Ya Hui Loses AirPods At Changi Airport, They End Up In Australia
As good practice, it is always wise to look after your belongings wherever you go — even in Singapore.
While it is apparently safe to leave your laptop at a Starbucks unattended for hours, it’s no excuse to take this safety for granted and be careless with your possessions.
This was the lesson that Singaporean actress Ya Hui learnt recently.
Source: @yahuiyh on Instagram
She was filming a show at Jewel Changi Airport when she lost her brand-new AirPods. Using Apple’s ‘Find My’ function, she tracked them all the way to Perth, Western Australia.
After posting about the incident on her Instagram Stories, a follower actually managed to find the lost AirPods and retrieve them for her.
AirPods misplaced at Jewel Changi Airport
The 35-year-old shared her experience with MS News — and, man, was it a roller-coaster!
According to Ya Hui, she was at a shoot outside Shaw Theatres Jewel the day the incident took place.
At around 12pm, she took a break from filming to get her hairstyle changed for the next scene.
That was when she took out the pouch containing the new AirPods Pro that she had used less than 10 times.
The pouch also contained other essentials, such as her hand cream and medicated oil.
An hour later, after lunch, she went to retrieve her pouch as she needed to use her medicated oil. However, it was nowhere in sight.
Her personal assistant even went around the area to look for it, but they could not find it.
“It’s my own carelessness, so I don’t blame anyone because I should have checked [on my belongings],” the actress said.
Ya Hui then approached mall management to ask if they could check the surveillance footage to get an idea of where she might have misplaced the pouch.
She was told that they can only do that after an official police report has been filed.
Apple’s ‘Find My’ app tracks AirPods to Terminal 3 & stops
After her shoot ended at around 5pm, she boarded a Grab with a fellow actor. That was when she received a notification from her phone’s ‘Find My’ application.
Ya Hui was shocked to learn that her AirPods, presumably in the pouch, were at Terminal 3 of Changi Airport. They remained there for about an hour.
As there was someone else on the Grab with her, she did not want to inconvenience them by asking the driver to turn back.
When Ya Hui and her colleague reached their office, she wanted to go back to the airport herself to track down her missing items.
But before she could do that, the app already stopped updating at around 6.30pm. This suggested that the person who had her AirPods had left the country by then.
Image courtesy of Ya Hui
Ya Hui lodges police report regarding lost AirPods that ended up in Perth
It was then that Ya Hui decided to file a police report about her lost items online. At around 9pm, the police called her back regarding the incident.
The actress commented that for lost-and-found cases, it might be more efficient if mall managements allow access to surveillance footage without the need for an official police report.
Not only would they be able to look for the missing items immediately, but they would not have to trouble the police, who are already busy with more important cases.
The next morning, the first thing she did was check if there were any updates from the ‘Find My’ app.
To her surprise, there was one – the AirPods were now at Delta Road.
She was relieved at first, thinking that they were at Singapore’s Delta Road. Unfortunately, that feeling was short-lived.
Upon a closer look, Ya Hui realised the rest of the address stated that it was in the suburbs of Perth, Western Australia.
Image courtesy of Ya Hui
The road just happened to have the same name as the one in Singapore.
Follower in Perth offers to pick up lost AirPods
Taking to her Instagram Stories, Ya Hui recounted the wild experience to her followers.
A female follower who happened to live in Perth offered to go get her AirPods for her since she lived nearby.
Ya Hui turned down the offer, figuring that it might interfere with police investigations.
Plus, she was a bit paiseh to have someone she wasn’t familiar with doing such a huge favour for her.
The actress admitted that she should have let this matter go by now and let her AirPods remain lost. But with current technology, she was extremely curious to find out what exactly happened to them.
Ya Hui then took the opportunity to urge fans to always be careful and never take things for granted.
“We always think that [in Singapore], people will return what does not belong to them,” she mused.
“I’d think that because I would do that for people, they would do the same for me too. But now I realised that, well, some people don’t.”
Another follower actually retrieves AirPods
Following our first interview with Ya Hui, we thought that was the end of the story.
But, in an unexpected turn of events, the actress reached out to us with yet another shocking update — someone else managed to track down the person who took the AirPods with them to Perth from Changi Airport.
Ya Hui gleefully shared with MS News that the female follower who initially offered to retrieve her AirPods told her about this new development.
Apparently, a Singaporean man residing in Perth saw the media coverage of Ya Hui’s Instagram Stories about the incident and went knocking on the door of the place based on the map she had posted.
The female follower then told Ya Hui to check her message requests from the man. He had messaged her when he got the AirPods and was waiting for her to see them.
Ya Hui was told that the Good Samaritan had posted about it on a private Facebook group.
He said in a comment that he thought he should help out a fellow countryman and also “preserve Perth’s reputation of kind and friendly people”.
While Ya Hui was very lucky to get her items back, the lesson still stands: always keep an eye out for your belongings.
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Featured image adapted from Ya Hui on Facebook. Screenshot courtesy of Ya Hui.
