Saturday, June 10, 2006

2nd Car Service - Done

Woke up quite early, and wondering around till half an hour before the car service appointment time. Mum told me she was having fever early morning, this sudden fever made her kinda worry because there's dengue cases in our area recently, but I think probably due to the hot weather and drank not enough water. So I drove her to the clinic first, and dad will pick her up after doctor check up.

Wow, almost 9pm! I quickly rushed to the service center, well, speeding again... Although it's quite near, but I still arrived 5 minutes late. I registered myself on my appointment time, and waited there. Aisks, and I was starting to get hungry. Did not eat anything the whole morning, coz planning to eat my favourite soup fish ball meehoon at the pasar near my place, after I finish this. And now started to feel weak and no energy...

"WNU XXXX" The receptionist shouted. That's my car plate number, so I went up to meet with her, and she showed me the things they gonna change in this 2nd service. From the lesson I learnt in last service, these people will generally assume your car has no other problem if you didn't tell them, duuhh! Yupe, there's some problems I wanna report.
First and most important, the clutch. Sometimes when I clutch out, or release clutch, I can't do it smoothly, as in slowly and constantly release the pedal. Because at certain point, you can feel as if it got stuck, and needs to release more force then it will only bulge, and this will cause a sudden jerk when you clutch in and clutch out. I don't think this is natural because other manual transmission car I drove before never has this problem!
Second, the audio player. This bugger starting to act weird for the past month. The buttons do not function properly, and gone haywire! When I press on, nothing happens, but have to press play to activate it. Sometimes the on off button will becomes the mute button instead, where the mute button strangely becomes the audio setting buttons, and also other werid cases. It's totally short circuited! But the problem is, once in a while, it will back to normal...
Third, the windshield. My car has this resistant watermarks that can't even get it off during my car wash, or even using glass cleaner material. My collegue told me her car was having this too, and the workshop people told her it can't be removed! WTF?! You kidding me?! New car like mine already had this problem?! This I must ask them to confirm!
Forth, of course is the fuel consumption. I can't really get the optimum fuel consumption as reported by most MyVians as they mentioned in the forum. Full tank 31L can only run around 420KM, where most can reach around 450+KM. No no no, I am comparing this with the records before I changed my rims. The FC is far more higher after I changed my rims, I have lost around 20-30KM due to this larger rim size! Hahaha, sacrifice performance for beauty, that's the price you have to pay!

But I had just reported the first 3 problems. Because new car FC will slowly improve after a few services, so I might just wait and see how first. For my windshield problem, she told me I could do it on weekdays, where there's not much workload like the weekends and they will check for me and it's probably the oily stuffs on it. So, there's still chances to get it fixed? Baaahh, like I'm always free on weekdays!

So I waited again, and my hungriness was getting stronger and stronger, fortunately I do not have gastric problem, otherwise I was really gonna suffer...

"WNU XXXX", my car plate number again? This time was the mechanic, and I followed him to the work floor. He asked me about the problems I reported, the audio player first. Dang! Just as I afraid, the bugger worked complete fine now! I explained several times again to him what's the problems, he seemed puzzled and didn't really believe what I said, and asked whether I know each button functions. Hahaha! Great... Then the clutch problem, just as I expected, he told me he can't feel any difference and it looked fine, but if I felt the clutch is positioned too high, he can adjust it for me. Once again, I explained to him but he seemed can't get it, was it my explanation that bad? Finally I asked him to do a test drive to check. Then I back to waiting again.

And guess what, after a few minutes, I was led to the cashier already! Dang! WTF?! These people don't even care what we reported, not even try to simulate and help us! I was really dissapointed, probably they were out of hand, fully scheduled, or anyhting, I dunno, but they gave me another bad impression about their service!

So I just drove away and went to ate my breakfast...

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Learn to swim - Day 2

Today we were a bit late, furthermore, I accidentally missed the entrance of the center, so have to do 2 U turns to get to the place. Arrived at the diving center around 210pm, Mr. Lim was already there waiting.

