We have it pretty good in this country. I know I do. Most of us have a roof over our heads and access to reasonably useful food. And for those who don’t, there’s access to services, welfare and community aid programs. No-one in a privileged place like Australia really has much to complain about.
And yet…
I’m having a hard time finding a job. I mean… I have a job, but my contract expires in June and there’s no funding available to keep me on after that, so I’m looking for a new one. I’ve had a couple of close calls for jobs which would have been fantastic, but even after making it to the interview stages, I’ve been denied. So that’s disappointing.
Another thing that’s annoying me more than it should lately is the NT Literary Awards. More specifically, my failure to get shortlisted for them. I don’t want to seem like a bad sport or like I have a higher opinion of my own writing than I should, but I was quite disappointed not to make the last round with a play I submitted. That’s fine. I decided to submit a request for feedback to find out what went wrong. I got this reply from the organisers:
Unfortunately, of your four pieces, only one has received written comments. It’s one of the hardships of dealing with a panel of volunteer judges, that you can’t tick them off for failing to follow orders! Please find one piece of feedback attached for Traditional English Hospitality.
I don’t want to bag the Lit. Awards too hard, because they do a great job promoting NT writing, but I do wonder how they made the decision not to shortlist me when there was no feedback on anything I’d written. Well… whatever. I’m not bitter. I’m never at home to Mr Bitterbottom.
And it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve always been of the opinion that as long as I’ve got my keyboard and my car, there’s nothing I can’t do. It seems a strange thing to base my independence and self-confidence on, but there you have it. If I can go anywhere and I’ve got Samantha with me, we’re all good.
On Saturday night my car broke down. This is a calamity in anyone’s life, but in Darwin it’s particularly disastrous, as buses tend to come about once every fifteen years. And for me it was a double blow as I watched the otherwise faithful GSS Unity being hoisted onto the tow truck: Genius that I am I left my keyboard sitting on the back seat.
Fortunately I’m in a position where I can walk to both work and church from my house, so the loss of my car doesn’t cripple me completely like it did when I was without a car in Palmerston. But here I am in the middle of the year when everything was supposed to be falling into place for me and I can’t get a job, apparently I can’t write, and now I have no car and no keyboard. At times like this a man falls back on the only recourse left to him: Whinging about it on his blog. I mean… praying.
Fresh from last week's spectacular demonstration of things going right for me, I'm just a little frustrated at my seeming inability to catch a single break. Ah well. One Body and Happy Yess comedy are both coming up. Hopefully that will turn things around.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
Showing posts with label Car. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Car. Show all posts
23 May 2013
22 January 2013
It's Complicated
A couple of weeks ago I published the internet’s most explosive revelation since Isaac Newton tweeted his discovery of gravity: I’m dating Kirribilli Kim and while the entire blogosphere may have been set a buzz by the information, that’s nothing compared with the furore of comments that erupted when we updated our relationship status on Facebook.
I had a laugh when I changed mine, as realised that since the first day I logged on all those years ago, my status had been set to “It’s Complicated”. And just as you might expect, switching off the sign that says "it’s complicated" was just the signal the karma fairies had been waiting for.
After Tassie, I spent a few days in Sydney with Kim. We hired a car to drive up to the North coast of New South Wales for Kim’s best friend’s wedding. Having not driven in Australia much, Kim has a tendency to drive on the wrong side of the road, so it fell to me to take the helm for an epic journey of discovery.
It should have been simple enough: Get on the Pacific Highway and stay on it for an hour and a half or so. But Sydney has a nasty tendency to spring surprise lane changes, merges and inescapable exits on unwary drivers. If you don’t know what you’re doing it’s easy to end up on the fast lane to Parramatta when you’re supposed to be aiming for the Harbour Bridge. It’s complicated.
By sheer force of will (and blatant disregard of a few road markers) we managed to stay on the highway until we got out of Sydney, but at some point we teleported off the freeway and found ourselves on a windy mountain scenic route, without either of us having any memory of having exited the freeway. It was a lovely drive actually, but I still have no idea how we managed that one. Fortunately the scenic route met up with the freeway again further up. I don’t know how much time it cost us, how we got on it in the first place, or even exactly where we went. It’s complicated.
But it all worked out in the end. We made it to our accommodation in a little village called Long Jetty. As you might expect, the main feature of the area was a really long jetty, which we walked out along around sunset. It was one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve ever seen; Kim must have taken upwards of thirty photos. Even I took a few.
