Rishi

Flying With Melbourne Flight Training (MFT)

2008-11-24T02:23:00.000-08:00

As some of you might know, i have been living in Australia for about 10 months now. I came to Australia originally to attain my flying license and degree with RMIT university. Unfortunately, RMIT's flight training school was not providing adequate training to gain the license as promised. As such, my other international friends and myself decided to leave and went off to another private flying school to carry on with our flight training.

When we joined RMIT, we were given acceptance to the flight training course and the degree course. However, when we left the flight training course, RMIT cancelled our degree course as well. Thats what RMIT did to us international students. Now i'm not saying that RMIT university is a bad university. They are really good when it comes to their degrees but their flight training school is equipped with staff from another flying school and they don provide for us international students properly. RMIT basically owns the flight training program but they get the services of another flying school to conduct the program. Anyway that was in the first 2 months of my stay here.

Melbourne Flight Training

After leaving RMIT, my international friends and i joined a private flying school known as, Melbourne Flight Training (MFT). MFT, in my point of view, is one fine flying school! MFT is a school where there are good, friendly and very helpful staff. The instructors over there are so patient when it comes to flight training. They make sure the students are adequately trained before they send them out for any form of solo flights. Though they only have got one simulator, i feel that their simulator is far better than the one that RMIT has. MFT also makes sure that they are not overcrowded with students. They make sure that their instructor to student ratio is at the most 1:4. Over at RMIT, the ratio could be 1:6 or 1:7 and thats quite overcrowded. At RMIT, because of this overcrowding problem, the international students got very little flight time. In 2 months, i had only accumalated 7 hours of flight time. Over at MFT, i accumulated 7 hours of flight time in 2 weeks. Thats how much of a difference there was in the standard of training between the schools. Now you would imagine that an internationally recognised school like RMIT would deliver good standards but over here, it was the other way round. A private school's standard was far better than that of an internationally recognised instituition.

Cessna 172R

At MFT, i flew the Cessna 172R plane. Its a single engine propellor driven plane which can only take 4 people one of whom is obviously the pilot. I progressed real fast with my training at MFT. My flight hours started increasing rapidly. My instructor Ben Topp was an excellent instructor, he still is. He helped me quite a bit and improved my flying skills. One thing which i really liked about Ben was, he was very thorough. He would empasize on the most minute of details, which is rather important because when it comes to flying, you have to remember everything. Not remembering one thing could result in something critical. With Ben's help, i acheived my First Solo flight and my General Flying Progress Test (GFPT). Most people would be able to achieve their GFPT within a month or two after their First Solo, but i took about 4 months mainly because of bad weather and plane availability. MFT is only about 1.5 years old so they have only got a small fleet of planes. Even though i took a slightly longer time, i still managed to pass the test the first time round and achived it at the end of the day. When i was sent out to do my First Solo flight test, I was quite scared because I was all on my own and I had to handle the situation all by myself. In the event of an emergency, the presence of an instructor would reassure me that someone more competent than me is next to me and would be able to help me deal with the situation. However, I was all on my own and if there really was an emergency, I had to deal with it all by myself. The reality of that scared me. But, it was a good experience which greatly improved my confidence. On my GFPT, i had the same fear, but not of being alone but that of being able to pass the test. It was a little pressurizing but i told myself that, ill just think that the person next to me was my instructor and not a test officer. That helped and i passed the test without any problems.

First Solo Flight

At MFT, it was not just All Work and No Play. MFT always believed that once its 5pm, everyone should just sit down, relax and have a nice cold beer aftera hard day's work. Instructors and students would chill and relax together without having any instructor superiority and student inferiority. Everyone was an equal over there! Everyone was treated fairly! At MFT, we have a Happy Hour every friday night. The Chief Flying Instructor (CFI) buys heaps of sausages and beer for all to enjoy. Now i don think you can ever find such a CFI anywhere. He is such an amazing person! He's go out of his way at times to help students. Whether a CFI or not, i don think you can find a person of this nature very often. Recently, the CFI held a dinner party called the "Wings" Dinner for all students and staff. The "Wings" Dinner was held to commemorate the achivements of the school and the students. The CFI had prepared certificates of achievements for students and certificates of contributions for the instructors. It was a wonderful night and everyone had heaps of fun. Infact right after the dinner, we had an after-party back at our school. Now, which CFI would actually do such things for the school, students and instructors. It was a night to remember!

