Nuts in business class

LAST week, for the first time in my 29 years of life, I did not have to do the slightly resentful shuffle past the business class part of the plane, towards the purgatory of economy class.

Instead, thanks to the brief moments of privilege that journalists sometimes have, I found myself luxuriating in the upstairs part of the Downtown Abbey that was an A380. In the echoing chamber of my business class seat, there was - dare I say it - almost enough room in which to swing a cat.

You think you're prepared for your first time, but you are never, really. My colleagues, many of whom remember their own business-class dalliances with fuzzy-eyed nostalgia, had done their best to induct me, pre-flight.

"The flight crew will call you 'Ms Hooi' in business class," one of them had told me in a half-whisper…