FINALLY - IT HAPPENED

I have taken more flights on more airlines than I can count in the last 8 years. For work or leisure, I usually end up on a plane every three months. Singapore Airlines (the movies and entertainment onboard SQ is out of this world), Thai Airways (good food), Malaysian Air (not bad), Egyptian Air (aka Air Misery - ha ha), Air India, JAL, Nippon Air, Cathay Pacific, Quantas, Sri Lanka Airlines, Eva Air, Turkish Airlines and of course, Lao Airlines. I get to sample (in some cases, with horror and indignation) all the experiences that an air traveller could experience. The airline food, the service, inflight entertainment, the beauty and grace of air stewardess and the gamut of emotions you get when you meet your fellow passengers. I have almost seen them all.

But today's article is reserved to talk about other passengers I get to seat with. Something finally awesome happened to me last evening on board the Lao Airline flight. You see, I have been praying for this to happen for the last 8 years, been keeping my fingers crossed and have been sacrificing piglets to the God of Air Travel etc etc. All my life, I have been seated next to people whom I hesitate to call homo sapiens (aka humans). Dumbasses would be too broad a category for them. I simply call them dredges of human society, apes or pre-evolutionary single cell ameobas. Check out the following passengers I have the honor (by honor, I meant ill-fated misfortune) to seat next to:

(a) a fat turd of an obese white man who stole my window seat and whined like a girl to the air stewardness when asked to give it up (Turkish Airlines, May 2003);

(b) a drunk Indian who reeked of cheap beer who later said something to the air stewardess causing her to yell at him. She then summoned the captain who then yelled again at the Indian dumbass in front of everyone. All this while I am seating next to the Indian, squirming uncomfortably and looking for something heavy to kill the Indian (Indian Airlines, Oct 2005);

(c) a fat Indian who stank as if he just doused himself with GALLEONS of olive oil. I was breathing shallow like a ninja for six hours. (Indian Airlines, Oct 2005 - return)

(d) a massive Australian man with more tattoos on his body and arm than humanely possible. He looked like a distinguished member of the criminal community. Our local Singaporean moneylenders and ah bengs would all look like pussies next to him. He looked like he eat gunpowder for breakfast and shit bullets. He did say "thank you" though when I passed him his tray of food so maybe he is just misunderstood. NOT. (Quantas, April, 2000)

(e) a plump Chinese businessman who for god's sake couldn't sit still and kept asking me where can he meet pretty Singaporean girls. I recalled I finally gave up and told him that "This place called Tuas has a lot of entertainment hotspots which pretty Singaporean girls hanged out". (This was on Malaysian Airlines in 1998). I wondered till this day whether did he actually took my suggestion and go to freaking Tuas in the middle of freaking no where. If he did, hey dumbass! How are the girls in Tuas? CO 1 Horny Chinese businessman 0. CO wins.

So you can understand my reservation everytime I got on the plane and started looking for my seat. Of course, there are plenty of times when I got seated next to perfectly normal travellers. Mostly I ended with men who are contented to just sit quiety, whipped out a book to read or fiddled with the inflight remote to surf movies or just play Legend of Zelda for the 331th time. But that's the thing. I always ended up with either dumbasses, criminal enforcers, rude Indians or just quiet men (which are ok). Where are all the pretty single girls I always see on movies? Where are the likes of Meg Ryan, Paris Hilton and Kirsten Dunst? Why am I not always seated next to them? Why? Why?

A word on pretty single girls on flights. I realised that there are almost none. Trust CO on this. You see, woman on flights are at their most natural state. The stress of travelling and hauling luggages around force women to eschew their make-up, heels and skirts. You wear skirts and heels to a busy airport at your peril. So woman are seldom pretty on the planes. They are frizzled, irritated and downright dumpy. The young pretty girls usually travelled with boyfriends or in a group of girlfriends. Group of girlfriends is almost always led by a fat girl who has taken on herself the job of motherhen and believes that it is her holy duty to prevent the girls in her group to have any fun and meeting guys.

But yesterday evening, a miracle happened. Forget about Moses splitting the sea. This is more spectacular. I finally got to sit next to a pretty, single girl. YESS!! KER-CHING! JACKPOT!! SOMEONE CALLED THE BANKER! WE GOT A WINNER!!

Say hello to Ms Kylie Louis, an Australian teaching in Tokyo and now holidaying in Laos. Laos, say hi to a pretty girl on your airline.


I thought this would never happen. Kyle is a bit on the mad side though. She clapped when we landed (in view that we are riding in the much derided propeller plane) drawing stares from the rest of the passengers. She also came to Laos thinking that Laos has plenty of ATM machines for her to draw money. Australians, don't you love them? We chatted and CO being a gentleman (and bloody trained for this day for the last 8 years) offered her a ride to a recommended guesthouse and also would be asking her out for dinner and later a drink when she get settled in.
I was hoping for a cute single Japanese girl like Noriko Sakai but a mad, pretty Australian girl will do just fine. Finally. Maybe there is a God afterall.