Mystery Solved!!
Guess what? CX has reconfigured 773s to have more economy seats!!!
The exit row is now 44 and not 41 as was on the 20th, when I took the same flight.
What's even more interesting was, that the ITCI agent thought that 41 was exit row and gave me the bp for row 41. I checked at the airport and got a 'sorry sir, but 44 is exit row and your seat is 1n 41' (well thats what my bp said, but i did see 44 online, after collecting the bp). A few polite please later, I got 44A.
Am guessing that QRC3288 is also correct, hence the interim 16K I saw.
Even more wonderful: I have about 10 HKG-SIN trips booked out - each had 41C/H or 54 C/H assigned, depending on the plane for that day (773 or 777) - ALL of them are now totally messed up. Just got back from a not so brilliant flight in an 'ordinary' econ seat, after exclusively travelling in the emex row for the past few months. (I am over 6-1", so the emex is really valuable and any sleep i get on my weekly flights to SIN really valuable to me)- well atleast Channel 54 with the outside camera was on...