Wednesday 24 September 2008

Regrettably Evil

3Willings
1) Beauty and the Beast
2) Roast Chickens
3) 6 Cycle Mind
They say that you shouldn't regret things. I've heard people say:
I don't regret anything. Whatever I've done in the past makes me the way I am now
Ok. That may be true that it makes you the way you are now, but I think people who say they don't regret anything are full of bullocks.

I'm sure WE ALL had times when we go out and regret not wearing a jacket or bringing an umbrella. Or maybe you buy something on a holiday and regret it when you get back. Or eating a meat pie and regret not heating it well enough.

You may or may not learn from them, but life is definitely full of regrets.


One of the things I regret was buying a car by myself.

Would I would regret buying a A$80,000 Lancer MR - EVO X? Yes. Not enough cup holders.

See, I've did my homework (or so I thought).

I researched everything about the type of car I wanted.

I looked up models, accessories, efficiency, power, history, warranty, servicing, insurance, registration, paint choices. I wrote a comprehensive, weighted scoring criteria (based on price, looks, power) which narrowed my choice to two car models. Then I test-drove the two models before I made a final decision.

So the choice was clear. I knew the car that I wanted and I kinda knew the price. So I was protected from sales pitch yah?

Fail.

I messed it up and walked away spending much more than I should have.



Where did I go wrong?



The car accessory girl.

She was evilness on hot legs, skirt and an awesome smile.


What happened was, after a long negotiation with the evil and ugly mr car sales manager, I finally got the car in the right price range.

I was happy and so I relaxed a little.









THEN BAM!!

I was introduced to the car accessory girl!

She was friendly and smiley and everything the car manager was not.

Surely someone like her wouldn't try and screw me (I mean that in a financial sort of way... she was out of my league anyways).

A few minutes later, I bought scratch protection, paint protection, car tinting, rust protection, leather guard and plastic protection (?!) for my car.

I don't even know what half of them did, but I bought it anyways.

*Sigh*

Little did I know that this was a common strategy. After the awful negotiations, when your guard is down, they pass you on to the most vicious of sales agents, the accessory girl.

Its been three years now since I bought my car and I will admit that I regret buying all them accessories.

The car is in good condition because I look after it. Not because they applied some mysteriously invisible magic formula.

Oh XR5 - if you were only more fuel efficient..... and A$10,000 cheaper...

I tell this story to my close friends and family who buy cars in hope they don't fall for the accessory girl. But even with this story, they still fall for her.

My older brother bought a Corolla and the accessory girl sold him window tinting.

My parents recently bought a Honda Civic and even with my repeated warnings to say NO to the accessory girl, they bought car upholstery protection. Blame it on the the coffee-spill-on-the-demonstration-rag trick.

Now my youngest brother is in the market for a new car.

I pray that he too doesn't fall victim to the evil (but always hot) car accessory girl.

Tuesday 16 September 2008

Splashing around

3Willings
1) Steamboats
2) Almond jelly

3) Lil Wayne - Lollipop


For the past few weeks I've been teaching my girlfriend how to swim.

She's doing really well. She went from zero swimming skills to 12 meters in 4 sessions. Pretty good I think. Although I get the impression that the teacher favours her :P

I think swimming is a very important life skill.

I'd categorise it with essential things like reading and writing, first aid and Googling.

And I think once she's able to swim, we can finally look into submitting an application for The Amazing Race. (or maybe is should team up with someone who can already swim...)

Sadly, swimming and I have a love-hate relationship.

I love it coz it's a really good full body exercise and its really challenging mentally.

When you've swam 100m straight and your arms and legs are super heavy and tired and your chest is burning from lack of air and you've snorted about 2 litres of water, your mind starts taunting and ridiculing you.

"you can't make it... "
"might as well give up now.."
"the old lady is beating you.. "
"is that 10 cents at the bottom of the pool?"
"who's the girl in the black bikini.... damn those are hot legs "
"ohh. its the old lady... "

But you give it a bit more and push through.

And when you finally touch that finish wall you get this fantastic feeling of accomplishment.
Enough to make you want to do it again.

And I love swimming coz it makes chips taste really good afterward.
Nothing beats after-swimming hot potato chips :P

But there are a few things I hate about swimming.

Number one is the chlorine. Hate how it smells and it burns my eyes.

And I hate the fact that I get thirsty when swimming and I can't drink the water coz its got chlorine. I've drank it a few times, but I wouldn't want to make a habit of it, knowing how many times I've peed kids have peed in the water.

And most of all - I hate the changing afterward.

Always forgetting my towel is not the problem.
Nor is it the fact that whatever I do, my pants always end up being wet. Always.

What really annoys me are the old people parading around butt naked and flashing their shlongs as if I'm not there!

I mean, geeze man!! The only thing that I should be seeing that is pruney are my fingers! Talk about sight for sore eyes.

And for the not-so-old, damn!
I know I'm asian - no need to rub it in!!

Wednesday 10 September 2008

Chasing Chickens


Its already midnight and I'm still up.

My body is so tired but my mind is not. My mind is actually disturbed.

This because my dad and I just watched The Watcher. Its a Korean thriller/suspense movie - And by god, its very disturbing.

Very very disturbing.

Its kinda like a whole series of Criminal Minds and Saw and Pretty Woman (?!) all concentrated into one.

Its one of those movies where even though it's ended, it leaves a lingering feeling of uneasiness.

I guess that must make The Watcher a pretty good movie if it bothered me that much.

One of my criticisms is the blood.

There's quite a bit of it - enough for a Mortal Kombat fan like me to cringe.

After the movie, I was cooking honey-soy chicken and when the blood started oozing out of the drumsticks I started feeling ill.

Lucky the smell of honey soy picked me up again. :P Hmmm chicken!