I have enough time to freshen up in the lounge. I look out for CGK who is on the next 2 flights with me, but dont see. When its time to board I head out to the gate and meet up with CGK there.

We take the Singapore 773 to Jakarta. Drink some champagne and coffee to awaken properly and talk, eat and drink the whole flight (not necessarily in that order ). Then its the turnaround procedure with which I am becoming so familiar. As usual, we have the same crew on the way back.

I dont have a copy of the menu, but there's an indonesian, another asian and a western choice (omelette); as well as book the cook of course. The menu is different each way.

Back at Singapore I run into an old friend and have a brief chat before her flight, and then join some great FT friends for lunch (none for me thanks!), talking, etc.

Later I make some changes to flights and freshen up before heading out to the gate for yet another flight.

Back to Jakarta again. Have some more Dom (what the heck!) and a nice dinner - although I leave much of it, not because its not nice but because with so many flights with yummy food I'm in grave danger of overeating. Unlike the earlier flights there is a bit of turbulence - especially near Jakarta where the weather is much worse than Singapore. In one particularly big bump I manage to spill food on my shirt

When we are on approach I think someone hit the wrong button or keyed the wrong info in somewhere as flight path showed time to go at about 10 minutes suddenly increased to 2 hours and 10 minutes! Even closer to landing, while in the middle of thunderstorm with lightning flashing all around every few seconds, we pull out and circle Jakarta to land from the other direction. As a result we end up arriving nearly 30 minutes late. Oh oh, I have a tight connection for the return flight at only 50 minutes scheduled time.

Well of course the return flight is also late leaving. With such a short turnaround in the schedule for the aircraft it is difficult to make up any lost time, and the torrential rain is also slowing down the ground work.

The return flight is bumpy, I have some more drink (to settle nerves so it must be medicinal ). We arrive late back in Singapore of course, not helped by a very long taxi around about 3/4 of the terminals. We pull up at the gate about 25 minutes late. There are a lot of connecting passengers so a Singapore agent is at the end of the airbridge with a big sign listing all the connecting gates. We are at F60 (yup that one right at the end of terminal 2) and my heart sinks when I see the next flight leaves from gate E11 - virtually as far away as it is possible to be within the terminal

Seeing by now I have about 10 minutes before the gate closes, and Singapore is enforcing this strictly these days, I run and run. I can confirm it takes 6 minutes at a fast jog to go from F60 to E11. So I make it with a few minutes to spare. I see CGK at the gate.