Suicide

When taking a stroll around the lovely city of Vancouver the last thing you want to see is a guy sitting on the edge of a wall eight stories up from the ground wanting to jump off.
I walked right passed him and very close, then out or nowhere about 8 Canadian policemen and women appeared and we were all asked to vacate the area, but as usual i had my camera handy and caught this great photo of a well trained policeman casually chatting to the young man and trying to persuade him to think things over.


As i walked back to the hotel i witnessed a movie being filmed, not sure who was in it but they had simulated a car crash and the guy in the saloon car who seems to looking right at me seemed familiar, maybe someone out there recognises him.

Also died today age 62 after a long fight with cancer but her death has been overshadowed by that of Michael Jackson with the press.

Michael Jackson 1958-2009

ROBBED

My trip to Cairo was something i was really looking forward too, one meal service , short flight, and a day off, the flight there was so busy and i alone took £1680.00 in duty free, i had also been to the cash point to get the money to pay for the joiner who was to start doing work for me when i got home.
As usual i stayed in when i got there, i sorted out the money and checked it was correct, i placed it in the grey wallet and put it in my crew bag alongside my two wallets, one with foreign currency of dollars and Euros left over from ,my holiday and one with £300.00 in Sterling.!
The next day i slept until lunch time and thought i would wander down to the pool for 30 minutes or so and see who was there, i knew it would be too hot for me so was not into staying long.
I arrived at 1350 and left for my room at 1415 at the latest, i had room service and went to bed, it was not until i was checking out the next morning that when i come to pay my bill i realised my wallets were empty, i immediately searched for the duty free money which had also gone, i almost passed out with shock, i called the in charge crew member and Captain, the hotel manager was summonds and we left for the airport on time, but during the flight i had to fill in the incident form.
Within 25 minutes of leaving my room the previous day someone had stripped me of over £2000.00....i have not really slept properly since and feel sick everytime i see my wallets knowing someone has rummaged through and stolen from them, it is an awful feeling, similar to burglary or even rape!!!

A Nice Story

Lucky Dog....



Anyone who has pets will really like this. You'll like it even if you
don't and you may even decide you need one!
Mary and her husband Jim had a dog named 'Lucky.'

Lucky was a real character. Whenever Mary and Jim had company come for a
weekend visit they would warn their friends to not leave their luggage
open because Lucky would help himself to whatever struck his fancy.

Inevitably, someone would forget and something would come up missing.Mary or Jim would go to Lucky's toy box in the basement and there the
treasure would be, amid all of Lucky's other favorite toys Lucky always stashed his finds in his toy box and he was very particular that his
toys stay in the box.

It happened that Mary found out she had breast cancer. Something told
her she was going to die of this disease....in fact; she was just sure
it was fatal.

She scheduled the double mastectomy, fear riding her shoulders. The
night before she was to go to the hospital she cuddled with Lucky... A
thought struck her...what would happen to Lucky? Although the
three-year-old dog liked Jim, he was Mary's dog through and through. If
I die, Lucky will be abandoned, Mary thought He won't understand that I
didn't want to leave him!
The thought made her sadder than thinking of her own death.
The double mastectomy was harder on Mary than her doctors had
anticipated and Mary was hospitalized for over two weeks. Jim took Lucky
for his evening walk faithfully, but the little dog just drooped,
whining and miserable.

Finally the day came for Mary to leave the hospital. When she arrived
home, Mary was so exhausted she couldn't even make it up the steps to
her bedroom.
Jim made his wife comfortable on the couch and left her to nap.
Lucky stood watching Mary but he didn't come to her when she called It
made Mary sad but sleep soon overcame her and she dozed.
When Mary woke for a second she couldn't understand what was wrong. She
couldn't move her head and her body felt heavy and hot. But panic soon
gave way to laughter when Mary realized the problem. She was covered,
literally blanketed, with every treasure Lucky owned! While she had
slept, the sorrowing dog had made trip after trip to the basement
bringing his beloved mistress all his favorite things in life.

He had covered her with his love.

Mary forgot about dying. Instead she and Lucky began living again,
walking further and further together every day. It's been 12 years now
and Mary is still cancer-free. Lucky He still steals treasures and
stashes them in his toy box but Mary remains his greatest treasure.

Remember....live every day to the fullest. Each minute is a blessing
from God. And never forget....the people who make a difference in our
lives are not the ones with the most Credentials, the most money, or the
most awards.
They are the ones that care for us.
If you see someone without a smile today give them one of yours! Live
simply. Love seriously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God



Dear God, I pray for the cure of cancer.

