Car Breakdown

Yesterday just wasn't one of my lucky days. For the first time in my life, I experienced a car breakdown. I think I saw it coming when the words "we cannot stop the car from breaking down" jumped out at me in my June 29 post.

When KK came to pick me up yesterday, I had the feeling that my brakes and clutch weren't working as smoothly as usual. On my way to the Bayan Baru roundabout, my car engine even died on me 3 times, which was unusual, considering the fact that I'd been driving smoothly for the past 2 weeks. Even so I wasn't quite sure what was the matter, and I thought it was the tyres so I stopped at a nearby gas station to pump air into them.

Not long after, we reached Tj Bungah, a open-door restaurant famous for its cheap, tasty Western food. In case you're wondering, we went all the way there because we wanted to celebrate Berry's birthday (Oh, Happy Birthday to my dear roomie!). After having dinner, we all got back into my Iswara and I started to reverse the car.

But it wouldn't nudge. I pressed harder on the gas pedal and all I got was a sensation/noise like my car was trying to clamber out of a ditch in the ground. So weird! So KK tried, and we all got out of the car to watch. Try any harder, and I swear the left back tyre would be pushed out! It seemed like something got stuck in the tyre.

I was stricken with panic as it was the first time I'd encountered such a situation, but thanks to my three lovely girlfriends, KK, Berry and Kelly, they all pulled out their cellphones and started dialing up families and friends to get someone to help.

Less than an hour later, Kelly managed to get a foreman to come look at my car. It was already 8.30p.m., but he took less than 5 minutes to determine that my clutch was causing the problem. He took another 5 minutes to tune my car and to decide that it was good enough for us 4 to reach Sg. Ara safely. But it still needed further repair so today the foreman came again to bring it for repair.

To celebrate the end of this disastrous episode the 4 of us AND Berry's birthday, on our way back, stopped at Cosmic Cafe to have a drink and birthday cake. Most importantly, the drink was for me to relax my spirits. Hehe.

I'm so glad that the 3 of them were beside me all along, comforting me and helping me in each of their own sweet ways. I know I'm a disaster at handling such situations, easy to cry and get mad and helpless, but with the 3 of them by my side, like Kelly said, it would only be "yesterday's disaster". Sure I'll have plenty of chances to encounter similar occurences like this, but one thing that I've learnt is that there's always a "first time" in everything, and experience can help you to get through a real, bad patch.

Comments

libelly said…
Girl, you are so lucky for this 1st time's experience!
家勤 said…
with this experience .. next time you will know how to handle the situation well ...

jia you jia you ~!!
Anonymous said…
xweing, what was the mileage of your car at the time the clutch fail?

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