Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Your Captain speaking
At age 26, apply to be a cadet pilot.
If you get accepted, then it's off to ground school in the Singapore Flying college. Upon completion of ground school, it's off to Australia for flight training. If you're still in the course, you'll graduate after 2 years or so, and lol and behold, you'll be a second officer onboard the flight. Basically, that would mean that you're pilot apprenticeship has officially begun.
Gradually rising to the position of First Officer, and finally, you're the Captain. All in all, a good 10 years or more. In the meantime, you'll probably wreck your social life, destroy your biological clock and lose interest in everything else but the sky.
Worth every ounce, this little trade-off. I cannot imagine a greater joy than flying.
That's why "Captain Gavin" sounds so very appealing.
I remember as a child, using a waterbottle-cum-joystick to blast bogeys out of the sky in a fighter jet. Those days, the bus was my aircraft, and my friends, the wingmen.
Heh. It was fun, and now, I still want to fly, though the preferred instrument is the yoke of a commercial airliner. I can almost imagine, walking down the pilot aisle, peak cap craddled under the left arm, and luggage carried on the right. The suit would be clean, and the shoes polished. Wearing shades? Perhaps. But definitely smiling.
6 more years.
Gavin
pondered @ 21:40
