Feels Good to be Home

Hey people, I have been neglecting this site real bad ay…
It’s mostly because I don’t have much time anymore
Here’s my attempt at making it back up again

So does anyone want to know what I’ve been up to for the past couple of days?
They’ve been craaazzy!

It started last Tuesday when I was told at work that I would be needed to travel all around the country to test out our new product (which I’m not at liberty to mention yet so I will continue to refer to it as ‘product’ and the airline will be referred to as ‘company’).

So on early Thursday morning I got my tired ass out of bed and hauled it to the airport for my flight to Melbourne. When we got there we had to attend a short debrief of the product as well as the itinerary of the test flights. Only a small number of people (20) were on these flights. Most were from the company’s cabin crew and a couple of guys from the US where the only other system like this exists. On a side note ‘company’ flight attendants are hot! Spent some time chatting to them, then we boarded the private plane and took off, flying back to Sydney. We landed there to refuel, then continued onto Brisbane, and had a weird kind of aborted landing where just as we were about to land, the engines kicked in again and we took off. Next stop, Adelaide, with the same landing procedure, and then back onto Melbourne. It was pretty cool because it was a private flight, I got to see the cockpit and had a whole row to myself, whilst testing the product. Oh yeah, the flight was fully catered as well, drinks food and all. I’ve finally experienced ‘crappy airline food’. In my opinion, it shouldn’t even be classified as food, more like mashed up chemicals (I mean chicken which doesn’t go bad for a year? It’s obviously not chicken…) At Melbourne, spent some time with the guys from work, had some drinks and a large dinner then headed to bed.

Next day, more of the same thing. We flew Melbourne to Perth, had 10 minutes to walk around the terminal while the plane refuelled and then flew back to Melbourne. By this stage I just wanted to go home! Then we flew back home on a normal flight back to Sydney, taxi back home. The whole adventure felt like it had been a week. The only thing that got me through the second day was lots of caffeine! I was so out of it, at least I now know what jetlag means and now I can say I’ve been in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide all in one day and everywhere except Darwin in two

But my day wasn’t over quite yet…

Headed down to TJ’s place after cause it was his brother’s birthday party (shoutout to Mitch!). Anyway had some drinks and kicked arse at soccer! Crashed there the night and the next day I was stuffed (must have been the bad mix of caffeine and alcohol). Anyway when I got home still didn’t sleep! I hooked up some equipment in my bedroom (namely in the form of a computer) and then called it a day.

By now I bet you’re all asking yourself:
“Who made you do this?”
“What were you testing?”
“Got some pictures of the chicks?”
“Why did I read all of this?”

Well for those of you who don’t know I work for Foxtel engineering, testing, creating designing new products (as that’s what engineers do…)
I can’t tell you what I was testing as it’s all under wraps. If you were smart you could put two and two together. I couldn’t get pictures because I can’t release them (duh!). Also, we were the first people outside the US to use the product. Pretty cool, huh?
Unfortunately no pictures of the chicks, I lied. I wasn’t chatting them up… they approached me and started talking to me. Yeah that’s right! Booyah! (It was mostly about the product though…)
I can’t answer the last one for you, maybe it’s because I am t3h pwnage! Hahaha
Well I think I’m done… at least for now.

Peace out

Update: Finally the ‘product’ has been launched… It’s Foxtel on Virgin Blue flights – A first for live TV in planes! You can all find more info here http://www.virginblue.com.au/products/live2air/