G'day! I am finally back from my trip.

Hi guys, I am finally back in London now. It was a very long 34.5 hours door to door from when I left my AirBNB in Melbourne and finally getting into my front door - taking into account flight delays plus a long stopover in Singapore, that was a really punishing journey that I don't want to repeat any time soon. I was actually so tired I did sleep on the flight but was awoken by turbulence and I was like, no please stop the shaking please, I am so tired I want to sleep. But somehow, I got in this morning and actually managed to do some unpacking and cleaning before passing out for 6 hours this afternoon when I thought I was just laying down for a nap. I do have so much to share with you guys so let's get started.

Doing the Bondi to Cogee walk in Sydney

I am happy to say that I didn't once fight with my parents on this trip - not in the week I first went over to Singapore, nor during my brief stop over in Singapore. I think they are learning - I was even baiting them to respond. I don't know why I do that but it was a habit I suppose, to demonstrate how different I am from them. Let me tell you the story: when I was in Melbourne, I went to see the penguins on St Kilda's beach and there were plenty of cute little penguins there. There are nature guardians on the beach who will make sure the visitors observe the rules like not using flash photography. Most people will realize they ought not do it when they are told, but this PRC woman kept doing it and pretended she didn't understand the warnings in English shouted at her by the guardians on the beach. So being me, I went up to her and translated - she clearly didn't give a fuck, she claimed she was just taking photos of the penguins and I couldn't stop her from using her flash. Well, things escalated into an epic shouting match in Mandarin and we traded insults. I then grabbed the phone out of her hands, threatened to throw her shiny new phone into the sea and suddenly she got scared. I told her to take her phone and fuck off before I changed my mind - she then disappeared pretty quickly. Does that make me a nasty bully? Perhaps, but the penguins weren't able to stand up to her and the nice white Australians were too polite to have done what was necessary to drive that Chinese cunt off that beach - perhaps Australians are too afraid of the whole race thing with her being Chinese, so I said, "I'm Chinese, let me deal with her so racism isn't even an issue."

So when I told my parents and nephew the story last night, I told them that in life, you don't want to be afraid of people, you want people to be afraid of you. I was baiting my father - I knew he would have been too afraid to have confronted that woman because he would be like, "what if her husband came to beat you up." But no, my father heard the story and didn't take the bait, he just didn't say anything, nor did my mother. My nephew was the one who was intrigued and he was far more curious about whether I would have carried out my threat, given the consequences of throwing a stranger's phone into the sea. I was impressed - after all, it should that he was thinking through the situation, a complex and difficult social situation and he was analyzing the different outcomes. He was curious to find out if she would have taken my threat seriously enough, or if she would have called my bluff about daring to throw her phone into the sea. Now that is something that most autistic people struggle to do and most of them would only be able to see the event from their own point of view. I thought my father would tell me what I did was wrong and I could then bait him into an argument about how his approach is wrong - but no, he just didn't take the bait and the conversation moved on (probably for the best).

Let me share some stories with you about my parents that make me feel a sense of resignation - I don't know if that is the right word but I hope these stories will make it clearer how I feel about the situation. Firstly, I got an insight about my father's social circles. Firstly, my father had asked me to go to Johor Bahru with him to help him with an appointment at a bank, just in case he had to deal with someone who wasn't Chinese. His confidence in his Malay had fallen over the years and his English was non-existent; so of course, I gladly accompanied him on this trip and it just so turned out that he had two other friends whom he had asked as well to go on this trip - you see, I had a nasty accident whilst playing table tennis with my family which resulted in a badly swollen right heel, so I wasn't even sure if I could walk that day. But as it turned out, I was okay and so the four of us went to JB together. Let's just say I wasn't impressed with my dad's two friends - don't get me wrong, I am very pleased that he had friends who were happy to join him on a trip to JB and I was very polite to his friends; but let me just tell you about this incident which made me just shake my head in despair about just how stupid his friends are and how I am perplexed by the way their dysfunctional friendship somehow works.

