I traveled international from Mumbai airport after a couple of years, and the change was more than pleasing. While work is still on, the infrastructure plan is magnanimous and state-of-the-art, and air traffic is comparable to any major hub. I could see a long trail of blinking lights in the moon light and there no longer seems to be a hold position at the end of the run-way. It was a good flight on Singapore Airlines, although the much-hyped Singapore Sling was a bit disappointing. Dixit Jasani, Vaibhav Pani and I were on a business trip. Dixit had been to Singapore just a month back. Vaibhav’s epic moment was to set foot in a foreign country. Mine was to catch a glimpse of the A380.

Without family, I had an option of trying some local food. Vaibhav and I tried some Indonesian-Chinese noodles, Chinese crab fritter and Indonesian fish cake. Honestly, it wasn’t until a glass of Milo that I started feeling better again. My mom would never agree to $1 chocolate drink when she could add 7 spoons of Milo to half a liter milk and make enough drink for the entire family. But honestly, that is how we all think. Fortunately on this trip, I did less of multiplication & more of subtraction when spending – if you know what I mean. I’m sure I’ll forget the math altogether when I start earning in a stronger currency.

Singapore is more like what it was in 2006; Mustafa got bigger & better and Marina Bay looks better with the Singapore Flyer and Marina Sands hotel in the background. It was good to meet a couple of old friends: Pritish Purohit & Ashish Singh. After a good breakfast at the hotel with samosas, what was supposed to be a 1.5 hour part on my side at the meeting, went on close to 5 hours, and I was involved right until the end. It was great to receive a very different kind of compliment from an attendee: “thank you, you enlightened me about P2P”. That’s precious!

On the way back, moments into the air, I had the epic moment of my life: I caught a glimpse of a Qantas A380. Krisworld, SQ’s inflight entertainment system, introduced me to ‘Come fly with me’, one of the most hilarious parodies I’ve ever seen; unfortunately, this mocked one of old favorites – Airport on  BBC. I would still say that the food is better on Air India. As usual, I couldn’t sleep on board – there’s nothing like getting back home!