I'll give you some time to make your choice...
So you want to hear about my misfortunes? You sicken me. But it was the right choice... It went something like...
Stuck in the Middle
You may remember me saying that it was ironic that the biggest purchase of my life was a free car. The only piece of advice I can give is, "when you pay over $2000NZ for a free car, make sure it wont crap out after 10 days."
It was already late when I left school. I never stay much past 5pm, but on this day, it was 6:30 before I left. Anyways, I was driving home, and the radio cut out. I don't watch many horror movies, but I should've taken this as a sign of bad things to come. I didn't think much of it, so I put my foot down... the radio went back on... hmmm...
Any normal guy would've immediately recognised that there was something wrong. But not naiive little Ruben. I actually played with the accellerator so that the radio would stay on... And then I came up to a set of traffic lights, 2 blocks from my apartment. The car stopped. It was a catastrophic power failure at a reasonably busy set of traffic lights...
Well. I soon realised the shortcomings of an automatic car. I couldn't get it into neutral. There and then it dawned on me how funny the situation was. I wasn't too worried. Surely someone would stop and help, probably some jumperleads would do the trick. I remember back in New Zealand when my friend first started driving. He had managed to roll the car into a ditch. Now, this was no busy intersection. This is the countryside. On the other side of that ditch was a paddock for cows. However, the very first car that came up this road stopped, took out a cable that was apparently waiting for a moment such as this, and towed the car out. All I needed was someone with jumperleads to stop for a few minutes. I put the bonnet up in the international signal for "help, my car is broken". So I wasn't too worried.
After almost 10 minutes of waiting at the lights with the bonnet, noone had so much as wound down their window. So I called a few Jet people in the town, who were extremely helpful. So anyways, there I was, with a lifeless car at the intersection. I was pretty hungry by now, and luckily I had half a packet of peanut and perssimon seed mix. It's a very nice combination. If you aren't sure what a perssimon is, don't worry, It took me nearly a whole year of living in Japan before I had ever seen a real live one. But the seeds are so damn tasty. I can just sit there eating them for hours, oblivious to time...
Unfortunately, they ran out, and all I had to entertain me was watching car after car drive past me and my lifeless car. The drivers would stare, but not stop. "Japan is supposed to be a country full of nice people" I thought. Noone would even acknowledge me. "Maybe they are too busy". "Maybe they are scared of the foreigner". And then the most obvious answer came to me: "Maybe they have even less knowledge about cars than I do. I mean, this is the country where most people take their cars to a mechanic to change their tyres". A few people did acknowledge me but honking their horn. "Thanks..."
After more than 40 minutes, one of the local Jets arrived with our mechanic(also where I bought my car from). He had gone to the auto shop, which at 7:30 was well closed. I'm told that as soon as he heard my car had stopped, the mechanic, who until then was relaxing after a hard day's work, picked up the keys to his van and said a japanese automotive equivalent to "to the batmobile!".
He really did save the day. He managed to get it started and drive it back to the garage, leaving me to drive the batmobile. And I thought my car was a piece of crap... This van had the maneouverability of a passenger train. And it was filled with automotive equipment, tools, spare parts and a large jet engine. If I had of crashed, it would be like standing in a toolshed in the path of a tornado...
But it was such an entertaining night. It sounds stupid, but I had so much fun. And my faith in the Japanese people being nice was restored when the mechanic told me he'd fix my car for free, and lend me another. And everyone lived happily ever after.
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