Its week 2 for us here - I already miss my children like hell! But, as promised, I will tell more about my first Milan trip...
12 June 2010, after we came down from the mountains, it was still early, about 11am. We decided to go straight to Milan. Luckily our GPS help us a lot. I set to Milan Centro, and asked Zaiful to follow the directions given. Its about 45 minutes drive. And finally, I saw the board "Milano" ... yes... we arrived in Milan - but not yet the center. At this moment, we didnt know what is the main attraction for tourists in Milan. As far as I am concern, Milan is a City of Fashion! and that is all! Well, with that, we continue to drive until the GPS said "you have arrived at your destination"...
I would like to go in details but - just to make it short... let the pictures says it all ...
We started our ground school for the AW 139 acft - Later on, I found that, the aircraft have a very sophisticated instruments - which make all the "other" aircrafts I have flown before looks old... old enough to be in the museum! For me, I found that, its very hard for me to understand the new systems introduced. After all, I have only 2 weeks to get things in hand.
Our class consists of 16 people - 5 of us from MMEA, 2 from Oman Police, 2 from Greece Police, and the rest I cant remember but - all of them are pilots from various countries. First 5 days were uneventful. The class starts at 0900H and finish at 1630H with lunch break at 1300h till 1400h. We were told that lunch is provided but - for muslims like us, I found a hard time going for lunch. The food were good but they mix the pork together with the other meat (turkey and fish). Finally, I only have bread and cheese plus coke. After a few days, we decided to go out during lunch, looking out for halal food. Eventually, they are two muslim "restaurant" and one shop selling raw meat (beef and chicken). Mostly, they were from Morrocco. They speak Italian fluently (and of course Arab) but not English! But - we manage to order some kebab for lunch with "sign languages" and a little Italian word. We also found out that - there IS a surau nearby (just across the street) and we did our Zohor after the lunch. It is said that - the surau were once used to perform Solat Jumaat -but the authority said that - its not proper for the place to perform Solat Jumaat because it is too near to the street and that, every Solat Jumaat, the people will take over the street (its a main street!) to perform Solat Jumaat. Since then, local people perform their Solat Jumaat somewhere else...
Just a few names to remember - Abdul Halim and Kamal for the Kebab's shop and Khalil for the surau.
And since then, almost every lunch time we went for the kebabs... (you dont want to know the price...)
Come first weekend (Saturday), Zaiful, Sabar and myself decided to go to look for a place with snow... We took off at 4am (yes, in the morning!) - for "The Mission"...
Using the GPS, we found the mentioned place - but since it is summer, the local said that - there are no snow available - and the mountains with snow is closed for public! Sadly, we still go on with the journey - just to take a few more pictures. And when were on top, we found out the locals were right after all. The place is closed for publics. Actually during winter, this place is packed with tourists from all over the world. They went up there using the cable cars provided. But since it is closed, the cable cars were there, just hanging over the cables....
BUT >>> since it is a high terrain place, of course there are still snow somewhere. And we found a few patches of snow!!! Ha ha... a few patch of snow s more than enough for us to enjoy our success!!! We packed some snows, throwing each other and I even slide on the snow ...! Biasa la orang Melayu jumpa snow.... After tired with the snow, we decided to go back - but its still early (almost 11am) ... hmm... where else to go but.... Milan! heh heh ...