Amen

16th June 2009

Not sure why i am writing anything today, sometimes it is just to put into writing what is on my mind as no one to talk too.
Boring day really, went to see Sue and had a cup of tea in her garden, Megan got too hot and lay under the table,(megan is a dog by the way).
Need to sort the house out for my visitors on Friday, also having fitted wardrobes put into spare room on Tuesday next week so need to sort that out and then i can have the crumbling wall re-plastered and start to re decorate and hang the new curtains, going for a duck egg blue theme.
I will post a photo of the way the room is now and i will repost a new one when it is finished, dont hold your breath as with my job it will take months.



I feel very sorry for my good friend Angus Kindley who's wife is very very ill with Cancer and has not long to live, he struggles to work each day, support all his children and look after his wife, it is a damn shame, some people get away with murder in this world and the good people always seem to be the ones to die before their time is up. He calls me regular and i often get him upgraded when travelling, along with his sister and mum and dad. He is like a brother to me and generally cares for my wellbeing and what happens in my life, something i have never had from a true sibling but something i would never want from them.
He used the words Caniving Bitch in our conversation, now i wonder who he was talking about!!!!

Cape Town 11th-15th June

I was unaware when i was rostered this trip that British Airways were the official sponsor of the Lions rugy tour in South Africa, although i was working in First class where the clientele are a little more refined i did go to help down the back and it was hell, everyone was standing in the aisles, the crew had already ran out of beers and wine and we were only 3 hours into an 11 hour flight, the aircraft cabins were overheating due to a fault, oh my goodness, this had to go down as one of my worst flights ever in my 21 year history.




Three nights in Cape Town in a 5* hotel all expenses paid sounds very nice indeed, well try going in June/July , middle of winter, freezing cold, non stop rain,deserted pool area and hotel with a miserable feel about it is enough to put anyone off, i am lucky to have experienced this beautiful place in the summer so i know the difference.




After all the headache and job losses it was nice to see Woolworths still exists in South Africa,it never traded under the same brand as the old Woolies in the Uk, was more like an M&S and still similar

Loss of Air France AF447

'Golden ears' on nuclear submarine listen for signals from Flight 447 black boxes

(Brazilian Navy/EPA)
The tailfin of the Air France Flight 447 being lifted out of the Atlantic
Charles Bremner, Paris
A French nuclear submarine today began combing the Atlantic depths off Brazil in search of signals that would pinpoint the flight recorders that could explain why Air France flight 447 crashed last week.

Aboard the Emeraude, crewmen called "golden ears", were straining to pick up in their headsets the acoustic "pings" which aircraft black boxes are supposed to transmit for 30 days under water.

Nothing is better equipped for such faint sounds than an attack submarine with sophisticated sonar gear for detecting vessels deep in the ocean, naval officers said.

As the Emeraude, with 72 men aboard, worked along with two US sonar-detecting vessels, the Brazilian and French navies continued to collect bodies and debris form the Airbus 330 airliner, which smashed into the Atlantic about 1,000 miles off Brazil with 228 people aboard.

Related Links
Airbus forced to land after 'flames and bangs'
Flying still safer than staying at home
Air France pilots told not to fly crash jets
Over 40 bodies had been plucked from the water and the first half-dozen were to be flown to Recife on the mainland for identification by fingerprints, body markings, teeth and DNA if necessary.

Passengers’ belongings were also collected bobbing on the ocean surface. Large fragments of the aircraft were also being taken back for inspection.

The submarine is searching a zone over 100 miles from the area to where currents and winds carried the crash debris. The French Navy was cautious about the chances of success in one of the most difficult searches ever tried. "There are big uncertainties about the accident site. The ocean floor is rugged so it's going to be very difficult and we're going to need a lot of luck," said Major Patrick Prazuck, the armed forces spokesman.

The submarine had to pass very close to the boxes if it were to have a chance of detecting them, he said. Once the voice and data recorders are found, a French remote-controlled submarine will try to retrieve them with a robot arm. No flight recorders have been retrieved from the 12,000ft depth where those of Flight 447 are believed to lie.

In Europe, passengers had had a scare today when a Spanish-operated Airbus A320 made an emergency landing in the Canary Islands after suffering a failure in one of its two engines.

The Iberworld airliner, smaller than the A330, had just left Las Palmas to fly Norwegian tourists to Oslo when there was a jolt and the pilots turned round to make a safe landing. Some passengers said that they had seen flames but the airline did not identify the engine problem.

Air France pilots have voiced satisfaction with the airline's swift replacement of speed sensors on all its 35 Airbus long-range aircraft. Faulty readings by the external sensors or pitot tubes, perhaps because of ice, are believed to have started the chain of events that led to the disaster.