On the way back we were accosted by a little girl who asked us if we had any fish for her, in a voice that suggested she might have been possessed by elves. We didn’t have any fish, so we ran away.
The next day was the day of the wedding. Kim and I got dolled up and made our way out to find the wedding site to make sure we’d have plenty of time and wouldn’t be running late. Sure enough, we found with plenty of time, so we went for lunch in a café up the road. Something went wrong with time, but I don’t know what. It’s complicated. The next thing we knew, we were running late for the ceremony anyway. Fortunately we got there before the bride, so it was all good.
After the ceremony we milled about for a bit and then made our way up to the reception. It was simple enough; Kim informed me that the reception was at a lighthouse just around the corner from the ceremony.
The lighthouse was a beautiful location, overlooking the beach and with lovely conference rooms. It had everything that could possibly be wanted, but it was missing one thing.
It wasn’t actually the reception venue. We had got the photo shoot location and the reception venue mixed up. So now we got to drive around I circles in a sleepy North Coast town, looking for a bunch of people celebrating a wedding. We tried the bowls club and the beach and the lighthouse again, and eventually we had to call someone to find out what the hell was going on. It was in the surf lifesaving club as it turned out, which was both lovely and very difficult to find by accident.
The following day we made our way back to the city and I attempted the most complicated operation I’ve ever undertaken: I took Kim to a cricket game at the SCG and then proceeded to try to explain to an American how cricket works.
By the end of the first innings, she had got the basic idea sorted out, and we were all ready to settle in and put her education to the test in the second innings when the skies opened and the entire match was rained out. No matter, you can check her progress here. I was disappointed not to get to watch the full match, but in the meantime we also got ourselves up on the big screen doing karaoke (don’t ask) and bore witness to the largest beer snake ever constructed. It made it all the way from one end of the Victor Trumper Stand to the other; a truly epic achievement, but perhaps an inevitable outcome at a cricket match with no cricket.
And then before I knew it, it was time to pack up and fly back to Darwin. But first I had to drive our hire car through Sydney peak hour to return it. I had to do three laps of King’s Cross just to get into the lane I needed. It’s complicated.
But that’s Sydney for you, I guess. It’s a nice place and all, but everything you put your hand to turns out to be far more complicated than you realised.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
I had a laugh when I changed mine, as realised that since the first day I logged on all those years ago, my status had been set to “It’s Complicated”. And just as you might expect, switching off the sign that says "it’s complicated" was just the signal the karma fairies had been waiting for.
After Tassie, I spent a few days in Sydney with Kim. We hired a car to drive up to the North coast of New South Wales for Kim’s best friend’s wedding. Having not driven in Australia much, Kim has a tendency to drive on the wrong side of the road, so it fell to me to take the helm for an epic journey of discovery.
It should have been simple enough: Get on the Pacific Highway and stay on it for an hour and a half or so. But Sydney has a nasty tendency to spring surprise lane changes, merges and inescapable exits on unwary drivers. If you don’t know what you’re doing it’s easy to end up on the fast lane to Parramatta when you’re supposed to be aiming for the Harbour Bridge. It’s complicated.
By sheer force of will (and blatant disregard of a few road markers) we managed to stay on the highway until we got out of Sydney, but at some point we teleported off the freeway and found ourselves on a windy mountain scenic route, without either of us having any memory of having exited the freeway. It was a lovely drive actually, but I still have no idea how we managed that one. Fortunately the scenic route met up with the freeway again further up. I don’t know how much time it cost us, how we got on it in the first place, or even exactly where we went. It’s complicated.
But it all worked out in the end. We made it to our accommodation in a little village called Long Jetty. As you might expect, the main feature of the area was a really long jetty, which we walked out along around sunset. It was one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve ever seen; Kim must have taken upwards of thirty photos. Even I took a few.
On the way back we were accosted by a little girl who asked us if we had any fish for her, in a voice that suggested she might have been possessed by elves. We didn’t have any fish, so we ran away.
The next day was the day of the wedding. Kim and I got dolled up and made our way out to find the wedding site to make sure we’d have plenty of time and wouldn’t be running late. Sure enough, we found with plenty of time, so we went for lunch in a café up the road. Something went wrong with time, but I don’t know what. It’s complicated. The next thing we knew, we were running late for the ceremony anyway. Fortunately we got there before the bride, so it was all good.
After the ceremony we milled about for a bit and then made our way up to the reception. It was simple enough; Kim informed me that the reception was at a lighthouse just around the corner from the ceremony.
