company function their husband goes on for a week of the year. So they imagine a few days of heavenly relaxation on their own, followed by missing their partner for a couple more days, nearly dying of boredom, panicking their partner may be cheating on them (this doesn't apply to all - the cheating or the panicking) and then their partner being home and life carrying on as normal.

This is pretty different to life when you partner travels for extended period of times (4-12wks away, 2-4 weeks home - or any rotating schedule). In short - these types of relationships can most likely only be understood by the average person as being similar to dating-breaking up-dating-breaking up (repeat for the duration of your life married to a pilot).
When your partner is home you spend the first week getting used to living with someone again and the last week dreading their departure. The in-between is wonderful yet exhausting: trying to balance family time, friend time, and quality time together, whilst also getting anything else done that requires the two of you (or just your husband). In some instances there may be required to be reminders of where house hold items are stored if like in my instance, your partner has only been home once in 10 months. Once they leave, you have the choice to mope around miserably for the duration of their tour (in which case you are likely going to become parts of the AIDS statistics), or pick yourself and be more fiercely independent than most single women....whilst not actually being single. When your partner returns home, repeat the above exercise whilst loving your pilot and not becoming a contributor to the AIDS statistics ;)

Some people dream of fame and fortune - others simply dream of flight...and never achieve it, the pilot wannabes

Most people know that I am married to a pilot, many know that I worked in the aerial geophysics and mapping industry - but few know the history of my love for aviation. So for those who don't know my story I thought I would give a little background...

When I was little I was like most kids - okay maybe not like most girls, because the first subject matter I remember being fascinated with was dinosaurs. They literally blew my little mind away - creatures so enormous, so deadly, and so....well, extinct! They were as mythical to me, as dragons and fairies. I spent what seemed like an eternity in equal measure wishing dinosaurs would once again roam the planet, and being incredibly thankful I would never have to worry about being chased by a velociraptor. As I grew older the dinosaur obsession died and was replaced by the next best thing....sharks, of course (at least they still existed)! This was mostly thanks to the 'Quest' collectible magazines we used to get in South Africa. Nearly every second magazine would contain terrifying imagines of Great Whites with their gargantous jaws splayed open, or a Thresher shark with its elegant tail fin on display.

Then when I was 12 years old everything would change. My father (like any good German) is a die hard Arnold Schwarzenegger fan...and so when the movie 'True Lies' was released to 'VHS' (those are old fashioned DVDs for you young people) - he was first on the movie rental store list to check it out. As it had an age restriction I was not allowed to watch it - but like any child, I used every opportunity to walk past the television set to catch glimpses of the 'not for children' movie. I happened to walk by during the scene of the Harrier jet doing a vertical take-off from the bridge. This trumped dinosaurs AND sharks - it was quite literally 'the coolest thing ever' in my mind. Not only did it solidify my personal love of Arnold,for being able to fly a fighter jet (at 12, OF COURSE, I believed this was real - it's Arnold, come on!), but it would be the start of a somewhat heart-breaking love affair with aviation.

Becoming a pilot is an expensive exercise, and something that was not an option when I finished school - so instead I studied computers (from dinosaurs-sharks-airplanes...to computers - no wonder it never enthralled me). However, 2yrs later South African Airways would post an advertisement in the Sunday Times newspaper for their Pilot Cadet Scheme (PCS), I applied immediately. Out of the blue 8 weeks later I would receive a notification in the post to report to Jet Park for initial screening and aptitude tests for the PCS - I was over the moon, over 6000 applications had been received by SAA. I attended the initial session, and again, weeks later,I would receive a notification to say I had passed and would be required to complete fitness & medical tests. We had now been whittled down to a group of only around 50-60 people. I knew I was strong, fit and healthy, the worst was over and I had now convinced myself that this was it - I was going to 'live the dream'. Weeks later I would be called back for further medical evaluation - and as I sat with the neurologist who was by now taping my closed eyes and running a third EEG, she turned to me and said "I am not allowed to discuss these sessions with possible cadets but I can see how your heart is set on this. Lisa, I cannot pass you - you have what is known as an abnormal EEG, this is a 'fail item' in the PCS due to the possibility of epilepsy." I left the hospital gutted, I would go on to see another neurologist who had worked in the South African Air force, who would run the same tests, and confirm the same findings. 

I would continue to work in the IT industry for another three years before receiving a phone call from a fellow computer programming graduate who loved aviation. He had put me forward for a position in an aerial geophysics company...the rest as they say - is history. I may never get to captain an aircraft - but I did get to spend a great few years working within the aviation industry.

**This post is in honour of my Gramps who turned 93 today! He flew the Halifax on cargo missions for the RAF during World War II - next week he will get to meet my husband for the first time and talk 'flying stuff' (,")