This guy - let's call him uncle Wan. My dad mentioned that I was going to Australia and uncle Wan then asked me if I needed a visa for Australia (this conversation took place in Mandarin). I said no, I have a British passport. And he said, you know why? Before I could answer he said, did you know it is because Australia was a British colony and he looked rather pleased with himself that he knew that piece of information. I didn't quite know how to respond because I was shocked that he expected me to be impressed with that - it was the kinda thing I thought my nephew would do, to demonstrate that he had been revising for his history exam but for a grown man in his 70s to do something like that? I felt a mix of sympathy and contempt for him at that point. After all, did it not occur to him that I am clearly a lot better educated than him, have lived and worked in different places around the world and that the fact that Australia was a former British colony was common knowledge? Like seriously, uncle Wan - just how severely autistic are you? And besides, you can never assume that British citizens have visa-free access to all former British colonies - the process for British citizens to get a tourist visa to visit India, one of Britain's greatest former colonies, is notoriously expensive and you'll be dealing with a highly bureaucratic process. But my point is that uncle Wan clearly has zero social skills and was clearly autistic too. Witnessing the way he had a conversation with my father was painful but fascinating at the same time, the same way you watch a Youtube video of a doctor popping huge pimples - call it morbid fascination if you must.

Ever observed two autistic people speaking to each other?

I swear uncle Wan and my father talked at each other rather than talked with each other: neither of them listened to each other but neither of them seemed to care either way. It was not a conversation in the conventional sense but two autistic people simply happy to be in each other's company without really caring about normal social interaction. Uncle Wan mentioned something about the way older people were being treated in Singapore - my father completely ignored that and started making comparisons between Singapore and Malaysia when it came to shopping. This went on for a long time and at first I was barely interested, then after a while, I was like holy shit, is this for real? Welcome to the world of autistic adults - perhaps to the outside world, it makes no sense but to them, well as long as they are completely comfortable, then I say, let them do what they want. Well, at least uncle Wan's autism meant that there were no awkward conversations about whether I am married with kids or not - he told me quite random things about how much he paid for Milo in his local supermarket in Singapore and why he prefers to buy it in Malaysia and where he likes to buy his groceries. Not a single question was directed at me and that left me quite relieved actually. I have mentioned that my mother is autistic too and I suppose my parents have managed to make their relationship work the same way my father seems to be good friends with uncle Wan. I never expected my father to be good friends with a highly educated person like doctor or a lawyer - but in their own weird and wonderful way, he has created a rewarding friendship with uncle Wan because they are both autistic. If they are both happy with the state of their friendship, whom am I to judge then?

Observing this has made me step back and question the way I had been judging my parents: yes they are clearly autistic and lack social skills, but somehow they have managed to create social relationships that have made them happy enough. I used to think that one good thing about my mother being a regular church-goer meant that there would be loads of very kind Christians who would ignore her lack of social skills and offer her a social circle through the church that was based on a Christian desire to spread the gospel rather than any notion of 'friendship' however you wish to define the latter. In fact, she has mentioned quite a few people from her church who have been very kind to her and my father and I can't help but feel that their motivation isn't friendship per se but more a desire to do the Christian thing. I see the way my sisters are the perfect Asian daughters and do everything my parents ask of them without once questioning anything and realized, okay, apart from the one prodigal son in London, everything else is pretty much okay for them in spite of their autism and for them to have somehow created a world where everything makes sense, where they are financially comfortable and even have friends like uncle Wan; well, that's pretty amazing actually. Perhaps I should be rather grateful that despite their autism, most things in their lives did somehow turn out alright in a weird way.

Now before I leave you with the impression that things are somehow weird but wonderful, let me tell you about something that did happen whilst I was in Singapore. I learnt that my father had fallen out with an old friend of many years - it is a long and stupid story that I will leave for another day, but inn a nutshell my father said something totally inappropriate because well, autistic people are tactless and it was a genuine effort to be funny. However, for the record, I can tell you what my dad said was wholly inappropriate and very offensive - one of his old friends told him exactly just that. Now my dad could have easily fixed the situation by apologizing, explaining that he didn't mean to cause offence and it was but a joke that misfired. It was not a big deal and a simple apology would have sufficed. But no, my dad being severely autistic couldn't see things from another person's point of view and he only saw things from his point of view - so he went on the offensive and accused his old friend of all kinds of horrible things and well, that friendship is well and truly destroyed. I did ask my mother about the incident as I was left in disbelief that my father had destroyed such an old friendship over this - all my mother could say was, "aiyah, you know he is liddat one lah, what to do?" I suppose she had expected his friends to realize what my father was like and had hoped for them to just let this one go, but sadly, that's not how things work in the real world. His own family members may put up with his bullshit, but not his friends. Not everyone has an infinite amount of patience and understanding for autistic people's irrational behaviour - I'm afraid the onus is on us to fit in and not the other way around. So whilst things are not as bad as I thought, the situation is far from perfect.

