mrbrown.com

Big Girl Now

My oldest daughter, I saw you standing at the door, looking out at the pool of our villa. Your younger siblings were already at the beach, playing with their cousins and both your Yi Suk and Sam Suk (二叔, 三叔), on our big family vacation. Our extended family all in one place, sixteen of us across four hotel rooms, one loud family on a road trip. It was fun to share the room with you, Mommy and Auntie.

Mommy said the dress was meant for your youngest sister Joy, but she was still too small for it. It fits you perfectly. Maybe in a few years, Joy will take over the dress from you.

Six years ago, your Ye Ye (爺爺) went on a similar trip with us. Remember? Back then, there were two less children. Ye Ye would have been happy to see his two new grandchildren, your little cousins, but he left us a year after that trip. Ye Ye would have been happy to see you so big and tall too.

The morning light poured into our room and wrapped itself around you, dancing like gossamer around your still-wet hair. Your thoughts are opaque to us.

But we know you are happy, even though you needed to adjust to the new environment. I know you didn't sleep well the first night. It always takes a while for you, my autistic daughter, but you eventually overcome.

Faith, you are a big girl now. Taller than mommy already. A few more years before you leave special school. I don't know where you will go after you reach womanhood. But you will always be my little girl, Papa's little girl.

I am miles away from home. But my home is with me. It is not a bad way to spend my fifteenth Father's Day.

Comfort food in Chinatown, San Francisco

Having my first Chinese meal since I came to the US last week.

Whenever I come to San Francisco, I must visit Washington Bakery and Restaurant at Washington Street, Chinatown. The food is good and affordable, especially the breakfast and tea set meals.

When I walked in, one of the waitresses smiled at me in recognition. Must be the yearly visits from Ryan and me, going as far back as 2007.

Even the restaurant wifi auto-connects on my iPhone. And Cantonese, my mother tongue, is spoken all around me.

Coming here is like coming home.

Apple WWDC 2016: The Big Fat Update

It is hard to believe that it is already the 27th Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) for Apple. Besides me, more than 5,000 attended the conference to find out what Apple will do for watchOS, tvOS, iOS and macOS.

Yes, OS X is finally called macOS. I will miss the old name but hey, at least the naming convention looks consistent now.

Before diving into the program of the day, Tim Cook led the auditorium in a moving moment of silence for the victims of the tragic Orlando Shooting.

The new watchOS 3 looks a lot faster, which is welcome. With each iteration, WatchOS has gotten faster and more usable. You can now share Activity with your friends and family, which is useful for keeping motivated and for trash talking your fitness "opponents". This means I may have to buy my wife an Apple Watch now. I also like the Scribble feature that lets you write on the Apple Watch screen. And SOS will call for help via your iPhone or wifi, without you needing to know what the emergency number is for the country you are in.

And oh, Minnie Mouse is joining Mickey Mouse as a watch face in watchOS 3. And you can even change her outfit colour. Minnie fans, rejoice.

Eddy Cue came on to talk about tvOS, and now you can do Single Sign-on for all your Pay-TV apps on Apple TV 4. Not terribly relevant to us since we don't have that many Pay-TV apps in Singapore. But the new Remote control app that mimics the Apple TV 4 remote is most welcome.

macOS gets a nice big update, besides the name change. macOS Sierra finally brings Siri to the Mac. I use Siri a LOT in my Apple Watch and iPhone so this is a welcome addition for me. You can search for your files on the Mac with Siri, and even get Siri to find photos or work files with criteria you speak.

Universal Clipboard also got me excited. This lets you copy and paste seamlessly between your Mac and your iDevices. Also cool: Craig Federighi showed us how you will be able to use Apple Pay for your online purchases on your Mac. How it works is you click on the Apple Pay option on the website and then you authenticate payment with either Touch ID on your iPhone or by using your Apple Watch.

iOS 10 is a huge huge update. I don't even know where to start. Messages will support full-screen messages, stickers, emojis on steroids and other third-party enhancements. Some of these sticker and emoji action look like the features we already use on Line, Telegram and WeChat but I have to say that the Apple implementation is slick.

Yes, Apple has opened up Messages to developers to add functionality to it. In fact, Apple seems to have opened up a whole lot of the iOS core features to developers, the most significant of which is Siri.