The lighthouse was a beautiful location, overlooking the beach and with lovely conference rooms. It had everything that could possibly be wanted, but it was missing one thing.
It wasn’t actually the reception venue. We had got the photo shoot location and the reception venue mixed up. So now we got to drive around I circles in a sleepy North Coast town, looking for a bunch of people celebrating a wedding. We tried the bowls club and the beach and the lighthouse again, and eventually we had to call someone to find out what the hell was going on. It was in the surf lifesaving club as it turned out, which was both lovely and very difficult to find by accident.
The following day we made our way back to the city and I attempted the most complicated operation I’ve ever undertaken: I took Kim to a cricket game at the SCG and then proceeded to try to explain to an American how cricket works.
By the end of the first innings, she had got the basic idea sorted out, and we were all ready to settle in and put her education to the test in the second innings when the skies opened and the entire match was rained out. No matter, you can check her progress here. I was disappointed not to get to watch the full match, but in the meantime we also got ourselves up on the big screen doing karaoke (don’t ask) and bore witness to the largest beer snake ever constructed. It made it all the way from one end of the Victor Trumper Stand to the other; a truly epic achievement, but perhaps an inevitable outcome at a cricket match with no cricket.
And then before I knew it, it was time to pack up and fly back to Darwin. But first I had to drive our hire car through Sydney peak hour to return it. I had to do three laps of King’s Cross just to get into the lane I needed. It’s complicated.
But that’s Sydney for you, I guess. It’s a nice place and all, but everything you put your hand to turns out to be far more complicated than you realised.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
02 February 2010
The Saga Continues
At the risk of presenting myself as some sort of over-bearing, self-indulgent whinger (an O.B.S.I.W. with a blog? Perish the thought.), I would like once again to touch on the subject of the fate of my car, the increasingly ironically named GSS Tarrdis. I realise I’ve already devoted one post to her purchase, and another to the fateful night when we crashed into a humpbacked whale. But the saga of my struggle to have the damage addressed by some combination of mechanics and insurance assessors is one that will be sung long and loud in the halls of… people who have little else to sing about. Dentists or something, I don’t know. Unfortunately, singing loud and long in my office is generally frowned upon, so instead I whinge silently yet long-windedly on my blog, which is of course what Cum Tacent Clament is all about.
Anyway, to bring you up to speed, I’ve prepared a montage of the basic gist of previous entries, in prose form. Try to imagine it with the mystic “Eeeeeh-eeeeh” music from Heroes in the background if you can. It makes it all sound much more spiritual.
Previously on Cum Tacent Clament:
…Finally, after a three week ordeal, here are the specs for my brand new spacesh… I mean… car…
…At the time, I believed it to be a dog, but closer inspection of the dent in my car suggested it may have been a hippo. Either way, there wasn’t much left of it after it stepped into my headlights as I approached at 100 km/h…
…Monday morning I called the Ford service centre and had the Tarrdis towed in to start the fun. The mechanic was a little confused…
…She had a strange look in her eye as I approached. I couldn’t decipher whether it was a look that said “Oh good grief, what is it now?” or one that said “Hmm… perhaps he’ll bring me flowers this time.” Maybe both…
…Our environmentally friendly calico shopping bags cost two dollars fifty each. And you'll get the added satisfaction of knowing you're saving the world…
…the insurance assessor then travels to the workshop to inspect the damage and approve the plans of the mechanics to repair it. The mechanics can’t touch the car until they get approval from the assessor. A week later I’m still waiting to hear back from this mysterious and apparently prohibitively busy assessor…
… Um, here’s your pancake sir…
Sorry, I drifted a bit at the end there. And now: the stunning conclusion to “What happened to Garry after he hit the whatever-it-was.”
So to start with, I contacted AAMI. The AAMI girl contacted the insurance assessor. The insurance assessor contacted the Ford mechanics for a quote. The Ford mechanics rang me, which was weird. I rang my mum, just to break what might have otherwise resulted in a vicious cycle that would have doomed us all to spend eternity trapped in a telephonic causal loop.
The crux of the issue was this: Because the oil filter had been torn off the undercarriage and the radiator had been knocked around, it was almost a foregone conclusion that there had been damage to the engine. That was always going to be an expensive problem, which wasn’t such a big deal for me as I had comprehensive insurance.
No, the real dilemma was the tug-o-war between Ford and AAMI over the quote to fix it. AAMI have a policy that if the cost of repairing a car is more than 75% of the value the car is insured for, then they write the car off and buy you a new one. This actually works out well for them, because they keep the remains of old one and sell the surviving parts off, which in my case is most of the car.
