year of the golden pig

it's chinese lunar new year today.

and i'm doing nothing. literally nothing. i got headache at back of my head because i laid down too much. i expect the veins there are having difficulty letting the blood through from being sandwiched by the head and pillows all day.

my friend called and asked me if i'm going out and i said no. well i have no one to go out with. all my chinese friends are of course busy at the moment criss-crossing the island with 2 oranges in hand visiting relatives.

hmm. i just realized how stereotype my pool of friends are, inspite of living in this multi-racial country.

i wish i have my car now. i could take it for a spin. ok maybe not a spin, i don't think i'll hit even 80km/h anytime soon. just a normal drive through and maybe practise doing parkings.

because my last refresher driving course last week was a disaster. i've written that i performed badly under inspection, but this time i got a nasty officer so it was even worse. i felt no better than a down sindrome person.

how the hell could i be on the wrong side of the road and never noticed it? seriously tell me.

and the officer was like, 'ok what's the big mistake here'? and it took me like a minute before i realized. for my defense, there wasn't any other vehicles on the road so how should i know? i could just be having deja-vu driving in US roads or something.

i did horribly at parking too. we were doing it at this almost deserted car park. it was dark, and i couldn't even see the parking lines, so i kept on crossing the parking boundaries. the officer could just let me know verbally, but no, he chose to ask both of us out of the car to inspect the lines, and gloated at my mistake.

to think i spend almost $200 for these stupid classes and all i got was lost of confidence.

anyway, i'm not gonna be overly concern about that. in movies, ppl who had not fly a plane before could be taught how to land just by a mere phone call. cars should be a lot easier, right?

this car thingy is getting more expensive than i thought. the darn COE dropped to less than half its value, which means i'm paying the car company almost $6000 more instead of locking it up in my COE. it almost never dropped that much before, and it has to be when i'm buying?

now my chinese horoscope that states a lucky year for me in 2007 sounds like a mean joke.

my kl friends will come to singapore this tuesday and they will be staying at my place until they find their own place. it's weird thinking there'll be ppl staying next to my room. i must remember to close the door when i shower and pay more attention to what i'm wearing at home.

well at least, i won't get headache from sleeping too much when they are around.


"happy chinese lunar new year"


...ed

too fast too furious

i maybe slow in making decisions, but once i make one i usually get it done fast.

like the time when i bought my house. i selected the first one the agent showed me. i mean, it's nice and affordable, what's there to be fussy about? it was love first sight. and everybody knows that always lead to a life happily ever after.

plus, what if it was snatched away by other buyers while i was busy implementing my customer right to bitch about other choices?

then recently there was time when i decided to convert my malaysian driving licence to singapore licence. the moment i got the extract from malaysian jpj, i took an urgent half day off work in next available day to settle the conversions process.

nevermind that half way through, i had to take cab back from the traffic police in ubi to my house to search for the entry permit and old passports that they required, then quickly take a return cab to resume with the application. what was missing were a dirty blond partner in khakis carrying backpacks and cameras frantically following us around, and i'd be positive i'm running for the amazing race asia snatching clues between simei and ubi.

everything went on smoothly after that, i almost forgot about the unpleasantness of that unfriendly malay counter lady the moment she handed me the temporary licence. seriously, she could be a flesh-covered cyborg, programmed to process applications with zero sense of normal human communication, i wouldn't know the difference.

anyway, so there was i with a valid licence to conquer singapore roads in my hand. i felt like standing on the edge of some tall buildings, with both hands firm on my hips, and go 'hahahahaha'... with my red cape furiously being blown by the wind.

comfort driving registration counters were just downstairs, so i figured i might as well signed up for a refresher course.

ok the truth is, i'm not at all confident yet to conquer singapore roads. or any other roads for that matter. it has been ages since i first got my licence. i mean, ace of base and richard marx were still largely popular then for crying out loud.

except during those time in idaho last year when i drove for a couple of months, but it was a left hand drive, and the roads there weren't anywhere condensed and packed like singapore roads. i could be driving in the wrong lane for half an hour and never know my mistake.

plus, they have like, 3 motorcycles in the entire state. not exactly road-challenging if u asked me.

so i went for my first driving session yesterday morning 10.20am. the instructor was a malay, who wore a black sunglass all along. it made me more nervous, like i was being interrogated or something. like he was gonna wait till i screw something up, when he'd take out his gun and say, 'man you're so busted'.

i always hate being evaluated. i'd be self-concious until my intelligence level dropped a few notches. that was why instead of putting the gear to D-drive, i put it to N-normal and complained that the car wasn't moving. then, instead of the left-right signals lever, i kept on invoking the wipers before turning the junction.

however, before the instructor got all religious and confessed all his sins while awaiting the journey to the next world, everthing improved once i entered the highway. i guess i just got back the jist of driving. in fact, my confidence grew from overtaking cars left and right, until the instructor every so often had to ask me to slow down, and mysteriously started giving tips on hidden police speed trap locations along the way.

i must say generally i didn't turn out very badly. except that one time when i didn't know what to do at this cross-junction where bunch of traffic lights seemed to keep on changing colours from every directions making me all confused. and also that time when that stupid lorry almost brushed against our car when i was attempting a U-turn.

but still, when i was at the nissan showroom and the salesman asked if i wanted to testdrive, i said no. i blamed the driving instructor, who told me the story of this guy who had a clash head-on with incoming vehicle while test-driving recently the moment we passed by that incident location. apparently he was eventually forced to buy the damaged car (for a discounted price, but stil..)

i mean, could there be any demoralizing story? imagine you're being told of a man torn into halves by raging sharks, and then being asked to go scuba diving in deep sea in the next hour.

however in the end, i still took the car for a ride but only in the building compound. anyway, i kind of already made up my mind. i like the exterior. ok the backside is a bit weird for my liking but that could just give me extra motivation for backside parking. as for the performance, does it really matter how the car performs in speed when you have to stop for traffic lights every 5 minutes? as long as i'm not poisoned by carbon monoxide during driving, i'm ok.

so i bought the car.

it still feels like a dream to me now, but the fact is, i already purchased my first car, a nissan latio sedan premium for $53.8K, in saphire black. i wanted to buy the non-premium version which was only $49.8K but only the white colour left for that kind of price. i'm not suprised, white car is so uncool. unless you're 45 with 2 kids.

i expect the day striked gold for the salesman getting such an easy customer like me. i didn't ask for an anything. nil. nada. not that i won't, but i have no idea what to demand. well actually i did ask for tinted windows, but now i'm not so sure how different it is with sun protector. isn't it already there or something? do you always have to ask for, let's say.. foot mats?? anyway, that's all water under the bridge now.

my friends were all suprised when i told them about the purchase. can you blame them? after all, i just told them that i was considering like 2 weeks ago.




...ed