Coffee, tea, me?  In-flight entertainment just got a whole lot more fun with the arrival (in Club Class, of course) of our new diaryist, Ms Judy Free.  She dishes the dirt on trolly dollies, stroppy stewards, cute captains and what really goes on in the mile high club as she jets around the world on our behalf, reporting back from her travels. 

This week Judy heads for Singapore, but will all run smoothly for our Cabin Confidential cutie? 

Hiya!  Got to Singapore in one piece - the staff in the airport had blocked three seats for me, next to the window, so was delighted.  UNTIL...the flight goes Barcelona - Milan - Singapore, and some young fella plonks down next to me in Milan!!

But..I..you can't....are you sure this is your seat? I actually asked him that, and was practically asking to check his boarding card. He looked at me like I was mental, and to honest I probably was a touch crazed at the thoughts of losing my little bed of three seats!

By chance there was one of the ground staff on board sorting out another seating problem a couple of rows behind me, so I asked him to check what had happened to my blocked-off seats. The cheek of me!

He came back, said Barcelona had blocked the seats but never said why, so when the flight left Barcelona, Milan had unblocked them! I wasn't pleased, but he just said to me "Is this the guy?", and pointed to the Italian sitting next to me (I was standing in the aisle, sounds like I was having a plane-rage moment, but it wasn't that bad).

Anyway, he says to yer man in Italian "would you like three seats to yourself? come with me" and led him to the back of the plane where there were three seats in the middle, leaving me with the window (and wall to prop myself up against) - hurrah!!  Watched loadsa movies and didn't sleep that much, cos the flight is a daytime flight.

Got here at 1am my time, 7am Singapore time, and starting to feel a bit tired.  Then discovered they'd left my bag behind in Barcelona!! They already knew about it, a message had been sent from there.

Fed up, but wasn't going to create a scene. They gave me a toiletries kit and EUR60 and off I went.  Got to the hotel, feeling well-whiffy at this stage, 28C and very humid at 8am.  Room won't be ready 'till 10am - aaaargh!!

The 24-hour department store, Mustafa's, is just around the corner, so off I go in search of cheap clothes, seeing as the suitcase won't arrive until midday on Sunday.  I need daytime clothes and something to wear out that night.

Mustafa's is in little India, so you can imagine the selection - I even found NEW stone-wash jeans!!

I was tempted to buy them, some curly-uppy-toe sandals - picture Ali Baba in peep-toes - and an Indian shirt, but that would only have been funny if there had been somebody there to laugh with me, or at least take a picture.

There was also a counter where you could buy denim and have your jeans made for you!  I ended up buying some white trainers, which are Kappa, and teamed with the right clothes look quite Justin Timberlake.

The difference is that mine cost EUR12!! They are real, not fakes, and only discovered then why they are so cheap - they were in the "Schoolwear" section!! (they're not size 3 or anything, although I probably would have bound my toes up like a Geisha girl to get a bargain!).

Got a purple polo shirt and undies 'n' socks 'n' bits, and off I went (all for EUR40!!). 

I decided to treat myself to an upgrade so I'm in a Club room on the 20th floor, so great views.

Am suffering from jetlag, couldn't move out of the bed today - was still awake at 5am, so was going to skip breakfast, but the airport rang at 9.30am to let me know my bag had arrived, so crawled out of bed with vampire-red eyes, HUGE bedhead hair, and came to the Club Lounge for breakfast - hey, nobody knows me here, and when the paps flew past in their helicopters trying to get a pic (20th floor, remember), I slipped under the table.

Shameless!

Went to Chinatown for the Lighting Up ceremony (they all pulled out packs of 20 John Player Blue...) for the beginning of the month-long Chinese New Year celebrations.  It was cool, fireworks, not too many firecrackers (which do me head in), a Guinness-world-record breaking number of Chinese lions/dragons (under the costumes were hundreds of young guys, all looking like that fella off the hair-gel ad on the telly, spikes going 50 directions at once- L'Oreal must have sponsored them), acrobats, dancers, martial-arts warriors, etc. which was all being televised at the same time. The streets were all illuminated with red lanterns, etc.

Afterwards had dinner in a little vegetarian restaurant, looked quite new, cos the boss was training in the waiters who were literally running around the 10ft x 10ft restaurant!  The boss was a queen with a bouffant toupee and a walk so swishy that he must have been dislocating his hips each time he went past.

One of the waiters was Chinese, but not from Singapore because his English was bad (as he watched me eating with chopsticks he asked with a HUGE smile if I "wan' fok or poon?"), and the Chinese-Singaporean bouffant-boss kept saying "where my boil rice? I tell you boil rice! You get rice!" and the little waiter looking totally confused - strange that they hadn't gotten around to covering "boiled rice" in his English class...

Tomorrow is the Thaipusam Hindu festival, here near the hotel, where Hindus go into a trance and pierce their skin with skewers and walk for 4 km of something like that, should be interesting.

Well, gotta go - have to change my room back to a cheapie, so this is my last visit to the Club lounge.

P.S. You'll be glad to know I bought some cool jeans in the end, about the only ones here that I could fit into without having a camel's toe (yuk!) and 12 inches to cut off the ends - anyone would think they were all tall here or something!  The girls in the clothes shops are so cute and helpful and when you tell them "it's a bit small", they kindly say "Aw, Asian sizes", when what they are thinking is "Aw, European belly"

Talk soon!  Judy, xxxx