August 25, 2006
Friday Frenzy
DUDE, WHERE’S MY WHEELS ? ? ?
hahaha, that ought to catch some attention
no, my wheels aren’t stolen. i took that pic while waiting for my mechanic to fix it. long story at the bottom.
I was cruising on the LDP form SS2 towards Kelana Jaya on the right lane
at speeds of 70-80km/h. traffic was heavy and i was like 1/2 to 1 car away form the car in front of me. As i was accelerating downhill after the flyover, I’ve noticed several cars in front of my swerving, however, the car in front of me didn’t. It is only then i noticed a HUGE metallic object (length of a baseball bat, rectangle in shape like those benteng jalan) rolled out under the car. i tried to avoid it but there are cars beside and behind me. leaving no choice, i rolled over it.
BANG! BANG!
Immediately my steering felt heavy and i knew that i had a flat. Another car (storm-ish looking) behind me over took from the left and indicated to me that i had a flat. With hazard lights on, i slowly drove to the side of the road and parked near the Kelana Jaya LRT station. I was shocked to find not one, but who flat tires. and to make matter worse, by rims are BADLY dented and the sports contact conti-rubbers were ripped.
while limping (driving very slowly with two flats) to the side of the road, i
noticed that a black Honda Jazz with 17″ bling also suffered the same fate. After i parked, another satria (old) rolled up infront of me with the same problem with his 15″ alu sport rims. There are other cars too, but they weren’t as outstanding as the bling-ed up Jazz and Satria.
It was a blessing in disguise that it happened at Kelana Jaya since i used
to stay there and has good contact with Mr Soon, a fellow family mechanic who has been servicing our cars for over 3 years. He arrived instantly when i called and was also helpful enough to help the other fellow Satria (Jazz already had professional help) by filling up his spare to replace his badly dented and cracked 15″ alloys which was beyond repair. I was however lucky that the 16″ stock rims were chipped and not cracked, which means it can be reused again after replacing the rubbers with Continental Sport Contact-1 rubbers like the stock tires supplied by Proton and balanced.
Since it was two tires that need replacement and Mr Soon’s workshop was nearby, he took the courtesy to remove my flats and fix them at his workshop, leaving my Neo at the roadside with no wheels (refer pic). All in all, it only took 45 minutes for him to fix it plus traveling from his shop to my stranded Neo.
[Off Topic]
While waiting for the tires to be fixed. I noticed that traffic slowed down to “admire” a Neo without two right wheels. Heck, some/all of the drivers were grinning from ear to ear, thinking that my rims were stolen or something. I wasn’t really bothered anyway, in fact i find it ironic that being a fanatic Neo fan-boy i had to advertize the Neo at such manner.
[/Off Topic]
In the end, i’ve spend RM490 for two right side Conti Sport Contact-1
tires plus workmanship. All paid with Visa with no extra charge.
moral of the story, be very very careful with your tires. 16″ may not look
like much, but it’s still as fragile as 17″ with ultra low profile rubbers.
August 20, 2006
photoshot at putra jaya
Since Nigel already got his Neo, we decided for a meet up for old time sake and admire our new babes. yes, more pics of the satria neo. some how, i don’t get bored looking at it.
August 8, 2006
It’s a Chinese thing
It all started as an innocent suggestion. For weeks straight
Marcus, Gary and I have been visiting cyber café for hours till wee hours of
morning in computer games such as DotA. This not only drained us physically,
but also financially. Since none of us (except me) don’t have a proper job to finance
our weekend activity, Marcus asked for an alternative activity over this costly
gaming sessions. So, ideas started pouring in, from Kareem, to snooker to poker
and then finally decided on mahjong, an ancient Chinese game.
None of us know how to play this game. In fact we have no
intentions to gamble at all, just learn something new while we still have the
extra time to do so. After a week of research in the internet on the gaming
rules and basics (which later I found out is wrong), we had a demo session on a
makeshift mahjong table which is actually a Kareem board with cardboard as
dampening material. It was a laughable experience the four of us (including my
bro) learning as we go. And yes, we played it wrong.
It wasn’t until a week after our first taste of tiles, that
my sister and her boyfriend, both seasoned mahjong players decided to give us,
noobs a taste of the real thing. I got to admit that I was lost throughout the
whole game. I wasn’t even sure what I was supposed to do as I had to relearn
everything. Plus not to forget that I can’t even read Chinese to begin with.
Later in the third game cum tutorial only did I manage to get the hang of it.
And on the plus side, not only did I manage to learn to speak a few more
Chinese words but also learn to read them. And to my surprise, it was actually
a very simple game of chance amongst four players.
Only two weeks since I started with a mahjong manual in
English in one hand and three new players looking lost which spent more time
laughing at our mistakes than actually playing it, we got better and improved
allot (which I can shamelessly say master the game).
Our new past time
On the hind note, this game actually brought the family
together on a Sunday. Previously where everyone else is distracted to their own
little world shopping, playing pc games or watching TV, And it’s mahjong that
brings everyone together in a game of tiles. Picture tells it all.
