Living in Jordan

Backposting - October 1997

These days were one the best days in my travelling experience. Signing a one year contract to fly with Royal Jordanian Airlines, were practically the first batch from Indonesia, ever. There were only 6 of us: Deisy, Daru, Rachma, Tieneke Herman, Dhidit and myself. Silly fun looking bunch of newbies to the middle eastern life. Really excited!

Initial training took almost 2 months, in the mean time, we were accommodated in a hotel nearby the airport, Queen Alia, apparently there were only two international hotels in the city. Training was a blast, we had so much fun as everything was totally a new experience for us. The hotel life got a bit boring after a while, at one point, we got so sick & tired of the same food after trainings so we decided to befriend the hotel chef who finally let us to go into the kitchen to cook our Indo foodstuff.

Tieneke & myself on the way to ballad for some grocery shopping

Apart from that, we still thought the main attraction during sunday brunch were watching the local women jumping into the swimming pool complete with their black yahala dresses and face covers, and the most annoying part of evenings was to slammed the phone on anonimous s*x phone calls - arab men for sure. Just disgusting!!! Bored girls tend to do silly stuff. One night we decided to have a drink down at the bar with the pilot cadets, which to our surprise turned into a nightmare. We were told off by the hotel management, they wouldn't tolerate any crew misbehaving in the hotel.... *we're not even officially 'crew' yet* and from that day on, two sky marshals were assigned to monitor what we do in in the hotel after coming back from training and ensure that we return to our own rooms.... like we'd even thought of doing something else.... iiih, plis deh!

Spending the night at the Dead Sea on my birthday, just the five of us

Then FINALLY, time to do our Check Flights - to be certified as an active Flight Attendant. Ooooh boy, couldn't remember where we flew to, it didn't matter anyway as you wouldn't even have a chance to look out through the window ..... or even breathe. Still remember my check flight supervisor was Susan Zelvo - known as the "dragon lady" - not sure about the "lady" part though, she looked and sounded like a man. When she put you to test, she does that passionately, won't leave you alone. Give her one wrong answer, she'd come back to you with a hundred more...... Just a total nightmare! We all passed.At that time, we all flew this Boeing 737 and L1011 Tristar. These aircrafts are considered flying junk these days. Too old. Lucky if you can get them to take off. Even back then, Tristar were known to have problems with their cargo doors that tend to open accidentaly while airborne.....

Our home in Marj Al Hamam - Amman, Jordan, about 15 mnts away from the airport

Thankfully, we were given enough training salary to move out of the hotel and rent a house immediately. We fell in love with a beautiful house up on the hill in Marj Al-Hamam area. Fully furnished and we all shared the fee - except Dhidit who decided to move in with her newfound boyfriend, whom I think she dumped not long afterwards. She loved her freedom too much...... Ya ampun Dhit, inget nggak loe?

Flying was fun, sort of. We preferred to fly rather than staying in home-base. These long layovers were just the best!!! 4 days, 7 days, 14 days... if you're lucky. Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Amsterdam - and most of the smaller cities in God-knows part of Europe I have never even heard before. Where the hell is Klagenfurt?!?

Klagenfurt stopover, on one of the charter flights. Delayed for 6 hrs of
technical problem a.k.a pintu kargo macet lagi bouw. Tristar emang biasanya.....

PS: Ketemu juga, ngubek2nya di German, ternyata Klagenfurt itu di Austria.. whoops!