Air France has acknowledged that its aircraft had suffered from a series of upsets in cruising flight over the past two years which were caused by faulty speed readings and subsequent malfunction in the automatic flight system. Several other airlines have reported similar upsets in their fleets of A330s and A340s.

Louis Jobard, head of the Air France section of the SNPL, the main pilots' union, said that it was common sense to modify the pitot tubes after the airspeed incidents, from which other airliners had been able to recover after three or four minutes.

"We are not especially worried," Mr Jobard said. "When there are erroneous speed readings, we follow a checklist of procedures for which we are trained. Of course they are much more difficult to deal with when in an unfavourable environment with storms and severe turbulence like 447 went through," he said.

All the clues to the Airbus's fate so far have come from data transmitted automatically back to the airline's maintenance base outside Paris during the last four minutes of flight. An understanding of the disaster would be immensely improved with information from the flight deck voice recorder and the flight data recorded on the black boxes.

French officials continued to say that they did not rule out any cause, including terrorism. However Air accident experts played down the significance of a French media report that two passengers aboard the plane had names similar to those of two suspected Islamic radicals who are on a watch list compiled by French intelligence.

The four-minute sequence of system failures reported from the stricken Airbus would not be consistent with a bomb explosion, a suicidal pilot or a fight between hijackers and the pilots.

Atlanta Georgia

This is my first time in Atlanta Georgia and i hope i do not get too many trips here, the airport itself is a maize and after clearing customs , leaving the airport we have to be screened again, lap tops out, shoes off, then we had a 15 minute underground train ride to the baggage reclaim area, then a 10 minute walk to the crew transport, from landing to getting to hotel in the city was 2 hours...HIDEOUS!!!!
The city itself does not have a lot of named stores, or maybe i just could not find them, lots of undesirables on the street to not willing to venture far on my own and look for the shops in case i wandered into gangland!!
Won't be adding this to my holiday destination list.

British Airways Reality

BASSA > Latest News

BA’S REAL FINANCIAL SITUATION
Jun 1st, 2009 by admin

The most striking number in British Airways results for the past year was the £3bn it spent on fuel, which was 44.5% higher than in the previous year.

So for all the talk from Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, that "the global downturn makes this the harshest trading environment we have ever faced", without the £900m jump in fuel costs the airline would have been very comfortably in profit: operating profits would have been around £700m.

In fact the evidence of BA’s revenues is not of a cataclysmic global recession. Passenger revenues rose 3.1% to £7.8bn and cargo revenues were 9.4% higher at £673m. Which is not boom boom, but nor is it financial disaster at 30,000 feet.

What actually caused BA’s worst ever loss of £401m before tax and the suspension of the dividend was a lamentable rise in costs: engineering and "other" aircraft costs increased by £59m or 13.1%; landing fees were 14.2% or £75m higher. Even staff costs rose a bit.

So it’s difficult to avoid the impression that at least part of BA’s agony, its descent in just 12 months from record profits to record losses, was of its own making - though plainly there’s a limit to what it can do to hedge itself against the near-collapse in the value of sterling (which pushes up the cost of fuel) and against the volatility in the dollar oil price.

The better news is that BA expects to pay rather less for fuel this year.

Also it’s cutting costs: staff are being offered the option of temporary or permanent part-time working and unpaid leave; the company is negotiating "productivity changes" with trade unions; there’ll be no management bonuses (surely BA didn’t contemplate paying bonuses in this climate?).

Walsh sees no end in sight to the sharp decline in demand for air travel. At the end of the year, therefore, BA moved to cutting prices rather than squeezing more revenue out of individual customers.

However it’s the uncertainties that overwhelm and the company has decided not to issue any guidance on what its results might look like in the coming year.

And if you’re looking for reasons to be fearful about the outlook for BA, there’s this resonant statement pertaining to the hole in its pension funds: "if the financial markets deteriorate further, our pension deficit may increase, impacting balance sheet liabilities, which may in turn affect our ability to raise additional funds".

It’s not clear how big the hole in this pension fund is right now. The analyst John Ralfe thinks it could be around £3bn.

What is clear is that the quantum of BA’s debt and the value of its net assets are moving in opposite directions at a worryingly fast rate.

Net borrowings rose by more than £1bn last year, to £2.4bn, dwarfing shareholders’ equity of £1.6bn (which fell by an alarming 46%).

At a time when - as Walsh says - the economic flying conditions are as bad as they’ve ever been, those liabilities are a heavy burden to be carrying in the hold.