Opening suitcase No. 18 on Channel 5's Deal Or No Deal is second nature for Lutfiah Abdul Jabbar. That's because before joining the popular TV game show last year, the 25-year-old Singaporean lived out of a suitcase as a flight attendant, first with Singapore Airlines, then Qatar Airlines.

In her five-year globetrotting career, she travelled to exotic places like Kathmandu in Nepal and Trivandrum in India as well as fashion capitals New York and Paris.

Now she can look forward to packing her bags and setting off on an all-expenses-paid trip to Brazil.

She had won the other 'race' at last weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix (GP) in Sepang - the contest in which a winner is chosen from among 10 La Formula Una (Formula One) girls to attend the season finale in Sao Paulo in November. She will vie with winners from the 17 other Grand Prix events this year for the title of the ultimate La Formula Una.

The talent quest - which emphasises fun personalities and brains rather than straight-out good looks - is organised by Austrian energy-drink maker Red Bull, which has two teams in F1, Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso.

Indeed, Abdul Jabbar, a pint-sized freelance model of Indian and Malay parentage, won over the mystery judges in Sepang last week with her chirpy personality and gungho spirit.

She joined the annual contest because she saw how it helped launch the modelling careers of some of her friends, including last year's Malaysian GP winner Claire Jedrek. Since her win, Jedrek has graced the covers of Urban and fashion magazine Cleo and is also a Deal Or No Deal model.

However, she says she doesn't believe in depending solely on looks to carve out a living.

'Modelling really depends only on how popular your look is and not how hard you work,' she says.

'All you do each day is bother about your looks and that's superficial.'

Instead, her ultimate aim is to fund her own education in fashion management or design.

She had been doing an engineering course at Temasek Polytechnic but quit in 2002 as she felt it didn't suit her. What she really wants is to start a boho-chic line of clothes - her wardrobe of choice.

'I'd like to become knowledgeable enough to set up my own label and I'd settle for anything as long as it gives me a learning experience, even working at a laundromat,' she says.

'Thanks to my career as an air stewardess, I've been exposed to many things and wherever I am, I'll be able to survive'.

Worldly wise, indeed.

This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times on Mar 27, 2008.