The Jason Hahn Files: Here's Why Your World In Mine Star Richie Koh Should Be Named Brand Ambassador For SK-II

For weeks now, Sharyn has been pestering Saffy to watch Your World in Mine. 

“But you dun make mistake and watch Your Hand in Mine, okay? That one is  different show.”

“Well noted, Shazz!” Saffy said brightly. “I am on it!”

She went straight home, put her feet up on the couch and hit play on The Mandalorian. “Seriously,” she told me, “why would I ever watch an HDB drama

when I can watch cute Baby Yoda swallow an entire live frog?”

I said Amanda had watched the first two episodes of Your World is Mine the previous night and before she knew it, she’d binged on another six episodes and the sun was coming up.

Saffy hit pause on the Mandalorian in the middle of a shootout in an Outer Rim cantina, and turned to me. “Really?” You could see the cogs in her mind turn at moderate speed. Despite her general low opinion of Harvard graduates, Saffy has always respected Amanda’s razor-sharp sense for being exactly on trend. This, after all, was the woman who, after five minutes, had declared Better Call Saul was the best show on TV. 

“Bob Odenkirk is seriously hot,” Amanda said firmly. “If he just got a better haircut and put on a bit of muscle, he’d be kicking ass in an action movie.” Of course, no one believed her, but when Nobody premiered, it only confirmed what Saffy had always known - beneath all that hair and Prada wardrobe, our flatmate was a TV idiot savant. 

Which is why later that evening, when all the dishes had been done, she forced me to sit down with her to watch the first episode of Your World is Mine.

“But I was going to watch The Book of Bobba Fett!” I whined. 

“We’ll just watch one episode!” Saffy said, her superb bosom rising half-heartedly as she hit play.

Halfway through, I turned to her. “Tell me why I’m watching two people try to coax a snail onto a leaf? If no one eats that snail in the next two seconds, I’m going to be very annoyed!”

“Tian Cai is not Baby Yoda!” Saffy said, her eyes glued to the screen. “He’s a special-needs boy.”

I was astonished. “You actually know his name?”

Saffy shifted on the couch. “I can read subtitles. Plus he’s super cute! And he has such nice skin! SK-II should be signing him up!”

Three episodes later, I’d given up any pretence of watching and had pulled out my iPad to watch Prey. As I later posted on Instagram, “There’s something very satisfying about the Predator bleeding fluorescent blood!” 

Meanwhile, Saffy was transfixed by her screen, her lips moving every so often as she read the subtitles. The next day, over lunch at the new Market Street Hawker Centre, Your World in Mine was all she and Sharyn could talk about. 

“Very good, right?” Sharyn said, her Coke bottle-thick spectacles fogging over with the rare emotion of being right. “I told you! The acting is so good!”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Saffy said. “The mother Jia Yun could do with a bit more emotional range. Even when she’s supposed to be happy, she looks like she’s about to pee in her pants in public and is desperately holding it in.”

Sharyn coughed up some of her laksa soup. “So bad, you!” she said, pointing her chopsticks at Saffy. “But true lah. And then hor, where got people go to bed with full make-up on, one?”

“Is she going to have an affair with her new boss?”

“Aiyoh, no lah! This is MediaCorp drama, okay, not Euphoria!”

Unconvinced, Saffy pursed her lips. “Well, he’s up to no good. No boss is that nice!”

Sharyn looked around the busy hawker centre and leant in. “Ay, I really like Richie Koh!” she hissed. 

“Which one is he?”

“Tian Cai!”

“Oh. Me, too!” Saffy whispered back. “But he’s a fetus! This sort of thing could get you arrested for child molestation!”

“Please lah, he 29 orredi! He totally legal!”

Saffy let out a sigh. “He’s 29? Really? But he looks like he’s 17. Good lord, he’s such a good actor!”

“Hannor. Plus he got really good skin,” Shary said, slurping another mouthful of laksa. “SK-II should make him ambassador!”

“That’s what I told Jason!”

Of course, Saffy couldn’t wait to tell Amanda.

“Wait till you get to the coma scenes!” Amanda said. “I couldn’t stop crying!"

Saffy sucked in her breath. “Someone gets into a coma? Who?”

“I can’t tell you! But it’s in episode 19! Where are you at?

“Tian Xi and Jin Hui are looking for Mao Dan!” Saffy said, surprising even herself by her sudden fluency in Chinese names. 

“Oh, you’ve got ages to go. Have fun. I’m watching The Mandalorian now! Hey, are you okay? Why are you coughing like that?”

Watch the first episode of Your World in Mine here: