Handymen

I have met many friends over the past few weeks who seem to have the utmost fascination as to how I am still not bored out of my skull. They know that I do tuition, rollerblading, writing, reading and gaming these days, but they are still amazed as to how I manage to fill up my hours with meaningful tasks.

My reply usually is, you just need to know where to look.

Take for example today. Against all odds, with only 13+ years of formal education on my side, I managed to outwit and ultimately crush a longtime foe of the House of Leong. And no, it was not a cockroach.

It was a grueling battle. When I was locked in mortal combat, straining to gain the upper hand every second of the way, I was hardly cognizant of the way time was slipping away in the real world. Not a moment passed when fatigue did not threaten to overcome my ailing body.

The moment a strategy I was trying to employ showed signs of failing, I would scramble to construct a new game plan whilst maintaining a calm and collected exterior. No doubt, every whit of the self-mastery I gained in the Army was crucial in avoiding a most dire outcome.

In the end, I stood victorious over my fallen foe, victim of an eleventh-hour stroke of genius. Yes, I had done it. I had outwitted a toilet bowl.

For all of you just BURSTING to laugh at me, go lift the cover off your toilet bowl and have a peek inside first. How many parts can you name? Can you work out how the mechanism functions? More importantly, if it was spoilt, could you fix it?

My mum had been the first to suspect that something was not too right with the bowl. On closer inspection, I was aghast to find that an Error 204 had occurred. In layman terms : A Systemic Mis-Alignment of the Input Triggering Terminal and the Tension-Sensitive Hydraulic Output Sphincter.

Or, just in case you're not older than six, the handle and the pump were disconnected. My money's on the fact that there are a number of you who are already lost, yet who still laughed at me a few paragraphs ago.

What occurred to me was this. One day, when I move into a house of my own, I will be assuming full responsibilities as the resident Handy Man. My wife would have probably stated this as a pre-requisite in her pre-nuptial, and in any case too many people underestimate the importance of being able to maintain their own house.

I shudder and pray I never degenerate to the point where I have to call the plumber or electrician or gardener for every single little thing. My mum was right way back when she forced me to clear the maggots (see previous post), citing the need for me to learn to upkeep the house.

And by golly she was also right 13 years ago, when she warned me that if I didn't study hard enough I wouldn't even have the brains to fix a toilet.

Mums can be so right at times, don't you think?