Air Force Open House 08

It all culminated with a huge piss up [not full participation due to high levels of fatigue] and me heading out to catch the Liverpool Game [they drew with Villa] with a new found friend.

The Open House [henceforth referred to as OH] was 4 days straight for us. 2 internal and 2 external. It was horrid in terms of working on weekends and psycho-ing ourselves that it was just another weekday.

But I love carnivals. Heck, I could live in a carnival all year round just walking the fairgrounds, playing the rides, collecting souvenirs and acting tour guide to the noobs. Unfortunately, no nation in the world can support a year round carnival. Even Brazil. Even Ibiza.

Some snapshots from OH, stolen off Flickr. I stole so many I just didn't have the time to like note down the owners. To youse, you have my sincere apologies. But what is the Internet, but a legal way to commit petty intellectual theft now and then? These are all glamour shots taken with probably high end DSLRs. Talkin about pictures, it's such a bitch taking photos with other people's cameras. Takes ages to come to you, they put it up in FB and it becomes THEIR album and you're just a spectatorial "tag". The demerits are endless. So, if you have an old digital camera you wanna garage sale off, it's my birthday this weekend; you'd better just donate it to me. All nicely gift wrapped with a card saying how much you love me of course.

Foreign workers having a blast.

Even they have a camera. Nabei I don't have. However, we were expecting throngs of our foreign nationals on Sunday but the response was subdued.

Little Miss Photographer. She hot.

The final segment of the air show.

First F16 breaking formation to come in to land. Overall, to us who work with these blokes day in day out, the airshow wasn't something so exciting. But you know the general public.. who think "work in airforce ah? pilot ah?". Yeah, these people got some of their grey matter rumbled out of position with the loud exhaust and jet fuel induced "high", so they definitely went "ooooooh and aaaaaaaah".

There were joyrides and all.

C130, Chinook, Fokker 50 and Piper Warrior. This be the estate of Punggol taken from the back of a C130 by a joyrider. Some of my blokes got the chance to ride it too. I politely declined. I've got two 6 hour flights on this mean machine comin up this month. Not something to relish. Always fly commercial. They got bloody stewardesses for starters!

The monsoon, or whatever bastardized El Nino or La Nina wreaked havoc all 4 days. Rain was so passe once you had spent more than an hour out there. Dark clouds coming up to wolf the sun down over here.

The boy needs a haircut.

Shades are mandatory. As I explained to a dude who recently joined our ranks: "The difference between the air force and anybody else is that we not only strive to do a good job like all of them, we have this inherent need to look good while doing it".

Why do I type with so much text in italicized brackets? That's cos I always have something to say, and half way thru typing I still want to interject myself and say something more. Character trait. Deal with it.