[Review] The Sky Is Crazy: Tales From A Trolley Dolly

Author: Yvonne Lee

I am rather preoccupied lately so I just picked up this simple read while passing by a book sale outside Plaza Singapura. This book is written by a former stewardess with an international airline (the book cover showed a well-known uniform). She wrote about how she started from Malaysia to flying around the world, stopping at major cities of Asia, Europe and United States. More importantly, she recollected her interesting encounters and captured special tales by her colleagues which we may never know of, flying at 35,000 feet.

She colourfully illustrated the eccentricities of passengers from the economy class all the way to first class, and the additional training and responsibilities behind the smiles. And she put all these in bite-size chapters with individual themes, making it a good book for your trip, be it on the plane or any other transportation. You will appreciate the job of a stewardess that bit more and learn how to be the passenger a stewardess will be more than happy to serve.

She wrote in a lighthearted way, with many funny stories interjected by a couple of sombre ones. Her encounters with the deportation of an illegal immigrant and the pair of children who were sent away for adoption remind us that the person sitting beside you in the plane may have a sad tale to tell and he or she can use your consideration.

Side Note:

I happened to read an article about SIA stewardesses in the Chinese newspapers before I wrote this. It was about a complaint on the English standard of the stewardesses. Apparently, the complainer asked three stewardesses about the availability of empty seats and the replies she got were three "OK"s. She said she manage to get her answer only after asking another steward. Though I give her the benefit of doubt but it seems highly unlikely that three stewardesses could not understand the complainer unless her English is incomprehensible in the first place. I knew of people who tries very hard to use an accent with sophisticated words, being sort of an English snob, where simple English suffice. Nowadays, people juggle different languages and we don't expect them to be masters of English, Chinese, French, Japanese, etc. Anyway, if the complainer's story of the pilot pronouncing "flight" as "fright" is true, kudos to the pilot for making a good joke.

A Series of Unexpected Events

My tale of unexpected events started with a SingTel screw-up and a freakish morning. Firstly, SingTel sux big time! My mum went to upgrade her SIM card before the weekend and as her number is registered under my name, I had to fax a copy of my ID and an authorisation letter. And you think this should be just it. No... SingTel actually migrated my phone number to my mum's new SIM card. As she took the SIM card with her to Genting, I was without a connection as my SIM card had been deactivated. I didn't noticed this until last evening. Then I called 1688. After going through levels of automated answering, I waited on the phone for more than 15 mins before someone attended to me. And the guy with a heavy indian accent didn't quite understand my problem. Then the line got cut off. Think I accidentally hit the off button. Then it's back to another 25 mins of waiting... Then a new guy promised it should be rectified in an hour's time but only found the problem fixed in the morning.

This morning I encountered two strange happenings. The first one was that the usual direct train from Woodlands going towards Pasir Ris at 7:49 didn't show. The next direct train was the one scheduled at 8:03. Then when alighting from the taxi, the newbie cabbie found that the end of his taxi's boot cover was wedged in my wheelchair's wheel. Haven't seen that before. Took him a while to figure out that the wheelchair would drop out simply by lifting the boot cover up. Oh well, that's my day.