Ford, I suspect, were fully aware of this, and aimed to keep the quote as low as possible so that they would get the job of rebuilding it instead of handing it over to AAMI, who were understandably keen to reach a write off deal. So every quote that came back to AAMI via the assessor got sent back in order to obtain a more ‘comprehensive’ quote. This went on for two weeks. Eventually I got sick of the whole charade and stopped smiling mysteriously at the AAMI girl and told her exactly what I thought of the whole process.
At this point, they got over trying to bully Ford into a higher quote and offered to move the car to NT Auto, who were much easier to deal with, apparently. So the assessor restarted negotiations with NT Auto for a quote to repair my dog-smashed Focus.
Here’s the best bit. The Ford service centre in Berrimah is not actually authorised by Ford Australia to sell new Ford engines, unless they are faulty under warranty. So, while the original Ford dealer couldn’t actually quote to replace the engine, some other local mechanic (NT Auto) could, but in order to do it he needed to contact his Ford supplier, which was located in Adelaide.
I’m sure you can imagine just how thrilled I was to be dealing once again with Adelaide, the city which had imbued me with so much commercial confidence in the past. “What could possibly be worse?” I asked myself. I shouldn’t have asked.
“We’ve been able to locate a suitable replacement engine,” said the NT Auto lady. We’re just waiting on a quote for the engine and the cost of shipping it here.”
“Where is it being shipped from?”
“England.”
So now, here I am one month on, waiting on a quote from a city I can’t stomach on shipping an engine from a country widely acknowledged as being entirely populated by useless prats. My confidence is not the highest it’s ever been, to put it lightly. Meanwhile, what is left of my car (that is, most of it) still languishes in the car park of the Ford Service (huh?) Centre, where it has been since I had it towed there after New Year's Eve. So I’m going in again this week to whinge to AAMI, only this time I think I will actually take some flowers.
After all, it’s our one month anniversary on Thursday.
So it just remains for me to thank Tony Slattery, Mike McShane, Josie Lawrence and Ryan Stiles. This is me, Clive Anderson, saying goodnight. Goodnight.
Garry with 2 Rs
Anyway, to bring you up to speed, I’ve prepared a montage of the basic gist of previous entries, in prose form. Try to imagine it with the mystic “Eeeeeh-eeeeh” music from Heroes in the background if you can. It makes it all sound much more spiritual.
Previously on Cum Tacent Clament:
…Finally, after a three week ordeal, here are the specs for my brand new spacesh… I mean… car…
…At the time, I believed it to be a dog, but closer inspection of the dent in my car suggested it may have been a hippo. Either way, there wasn’t much left of it after it stepped into my headlights as I approached at 100 km/h…
…Monday morning I called the Ford service centre and had the Tarrdis towed in to start the fun. The mechanic was a little confused…
…She had a strange look in her eye as I approached. I couldn’t decipher whether it was a look that said “Oh good grief, what is it now?” or one that said “Hmm… perhaps he’ll bring me flowers this time.” Maybe both…
…Our environmentally friendly calico shopping bags cost two dollars fifty each. And you'll get the added satisfaction of knowing you're saving the world…
…the insurance assessor then travels to the workshop to inspect the damage and approve the plans of the mechanics to repair it. The mechanics can’t touch the car until they get approval from the assessor. A week later I’m still waiting to hear back from this mysterious and apparently prohibitively busy assessor…
… Um, here’s your pancake sir…
Sorry, I drifted a bit at the end there. And now: the stunning conclusion to “What happened to Garry after he hit the whatever-it-was.”
So to start with, I contacted AAMI. The AAMI girl contacted the insurance assessor. The insurance assessor contacted the Ford mechanics for a quote. The Ford mechanics rang me, which was weird. I rang my mum, just to break what might have otherwise resulted in a vicious cycle that would have doomed us all to spend eternity trapped in a telephonic causal loop.
The crux of the issue was this: Because the oil filter had been torn off the undercarriage and the radiator had been knocked around, it was almost a foregone conclusion that there had been damage to the engine. That was always going to be an expensive problem, which wasn’t such a big deal for me as I had comprehensive insurance.
No, the real dilemma was the tug-o-war between Ford and AAMI over the quote to fix it. AAMI have a policy that if the cost of repairing a car is more than 75% of the value the car is insured for, then they write the car off and buy you a new one. This actually works out well for them, because they keep the remains of old one and sell the surviving parts off, which in my case is most of the car.
