After a long time, here’s me back again. Actually, the title is a misnomer, because I wasn’t really sleeping. Far from it. Office work had me so busy, sleep was difficult to come by. After a dull, slow and dismal 2020, 2021 showed signs of revival for the aviation industry. The first quarter was rather slow, but the second quarter onwards, all airlines showed a gradual return to normal operations. Nobody’s yet there at 100% capacity or network coverage, but the yields seem to be higher than pre-covid times. Simply because the fares are on the higher side. Also, people moved more and more towards revenge travel, where they took it on themselves to show they are not afraid of the virus and won’t be pegged indoors. The world seemed to realise that as long as we are careful, wear masks and keep our hands and face clean, we can go on with our normal lives to an extent. Of course, all it takes is one mutation and we will be back to square one. But, for the sake of humanity and economy of all countries, lets hope we dont get back to the state of 2021. I hope medical world has understood the challenges posed by the virus, and we will be in a better shape to face any new variants coming up. The vaccinations have worked well in the UAE so far, with very few people turning up positive during the recent times. And that’s with the EXPO going on, and the Dubai Air show.
A big transition for us in flydubai, was the re-induction of the 737 MAX. After the intense scrutiny, these birds started flying again. The manufacturer got all the necessary certifications, and only after that airlines started redeploying them. Things are back to normal now with respect to these aircrafts, and I hear that our premium business class product is really awesome, esp for five to six hour journeys.
I attended the Dubai Air show, and will upload some pictures shortly. It was a great event, with most of the heavyweights in the aero-defense sector and commercial aviation sector making their presence felt. The aerobatic show by two different squadrons was really cool, and the roar of the engines shook the entire place. There were several fighter jets showcased, as well as the latest A350. Some military transporter jets as well as various types of helicopters completed the sortee. Most of my colleagues from flydubai were there. It was an afternoon well spent, and I clicked away merrily. Unfortunately, I took my macro lens instead of the normal one, and as a result, couldn’t take many pictures on my camera. Had to depend on my iPhone, which also gave cool pictures now. I hear the Pixel 6 Pro camera is cool, and I hope to get one when it’s available.
A Sleek Fighter 
Fursan Fighter 
Sabu and the Plane 
A380 with 50th year UAE Formation logo 
Two of my Best People 
Small and Insignificant 
Me and A350 
Belly of the Beast 
Bombardier Again 
Bombardier 
Looks like AWACS
Another update is that one of the frequent visitors to my balcony garden, a bird, has decided to make its nest on a small ledge in the roof of my balcony. It’s interesting to see the bird sitting immobile, maybe it’s trying to lay the egg, or even to hatch it. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to see if there’s an egg, because it’s high, and also I dont want to scare the bird away. Let it stay in its home peacefully. One thing I am sure of is that it’s the same bird that used to keep visiting the balcony, and digging away at the plants I had pain stakingly grown. At that time, I didnt know whether to shoo it away, or to let it be, after all, this is nature at play!. Anyway, looks like it’s back now, and decided to bring up its young one/s here. Maybe I can capture the hatching on camera, fingers crossed.
We have entered foggy times, and I recently had the opportunity to drive in the fog. It was a different experience, with visibility highly reduced. I could only see as forward as the vehicle ahead of me. Everything to the sides and in front as well as back was covered in a hazy white envelope, and when I put my hand out of the window, it felt very chilly and moist. Because earlier I used to work and stay near the airport, i would start to office only around 8.30 AM, and by the time the fog would have dissipated. Now, since the office is almost 40kms from home, I have to be out early, and that’s how I could experience the fog.
I finished my electronics refresh, and bought some new devices. I am crazy about electronics, and every two years or so, recycle my devices. This year, I returned a lot of my old phones, iPads and macbook. Got very good resale value for this, it funded almost half of my new Macbook Pro. So you can imagine how much I would have got. So, I got a new iPad for my daughter, a new Macbook Pro for me. I also gave away my xBox. These are all ok. I got the shock of my life when I gave my car for service, and it came back with a five digit value ! To be fair, it included one year warranty also, and this goes on to show that we need to consider maintenance of cars also when we go and buy them. Else they will start eating into your pockets. It’s all happening.
In our office, we celebrated the 50th UAE National Day in style. Since we moved to our new head quarters, office programs have got a much better look and feel to them. There is a wonderful courtyard, open to the sky, and the entire office staff can assemble there, with some semblance of social distancing. It’s that huge. All ceremonies like flag day, Diwali, UAE National Day etc are now attended by the entire work force, where as earlier, we were all housed in different offices, and it was difficult to get everyone together. I got some nice pictures this time, during the National Day celebrations. The one with my CEO, Mr. Ghaith Al Ghaith is very dear to me, so is the one with my boss, the indomitable Mr. Ramesh Venkat. I can confidently say flydubai is where it is, because of the vision and clear focus of these aviation pioneers, along with the other Chiefs and top management.
Workwise, several things are changing in the world post-covid. Two most important features of the IT workforce now are Work from Home, and Intense Demand. Work from Home is now not just an option, it’s also a means for organisations to improve their productivity. After all, a lot of infrastructure cost can be saved, if staff opts to work from home. Unless, of course, it’s your own buildings and facilities. In which case the best option is to get all staff to work from office. All said and done, working together enhances productivity, but working onsite also improves mental health, purely because we can see friends and colleagues face to face, have serious as well as goofy talks, and over all increase our feeling of well being and positivity. The second aspect I am facing now is intense demand for IT resources, esp in India. It’s almost like the entire world was saving during Covid time, and now they are all raring to go. We interview resources, select them, and one week before joining they refuse stating that they got a better offer. Bargaining for the best deal is something natural, but one cant help have the feeling that it’s now more about the remuneration than the satisfaction. I recall that when we started our careers, there was no stackoverflow.com, or other google sites where code can be found! Now development is as easy as going to the sites and copy pasting the code. Earlier, we had to make sure our code performs well, no run time exceptions could occur due to Null Pointer/Memory Leak et al. There was lot of happiness and a real sense of achievement when your code went into production. Now I feel it’s all pre-built, we just need to find the right component and plug it in.
During my past life, I had the opportunity to meet and work with two engineers, who developed the original Java source code. Obviously, they worked for Sun Microsystems at that time. Such interactions helped mould our thinking and approach in a different way, I would like to believe.
One buzz word now is low code platforms. There are several such platforms available, which promote faster development cycles and also encourages citizen development. Essentially, these platforms are to empower business units to develop small apps for their use, without too much dependency on IT. I also tried out such platforms in our development shop, and now we have identified some usecases which can be best developed using such tools.
Now, my daughter’s finishing her 12th grade, and wants to pursue Computer Science. Of course, now it’s all about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. All kids want to get into these areas, and it’s a wonderful world out there full of opportunities. I hope they all turn out to be happy citizens and achieve great things in life.
I have a feeling that 2022 is going to be a decisive year for many of us in the aviation industry. As I write this, we have found yet another mutation after Delta, this time called the Omicron. It seems to be very contagious, but there is still no study as to whether it’s more severe or less severe than the other strains. This is why I said next year will be a transformational year. Either we will win over the fear of the virus, and travel will return to normal, or else we will face turbulent times which will test the foundations of our businesses. Time will tell, fingers crossed.