The Game (by a Local Player) - Part 1

I picked up The Game (by Neil Strauss) in a bookshop on this guy's recommendation, and in a moment of great self-misguidedness, decided to purchase it in the hopes that it would teach me how to get more clients.

Unfortunately, I now know how to pick up women. Not clients. Just women. It's hard to think of another skill I've picked up which would be less useful to me.

In an even more misguided attempt to not waste the good money I spent on this book, I asked this guy to read it.

Hey dude. It could help you pick up more chicks.

I don't need to know how to pick up more chicks. Nobody knows how to pick up chicks like me. Neil is an amateur!

I've asked him through the years about his techniques and have on occasion received some more useless information about how to pick up women. Until now. The guy has recently informed me that he is retiring from The Game, as he is about to get married, and all the information would be lost forever since he is not permitted by Certain Individuals to divulge it. And by Certain Individuals, I mean his wife-to-be, who has access to sleeping pills and a sharp paring knife.

I have therefore become the unwitting recipient of his memoirs, now to be published anonymously, and which will permit me to enjoy fame and hopefully some fortune through someone else's efforts.

This is the first half of Chapter 1, entitled "How to Pick Up a Singapore Girl during your Flight"

The stewardesses on Singapore Airlines (“SIA” or “SQ”), affectionately known as “Singapore Girls”, are widely acknowledged as the epitome of beauty, grace and Asian hospitality in the airline industry through a combination of clever branding and careful selection and training by SIA. Many male passengers want to get to know the pretty stewardesses serving them on the plane but don’t know how.

I’ve been encouraged by friends to write this advice for the benefit of all mankind because over the years, I’ve had quite some success with SQ stewardesses I’ve met on the plane. And my friends fiercely believe in the sharing of all knowledge for free for the betterment of the human race. Or so they tell me.

But before you get too excited, let me put 2 qualifications to this post:

1. By “pick-up” I mean get her phone number. If she gives you her phone number, you’re likely to get at least a first date. What happens from there, if anything at all, is beyond the scope of this post.

2. I don’t guarantee you’ll succeed everytime but if you follow my advice, you should at least become more successful in getting their phone numbers. Other qualities like your physical appearance, age and conversational abilities will of course play a big part too.

Ok, enough introductions and qualifications, let’s get on with it. To get an SQ stewardesses’ phone number, you need to know 3 basic things:

1. When to approach her for a conversation.

2. What to say during the conversation (before asking for her number).

3. Signals which mean you’re headed for a crash & burn. That is, you personally are headed for a crash, not the plane. If she tries to crash the plane just to avoid talking to you or giving you her phone number then your particular problems are WAY beyond the scope of this post.


1. When to Approach Her

First, it is vitally important that you don’t approach her when she’s busy. She can’t talk and you’ll get nowhere. You might even irritate her and ruin your chances before you’ve even started.

Flights generally consist of 4 parts – Emplaning & Take-off, Meal Service, Lull and Landing & Deplaning. The only time you should get out of your seat and try to chat up a stewardess at the galley is during the Lull period. This happens after meals have been served and cleared away, the duty free shopping trolley has trundled past and the cabin lights are dimmed so passengers can relax and sleep or watch a movie. The cabin crew are extremely busy during the other 3 parts of the flight and have no time for chit chat.

In that regard, it is important to note that some flights are so short, there is no Lull period. Singapore – Hong Kong is a good example of such a flight. Flight time is normally 3 hours and 15 minutes but can sometimes be as short as 2 hours and 50 minutes. If you observe the cabin crew on that flight, they are literally rushing to finish meal service and stow everything away in time for landing. Don’t bother approaching a stewardess in-flight in such cases. Your best bet is after landing, during baggage collection but Singapore – Hong Kong flights are turn-arounds for the crew. This means the crew which flew you to Hong Kong will not deplane. They will stay onboard, tidy the aircraft, receive the new passengers and fly them back to Singapore so you most likely won’t see them after you deplane. Too bad.

The second thing to bear in mind under this heading is don’t piss off the stewardess before you’ve had a chance to talk to her during the Lull period. Pissing a stewardess off is easier than you think because whilst you’re in your comfy chair and perving at her, she’s working and has lots of things to do during Emplaning and Meal Service. Pissing an SQ stewardess off is also harder to detect than you think because she is trained to smile and be gracious in front of passengers. Most of the time, you won’t know you’ve pissed her off unless you know what their pet peeves are and you avoid those.