Ford, I suspect, were fully aware of this, and aimed to keep the quote as low as possible so that they would get the job of rebuilding it instead of handing it over to AAMI, who were understandably keen to reach a write off deal. So every quote that came back to AAMI via the assessor got sent back in order to obtain a more ‘comprehensive’ quote. This went on for two weeks. Eventually I got sick of the whole charade and stopped smiling mysteriously at the AAMI girl and told her exactly what I thought of the whole process.
At this point, they got over trying to bully Ford into a higher quote and offered to move the car to NT Auto, who were much easier to deal with, apparently. So the assessor restarted negotiations with NT Auto for a quote to repair my dog-smashed Focus.
Here’s the best bit. The Ford service centre in Berrimah is not actually authorised by Ford Australia to sell new Ford engines, unless they are faulty under warranty. So, while the original Ford dealer couldn’t actually quote to replace the engine, some other local mechanic (NT Auto) could, but in order to do it he needed to contact his Ford supplier, which was located in Adelaide.
I’m sure you can imagine just how thrilled I was to be dealing once again with Adelaide, the city which had imbued me with so much commercial confidence in the past. “What could possibly be worse?” I asked myself. I shouldn’t have asked.
“We’ve been able to locate a suitable replacement engine,” said the NT Auto lady. We’re just waiting on a quote for the engine and the cost of shipping it here.”
“Where is it being shipped from?”
“England.”
So now, here I am one month on, waiting on a quote from a city I can’t stomach on shipping an engine from a country widely acknowledged as being entirely populated by useless prats. My confidence is not the highest it’s ever been, to put it lightly. Meanwhile, what is left of my car (that is, most of it) still languishes in the car park of the Ford Service (huh?) Centre, where it has been since I had it towed there after New Year's Eve. So I’m going in again this week to whinge to AAMI, only this time I think I will actually take some flowers.
After all, it’s our one month anniversary on Thursday.
So it just remains for me to thank Tony Slattery, Mike McShane, Josie Lawrence and Ryan Stiles. This is me, Clive Anderson, saying goodnight. Goodnight.
Garry with 2 Rs
09 January 2010
Not my best start ever
And so the New Year has rolled around. A year for finally sending down some roots. A year for laying the foundations for making something semi-permanent (or least, slightly less piecemeal) of myself. A year for getting around to some of those ambitions that never really made sense without a stable base of operations.
And a year for getting over the old black layout and … basically renovating my entire blog. Fear not (or alternatively… be appropriately afraid); I’ll still be documenting my adventures in ecumenical mischief with the same unjustifiable arrogance as ever. I just can’t really claim to be far from home anymore. That ship has sailed. And then come back.
This is also a year for doing something about the black hole of financial disasters that was 2009. I’ve set out budgets, planned my repayments and got everything categorised in nice neat boxes. This was an entirely unnatural process for me, so used to flying by the seat of my pants and touching the ground only long enough to take stock of my next leap and, on occasion, to repair the seat of my pants.
I was feeling so unreasonably proud of myself that I must have upset the universe somehow. It seems to be an immutable fact of life that just when it looks like I can sort myself into some sort of rhythm and make some sort of progress, the universe bowls me a googly.
I was piloting the GSS Tarrdis home after celebrating New Year’s Eve in town. I had almost reached the outskirts of Palmerston and was reflecting on what a good run home I’d had. Not another car on the road, no pounding monsoonal downpours and no bastard in a four wheel drive tailgating me all the way along the highway. I didn’t even come across a breathalyser, despite us all having been assured by the police that they were going to check every single driver on New Year’s Eve. Darwin doesn’t have that many roads in and out, but apparently they couldn’t quite cover both of them. No sooner had I thought this than I ran headlong into a subspace anomaly.
Okay, it wasn’t so much a rift in space-time as it was some sort of animal. At the time, I believed it to be a dog, but closer inspection of the dent in my car suggested it may have been a hippo. Either way, there wasn’t much left of it after it stepped into my headlights as I approached at 100 km/h. I take some comfort in the knowledge that it was certainly killed instantly, and probably literally didn’t know what hit it. Shaken, but not stirred, I continued home.
