I fly quite allot! Well at least once a month and more than enough! On this particular occasion I was heading to Singapore after two months in Doha, Qatar and the flight surprisingly turned out to be extremely entertaining indeed. The show of which I became an active participant helped to pass the time and I arrived in Singapore on the quickest flight that I had ever known - the journey just flew past!

First a spiel about the plane!
As the new and much acclaimed Airbus and Boeing aircraft roll off the shelves to be snapped up by International airlines, soon to be passengers have been given images of 'comfort and style' as they cross the skies. This has sadly not occurred (as all the adverts showed people drinking champagne in business class) and aircraft travel remains an uncomfortable experience for economy class passengers who are treated like cows at an earlier than expected morning milking session. The design and emphasis of the new planes seems to have revolved around the "how to fit 10 elephants in a mini" and fuel efficiency and maximising profits having taken over completely. I have heard rumours on the grapevine that McDonalds place great emphasis on the design of their restaurant seating than do aircraft manufacturers; maybe Airbus and Boeing should take a leaf out of their book or MacDonald's should set up its own airline.

As I stepped onboard one of the new planes in Doha airport I already knew what to expect and was thus prepared mentally and physically (as far as one can be in these circumstances) for the seven hour journey from Doha, Qatar to Changi Airport in Singapore. I was ready to have my spine pushed inwards to my stomach and for my neck to be squashed and massaged by some weird obtrusion in the chair that precludes the resting of the head comfortably. I was ready to sit in one position for the whole journey as being 5 foot eleven inches I find my legs jammed once the seat in front shifts gear to the "comfortable" position. Not that I am tall but I have come to the conclusion that these new planes have been designed either for serpents or very small people!

Enough complaining and to The Experience!
I did not expect the unexpected on this flight. I had prepared myself by locking my emotions and thoughts into an iron safe with multiple locks for six hours, I had drawn the steel shutters down so that nothing would invade my privacy space - not one mishap, irritating passenger, uncomfortable seat or long queue at the toilet would upset me in the slightest.

I had though erred before even boarding the flight. At check-in I had missed out the crucial request for a window or aisle seat and as I looked at my very central and rather squashed 24F a little bit of emotion escaped the prison cell it had been banished to.

Yikes!

I sat down heavily in a right black mood; cursing the fact that even this new plane did not offer individual movies and I kept my eye on the empty seats around - with the view to performing athletic contortions by jumping out of my seat, swinging from the luggage bins to plop rapidly into one should it not be filled upon departure!

All pens though slowly but surely became occupied with little people!

Why do I mention 'little' people? Well, simply put and with no disrespect intended for they were little, in fact the average height of all could not have been more than five foot and in my books that is small. As I kept my beady eye on the empty seats the other passengers were filling them up and nearly 90% of the planes passenger list consisted of Indonesian girls.

I assumed for the most part that they had all been working for a year or two as maids in Doha, Qatar or in surrounding areas for wealthy Arab families. This is something that occurs all over Asia with hundreds of thousands of maids leaving home countries like the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc to work in wealthier countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore and further afield in places like Dubai and Doha in Qatar. It would seem that the ones filling up the seats that I so dearly wanted had completed their tours of duty and were returning home to their families and a new life therein or for a holiday back home before returning to servitude next year!

One very small girl sat delicately in her seemingly oversized chair next to me and promptly snored herself to sleep. That was a positive sign, should I feel the need to attend the toilet I could suck myself from my prison without bashing the seat in front with my knees or head or both and I would be able to get past her without too much bother. On the seat to my right another little girl with a cheeky smile plonked herself into position and with the same smile proceeded to wiggle around like an Airbus representative might to prove to all that the seats were perfect and very comfortable indeed despite passengers complaints. And behind, in front and as far as the eye could see were maids and more maids and I was the odd-one-out!

I was still angry! Angry at myself for not having obtained a window seat! Angry at Airbus for producing such ridiculously small seats and angry at the maids for having chosen that day to fly. Just angry at everything really! I also wandered if they could fit two maids to one seat but felt that nobody else except I would go for the idea!

As the plane took off, I went through as series of motions to read my book, read a magazine and to sleep. But nothing worked and so I suffered onwards and through the meal that took amazing contortions to digest as each swallow caused a stab of pain to flow down from my curved neck to my stomach where the spine was waging war. As I was wriggling desperately to cut a piece of chicken without knocking the face of the maid sitting next to me, life changed and I forgot all about the seats and airbus and my anger vanished.

