Am here posting after a couple of months. Towards every year end, I take last week of the year, leave off work to put my feet up and reflect on the year passing by. These are those moments to reflect on 2014!
To be honest, I feel like I hadn’t achieved much,in both personal and professional lives over the year. So what should I do..? Should I be worrying and regretting of the stuff I failed to do or quite the opposite - marvel about at least a couple of things I did manage to achieve and did well.
There are two major career highlights that I achieved during the past year and both are related to increasing awareness of the behind the scenes in our business,amongst flight attendants community. One was that, I worked tirelessly to get a video produced to show flight attendants of consequences of some their wrong doings in-flight ( wastage, cost impact etc) & how could they support us to minimise wastage, costs etc by doing this right and the other was, me organising & personally facilitating flight kitchen tours for the flight attendants twice every week starting from November 2nd, 2014. By the end of last year, I had facilitated about 14 such tours for about 200 flight attendants. Looking at the numbers, of course, this was just about a fraction of 1% of the flight attendants in the airline and there are many many more tours to do to cover entire flight attendants community.
What I’m also very pleased about is that I’ve been receiving many complimentary comments from some of those who attended the flight kitchen tours both verbally and in writing. Below is one such lovely note that I received on email on the new years eve and I have to say, which made my NYE a bliss! It also inspires me to continue to facilitate these tours even better this year and perhaps even starting to write a blog about our industry & airline food!
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Subject: Recent Catering Tour 2014
Dear Sumudu Gunaratne,
After recently having the pleasure of being taken on a guided catering tour by yourself, I felt it of the utmost importance to write to you and thank you.
The catering tour I attended far surpassed my expectations. It was wonderfully co-ordinated and informative, and whilst highly professional- in that it showcased the 'behind-the-scenes' ongoings at the Catering location- it was personal and moving for me, resulting in a different outlook on my part on all my future flights.
From the onset, I felt it a deep privilege to have been allowed to view what takes place 24/7, 7 days a week, between the busy, and successful flight operations the airline is renowned for. From the moment we were picked up and escorted to the Catering division, signed in, donned our white jackets and hair nets, I was amazed.
I would like to take this moment to salute and commend you and your colleagues as a Team at Catering and Service Delivery. You can be proud of the work you are doing. Without the hard work that is done by the staff behind the scenes, whether it be packaging of menus, packaging of blankets, emptying of clearance carts, re-stocking of bars, cutting and boiling of vegetables or packaging of knives and forks, you are a highly valued and a crucial part of the hardworking team that works around the clock, ultimately resulting in making the Airline the prestigious success that it is.
Thank you for allowing me to see the important roles that you play. We value you.
Happy New Year in advance to you and your family. May 2015 be an even bigger year for the airline!
Kind regards,
xxxxxxxxxxxx
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