SilverKris lounge, SIN

Sweeter words were never printed at the bottom of a boarding pass:

YOU ARE INVITED TO THE SILVER KRIS LOUNGE

I'm probably the only Flyertalker who has resided in SIN for two years without ever stepping into this hallowed space, so now at long last it was time to pop the cherry -- albeit only to the Raffles side, so maybe there's still something left to look forward to?

After working until nearly 10 PM, both tying up loose ends at work and sorting out last-minute travel arrangements, I headed to the airport with a smile on my face. Check-in was unremarkable, exit immigration was painless (as always), and soon enough I disturbed the busily chatting lounge ladies with my blue-fringed boarding pass enough for one of them to wish me welcome to the left side of the lounge...

My first impression was sheer size: the SilverKris is way bigger than the Premier Lounge I'm usually stuck in, and on this time it was nearly full when I came in. But I had nearly two hours to kill, and the lounge emptied out quite a bit between 11 PM and 1 AM. Quantitywise the food selection was quite OK, enough for me to get my long-delayed dinner, but quality wasn't particularly impressive. I couldn't even find the bubbly at first, and only spotted the bar counter and the rows of Piper-Heidsieck on my second trip to fill up... But (unlike the Premier) the lounge had lots of internet terminals and workspaces to use, so I settled down and surfed.

All in all, in my book the SQ lounge at ICN still takes the cake for me.

SQ 981 SIN-NGO B777-300 C seat 14K

Boarding was on time -- in fact, thanks to the departure gate way at the end of the F pier, I barely made it before the 15-minute cutoff -- and, after making the lovely turn to the left to the biz door, walked down past the economy door on my way to my seat. Quite frankly, this was a bit of a letdown after my previous Raffles experience: no SpaceBed, the plane showing signs of wear and tear, the crappier not-on-demand version of Wiseman (Krisworld), etc. The only positive was that load was light, under 50% in C (maybe a bit higher in Y), and I had two seats to myself although the bulky divider between the two limited the utility of this.

As I'd accumulated quite a bit of sleep deficit, my plan was to just get as many Z's as humanly possible, but the flourescent light installed right above my seat did its best to prevent me. While nowhere near as comfortable as a flat bed, the recline was ok and I was able to find a tolerable comfortable position and for the first time ever, I actually managed to fall asleep wearing shades.

The lights went on and I was woken up at 6:30 Japan time (5:30 SIN time...) to ask for my breakfast order, which took 45 minutes to arrive -- why couldn't they ask the night before and let people sleep longer!? And after that wait, it turned out to be a fairly horrible attempt at a Japanese breakfast. The miso soup was edible, but the rice was mangled beyond recognition (cold, starchy, falling apart) and the snowfish with tasteless white sauce slapped on top was worse than any university cafeteria meal I ever ate in Japan (gakushoku being usually considered the baseline of bad food).

Soon enough the pre-arrival announcement were made, it turned out we were landing well ahead of schedule at just past 8 AM instead of the scheduled 8:35 AM. This meant that my 23:55 'transit' would in fact last for over 24 hours, in violation of usual ticketing rules -- muahaha! But evidently this messed up the finely tuned scheduling, as the plane parked in middle of field and we were bussed to the terminal.