The golden rule in not pissing an SQ stewardess off is to not make her work more than necessary. Here are some examples:
· When you emplane, on Business Class you will be offered a glass of champagne, apple juice or orange juice. All 3 types of drinks come on one tray and you just pick one. If you ask for something that is not on the tray, the stewardess will get it for you. But because you made her do extra work, she’ll be pissed off with you.
· During meal service, if your friend sitting next to you asks for a Singapore Sling and you express curiosity about the drink, the stewardess will ask if you want one too. If you say no but then change your mind and ask for one after your friend has been served his, the stewardess will get it for you. But because you made her do extra work, she’ll be pissed off with you.
· During the lull period, if you can’t decide between the wines, the stewardess will offer to bring the 2 or 3 varietals for you to try. If you decline that offer and pick one but after a sip decide to ask for the other wine instead, the stewardess will get it for you. But because you made her do extra work, she’ll be pissed off with you.
The above examples may sound petty but they are all real life examples which my stewardess girlfriend complained to me about at various times during our brief but passionate relationship. In the years since, I have verified with other stewardesses that she wasn’t alone in her feelings. All of the above types of actions do indeed piss off SQ stewardesses. They sometimes bitch about it to each other after the flight.

One other thing in this regard, if you are Indian and the stewardess is Chinese and you do any of the above, she will be even more pissed off than usual! This is because over time, all SQ stewardesses come to notice that Indian passengers commit the above actions more often than passengers of any other race. Some stewardesses actually hate flights to Indian cities because of this and also the Singapore – Seoul – San Francisco flights because there are often lots of Indian passengers on that route.

Besides avoiding the above types of actions, you can actually build some goodwill with a stewardess if you say something to show her you recognise the fact that she’s busy and you don’t want to make her do extra work. For example, upon Emplaning, the stewardess will come up to each and every Business Class passenger and ask if you would like a newspaper or a magazine. Being a golf nut, I always want a golf magazine. SIA carries only Golf Digest and Golf Asia on board and even then, they only have a few copies of each. If you ask for one, the stewardess might have to hunt around the aircraft looking for it.

In that situation, what I always say to the stewardess is something like the following: “I’d like a copy of Golf Digest but I know you must be really busy right now, so please only look for a copy for me after take-off when you have a little more time before the meal service, ok?” This invariably results in a genuine smile from the stewardess and most of the time, she will insist on finding you a copy of the magazine immediately anyway because you were nice enough to offer to get it later.


2. What to Say During the Conversation

Ok, meal service is over and the cabin lights have been dimmed. Most of the passengers are in their seats watching movies or sleeping and the cabin crew are in the galley. This is the right time to approach a stewardess to get to know her. The easiest thing to do is to walk into the galley and ask the stewardess for a drink – something simple like a beer or a glass of wine. When you get your drink, strike up a conversation with her so that she can’t walk away to do something else or attend to another passenger.

The strategy in such an ice-breaker conversation is to say something which interests the person you’re talking to so that they’ll want to keep talking to you. Since you don’t know what interests her when you first talk to her, you should always start by asking her questions. This gets her to do the talking and gives you clues about her interests and likes and dislikes. When approaching an SQ stewardess on a plane, the 2 easiest topics you can ask her about are her job and the flight destination. Asking about her job also helps you to quickly determine if she’s married or in a relationship since you’re not likely to get her phone number in either case and you might want to consider turning your attention to another stewardess. Having said that though, I did once get the phone number of a stewardess who was in a relationship and she subsequently broke up with her boyfriend to have a brief but passionate (hereinafter “BBP”) relationship with me but that is clearly always going to be the exception rather than the norm.

To get from asking about her job to determining her marital status, some variation or transposition of the following questions can be used:
Q: Thanks for the drink. How long have you been flying?
Q: How many flights a week do you normally do?
Q: It must be tough seeing your loved ones at home only a few days a month? Unless your boyfriend or husband also flies in the same crew with you?

Asking about the flight destination can easily lead to finding out which hotel the crew stay in, how many days they have there before their return flight and what the stewardesses’ like to do when at that particular destination. It makes planning for a date (if you have the time on a business trip!) easier with that information.

When talking to an SQ stewardess, it might be useful to bear the following information in mind:
· Most FSS nowadays are not Singaporean. A high proportion are Malaysians, some are Indonesians. Most of the LSS and a very high percentage of the CSS are Singaporeans.
· SQ stewardesses are mostly pleasant and charming girls but they are not the sharpest tools in the shed. They are worldly-wise only because they are familiar with the cities they have flown to and therefore

.... to be continued. Dun dun DUN!!!!