Like most Asian families, we never had any handymen, plumbers, electricians, etc. ever step into our house as my dad was all of those in one plus more.

He fixed the cars, turned televisions into a watches, he even built half our house–literally. When we bought the house it was a 3 br, 1 floor house and when people pass by it they look over and think, “why’s there a bigass hotel in the middle of the neighborhood?”

Unfortunately in my case though, the apple flew far, far from the tree no matter how hard he tried to turn me into his little handy boy. Routine fixits around the house usually ended up something like this:

Me: Hey dad need any help there?
Dad: *groan* Uh sure…can you hand me that 3/8″wrench over there?
Me: *pause, reaches* Sure here you go.
Dad: Son…that’s a screwdriver.
Me: Oops!! *puts it back* Sorry, here you go.
Dad: That’s…a hammer.
Me: o_o Isn’t that what you wanted?
Dad: You’re a failure at life. Why don’t you play play your video games*, before I hit you with this?

Yeah it was tough living in his shadow, and those aren’t the kind of words that are very encouraging when you’re 15** years old.

It certainly wasn’t lack of effort then that I’m less handy with tools than an elephant, though I may have taken too many shots to the head with a …wrench(?) as a child which may have contributed to my Mr. Unhandy title.

This past Sunday then while participating at something else I’m a failure at, i.e. playing basketball, I went through the usual routine–walked out of my car, took my keys and left it on the side of the court along with my phone, which under normal circumstances is no problem.

Except it rained, hard.

“Tien isn’t that your phone over there?”
o_o

And that’s when the flashbacks to my childhood began again.

Long story short then, after trying to use my phone to no success, I decided to try out the ol’ put it in rice method, which miraculously restored it to its normal state.

Thank goodness I thought, without my phone I would be unable to conduct important business with it as I normally do.

The only problem though is that when leaving it in rice for an extended period of time, some loose grains may have a tendency to enter the phone.

Ugh. Now where’s that hammer so that I can open up this phone and get rid of these rice grains?

*video game system was built by my dad
**17