Were you aware that AirAsia has an On-Time Guarantee? Nope? Neither was I. Until, that is, last night when I received a pleasant surprise in my Inbox.

AirAsia To Singapore

The Journo and I went to Singapore in August for the Singapore Ultimate Open. Partly because of the price, but mainly because of the flight timing, we chose AirAsia, which flew out from KK Friday night and returned from Singapore on Sunday evening. Perfect for a weekend of Ultimate excess.

I have to say, I have no recent memory of major AirAsia delays on any of my flights and as such, the Friday night flight, as expected, went off without a hitch.

Bloody Sunday

We returned to Shangi Airport on Sunday evening with a good 2 hours before departure, which put us there at just after 6pm.

It had been a long grueling weekend of Ultimate, playing 5 almost-1-hour long games on Saturday and 2 70-minute games on Sunday against teams much better than us.  Sunburned, fatigued and in desperate need of sleep, getting onto the flight and settling in was a serious priority.

Our queueless check-in went smooth and we even managed to get seats next to each other on our separately booked tickets. It was when the check-in assistant casually confirmed our boarding time that we were unpleasantly surprised, “… and the flight boards at 10.15pm…”

I did a double take and said “What? That’s not right”, to which she calmly replied as if it was common knowledge, “oh, the flight has been re-timed to 10.45pm due to the late arrival of the incoming flight”, and, in defense of why we hadn’t be alerted, “… it was last-minute, sorry”.

My mind went numb with conflict about what to be angry about:

• that we were not alerted via the cellphone numbers that AirAsia had for us,
• that we now had to wait more than 4 hours to board our flight,
• that we had to miss most of the exciting Ultimate finals to get to the airport on time, or
• that we didn’t get to drink as much of the free beer sponsored by Brewerkz as I wanted to.

Stewing, we stomped off, did some shopping, explored Shangi’s thankfully interesting terminal, had dinner and eventually fell into uncomfortable sleep on seats near the boarding gate with about 90 minutes to go.

Ladies & Gentlemen, this is not your captain speaking

An announcement woke us up before my alarm could: “… AirAsia to Kota Kinabalu has now been retimed to 1am…”. Sunburned, tired, in need of sleep and stewing turned to raging frustration. “I can’t take it anymore, I have to sleep”, I told the Journo, “let’s go to the transit hotel”.

Expensive, this decision, but so worth it. We got nearly 2 hours of solid sleep cuddled under warm blankets on a comfortable bed. Until the phone rang, again, beating my alarm. Dazed and confused I found the phone only to hear the lady from the check-in desk say “Sir, your flight was brought forward to 12.30am. You have 10 minutes to get to the gate. Hurry”.

As if in one motion, we jumped straight out of bed and opened the door while picking up our stuff. I ran to the gate a good 500m aways and stalled for time as the Journo caught up. The security staff looked like they were packing up already, but luckily we made it through. Mere minutes after we boarded they closed the door and we were off.

I couldn’t help but wonder how many people got left behind.

Home Sweet Home in Time for Dawn

As we touched down in KK the clock struck 3am and after I unpacked, did a forced load of washing (can’t let sweaty clothes dry, man), I eventually hit the pillows hard at 4am.

Not one to carry grudges for long, the AirAsia ordeal was forgotten soon after ranting about it to friends for a day or so.

Happy Ending

Last night, just as I was about to shut down for the night, this whole mis-adventure committed to the hardly-ever-accessed part of my memory, I got an email from AirAsia. Subject: Retrieve your OTG Gift Voucher.

With much curiosity I opened the email, checked its authenticity (phishing victim, me? Never.) and followed the instructions. Moments later I received another email with a claim-code for a voucher to the value of RM200 to be used on my next flight or on other AirAsia services.

OTG, as it turns out, stands for On-Time Guarantee.

Having never seen any literature about this before, I did a quick search and found this press release dated 23 October 2008, in which AirAsia announces that customers inconvenienced by a delay longer than 2 hours on an AirAsia flight, will be eligible for a RM200 voucher.

Bonus!  With our next flight planned (but thankfully not booked yet), this voucher will be a mighty handy discount and a pleasant offset against those expensive 2-hours of sleep I bought in Singapore.

And although I had forgiven AirAsia for that hideous delay already, this vouchers goes an infinite distance towards establishing goodwill and restoring confidence in Asia’s favourite airline and proving why they are the top dog.  If only other companies demonstrated their commitment to their customers in such ways.

Good work, AirAsia.

I just scrubbed my Ultimate shirt, which necessarily had to go into my backpack muddy, sweaty and unwashed.  Two days after the event all I could do is make it a lighter shade of mud-brown, but it’s not clean by any stretch of the imagination.

The Singapore Ultimate Open (SUO) was this weekend past.  22 teams from across the region gathered on the green expanse that is Ferrer Park, to pit their Ultimate skills against each other.

The Borneo Bristleheads were there too, albeit in a diluted form.  4 of the team (myself, Julia, Richie, Angela) that went to the Malaysian Ultimate Open (MUO) about 6 months ago, joined the cream of Satu Lagi, whilst 2 Bristleheads (Ken & Brian) joined from KL – 1 because he lives there, and 1 because he moved there.  The rest were Satu Lagi team players, one of the teams that kicked our butts at the MUO.