We parked the car and went meet up with him, as usual, we head into the center to change. This time, there were already 3 scuba divers, 2 were the trainees, probably preparing to start their lesson. Me and Kong went together in a fitting room to change, then we took out the sunblock we bought yesterday in Watson at Leisure Mall. It's not that I scare to get dark, but the killing sun is really unbearable, you probably won't feel anything while in the water, but when you get out, and the time after, you will start to get burning feeling from your skin, sometimes even pain. So applying sunblock is a must under this burning sun! Then we took a little water shower, did some warm up, and straight to the pool.

"Splash!" All of us jumped into the pool. The water was warm, great! With no delay, I quickly tried to get myself ready, by submerging into the water! Of course, the first time you will sure breath in water and drink some. This is what I meant by get ready, to get usual of the painfulness first! Hahaha!

Then Mr. Lim approached me, wow, I'm the first one this time? He asked me to do the floating again, oh man, I was still not yet ready! No choice, just had to force myself now... Float... gooloo.. gooloo... dang! Again,
gooloo.. gooloo... great... The 3rd time, I finally can hold on a bit, and float while splashing the water. I think Mr. Lim also noticed I had problem to do it straight like that, so he led me to the staircase, and asked me to practice floating and flapping my legs there. Phew~ Now I can relax a bit and do it step by step.

Ya, I know I'm a slow learner, and not even a regular sportman, but I believe determination is everything! So I started to practice there, 1 time... 2 times... 3 times..., and counting, until I almost out of breathe, wow, now I finally realize how swimming can build up your stamina! With only splashing water with my legs, I already felt tired and out of breathe! Probably I was doing it too frequent, so I just slowly catch my breathe first before the next go, into the water and flap.

Mr. Lim finally had done teaching both Kong and Chean for the moment, and came back to me. I was told to swim across the swallow pool, this should be OK, and I did a few rounds just as he asked. Then he told me to swing my hand and try to use both hands and legs, the beginning of free style swimming. Whenever I tried to swing my hands, I lost control of my legs, hahaha! I had a weak hands legs co-ordination! "Try to raise your hand like riding a bicycle!" Mr. Lim instructed, eerrr... Huh? Frankly, most of the time I can't really interprete what he wants me to do, probably I was still felt overwhelmed by the water, trying to adjust myself to it... But not that sporting genie Chean, he can catch up very fast and knew what to do from Mr. Lim's words. I am kinda like a pictorial message receiver guy, I prefer demonstrations than words, hahaha!

After a few tries, and so was Kong, Mr. Lim probably felt that we were still quite stiff and tense, not relax enough. So he pointed at me and told me to relax and tried sleep on the water, where his hand holding my head. Gosh, I did what he told, and slowly flap my legs, with relax body, due to the sun was directly shinning from above, I just closed my eyes, and flapped myself away. "Hold on on the wall" Mr. Lim told me. Eerr.. where am I? When I opened my eyes and checked around, WTF?! He led me swim across the 8 feet area!! I almost stunned at this point! What he was trying to tell us, if we calm and relax our body, we can actually float naturally and swim like that...

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Saturday

Woke up at 10+am, and still didn't feel like getting up, yesterday slept really late, because we went for movies, 845pm, The Da Vinci Code, and 1220am, X-Men: The Last Stand. Ya, 2 shows, it's really one after another, but at different places. We travelled to Sunway Pyramid for The Vinci Code, then rushed back to Mid Valley for X-Men, damn tired! Fortunately the 1220am show was an action movie, if it was DVC, I think I'm gonna fall at sleep in the cinema...

