The Smartest Man in Singapore

Is this the smartest man in Singapore?

I will leave it up to others to decide definitively, but will share a tale that may give back-ground thus enabling a considered decision. The person's name for this exercise will be Mower-man Mike who is one of the recent arrivals to Singapore. Like a number of us, he and wife Deb have taken up residence in a condominium and is setting about tending to some of the maintenance issues the locals appear able to ignore.

First on his list was getting the hot water to work which ended up being a simple fix of turning the switch, of which there were more than one, on. This type of fix is always the easiest. Other folk have come up against the problem of disconnected services, such as gas, which have not been as simple to fix.

For example. At home, when the gas or electricity is "disconnected" all hardware tends to remain in place and it is simply an administrative task to change ownership of the account and read a meter. In Singapore when they come to 'disconnect the gas' they really disconnect the gas. As one of us found when the gas did not work and the maintenance man was called to assess the problem.

Due to an inability on the part of one party to understand Singapore-English and on the other party, Aussie-English, the only way it could be explained was to take her down to the basement to point out the missing meter and the taped-up gas pipe amongst all the other meters for each unit.

Back to Mower-man Mike (MmM). At home, Mike was used to having a dual-flush toilet. The problem in his condo was, he couldn't work out how to make the dual-flush work. There was only one button on the top of the cistern. But wait, what's this? There was a metal lever affixed to the wall beside the cistern. The lever moved back-and-forth through an arc of a few inches. It must be used to determine how much water is used in the dual-flush cistern. But at the same time it appeared not to be making any difference to the amount of water being dispensed.

A visit to the building manager's office elicits the suggestion that a plumber be called

The plumber duly arrives and, in barely understood, accented English inquires as to the problem, "Good morning sir, I am Prabhakar* and I am here to be fixing the plumbing problem." MmM takes Prabhakar to the en-suite and as best he can, given his own lack of second and third-language skills, explains the problem. There being, at this point, some confusion with the concept of 'dual-flush'.

After moving the lever about a bit and looking into the cistern Prabhakar turns to MmM and says "...OK sir, I think I am seeing your problem. I will be getting some tools and be back to fixing it up for you, right away. Is that your only problem sir?" MmM replies in the affirmative and is relieved that the issue will be resolved.

Thirty minutes later, following much hammering, drilling, grunting and sweating MmM is called back to the en-suite. With a flourish, Prabhakar points to the lever. "All fixed sir", he says

MmM takes hold of the 'lever' and attempts to move it. Nothing happens. In fact, it does not budge at all. MmM looks across at Prabhakar questioningly. Prabhakar then takes hold of a roll of toilet paper located nearby. With delicate precision he gently slides the roll down over the 'lever', thus revealing its true purpose.

A chrome-plated, wall-mounted, ergonomically designed......toilet roll holder.

Moments after Prabhakar had made his exit MmM looked out of his lounge-room window, down at the pathway below. There, laughing hysterically into his mobile phone was someone who looked remarkably like Prabhakar.

Yes, it was Prabhakar. Something had obviously amused him.

* Prabhakar - (Hindi) light-maker, revealer of truth, pointer out of the bleeding obvious.