Don't tell my wife this please!

As I fought my chicken the girl on my left took my dessert off my tray and proceeded to eat it! I looked on in complete shock at what I felt was grand-larceny or theft or something to that order but she just sat there eating my dessert without a care in the world. I didn't feel like my chicken anymore and just sat there, wandering if I should say something when all of a sudden a bowl of Emirates fruit came and plonked itself on my tray! And then a dessert!! I was a very confused passenger but in-light of a complete lack of understanding I proceeded to eat the fruit and the dessert, I just didn't know what else to do. I certainly did not want to open up a line of dialogue

After the meal had been cleared away I tried to get some sleep but the head of the girl on my right slipped dramatically and ended up on my shoulder. It wasn't heavy so I let it go in favour of causing a fuss by waking her up. And it was okay because before long the girl to my left balanced everything out by falling asleep on my spare appendage. I sat their immovable apart from being able to wriggle my big toes and wandered if the sky was about to fall-in.

Some of the girls in the seats behind, to the distant sides or in front must have noticed this blatant abuse of my body parts but instead of waking the girls up and moving them away so that I could have three seats to myself they found it quite hysterical. Like Chinese whispers, yet spoken quite loudly (and in Bahasa but the jist of the whisperings appeared quite unmistakable) the word spread around the plane faster than the speed of sound - if that's possible. As I sat there in my cage, a seeming horde of 'viewers to the show' clambered onto seats laughing and jostling as they "rabbitted" away and pointing at me with cameras a flashin'. I was only saved when the pilot complained of instability due to mass internal movement. He put the seat belt sign on and the stewardesses buzzed around in controlled panic as they moved the masses back to their seats.

My two girls though passed through this activity in oblivion, either my shoulders were superbly comfortable or they were very tired I knew not.

After two hours I had one girl fast asleep in my lap whilst the other was resting on my arm. Had I let go her head would have fallen smack onto the other girls and well I could not let that happen so continued in my airbus support role!

After two hours they both woke up. I initially thought that they would be embarrassed upon finding out what had just passed. But they woke up, shook their heads then smiled as if to say 'nice shoulders' and proceeded to wake the rest of the plane up with their chatter and noise. They poked the girls in the seats in front, threw 'things' behind and so at three o'clock in the morning (Doha Time) the lights came on, the shutters went up and for all and intents and purposes we could have been landing shortly except for the fact that Singapore was still two thousand miles away and we were smack bang above the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Hair brushes were passed from one end of the plane to the other; I would not have been surprised to learn that the pilot had a turn at smoothing his locks, before returning the hairbrush miraculously to its owner. Crumbs fell like snow over my body as biscuits and nibbles were passed around and the noise was incredible. No stewardess showed up, I think they were in hiding.

I was still part of the show!

As hair brushes, mirrors and lipsticks passed me by, as biscuits traversed the plane and the chatter rose to deafening levels they all took turns at asking me questions. The first one of "are you married" was followed in quick succession by "how old are you" and despite the fact that I informed them of my lovely wife back home and that I was getting on in years they seemed un-phased! In fact they all took turns at being photographed with me as the centrepiece, all took turns at offering me anything from coca cola to phone numbers and all delighted in teasing each other!

We landed in Singapore a very noisy and merry bunch indeed. I scraped myself out of by bucket seat, wiggled my shoulder gently to see if they moved after-all and thanked my hostesses sincerely for making the flight such a pleasure. This last took quite awhile as there were at least thirty or more who wished to shake my hand, kiss my cheek or at the very least just say goodbye.

Once safely inside the terminal building I marched off to get my bags as they transferred to the Jakarta flight. I did not keep any of the phone numbers, email or postal addresses given to me, I did not keep any of the photographs given to me from their pasts and I certainly scrubbed my face of any offending lipstick residues - I took home only the memory of an excellent flight and a silent thank you I give to all for turning what could have been a tortuous flight into a pleasurable journey!

The seats are still terrible though!

Ieuan Dolby is the Author and Webmaster of Seamania. As a Chief Engineer in the Merchant Navy he has sailed the world for fifteen years. Now living in Taiwan he writes about cultures across the globe and life as he sees it.