Third Solo Video

All in all, my flying times in Australia have been wonderful because of MFT. I don think i would have been able to gain all these achievements and friends if i was not part of MFT. I would like to say, Well done MFT for all that you have done and congratulations for all that you have achieved in such a short period of time! I would also like to thank the CFI, Glen Buckley and my instructor, Ben Topp for all their help and contributions to my achievements. Thank You Very Much!

"Wings" Dinner

My Friend Imran & my Instructor Ben Topp

My International Friends, myself & my Chief Flying Instructor Glen Buckley

After Party at MFT

Table-top dancing with our Virgin Blue Airline Captain

Myself and MFT's secretary Nicole

MFT's other secretary, Nalia and myself

Dec 28!

2008-11-22T00:29:00.000-08:00

On Friday Dec 28, 2007, something really memorable happened in my life. That was the day where i decided with whom and how i wanted to be in life.

I completed my national service in September 2007 and right after that i was working at my cousin's law firm. That was where i met Janani. Janani is doing a diploma in Law and Management and she wanted to get some job experience in a law firm. My cousin's law firm partner and Janani's dad were friends and thats how Janani came to work over there.

Janani is a matured person who works very hard to gain what she wants to achieve. She knows what she wants in life and she is working hard to achieve that goal. She is also a very passionate person. She's very passionate about the things that she indulges in, for example, Dance. She's been a classical dancer since she was 3 and she intends to carry on with it till she's at a a professional level. She's also very passionate about blogging. Any form of information that strikes upon her, she blogs it and shares the information with everyone. There's a lot of things that i learned from her and I'm glad i got a good friend like her. I'm so glad that i met Janani, very glad indeed!

When Janani and i met, we had very negative opinions of each other. I thought she was very arrogant because when i first saw her, i smiled, a very polite gesture but Janani on the other hand, couldn't even be bothered and just looked away, hahaha. Its funny even when i think of it now. I on the other hand, have a naturally serious face. Looking at that, Janani thought that i was a snob who never smiles, so naturally she did not want to reciprocate my gestures. Well all that was in the beginning.

After that, opinions slowly started to change between us. On Monday, 8th October 2007, we first spoke to each other. I'm normally vegetarian on Mondays and on that particular day, i had not taken my lunch yet as i had quite a bit of work to do. Janani had just come back from lunch and she happened to bring back some vegetarian fried rice. My cousin's partner asked if i had my lunch and i said no. That was when Janani first spoke to me and asked me if i wanted some of the vegetarian fried rice. Even after this incident, she did not have much of a positive opinion of me. But after that day, we started speaking more. I guess the fired rice was a good aid that led us to start talking to each other.

When we started talking, i used to tell Janani a lot of stories when i was in the army and whole lot of other stuff relating to any form experiences i had gained in life. All these made her change her opinion of me. Janani also tole me a lot of stuff about herself, her passion for dancing and a lot of other stuff. During all these conversations, we found out a lot of stuff about each other and realized that we had many things in common. The way we thought, the way we look at things with a different perspective and not to mention, the fact that we could understand each other really well. Its not about understanding what we are doing but why we were doing certain things. We understood each very well in this way. Sometimes its not very easy for a guy to understand a girls point of view and for a girl, a guys point of view. But we did not have that problem. We realized that we clicked very well with each other and that we were bonding.

Our bond became stronger and stronger as the days went on. We became closer and started to understand more about each other. Some were very general stuff while some were private stuff. I realized after some time that, here was a girl whom i had always hoped to get as a partner. A girl with all the attributes I've always been looking for in a partner. I knew i liked her a lot but it was then that i realized the extent of it. I did not wanna say anything at first because i did not want her to take anything the wrong way. After some time, i knew that she liked me also and thats when i decided that I've gotta tell her soon.

On Dec 28, 2007, after having kept it within myself for more than 2 months, i finally opened up and told her that i liked her alot and that i really hoped that something would work out between us. She too opened up and told me the same thing. On Dec 28, i told myself that this was a person who was very dear to me and whom i really treasured alot.

Thank you so much Janani for entering my life and thank you so much for making such a big difference in my life. Thank you so much Janani!

Finally I've Updated My Blog

2008-11-22T00:20:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,
I have finally updated my blog after such a long delay. Some people would not be accepting such an excuse from me but nevertheless, the blog's been finally updated. I would try my best to update it on a weekly basis. So yep, more updates of postings would be coming your way soon. See you guys soon, take care!