I spied on a small Singaporean family seated a row in front of us on the plane. It was easy to spot a Singaporean family. It wasn't because they talked loudly and displayed inconsideration to others. On the contrary, the family was soft spoken and had two well mannered toddlers with them. In comparison, little Albany was too active for my preference that night.
A little side note about Albany's travelling record. It has been a nightmare travelling with Albany so far. During her debut flight barely few months old, she managed to sleep most of the journey away. We were required to pick her up from the plane cot and held her in our arms during landing. Several toddlers and babies began to cry due to the discomfort in their ears caused by the sudden change in atmospheric pressure. Then it happened. Baby Albany let out a lungful of her trademark wail. Between a hiatus, the plane went silent and everyone turned to look in our general direction to check out what happened. Even the toddlers and babies who stopped crying at Albany's sudden shriek. It left me slightly red faced.
Her second trip was a nightmare for us. It was my most painful flight experience to date. By then Albany was a young toddler who could hardly speak beyond a few words. It was just one of those nights where she wouldn't settle down and every atom around her seemed to annoy her to no end and everything that used to work had no effect on her. She cried the entire flight away. I was so exhausted but couldn't sleep a wink, holding on to a wiggling unsettled toddler who would cry even louder if we put her back to her seat. Such an experience made me extremely skeptical about my reasons of returning to Singapore for a visit. The key was to spend some time with my parents but it dawned on me right there that flying them into Perth seemed like a better idea instead.
Back to the Singaporean family, I couldn't help but note the differences in between our parenting methods. The children were subdued by their electronic screens throughout the flight. Both of them displayed remarkable skills with their note pads, far surpassed Albany, who could barely do more than random jabs on the screens because of her limited exposure to such technologies. As a result, Albany's attention span towards the notepad was much shorter and she grew restless quicker than the other toddlers.
Another key identifier of the Singaporean family was the manner they could summon their objects of need by simply waving a few finger movements in the air as if they were casting some mysterious arcane spells. With three fingers curled to depict the letter 'C' and a slight twist of the lady's wrist, a bottle of water appeared in her hand within seconds. Two fingers on each hand seemingly pulling a piece of string in the air yielded her a piece of straw for her drink. All these magic made possible with the support of a darker skinned south-east Asian woman. Meanwhile, the father of the toddlers remained seated throughout the entire flight without lifting a finger to attend to his children. Food and beverages were served for him as he read his newspapers like a boss. I stared at him in awe as Albany crawled onto me for yet another hug.
Fortunately, we managed to make Albany sleep this time and she had a good nap for 1.5 hours. The spacious Scoot plane also left me enough leg room to adjust my posture. There was even enough space (though barely) for Albany to lie down for her nap, a contrast to the previous nightmare on TigerAir. We even arrived at Singapore almost 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. Throughout the flight, Albany barely gave us any trouble and we could even afford to steal some rest along the way. That was the best flight we had with Albany so far, no doubt about it.
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