Well, no one greeted me from my SQ Y long haul. So, there you go. No picture will be posted.
But, some has seen my photo collection fresh from the camera 4 hours ago!
We boarded the flight late-ish, given that we had been imbibing some Singapore Slings in the SKL. CGK had already adjusted to the show-me-the-card mentality at LHR, so he breezed right through the gate checks.
Now a foreshadowing: given SQ’s enforced board-from-the-back-rows boarding procedure at LHR, the only ways someone could’ve beaten us to our seat area were: (1) the passenger possessed *G status, or (2) the passenger had babies or young children. Guess which was the case with CGK’s seatmate on this flight?
.
.
.
When we got to the front of the Y cabin, we discovered that the woman in CGK’s row had recourse to reason #2. But more on that later…
For now, here is my journey as CGK’s translator to the Y experience :
First to-do: ensure that you’ll have a bottle of water with which to re-hydrate yourself. I asked CGK whether he remembered to take a bottle from the LHR CH, and he asked, “What do you mean”?
I had to explain how, in Y, you didn’t get your own private bottle of water. Having your own bottle which the SQ Girls / Angels could refill was a lot more convenient than waiting for the refills that came in a small plastic cup.
After the hot towel service, they handed out the menus. CGK flipped through his; looked back to where I was sitting; and, wide-eyed, remarked, “They gave out the wrong menu!”
“What?”
“They gave out the wrong menu. Mine says SIN-LHR.”
“Um, CGK? Look in the second half of the menu.”
Virtual lightbulbs flashed as CGK acknowleged the revelation.
At the conclusion of the meal, CGK got up to use the toilet. Later he came up to me and said, sounding amazed, “There was a line for the toilet!” At the end of the weekend, CGK confessed that the rules for using the Y toilet was a bit complicated for him (remember, he's the type of passenger who would let another step ahead of him if there were a doubt about who had the right of way): you had to remember who, from two potential directions, got to the front of the queue first. I tried to explain that it was just like coming to a 4-way stop at an intersection: you just note which one got there first, and let the process run accordingly. I had forgotten than CGK doesn't drive in his home city.
When you travel with someone, you do get to learn his or her quirks and to decide whether those quirks mesh well with your own.
I learned that:
1. CGK can sleep on planes much better than I can (even in Y!). That, SQfg, is the main reason you don’t have a picture of me sleeping. I was awake more than CGK was.
2. CGK is a total sweetheart. (This isn’t a new discovery, more like a confirmation of a belief . ) I was worried about him having to deal with a baby next to him, because I myself would have been mortified. But I after I had stowed away my carryon, I looked towards his row and found … him chatting and smiling with the mother. A couple of minutes later, he was carrying the baby and giving the mom a couple of minutes to organize the stuff for the journey ahead.
I’m hoping that someday I’ll develop the same kind of unflappability and genuine niceness to other people. In the meantime, I’ll try to curb my orneriness and learn from people like CGK.
Put it this way: he joined my brother's family and me for dinner, and when my niece and brother dropped me off at Changi, my niece's shrieks of "Tito [CGK]!!!" ("tito" = uncle in Tagalog) let everyone within 10 meters (or whatever my niece's vocal range is) know who he was.
…[list][*] After the hot towel service, they handed out the menus. CGK flipped through his; looked back to where I was sitting; and, wide-eyed, remarked, “They gave out the wrong menu!”
“What?”
“They gave out the wrong menu. Mine says SIN-LHR.”
“Um, CGK? Look in the second half of the menu.”
Virtual lightbulbs flashed as CGK acknowleged the revelation.
After the hot towel service, they handed out the menus. CGK flipped through his; looked back to where I was sitting; and, wide-eyed, remarked, “They gave out the wrong menu!”
“What?”
“They gave out the wrong menu. Mine says SIN-LHR.”
“Um, CGK? Look in the second half of the menu.”
ROTFL!!!!!!
BTW, looking at his relaxed face at the end of this Y experience, i can swear his face here is definitely better than the face he had after a SIN-LAX in F...
.... therefore, dearest CGK, you need to fly more Y!!!
There's only One way to fly.... SINGAPORE AIRLINES!
If SQ is too expensive, the other way to fly is Qatar Airways
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