The next day, I inspected the damage. There was dented panelling where I had hit the buffalo and some of the undercarriage had been bent out of shape. I thought it looked nasty, but she would hold up until I took her in for her first service. I hopped in to drive to the supermarket. There was a nasty buzzing sound coming from the bonnet, but I figured that was the dented panelling vibrating. Then the check oil light came on. I decided at that point that I should probably take her into the mechanic on Monday. I drove out of the carport and she stalled. I started her up again and decided to take an experimental lap around the block before I braved the main road. She stalled twice more, before giving up altogether just as I got back to the front gate of our complex. She bluntly refused to start again, so I coasted to a stop and parked on the side of the road outside our unit.
Monday morning I called the Ford service centre and had the Tarrdis towed in to start the fun. The mechanic was a little confused as to what I was doing there, since the receptionist hadn’t filled out the job folder properly, so I explained that I had hit an elephant and torn an oil line somewhere, among other things. I left the car in his capable (I hope) hands and caught a bus in to Casuarina to speak with the insurance folk.
I’m pretty sure the girl at AAMI is thoroughly sick of me. I must have been in to see her half a dozen times at least while trying to get the documentation for my loan sorted out, which wasn’t that long ago. She had a strange look in her eye as I approached. I couldn’t decipher whether it was a look that said “Oh good grief, what is it now?” or one that said “Hmm… perhaps he’ll bring me flowers this time.” Maybe both. She was a little surprised that I was making a claim so soon after having bought the car, but I explained that I had run into a brachiosaurus on my way home from New Year’s and she started processing the claim for me.
Meanwhile, the mechanics had finished their diagnostic tests on my car. Apparently the collision tore the oil filter off and crushed the radiator against the body of the engine. All involved were suitably impressed that I had successfully made it home without the whole thing bursting into flames.
Unfortunately, the protocol of these situations is that the insurance assessor then travels to the workshop to inspect the damage and approve the plans of the mechanics to repair it. The mechanics can’t touch the car until they get approval from the assessor. A week later I’m still waiting to hear back from this mysterious and apparently prohibitively busy assessor. I was going to wait until I heard back before posting this so I could present the full saga in one instalment, but it’s now Saturday and I’m once again stranded in Palmerston for the weekend and it’s raining outside and I’m bored, so I decided to start blogging to keep the tedium at bay for a few minutes more by sharing it with you.
I suppose it is somewhat appropriate in this, the season of new starts, that here I am; right back where I started from.
Insert yet to be determined, classy yet quirky new sign off line here.
Garry with 2 Rs
And a year for getting over the old black layout and … basically renovating my entire blog. Fear not (or alternatively… be appropriately afraid); I’ll still be documenting my adventures in ecumenical mischief with the same unjustifiable arrogance as ever. I just can’t really claim to be far from home anymore. That ship has sailed. And then come back.
This is also a year for doing something about the black hole of financial disasters that was 2009. I’ve set out budgets, planned my repayments and got everything categorised in nice neat boxes. This was an entirely unnatural process for me, so used to flying by the seat of my pants and touching the ground only long enough to take stock of my next leap and, on occasion, to repair the seat of my pants.
I was feeling so unreasonably proud of myself that I must have upset the universe somehow. It seems to be an immutable fact of life that just when it looks like I can sort myself into some sort of rhythm and make some sort of progress, the universe bowls me a googly.
I was piloting the GSS Tarrdis home after celebrating New Year’s Eve in town. I had almost reached the outskirts of Palmerston and was reflecting on what a good run home I’d had. Not another car on the road, no pounding monsoonal downpours and no bastard in a four wheel drive tailgating me all the way along the highway. I didn’t even come across a breathalyser, despite us all having been assured by the police that they were going to check every single driver on New Year’s Eve. Darwin doesn’t have that many roads in and out, but apparently they couldn’t quite cover both of them. No sooner had I thought this than I ran headlong into a subspace anomaly.
Okay, it wasn’t so much a rift in space-time as it was some sort of animal. At the time, I believed it to be a dog, but closer inspection of the dent in my car suggested it may have been a hippo. Either way, there wasn’t much left of it after it stepped into my headlights as I approached at 100 km/h. I take some comfort in the knowledge that it was certainly killed instantly, and probably literally didn’t know what hit it. Shaken, but not stirred, I continued home.
The next day, I inspected the damage. There was dented panelling where I had hit the buffalo and some of the undercarriage had been bent out of shape. I thought it looked nasty, but she would hold up until I took her in for her first service. I hopped in to drive to the supermarket. There was a nasty buzzing sound coming from the bonnet, but I figured that was the dented panelling vibrating. Then the check oil light came on. I decided at that point that I should probably take her into the mechanic on Monday. I drove out of the carport and she stalled. I started her up again and decided to take an experimental lap around the block before I braved the main road. She stalled twice more, before giving up altogether just as I got back to the front gate of our complex. She bluntly refused to start again, so I coasted to a stop and parked on the side of the road outside our unit.