You will be able to tell Siri to send a message via WeChat or Whatsapp, tell Siri to book a restaurant… I cannot wait to see how developers make use of Siri. That sounded kind of wrong.

Photos is another exciting iOS 10 improvement. Memories is a function that will be able to identify faces, and group people, places and things into albums. Then you can use the grouped content to create Memories movies, a slide show made up of photos and video clips from say, your trip to Seattle or Japan in June 2016, and set it to music.

A look at how the Memories feature of #iOS10 Photos will work. #WWDC2016 I think it is cool.https://t.co/yPBZfaqEPd

— mrbrown (@mrbrown) June 14, 2016

Apple Music gets a long needed overhaul too. The interface is bolder and cleaner. I shall give it a go when it is available, to see if it is improvement enough to lure Spotify stalwarts.

Interestingly, Apple revealed that there are now 15 million paid subscribers to Apple Music. That is a lot of paying customers. Maybe there are many Taylor Swift fans.

Bozoma Saint John, Head of Global Consumer Marketing Apple Music & iTunes, who presented this segment, was a breath of fresh air in the presentation. She played some cool music (Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang) and tried to get the auditorium dancing and rapping along. Sadly, we failed her in the rapping department. What a cool lady!

And finally, Tim Cook revealed a free gift in the form of Swift Playgrounds for iPad. The app allows anyone, especially kids, to learn how to code in Swift. Now that is something I wouldn't mind letting my kids play with on the iPad, instead of just games.

Coding is indeed an important language for kids to pick up, and Swift Playgrounds may be a great gateway to interest them enough to learn more.

Here is a nice summary of the features in one video, used with permission from Apple:

A cool summary video of #iOS10 features revealed at #WWDC2016https://t.co/59h81Lg7GR

— mrbrown (@mrbrown) June 14, 2016

Gahmen to cut off Internet from Civil Servants' computers

Our civil servants will have the Internet cut off from their computers in May next year. Because we Smart Nation.

Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy

Today I remember the day we lost and then found Faith.

In fact, every year, on this day, I give thanks for that day, when friends and strangers rallied around our family, to look for Faith who got lost in Dhoby Ghaut station. It is hard to believe it has been four years already.

I still remember the day like it was yesterday.

I still remember the panic and fear felt by my family as we sought to find our autistic firstborn, who had slipped out of mommy's hand during peak hour, and disappeared into the maze that is Dhoby Ghaut station, a station with three lines that could take an autistic child who couldn't talk, anywhere on the island.

I still remember the unusual calm I felt in that storm, as adrenaline and God's grace took over, guiding us towards finding her.

I still remember my phone melting down with Twitter notifications as a community offered help.

I still remember the disbelief in my heart when I received a call from Michael that he found her at Telok Blangah station.

I still remember how bewildered we felt about her journey around the Circle Line.

I still remember the overwhelming relief washing over me when I saw her at the station platform, more than an hour and half after we began the frantic search for her.

To this day, I cannot walk through Dhoby Ghaut station without uneasiness in my heart. My friend Rebecca calls it post-traumatic stress syndrome. I felt it again as I walked through the station with my two younger ones today, four years later, as we went to do some book shopping at Kinokuniya in Takashimaya. Maybe it never totally goes away.

Last week, we went to the park near our home, and had a pleasant afternoon playing at the playground there, as dusk fell.

Faith was at first a little withdrawn, her senses distressed by the sound of the renovations happening at a house near the park. But after a while she calmed down and could be coaxed to play on the swing.

For some reason, today, as I looked at these photos of Faith at the station and Faith at the park swinging beneath a tree, this song by the David Crowder Band kept repeating itself in my head.

All day, the chorus repeating in my head, "Yeah, He loves us, oh, how He loves us / Oh, how He loves us, oh how He loves / So I love…"

"He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

And oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves us all"

For a brief moment, Faith forgets her fears, her anxieties, her sensory overload, and smiles on that swing.

She is a tree, bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.

Tuition Teacher also need Killer Looks ah?

What is this, I can't even…

Let me tell you what was MY ex-teacher mother's Killer Strategy for making me study hard when I was a kid:

She gave me her Killer Look. Also known as "If you don't study hard, I will kill you" Look.

In other news, this assessment book saw it fit to teach students that it is okay to use "revert" as "reply".

Please do the needful and expunge this erroneous use of "revert" from our lives. I beg of you.