Am I painting a pretty picture to allow me to leave Singapore with a smile this time? Yes. I posted a picture of me in a playground with my nephew on Instagram and quite a few people commented on my big smile in that photo, how I looked so 'joyful' (that's the word an old classmate used). But of course there are problems, problems that I am not directly involved with. You see my mother is being increasingly paranoid of the maid - I was informed that her behaviour is not unusual in Singapore, rather many older Singaporean women over the age of 60 are so worried about the maid trying to seduce the man of the house, well in this case, my father. When I was told that my mother once threw a huge hissy fit because she caught the maid smiling at my father, I laughed out loud - where do I even begin? I smile at people all the time, it is the friendly thing to do: when I walk into a restaurant and meet the waitress, the first thing she does is smile and says hello. Anyone in the service industry smiles - who wants to be greeted by a waitress who frowns when she brings you your meal? That's what us normal humans do. But for my mother to interpret something as innocent and normal as a smile as an attempt at seduction, oh my, now that's just ridiculous but it makes me wonder why my mother has so little faith in her own marriage, that she doesn't even trust my father to be around other women who happen to smile? Now my sister has told me a long list of crazy accusations my mother has made about the maids trying to seduce my father - each one more ridiculous than the next - and she made me promise not to repeat those accusations for comedic effect on my blog for that would only make my mother look like a crazy woman. But it suffices to say that the maid's most innocent, mundane and normal gestures are interpreted as efforts to seduce my father. My mother has hated every single maid that had ever stepped foot in her house and has gone out of her way to find fault all of them.

When is a smile more than a smile?

On one hand, yeah I find it all pretty hilarious (my dad is such an old man, the thought of him being seduced by the maid just makes me roll over with laughter), but on the other hand, it is no laughing matter because I realized my sister is ridden with guilt over the whole matter. You see, when my mother tells my sister, "the maid is trying to seduce your husband", my sister laughs it off because she is a very beautiful, attractive, intelligent and confident woman with a great husband. She completely trusts her husband. So for my mother to get this paranoid, she must think that my father has stopped finding her attractive a long time ago and she is less exciting to look at than a young Indonesian maid in her 20s - which is a pretty tragic state of affairs, but what can I say? I'm 41 and the youngest of three children, you work out my mother's age. For my mother to go through life feeling so paranoid, well, it does upset my sister and I. After all, my sister doesn't want my mother to have to do all the housework at her age - hence the maid, but instead of relaxing with the help of the maid, she is now paranoid about the maid all the time seducing my father. I have been shocked at stories of Singaporean women mistreating their maids and I am appalled that my mother has become one of them. This goes against everything I believe in and it does make my mother look like a monster in my eyes. I am only hoping that my mother is going senile rather than becoming a total monster because of what happened when I was in Australia.

My mother was recently so convinced that the maid had broken a glass pane in a cabinet and scattered broken glass on the floor in an effort to murder/maim my mother, so she could seduce my father. There was absolutely no evidence that the maid actually did anything wrong and the cabinet in question was a very old piece of furniture that dated back to my childhood. The maid hadn't even been in the house when the broken glass was found. Both my sister and I are convinced that the glass pane broke on its own, because the cabinet had simply eventually caved in after so many years. Nonetheless, my mother interrogated the maid for hours, threatened to call the police and told her she would be sent to jail for a long time - she told the maid that no one would believe her because she was just a maid and if she didn't admit to it and beg for mercy, my mother would let the Singaporean police deal with her. Under duress, the maid broke down and admitted to breaking the cabinet but she then told my sister she had absolutely nothing to do with the broken glass pane. My sister believed the maid and for the record, I totally believe the maid as well. Yet my parents are vexed that their own children would choose to believe a maid over their own parents: well, but they demand unconditional trust from us but we both realize how severely autistic and totally irrational they can be whilst the maid is actually a pretty honest witness. The whole situation is a mess - I don't know how other Singaporeans in my situation would deal with such paranoid elderly folks. What would my mother expect my sister to do - to give up her well-paid, respectable job to clean and cook for them? Who's going to pay the bills then, without my sister's salary? Heck, my sister even tried hiring the fattest, ugliest maid there was in the agency, but even that didn't improve the situation as my mother isn't reasonable.

Like the penguins on the beach, maids in Singapore can't speak up either.

Okay so that's it from me for now. I will start a series of blog posts to let you know about my impressions of Australia and New Zealand. So much to tell you about my time down under, akan datang, that will come soon. Thanks for reading.