Monday morning I called the Ford service centre and had the Tarrdis towed in to start the fun. The mechanic was a little confused as to what I was doing there, since the receptionist hadn’t filled out the job folder properly, so I explained that I had hit an elephant and torn an oil line somewhere, among other things. I left the car in his capable (I hope) hands and caught a bus in to Casuarina to speak with the insurance folk.
I’m pretty sure the girl at AAMI is thoroughly sick of me. I must have been in to see her half a dozen times at least while trying to get the documentation for my loan sorted out, which wasn’t that long ago. She had a strange look in her eye as I approached. I couldn’t decipher whether it was a look that said “Oh good grief, what is it now?” or one that said “Hmm… perhaps he’ll bring me flowers this time.” Maybe both. She was a little surprised that I was making a claim so soon after having bought the car, but I explained that I had run into a brachiosaurus on my way home from New Year’s and she started processing the claim for me.
Meanwhile, the mechanics had finished their diagnostic tests on my car. Apparently the collision tore the oil filter off and crushed the radiator against the body of the engine. All involved were suitably impressed that I had successfully made it home without the whole thing bursting into flames.
Unfortunately, the protocol of these situations is that the insurance assessor then travels to the workshop to inspect the damage and approve the plans of the mechanics to repair it. The mechanics can’t touch the car until they get approval from the assessor. A week later I’m still waiting to hear back from this mysterious and apparently prohibitively busy assessor. I was going to wait until I heard back before posting this so I could present the full saga in one instalment, but it’s now Saturday and I’m once again stranded in Palmerston for the weekend and it’s raining outside and I’m bored, so I decided to start blogging to keep the tedium at bay for a few minutes more by sharing it with you.
I suppose it is somewhat appropriate in this, the season of new starts, that here I am; right back where I started from.
Insert yet to be determined, classy yet quirky new sign off line here.
Garry with 2 Rs
27 November 2009
The Price of Freedom
One of the things I had forgotten about my beloved home town is how abysmal the public transport situation is. Even on weekdays during peak hour, the buses are just a little too infrequent to be really classified as useful. And if you’re living out in Palmerston, you’re pretty much grounded unless you’re content to wait for forty or more minutes in order to get anywhere, especially on the weekends.
Yeah. Basically anyone in Darwin who can own a car does. And after a week of getting up at a quarter past six in order to get to work by half past eight, I decided they’ve all got the right idea, and set off to find me a car loan.
Now the thing about personal loan information brochures is that they’re always all about the benefits and the freedom you can buy (?) with your new money. I found them all really annoying, because I was already sold on getting a loan. I just wanted the necessary information on interest rates and repayment schedules. Apparently those data aren’t the sort of thing you want to include in an “information” brochure (notice my experiment with using /data/ “correctly” as the plural of datum. That’s classical styles, baby. I’m still not sure if it works in the new millennium, though. Thoughts?).
Eventually I stuck my head out and asked for an appointment with a bank … consultant? Assistant? What do we call these people? My bank … lady’s card just says “customer service specialist”. I think that’s a bit pretentious, but then, I use data as a plural, so I’m in no position to judge.
At this point the flood gates opened and I got so many facts and figures that I was drowning in them. It took me a week to get over it and figure out exactly which among my plethora of options I wanted to go with. I made up my mind and got myself a pre-approved loan just in time for the weekend. Tony Barber appeared from behind a nearby bougainvillea bush and exclaimed
“Let’s go shopping!”
And then disappeared again. Weird.
I spent the following Saturday shopping around the various new car dealerships in Darwin. The trick was that they were spread a fair way apart, and the bus system, as I mentioned, is not really an efficient way to get around. I started my mission at half past eight in the morning and had collected all the information I needed to make my decision by half past four that afternoon. I signed on for my brand new car, and got ready to take the forms to the bank on Monday.
At this point I hit my first snag. In order to fund the loan for the car, the bank needed to know the insurance details. In order to insure the car, the insurance company needed to know the registration details. And in order to register the car, the car company needed to receive confirmation that the loan was funded. It was a cyclic impasse the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the great frequent flyers calamity of ’07.
