Karin's Car

Since a few days Karin has finally a car of her own. I promised her to buy her a car and she has made her choice. Unfortunately she is not allowed to drive until the baby is born. But I can still drive her around and now that my parents have arrived my dad can also drive her around.

But I think she is still proud to have a car of her own!!!

Critical

Just the day after my testflight I took Karin to the hospital for her monthly check. turned out that her Bloodpressure was too high and she was admitted to the hospital straight away. We checked some pregnancy books and also asked the doctors who treated her. Seems that a small percentage of pregnant women (15%) that are pregnant of their first child, or are over 35 years of age, or are pregnant of multiple babies, are suffering from sudden high bloodpressures. This could be dangerous for the mother and the baby. The baby can suffer from lack of oxygen. Karin had to stay in bed and was under medication to bring the bloodpressure down to normal numbers. Yesterday 30 november she was released from the hospital. She still has to take medication and has to rest a lot. She is not allowed to walk around more than 15 minutes. She also has to measure the bloodpressure several times a day and monitor the baby's movements.
If the bloodpressure stays an issue there is a chance the baby will be delivered earlier!
We'll keep praying for Karin and the baby that both stay healthy and that the remainder of the pregnancy and the delivery will go smooth!!

Abu Dhabi

Two weeks ago we decided to go to Abu Dhabi with a few colleques of mine and their partners. With two cars we drove to Abu Dhabi where we had a nice late lunch picknic on the Abu Dhabi Corniche. We had a great view of the city from that spot. The weather was nice and there were a lot of people there.
My colleque Mary (secretary) was full of jokes (as usual!). Left you see Jonathan (from Boeing) who is working with me for three months. He just arrived in Dubai a week before this trip. He now has to stay in the United Arab Emirates for 3 months before he can go home back to Seattle.
To make sure Mary was behaving all the time we brought her husband Elvis to keep an eye on his wife!! Their son Avelin (6 years old) was as usual running around all the time and never present when a photo is taken!

Furthermore we brought my colleque Erin (Performance Engineer) and her husband Matthew. Matthew just started flying for an airline in Abu Dhabi (not Etihad!!).

After the visit to the Abu Dhabi Corniche we went to Marina Mall which is located on the other side of the Corniche. It is a very nice, but also very busy shopping mall. Unfortunately the foodcourt is not really that big and special :(

On the way back to Dubai Mary's husband Elvis was supposed to lead the way but he got lost and was driving so slow that I just had to overtake him in my fast Toyota and rush back to Dubai!!

Test Flight A6-EMN

On 27 november 2006 we had to test fly the A6-EMN (777-300). It concerned a routine test flight to renew the Certificate of Airworthiness. On this flight the crew consisted of Captain Abdulla Al Hamadi, First officer Marcello Brasil, Test Flight Engineer Victor Lint and Observer Sabreen. On the picture from left to right Victor, Sabreen and Abdulla.

Sabreen is Engineering Trainee at the Flight Operations Department and specialisted in Aircraft Performance. On 3 december 2006 she will end her training period and continu working as Engineer. I hope she will start assisting me as Operations Engineer on the 777 fleet as I'm still the only Engineer. That was also the reason why we took her along on this test flight to train her for the Operations Engineer position. I hope she likes the job.

On the right is First Officer Marcello Brasil who is actually from Brazil. Makes is easy to remember with a name like that!