Car adventures

We finally purchased a car last Friday. Naturally, we're very excited about that as it's been difficult to keep borrowing one from my parents or to keep asking for rides all the time. We're also hoping that using a new car will stop a string of "bad karma" events that mysteriouslly followed us over the last six weeks. It's worked so far. Nothing bad happened since Friday. We've realized that the bad karma events were limited to one a day so once we would get one out of the way, we were "safe" and could relax for the remainder of the day.

Let's see if I can recall the car related ones... There are others that will be reserved for some other post. While supervised (by me) Ivor grabbed the back windshield wiper of my dad's car. Don't know why he did that or what he wanted to do with a widshield wiper. I promise you that he has plenty of toys. The wiper broke off so there was Ivor just waving the thing around. We tried replacing it but it turns out they've stopped manufacturing a wiper like that. We're still trying to correct this one. Then, the gas gauge mysteriouslly went nuts. Then after a day it fixed itself. We're trying not to question that. Then the lock on the driver's side, once again mysteriouslly, stopped working so one can't lock or unlock the car that way anymore. Now the driver has to go to the passenger door to unlock the car. Hassle? Yes. Will we fix it since it happened while we borrowed the car and drove it around? Yes. Could it have been user error while messing with the car door? No way.

Then we got hit by a bus. Yes, a bus. Driving around here is like driving an obstacle course. I figured that after driving here for a few months, I'd be ready to leave my graphic design work behind and start a new career as a stunt driver. It was during the height of a morning rush hour. There was a long line of cars so I stopped before an intersection until the cars in front of me moved and so I wouldn't block the intersection. So much for being nice. Everyone coming from the right then figured that this would be an easy way to get in. Seeing that, I crossed an intersection and got against the car in front of me. I was very pleased with myself. Car behind me got halfway into the intersection too. I imagine he was pleased with himself too. Then a bus came from an opposite direction. He eyed the gap between me and the car behind me and deduced that he can certainly sqeeze by with room to spare. Right? Well, he miscalculated and slowly but surely I felt the back of the bus lean on my car and push it aside. The bus driver just kept on going and I remained behind mouth agape. The car is now missing some paint. I called the bus dispatcher and they said that there is nothing they can do about the damage unless I can prove their fault. So I was supposed to go around and find a bus with a big smear of red paint on it? No I didn't do it. Will see about fixing this one too. Driving my dad's car proved to be too expensive so we now have our own to break.

Driving here is interesting. You never know what waits around the corner. Or in the middle of the street... Did you know that parking is at a premium here? We've seen people get extremely creative when trying to figure out where to park their car. One that tops it all is parking in the middle of the street. Literally. Apparently this is how it goes. You're in a rush and don't see any available parking. You look left, then right, then you just stop the car, lock it and go run you errand. The car stays in the middle of the street until you happily return and reclaim your car. You see, if you park on the center white line then you're not really blocking traffic. Wow! One way streets, construction, people randomly driving or walking around not paying attention, two way streets with only one lane because the other lane is blocked by parked cars... Just another day driving in our beautiful city. Chris decided to opt for public transportation for now.