I let the customer service specialists battle it out between them, and eventually we got the loan funded, but not before I discovered the insurance company had created a policy under the wrong name, and the car dealership needed three extra days to treat the paint and tint the windows. Finally, after a three week ordeal, here are the specs for my brand new spacesh… I mean… car.
Model: Ford Focus CL Sedan
Doors: 4
Transmission: 5 speed manual (better than automatics for dropping down a gear and overtaking a road train)
Allegiance: Autobot
Power: 107kW
Torque: 185Nm
What those numbers mean: No freaking idea. A kW is a kiloWatt, and an Nm is a Newton metre, but I’d need to find my high school physics books to figure what that means. And that’s not going to happen.
Colour: TARDIS Blue
Average fuel consumption: 7.1L/100km
CO2 emissions: 169 g/km
Dimensions on the outside: About average for a small sedan, I guess
Dimensions on the inside: 15 decks, with accommodation for 560 crew, mess, cargo bay and holodeck.
Top speed: Well, the NT now has a blanket speed limit of 130 km/h (so stupid…), so obviously I won’t be going any faster than that. However according to the specs it can get as fast as warp 9.75
Armoury: articulated transphasic photon torpedoes, frequency modulated phaser blasters and a picture of a bear holding a shark.
Woah… sorry, I got confused between my new car and the USS Voyager there at the end.
Um…
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
Yeah. Basically anyone in Darwin who can own a car does. And after a week of getting up at a quarter past six in order to get to work by half past eight, I decided they’ve all got the right idea, and set off to find me a car loan.
Now the thing about personal loan information brochures is that they’re always all about the benefits and the freedom you can buy (?) with your new money. I found them all really annoying, because I was already sold on getting a loan. I just wanted the necessary information on interest rates and repayment schedules. Apparently those data aren’t the sort of thing you want to include in an “information” brochure (notice my experiment with using /data/ “correctly” as the plural of datum. That’s classical styles, baby. I’m still not sure if it works in the new millennium, though. Thoughts?).
Eventually I stuck my head out and asked for an appointment with a bank … consultant? Assistant? What do we call these people? My bank … lady’s card just says “customer service specialist”. I think that’s a bit pretentious, but then, I use data as a plural, so I’m in no position to judge.
At this point the flood gates opened and I got so many facts and figures that I was drowning in them. It took me a week to get over it and figure out exactly which among my plethora of options I wanted to go with. I made up my mind and got myself a pre-approved loan just in time for the weekend. Tony Barber appeared from behind a nearby bougainvillea bush and exclaimed
“Let’s go shopping!”
And then disappeared again. Weird.
I spent the following Saturday shopping around the various new car dealerships in Darwin. The trick was that they were spread a fair way apart, and the bus system, as I mentioned, is not really an efficient way to get around. I started my mission at half past eight in the morning and had collected all the information I needed to make my decision by half past four that afternoon. I signed on for my brand new car, and got ready to take the forms to the bank on Monday.
At this point I hit my first snag. In order to fund the loan for the car, the bank needed to know the insurance details. In order to insure the car, the insurance company needed to know the registration details. And in order to register the car, the car company needed to receive confirmation that the loan was funded. It was a cyclic impasse the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the great frequent flyers calamity of ’07.
I let the customer service specialists battle it out between them, and eventually we got the loan funded, but not before I discovered the insurance company had created a policy under the wrong name, and the car dealership needed three extra days to treat the paint and tint the windows. Finally, after a three week ordeal, here are the specs for my brand new spacesh… I mean… car.
Model: Ford Focus CL Sedan
Doors: 4
Transmission: 5 speed manual (better than automatics for dropping down a gear and overtaking a road train)
Allegiance: Autobot
Power: 107kW
Torque: 185Nm
What those numbers mean: No freaking idea. A kW is a kiloWatt, and an Nm is a Newton metre, but I’d need to find my high school physics books to figure what that means. And that’s not going to happen.
Colour: TARDIS Blue
Average fuel consumption: 7.1L/100km
CO2 emissions: 169 g/km
Dimensions on the outside: About average for a small sedan, I guess
Dimensions on the inside: 15 decks, with accommodation for 560 crew, mess, cargo bay and holodeck.
Top speed: Well, the NT now has a blanket speed limit of 130 km/h (so stupid…), so obviously I won’t be going any faster than that. However according to the specs it can get as fast as warp 9.75
Armoury: articulated transphasic photon torpedoes, frequency modulated phaser blasters and a picture of a bear holding a shark.
Woah… sorry, I got confused between my new car and the USS Voyager there at the end.
Um…
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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