End of September

We finished up the five days of simulator training with a check flight. I needed to see how the other pilots were progressing, so after K and myself, I spent the remainder of the day observing simulator periods. Needless to say, this made for a very long day. I was certainly ready to get back to the hotel.

With Ramadan over at 7:30 the entire group went up to the roof top Indian restaurant for the Iftar Buffet. We had been to this restaurant on numerous occasions so were well known by the staff. The reason we were there was an interesting sidelight of Ramadan. As I have mentioned previously, there is NO alcohol served during the month of Ramadan. Not that I would “skirt the rules,” but on previous nights we had been able to order “cold tea” that arrived at the table in a nice silver tea pot with a China cup and saucer. The “cold tea” was actually a way for the steady customers to get a cold beer, under the table so to speak. On this evening not all things were possible in Bahrain as there were under cover police watching in the kitchen and restaurant to ensure Ramadan rules were followed. So back to the room after dinner!

Gulf Air did provide us with first class seats for the returning trip to Dubai. Their service was excellent and the US airlines could learn a good deal from them. In a two hour flight they served a full meal, many juice, water, soft drink runs, and gave everyone a newspaper in the language of your choice. It is really very easy to get used to first class when someone else is paying the tab!

Once again arriving back into Dubai we had to make a Duty Free run before finding our driver S. Everyone purchased their limit of Duty Free but there is really no way to hide it from the driver, who is an Afghan Muslim. So, Ramadan or not, he turns a blind eye to our purchases as he knows who fills up his “rice bowl!”

With the pilots and flight attendants trained at this point, it is now up to the S Brothers to decide when to start and where to go. I think that we will begin operations sometime before the fifteenth of October. Hopefully they will start small so everyone can get some experience working together before getting too exotic. Although the new web site, http://safiairways.aero/, doesn’t seem to indicate a slow start! I would like to point out also that I had nothing to do with the building of the site.

I was very anxious to get back to Dubai this time because I was going to have my first visitor! This SNIL, Simulated Nephew in Law, was JS from Singapore. He was staying at the Arabian Courtyard in Bur Dubai, so we decided to have dinner there. He travels to Dubai numerous times a year on business, so I hope he ends up being the one constant while I’m here. I really did try to get him to the Ice Bar in Dubai to no avail. I had really thought he and his wife K were into this lifestyle. What can I say; he had to go to bed early! There are hackers and non hackers… I’m sure the Rs will go when they get here in November.

As I have mentioned before, it is a moral violation to use Skype on the internet in the UAE. The authorities are not able to keep Skype off the internet but they can BLOCK direct dialing internationally; they can BLOCK the ability to pay your account online; they can BLOCK direct dialing into your account. The only thing they can’t BLOCK is Skype to Skype calls, which are free.

So the commercial for this blog is about SMSDiscount.com. All the pilots have joined it as of yesterday. We took them up on their offer of 120 days of free international calling and then one to two cents per minute on the international calls after that. I was able to call GHD on SMSDiscount and the reception was excellent. We’ll see how long it takes for the UAE to find out about this. The real problem here is that both of these firms take away business from Etisalat, which is a UAE communications company. For those of you that may be going overseas, one must stay a step ahead of these guys.