Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Open Up, Jack

This is an embarrassing but true story.

After 4 months of gallivanting around in Jack, I (finally) attempted to open his hood. Needed to check water level before making long trip to Sitiawan.

I took 15 minutes trying to work the mechanism to open the hood. Pull lever in car - 1 second. Find the latch to unhook catch at the hood - 14 minutes 59 second. Very embarrassing considering I've been driving Jack around for 4 months. FOUR months, and I never opened the hood before. I felt like a prize idiot by the time I got it open.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Jack KLIA

Mileage: 9109 km

Last week Jack made an impromptu trip to KLIA. Eric missed the train, and Jack gave him a lift to the airport to avoid him missing his flight also.

Good practice for Jack. AirAsia is having a good promotion for Sandakan flights, so my parents decided they'd come down. Jack's driver duties in conjuction with the cheap airfares:
30 Jul - Arrival, brother
4 Aug - Arrival, parents
10 Aug - Departure, father
13 Aug - Departure, brother
14 Aug - Departure, mother

Don't ask. I (still) don't know why either. Maybe they pantang travel together.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Jack tyre story - the other version

The below narrative on Jack blown tyre is lacking some details.
Here's some the left-out parts:

A friend commented that luckily the blown-tyre incident took place in a gas station, with help close on hand. Unfortunately quite the opposite took place.

The counter staff were extremely unhelpful. The guys on night shift looked particularly shifty, they had that mat malas look about them. It didn't help that car-man wasn't a particularly pleasing person to deal with - his shaved head with its scars prominently showing plus a pissed-foul expression scared them some maybe.

Service was pitiful. No offer of help, not even a bother to have a look. One mat malas replied rudely 'Encik cakap lain macam saya tak mau tolong'. Hahaha. Other laughable snippets of conservation:

'Tak tau siapa boss'
'Manager not on duty. Tak tau macam mana nak contact'
'Tak tau nombor telefon station. Saya baru kerja sini satu bulan'
'Baru kerja satu bulan. Tak tau apa-apa' [yes, this from a different guy]

Even if you were only mildly annoyed before, after the sullen faces, the original rude guy disappearing into office and refusing to come out, the buat-donno replacement guy at the counter you'd feel quite pissed too. Just like dining out at a restaurant, regardless of the food quality, bad service can make an exteremly bad day. The blown tyre ceased to be the issue (after all I had my car-man on hand hehe). The bad service was unforgivable.

There was one guy working at the pumps who had some service sense, thankfully. There was some drama of long faces and Mr.have-some-sense telling off his colleagues. Car-man wasn't too pleased about the incident, and knowing Shell high expectation standard on companies/station/dealers carrying their logo, he logged a formal complaint to Shell.

Shell dealt with the complaint very well, with impressive follow ups. Two days later car-man dropped by the station again, to collect a cheque of RM160 from the station owner as reimbursement for the tyre.

Now this is the real story of what actually happened.


Postscript:
Another laughable conversation for your entertainement. Upon collecting cheque from station:

'Encik, kenapa tukar sendiri. Bawa sini saya ada orang, ada workshop. Ini mahal.'
said with not too pleasant face and tone.
'Puan. Ini card saya, saya ada workshop sendiri. Ini harga dealer. Bukan mau buat duit dari puan, tapi servis staff puan banyak teruk.'
'Oh...'

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Jack Blows a Tyre

Jack blew a tyre recently, at a Shell station no less.

There was an evil piece of metal rod sticking out of a broken concrete road slab. You know that thick sort used as the spine of concrete blocks. Jack ter-drove over it (hey, it was at night and a dark corner!). Metal rod went in nice and proper and left a nice and proper tear.

Jack's spare tyre got a chance to smell some fresh air. I got a chance to see my car-man in action. Yummy.

It took all of 10 minutes to get the tire changed. I, of course, was a useless spectator, hardly lifting a finger. Having someone reliable on hand to fix it up and take care of things is nice - surprisingly I wasn't pissed at anything (not the rod, not the station, not Jack, not the person driving Jack at that time). Just a mild 'Oh I blew my tyre' reaction.

Amazing. Me, whose get worked up easily just driving around.
Hehe. Yup, everything in my world is rose-tinted at the moment.