Discover Singapore – A world of unique contrasts

On Friday we arrived in Singapore to realise what everyone already knew: Singapore is expensive.  Perhaps you won’t notice so much with US, Australian, European or British currency, but believe you me, you do when you travel with Malaysian Ringgit.  Our double hostel room, for which we paid SGD$50 per night for was, to be kind, spartan.  Just a bed, a coat hanger and a mirror.

The fact that it had air-con was negated by the fact that the walls were paper thin and you could hear every little fart from the toilet 3m down the hallway, nevermind the stomping and talking and god knows what else that was going on in the hallway.

But, it served the purpose and is walking distance away from Ferrer Park, so I guess this time we’ll let it slide.  Next time we won’t pay much more, we’ll just expect a lot less.

Singapore Ultimate Open

Saturday morning we arrived at Ferrer Park at about 8am games were already going. Our game was, thankfully, scheduled for a little later in the morning.  We did some warm-ups with more purpose than we did at the MUO, but we were clearly still amateurs.

The Singapore Ultimate Open would turn out not to the be the first tournament where we win a game.  We lost all our games and a particularly fast team from the Philippines actually white-washed us.  I believe it was in under 30 minutes.  We never knew what hit us.

We played a team from Singapore, Chukkies, twice.  Great team spirit and the most unserious Singaporeans we’ve ever seen.  I’ll lose to them any day – they made the games seriously fun.  We also played a team from Vietnam called R.M.I.T.  We did a little skit for them, because in Sabah there’s a saying, which is the equivalent of cheers and is pronounced ‘ari mi ti‘.  We thought it was clever.

Our team worked well together, I thought, and especially the guys from Sabah were nowhere near as knackered as we were after the MUO.  After Day 1 we could all still actually walk – and run – which was good for game play.

Beer on the Field

Ken has previously relayed legends of having beer on the field.  We did, of course, not believe this.  One of the big sponsors of all sorts of sports here in Singapore is Brewerkz, a micro-brewery slash restaurant that brews their own beer.  And good beer too.  And because they sponsored this event, Thomas, a rep, was on the field (well, next to) handing out FREE beer.  I kid you not.

Richie and I took advantage of this and had way more beer than what we should have, considering we still had a few games to play.  But it was all good and the beer was extremely drinkable.  I love Brewerkz.

Saturday’s Party

For the Saturday evening’s party we missed the South Africa vs. Australia rugby game, which the best game of the Tri-Nations as the Bokke won for a change.  We missed it in lieu of yet another not-so-great Ultimate party. All the players crammed into the small, 3-level Majestic bar hat was too overcrowded and necesarily had the players over 3 levels.

We left early with fears of being crushed to death.

Sunday Play

We were up early and I wasn’t a happy bunny.  The previous day’s chaffing did me in and the walking around at night didn’t help either.  I liberally slapped on the Vaseline, but it didn’t work.  Eventually I took off the underwear, which worked a charm.  It was a little obscene, but comfortable and that’s, in the end, what counts.

We had our second came against the Chukkies. They beat us, but not by as much as the day before.  We had our hopes up against team Voodoo.  We drew first blood, then scored 4 points in a row… and then they trashed us.  During the game I did a brilliant layout – brilliant save for the fact that I didn’t catch the disc.

But I slid through the mud for a good 15m and filled my clothes and mouth with muddy water.  It didn’t nothing for the chaffing.

We scored 2 more points in that game and Ken almost got physical during a misunderstanding which, thankfully was cleared up quickly.

After the game Julia was still pretty clean, but only until Miquel pushed her during a photo and she belly-flopped in the mud.  She wasn’t a happy bunny.  We rushed back to the backpackers to check-out as we thought they were full – but turns out they had more space so we stayed another night (only after we stripped our linen and had to redo it all again).

We headed back for more beer and the finals.

Superior Class Ultimate

The Singapore Open Finals featured a team from China and a team from the Philippines.  Hands down it was the best Ultimate I’ve ever seen – ya ok fine, I haven’t seen that many games yet, but still.  It was awesome.  Serious strategy, serious running and players literally flying through the air after the disc.

It was poetery. It was art.  It was Ultimate at its best.

Rest of Singapore

We toured the city a bit until it was time for dinner.  We met the guys at Brewerkz for dinner.  We were a bit late and we had a ’snack’ earlier in Little India, so we’re not hungy.

A guy, visibly already drunk, shows up and he turns out to be an Ultimate player.  I accidentally invite him to sit down and he proceeds to dominate the conversation around the 12-strong table.  He buys beer and not to be rude, I share.  Lots of it and proceeds to bore the people around him. He was supposed to meet up with his friends – they never show.

We eventually retire and head back for some well decent sleep.

The Singapore Ultimate Open was a great experience, and once again, even though we didn’t win a single game, we learned alot.  We return to Kota Kinabalu with even more enthausiasm than we had before and our love for the game of Ultimate is now deep set.

We vow to turn the players in Sabah into a winning team.  We can dream, can’t we?