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Me: "I just wanna pick up some toothpaste for my trip. Since we are here, maybe you call home and find out what else we are short of."
Wife: "Ok."
We walk out of the supermarket with $106 of groceries.
Update: I didn't get my toothpaste in the end because they don't sell travel-sized ones. So annoying.
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I was fooling around with stickers and gifs in my iPhone's iMessage and made some new Kim Huat gifs in the Tumblr iMessage app, feat. Kim Chan.
I think it is time for a new set of Kim Huat Gifs. The last time we did it, many of you seemed to like it.
You can see the new set of Gifs at Giphy:
http://giphy.com/channel/mrbrownlah
Or if you are the kind who die die must download it and own it, you can download a zipped folder of all the new gifs at:
Spread the love!
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Kim Huat shares his love for life-saving.
(Subtitles available, turn on Captions if needed.)
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/ZFMwRGzF7KA
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Me, trying to pull out the key Faith broke inside my bedroom door handle: "Darn it, my tools can't get it out."
Wife: "Here, try this pair of pliers!"
Me: "Ah good! Thanks. You know, I used to have needle-nose pliers just like these in my toolbox but I can't seem to find them."
Wife: "Oh, these are yours, from your toolbox. I er, borrowed them some time ago."
Me: ( ..•˘___˘• .. )
At one point, I even called the locksmith. Bear in mind, my iPhone was inside the locked master bedroom. So I came up with the idea of using my Apple Watch to call him.
"Siri, call Locksmith."
It worked! The Apple Watch connected to the iPhone inside the room via Bluetooth and dialed.
"Hello?" said the Locksmith, somewhat loudly.
"Is this Ah Boy? My key is broken inside the lock of my master bedroom!" I said, into the Watch.
"What kind of lock is it?" he said, impatiently, sounding like he was preoccupied with another job.
"It is the handle type of lock, you installed it for me the last time another key broke inside my old lock," I replied.
"I can't tell like that, you take a photo and send to me."
"But my phone is in the locked room, and I…" I tried to explain, but he hung up.
Magnet didn't work. Because the key wasn't made of magnetic metal. In the end, I managed to tease the broken half of the key out with surgical precision, after trying for half an hour with different tools and pliers. In the end, I teased the broken key out with two nail files.
I held the broken key in my hand and raised it high. like I just pulled out King Arthur's Excalibur from the Stone.
Small victories like this make a simple man happy. And also saving the ninety bucks that it would have cost me to get Ah Boy to come down and drill out the old lock, and replace it with a new one.
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Kim Huat does his patriotic duty and gives his two cents on the 2017 National Day song. (Subtitles available, turn on Captions if needed.)
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/wgWbCeFnwwY
Media link:
Channel 8 News: mrbrown挑战下个国庆主题曲创作人 不要再用“新加坡，和谐，国家”等词
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Old Days Situation:
1. Someone cuts your lane or
2. Never gives up bus/MRT seat or
3. Behaves in a generally lao lan way.
Old Days Response:
1. Exchange some angry words or ignore it.
2. Forget about it the next minute.
3. Carry on with life.
Nowadays Situation:
1. Someone cuts your lane or
2. Never gives up bus/MRT seat or
3. Behaves in a generally lao lan way.
Nowadays Response:
1. Exchange some angry words.
2. Get into fisticuffs.
2, Take each other’s photo with smartphone.
3. Take each other’s video with smartphone.
4. Deploy in-car cam/GoPro video footage.
5. Go home and edit all collected media into an epic 3-hour-long Steven Spielberg movie.
6. Upload the entire video with annotations to Facebook and/or YouTube.
7. Write accompanying long essay about the incident.
8. Ask for CSI.
9. CSI the wrong people.
10. Publish information of wrongly-CSI-ed people on Facebook and clickbait websites of questionable journalistic repute.
11. CSI again for the real culprit because the first CSI was wrong.
12. Make police report.
13. Invite commenters who say these people must be foreigners and that Ah Tiong/FT Indian/Chow Ang Moh are all like this and should lose job/lose business/lose employment pass/be deported.
14. Blame Gahmen for letting FT trash like these Ah Tiong/FT Indian/Chow Ang Moh in.
15. New public dispute arises, old one is forgotten.
16. Rinse and repeat.
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Kim Huat investigates the dark world of baby formula. (Subtitles available! Turn on Captions!)
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/XAseOzqrfDI
Media link:
Channel 8 News: 【本地奶粉课题】Mr Brown视频“探讨奶粉界黑暗面
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I am home again, after a few months of continuous travel. The wife immediately deployed me to manage Faith on Sunday as she sat down with the two younger ones for exam revision.
My job was to keep Faith from getting bored, and really, there is only so much an iPod playing her favorite YouTube videos can do. You eventually need to give her a car ride and some outside air.
So I took her for her car ride, and then for a walk at nex mall. My jet-lagged mind decided that was a good idea.
nex. Mall.
On. A. Sunday. Afternoon.
Yeah, I know right?
She was fine, at first. She dragged me around to see stuff. Then at a particular corner of the mall, I think her autistic senses got overwhelmed and she decided to run into the massage chair shop and sit at the cashier counter.
"So sorry!" I said apologetically to the staff there, rushing to get her out of there.
"不用紧，慢慢来！" (Don't worry about it, take your time!) one kind lady staff said, smiling, as I tried to get Faith out of the chair and out the shop. Pulling her off the chair only made things worse, and Faith lay down on the floor, refusing to budge.
"Come, Faith, stand up. We go home, ok?" I said, trying to coax her off the floor. Then after a few tries, she listened, and got up. She took my hand, and we walked/ran to the entrance. But when she reached the line separating the shop and the common corridor, it was like she hit an invisible wall and she u-turned, making her way back to the cashier's counter.
More coaxing from me, and she finally made it past the force field, dashing away from the shop before I could say thank you to the patient and understanding ladies at the shop. Down the broken escalator we went (nex, when are you going to fix that stupid escalator that is causing a bottleneck every time???), and then out the building to the open space.
I thought we could make it all the way to the open-air car park where the car was parked, but she decided to detour to the playground. And then she sat down at the benches, as if to say, "I am so done with the sensory overload and I am going to sit here and rest."
She shook off her shoes and made herself at home.
Once more, I gave her my inspirational speech that would have moved men to tears and the downtrodden to fight for their freedom. In my most William Wallace voice, I said, "Come Faith, wear your shoes. Let's go home. The car is just around the corner."
She frowned at me, her shoes still off.
"Come Faith, wear your shoes. Let's go. The car is so near and Mommy and your siblings are waiting to go to Popo house. You like Popo's house, right?"
It took a few tries but she finally put her shoes back on, and followed me back to the car.
My friend Robert, whose son is also autistic, commented that his son teaches him every day he is not in control.
I agree with Robert. It is a profound lesson for a control freak like me. Robert went on to say of his son, "If he wants to stay put I sit next to him and stay until he decides it is OK to go."
Like Robert with his son, I have found that getting physical with Faith only makes things worse. It gets harder too, as she is now bigger and stronger.
You also learn to develop a very thick skin, because these sensory meltdown episodes happen in full view of the public very often, so you appreciate it tremendously when people show understanding and acceptance.
We are mindful of Faith's condition when we go out, but at the same time, we do not want to completely shut her away, out of this world. So we try, a little at the time, to expose her to places where there are new people, new noises, and different stimuli, in the hope that her autistic senses learn to cope and adapt.
In the process, we, her family, also learn a little more about ourselves. We learn to let go. We learn there is a new normal. We learn to cope and adapt, to change the things we can change, and to accept the things we cannot.
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