My flight to Helsinki, Finland was supposed to be depart yesterday night 0950pm. 13 hours later (now), I'M STILL IN SINGAPORE AND BLOGGING FROM MY HOME!!!! Can you believe this????

When Sam (my travel pal) and I checked in at the airport yesterday, everything was as normal and we boarded the plane at 0900pm. But at around 11pm plus, the plane still could not take off as according to the Captain, "The panel sensor at the cockpit cannot get a signal from this 2nd engine (from dunno which part of the plane), but interestingly, the engine appeared to be working perfectly fine!". So after several tries, they decided to shut the electric power in the entire plane and try starting up again (guess this is much like we shutting down and starting up out PC when our computer gets hanged lar). As it was night outside, the plane would be in total darkness without the electricity. So all of us needed to get down the plane first lor. They directed us to the transit cafe for a free meal and we were supposed to wait till 1am to get more information.

A bowl of prawn noodles and lots of waiting later, at around 0140am, the Captain finally made an appearance at the transit lounge and annouced sadly, that they simply cannot solve the panel problem, and would need to buy some dunno what spare parts from dunno where to fix the problem. The earliest departing time for this flight would be 21st Jul (TODAY) at 3pm!!!

Can you believe this?? SO DAMN SUAY RIGHT!!!! Of course I should feel relieved that they had actually detected this problem BEFORE the plane took off lar, but still! The even funnier thing was that this particular flight actually has a transit stop at Bangkok first, so there were actually quite a number of people going to Thailand on the plane (and a lesser number of us actually going to Finland). Can you imagine? A more than 12 hours delayed flight, for a journey that would only take 2 hours!

The local flight Captain gave us 2 options:
1) Wait for them to arrange hotel accomodations and transport to-and-fro the hotel
2) For the locals, to go home now and be compensated for the to-and-fro cab fare

Of course I went along with the 2nd choice lar, cos everything was in utter mess at the lounge and who knows what time the airline will be able to get the accomodations settled. I don't want to spend my night at the airport leh! So now, I'm still waiting for more information to come in, like how our itinerary will be affected, how days our trip will still last, should I take another day's leave, etc etc. Aiyoh....So 伤脑筋!!