Moving out.....

Aaarrghh!!! I'm on standby today and my phone rang, I got such a heart attack! Turns out it wasn't crewing but a lady from crew services telling me that I have an apartment and I can move in as soon as I've picked up my key. My goodness....!!

See up till now I've been living in a hotel, not a totally good thing, not a bad thing either but I'll come to that later. And now I'm finally moving out. I'm excited and nervous, I'm happy to finally be able to have a place that's mine, not just temporary, a place where I can finally unpack and settle in. I'm nervous for several reasons, the main one is that I don't know who I'll be moving in with, it could be good but it could also be very bad. Unfortunately while the company said we could choose our flatmates, it hasn't been able to stick to that because there are no new buildings available as yet and therefore it is slotting people in where others have left the company.

So looking at the pros and cons of my situation I'm still a little anxious though happy to move out regardless of who I move in with. Living in a hotel, wait no, I should say living in my hotel hasn't been so great, other hotels other crew have been staying at are much more accommodating to crew. Ok so here are my arguments:

A) Meals. There is no place to cook your own meals so you usually order roomservice (which can be expensive as they don't offer crew discounts), eat out, or eat something that can be easily made in your room, which isn't much.

B) Laundry. Both personal and Uniform. There is no place to do your own laundry, you do it by hand or pay for it to be done. The Uniform laundry issue is this; the company has arranged for the laundry company in charge of our uniforms to pick it up at the different hotels and accommodations, only our hotel wont let them come in to do that, and no amount of negotiating has gotten them to budge or come to some sort of compromise. This means we need to go in ourselves to put it in. This brings me to my other point.

C) Isolation. The hotel is located at a distance from the city and while it provides a free shuttle service there and back it only runs 4 times a day and sometimes not on time either. So if you come back from a flight and need to run errands like putting in your laundry you either wait for the shuttle or pay for a taxi...most of the time you end up paying.

There are pros though...*grin* the fact that you can get roomservice, a nice hot meal delivered to your door with no washing up to do later. Never having to make your bed (I love that!!!), fresh and soft towels daily, the gym is fantastic, there is an indoor pool and believe it or not a bowling alley. And those little bottles of bubble bath, shampoo, body lotion etc are nice too...

So who will I be moving in with, what will they be like, and will I like the place are all questions I'll find the answer to soon enough. Meanwhile, I have a few flights lined up over the next couple of days so I don't know when I'll actually move....

VP