Cut my hair
Planning to get my hair cut, so was Kong and Chean. Called Kong up, he was ready and Chean gonna bring his sister along, so might be late. 11am, time to move, suddenly my sis called. Today is her birthday, so his hubby sent her a bouquet of flower, and the flourist gonna be here any moment, dduuhh.. good timing! OK, wait a few minutes doesn't hurt. But as the time ticking away, no one came. After a few calls back and forth with my sis, found out that the flourist gone to the wrong place, darn! It's 1230pm, and I was hungry and yet to know need to wait how long. Just as I was starting to get dark face, my dad came back! Phew~ I quickly told him about the situation, and rushed out to fetch Kong.

I had my brunch at Maideen, nasi lemak ayam goreng, dunno why, it looked much larger compare to usual one where we ate at night. After that, we just drove to Leisure Mall, parked my car there, and walked to the hair saloon opposite of the building. Aisks, it's crowded, but we still get to the queue right after we sat down.

After some hassle with the hair, it's done. Dang, my scalp was almost numb due to the excessive hair blowing, with hot air and too close to the scalp! I let the hair stylist did the decision, I just told her "short and easy to take care". Hahaha, ditched the old hair style that has been with me like 10+ years, to this, common among teenagers, those hair standing kind. Looks better? I dunno, just some hairstyle to me, nothing special...

Swimmng at Yanny's place
That day yum cha, Yanny invited us to his place for some swimming fun, Chean seemed quite interested, so we called him up to see whether today wanna go, and asked him to arrange with Yanny. The time was set on 4pm. Me and Kong went loitering a bit in Leisure Mall after the hair cut, and then only went back home.

We arrived Yanny's place around 5pm, changed, warmed up a bit then straight to the water. Gosh, the water was quite cold, probably due to weather was quite cloudy and windy too. Fuck, at that moment, I really didn't feel like wanna swim at all, trying to get myself ready by submerge and hold my breath in the water, goolooo... goolooo... fuck, drinking water with my nose again, at this point, I was really no mood already. Probably scared, probably doesn't want the bad feeling of stuffing my whole nose till throat with water, I dunno... So I just flapped around the pool side and watched 3 of them have fun. Hahaha, they were funny, trying to do backstroke, butterfly, etc. and ended up with whale like splashing. There was a guy, seems quite expert, doing all sort of swimming styles there. We were very amazed and impressed! But the most funny part was, he did some tai chi movements in the water, what the? Kung fu master or something? Hahaha!

We played in the water till around 730pm, where the darkness came. After cleaned up ourselves, we went back. Before that, I called Loong to check whether OK to have a movie party in his house later, no problem from him, great, then we head back.

Movies at Loong's house
Mum was not cooking coz she and sis went out, and had a sort of birthday lunch for my sis, and they were still full. So I will just settle by eating at the restaurant near my house. Before that, I was quite dissapointed with what I did in the pool at Yanny's place, which was exactly did nothing at all! I filled up the bath tub with water, and pushed myself in it to practice my breath holding! Hahaha, stupid me!

Ate my dinner with mum outside, hokkien mee and canto fried mee, 2 of my favourite! Yummy! Went home and it was almost time to go Loong's place, but I was damn tired! Called up Kong and Chean to check whether they were ready to go, no problem. So I moved out. About this movie party at Loong's place, it's almost a weekly activity for us last time! Last time? Yupe, Loong went to US furthering his study and he is now back for summer break. So it's like back to the old time, great and fun!

Cheely was already there at Loong's house, as usual, playing PS2 Winning Eleven with him, dduuhh... After a few game, I interupted them and said wanna play my favourite boxing game, Fight Night! And wow, it turns out episode 3 was out and Loong already bought it! Great! We played a few rounds and it was exciting and satisfying! Finally, Chean came, all members ready, so we started the show. First movie, Shinobi, hhhmmm... some story about hidden clans in the Japan's samurai age, which possesed the art of shinobi, eerrr, beats me what the hell is that.. hahaha! That Kong and Chean looked very tired and almost half sleep half awake through out the shows. Had another movie, canto movie, Bet of Basic. A comedy with lowclass funny storylines and acts, still OK for killing time.

We went back around 330am with zombie like mind and body, another great Saturday, right?