aeromedical evaluation one

here i am, after a long break. to my readers, i apologise for the long absence from the blog. its a long story and definitely needs a big amount of blogging on a later date. it will be about how i was invited to witness a satellite launch by the fabulous measat and the wonderful people who run it, and my experience in baikonur, and the tour of switzerland and rome i went on after!

right now, i am back to sept 2005! the letter came in sept, stating i have passed my basic medicals and is required to attend another series of tests named 'aeromedical evaluation' for a whole week as the next step of the selection process! first thought is, what the heck is aeromedical! look it up, pls. coz i did and did not find it my tiny oxford dictionary. dismissing it as another set of medical tests, i go on with work and my jog routine. as i said before, i dont find the use in worrying about medical tests' results as there's nothing i can improve, medically, in a couple of weeks. we were to register at hotel midah in KL on the 25th evening, which was a sunday. second thought, where the heck is hotel midah! that question was answered by some friends who frequent the hotel for massage services! apparently, the hotel is well known for this particular service! thank heavens i had some friends with the good sense of treating their bodies well! mohan drove me there on that sunday, and upon registration, i met shankini. shankini is an amazing gal, sweet, funny and the most intelligent gal i've known! we became good friends since that day, clearly one of the few good things that happened to me that year. she has a face of a baby, a heart of gold, and a mountain of self confidence! and till this day, i must say, she has to know more about me than i tried to figure out about her in the past year, coz she held in her hand the whole stack of my evaluation results! shankini is the reserach officer at angkasa who were put in charge of the selection process and the astronaut program! does she have the coolest job in the country or what! she worked very closely with dr. zul and a bunch of his colleagues from the air force, dr. razin, dr. alvin and dr. sara. fabulous guys they were thru out my time with them! this is the cool bunch that i had to deal with.

i had to ask at the registration desk, how many of us were selected for this round? 62, i was told, but only 59 showed up. next obvious question, of course, was how many gals? 2! i was told. exactly, 2 with an exclamation mark, was exactly how i heard it from shankini, coz she was clearly shocked or unhappy about that number, as i was! what!? two? out of 59, there were only 2 gals and i was one of them. i couldnt wait to meet the other! next thought is, there wil be 57 males to put up with for the rest of the week. i knew at that point, we were all gonna spend a lot of time together, stressed or not, with needles and stuff, and i feared the answer to the question, how competitive is everyone gonna get exactly?