Today I paid the booking fees to the first ever car I’d own with my hard-earned $$$. I was bent on getting a car today and I made it happened. In the morning I took several hours to print all the necessary payslips, bank statements etc; bad decision cause I ended up causing emoCharlie, Ah Horng, Kerol and ST to only have lunch at 3pm :P Should have just photocopied everything at the bookshop.
I was supposed to view 3 cars in 3 entirely different locations – Cheras, Kota Kemuning and Klang. But due to my chronic lack of mojo in printing shit, I ended up missing the Cheras appointment and went only to two locations.
First car was at Kota Kemuning. The pictures on the classifieds looked so promising, the blue colour totally appealled to the sanguine part of me and the 17″ rims…..man, I felt like I was owning it. Alas, it was not meant to be. There’s a reason why the interior pictures were not shown. It was rank. The seats were dirty and the owner had a cheapass pre-amplifier installed right on the side of the centre dashboard. Wasn’t even classily done, dude literally drilled onto the side and screwed the effing thing on. It reminded me of some 80s taxi. Then he had a bigass but cheapass sub-woofer installed in the boot, taking about 3/4 of its space. And the worst thing, the box was skinned in some colourful marbled wrapping plastic. In my mind I was thinking, what the eff was he thinking?? Not to mention, he got some ill-fitting middle console installed which rattled like a budget airplane.
Trying to keep a straight face, I went through the motions, test drove it, made some comments and then I was out of there. Before we left though, I told the fella that I was going to view a different car before making my decision. He smugly responded that I will definitely go back to him again. I smiled. I could have said no effing way but I kept my mouth shut.
On the way to Klang, I was filled with disappointment. I thought maybe I had set my expectations too high. Maybe I shouldn’t expect it to look mint. Maybe buying a used car isn’t such a good thing to do. We reached the place at about 4.30pm. They spoke mandarin, smattering of cantonese and even lesser english. Luckily Carol was there to translate for me.
Jaison, the guy I was dealing with took me to the car. It was dark grey, fully tinted & kitted out. No Transformers stickers or bumper stickers that reinforce lack of wit. So far so good. Then he opened the door for me, I climbed in…and plonked my arse onto mint leather seats. My buttocks were happy. Dashboard was clean and hardly any scratch. No ill-fitting consoles. Did I mention it has genuine leather seats?
I took it for a spin. I was happy with the drive. Then my 6’5″ bf gave it a try too. He was comfortable, both as a driver and a passenger. I asked Jaison for the price. It was a grand one thousand ringgit lesser than my initial budget. I almost yelped in happiness but I maintained face. Then the boyfriend stepped in to negotiate, pushing the price further down by about 3K. We shoke hands and the rest is history.
So I went all the way to Klang to buy a car, with a Penangite as my translator, another Penangite as my dog sitter and a European who haggled RM3000 down. Can’t wait for next week!
p/s: Nicklaus if you’re reading this, yes you have a reason to celebrate now and can stop whinging about not being able to go anywhere.