mrbrown: L'infantile terrible of Singapore

Insing column: mrbrown and the flood

Update: The link to this week's column is not working at the moment. I will find out why and update you all once I get a clearer picture. Thank you for your kind patience and sorry for the inconvenience.


Latest weekly Insing column is "mrbrown and the flood"

Excerpt:

I think we need to appoint a Minister of Freak Incidents soon.

After all, who is going to deal with the kind of incidents like the recent flooding of Bukit Timah? According to the authorities, the kind of rainfall that can cause such flooding was a 'freak' event that occurs only once in 50 years.

Environment Minister Yaacob Ibrahim even said, "We knew the diversion canal was not big enough to take this."

That was very reassuring to know.

I can imagine someone saying, "You know, those canals are not going to be able to take very heavy rainfall."

And someone else in charge might have said, "We know. But what to do? We cannot make the biggest canals to accommodate the biggest rainfall possible. We can't cater to freaks. Anyway, once in a half-century only lah." (cont'd)

VW Polo Non-Stop Weekend: East Coast Park

Our final video from the 30 Hour Non-Stop Weekend Rally. The East Coast Park crowd was great. There was a staring contest for the goodie bags premiums, and I also showed off my er, reverse parking skillz.

the mrbrown show: everybody loves Singapore

Other countries are inspired by China's gifts to us! Find out what we get at mrbrownshow.com!

VW Polo 30-hour Non-Stop Weekend: Sunday at East Coast

We got a little less than two hours sleep before we setting off for the next leg of our rally. We did manage to catch a lovely sunrise at our cove. Sigh, such a nice luxury catamaran we were on but so little time. Here are a few shots to make you drool.

Our first stop for Sunday was East Coast Park. After some McD's for breakfast so we started our meet the people session (we WERE in white). The response at East Coast was great. People came up to chat with us, ask us about our drive so far, and to check out the Polo. I signed an autograph for Angus, a young fan, and we took a photograph with his family.

Ryan was most eloquent and helpful with folks who wanted to know about the car. I swear he can be a car salesman. I think his liking the car himself helped him to articulate what was neat about our Polo.

We made our way to Katong Village next, where we had lunch in Katong (delightful Marmite chicken and char siew there), then we were off to Bishan Park to give out goodie bags to joggers and folks walking their dogs. We made a stop at AMK Central too and could not resist queuing for the Bubble tea at Koi Cafe, near AMK Hub.

I think I got a little too ambitious with my order and asked for a large for Ryan and me. I ended up with enough pearls in my large Bubble Plum Green Tea to be a meal. Ryan had a large Bubble Milk Tea and also had trouble finishing it.

Benjamin Heng, Carolina and the rest of our rally team very quickly gave out our goodie bags to the shoppers at AMK Central.

With that done, we headed back the Volkswagen centre, our final checkpoint. It was a zoo there, with people waiting to test drive the Polo. Even our rally car was quickly pressed into service to help with the test drives.

I wanted to have some ice cream or three at the showroom but my brain was too tired to even think of asking for a scoop. And also, I was still burping bubble tea pearls.

Time to koonz. I will share more photos and video when I am sufficiently rested from our 30-hour adventure. I will probably be dreaming of 7-speed twin clutch gearboxes and bubble tea pearls.

VW Polo 30-hour Non-Stop Weekend: our Sunday schedule

Our rally is still on! Here are our checkpoints for today (Sunday, 22nd Nov 2009):

• 8am: East Coast Park (Carpark in front of McDonald's
• 12am: Katong Village (Carpark)
• 1pm: Bishan Park (Carpark E-17)
• 2pm: AMK Central
• 4pm: Volkswagen Centre Singapore, 247 Alexandra Road

Ryan and I are looking forward to meeting you all!

Once again, do twitter us during with fun weekend ideas! You can twitter me at @mrbrown!

Find out more at polo.sg!

VW Polo Non-Stop Weekend: Dempsey Hill, St James and Zouk

After a hearty dinner of Teochew porridge at Ye Shanghai (on Henderson Road, opposite Henderson Secondary School), Ryan, Benjamin Heng and I made our way to Dempsey Hill to show off the Polo to diners there.

Carolina was already there, preparing the goodie bags to give away. We also made stops at St James and Zouk. My wife did not believe me when I told her earlier that I was probably not going to have time to enter said clubs because I would be busy showing people the car. Sigh.

So many beautiful people at Zouk, man.

After our Zouk visit, we had a bit of supper at a little past midnight. By now, I would have been up for 19 hours already (I got up at 6am on Saturday). We had one more stop to make. Can you guess from the photos where we are?

It's 3.27am now. I think it is time to get an hour or two of shuteye before our second leg begins. Catch you guys after a few zzz's. Ok, just one or two z's.

VW Polo Non-Stop Weekend: Mount Faber and Sentosa

Ryan and I drive up Mount Faber and later drive into Sentosa where we give out VW Polo goodie bags.

I have an important job to do. Find out what at the end of the vid.

VW Polo Non-Stop Weekend: take a look at the boot

Meet my travel buddy Ryan and emcee Ben, who are part of our VW Polo Non-Stop Weekend rally. I will see their faces for 30 hours as we drive around Singapore.

I thought you might also like to see how a VW Polo boot looks like haha!

the mrbrown show: a fan music video of the Mosquito Song

Woah, I did not realise someone had gone and made a great animated music video of our Mosquito Song parody of "Home", which originally came out of this rehearsal footage.

Very very nice.

VW Polo Non-Stop Weekend: Mount Faber and Sentosa!

Ryan and I drove up to Mount Faber next. That was a nice test of the Polo's engine, I thought. The car took us up with no problem. And I am not that light, you know that, right?

Ryan also took the opportunity to try the Hill Hold feature. On a slope, if you stop and lift your foot off the brake pedal, the car is supposed to continue activating the brakes for 3 seconds as you transition over to the accelerator pedal, to keep the car firmly on the slope without rolling back.

Did it work? Yep. But I wished Ryan had chosen to try this without me in it.

I know what you're thinking, what are two grown men doing up in Mount Faber? Romantic as the view was, once again, I was with the wrong person (like our Ratatouille Paris trip). I would have preferred seeing the view here with my wife.

Our next stop was Sentosa, and we gave out lots of goodie bags at the the Imbiah Lookout, Beach Station, and Palawan Beach.

We drove past the big Merlion and it loomed over us.

We were a little worried about the weather but so far we've been very blessed. When we broke for lunch at 2pm, the rains came. Then when we finished lunch, the rain stopped.

Nice.