Year of The Rat

I would like to use this opportunity to wish everyone a very prosperous and happy lunar new year. A rather uneventful day however started off on a jarring note this morning. My family and I were in the car, all set and ready to go when i cranked the car key to find that the car wouldn't start. Understandably we were all too stunned for words owing to Toyota's legendary reliability and robustness. Nevertheless, the gravity of the dismal incident sunk in immediately after we had composed ourselves.

We eventually pinpointed the problem to be a case of a discharged accumulater. Something which is pretty unfortunate and regrettable especially when it's the first day of the new year. We were uncomfortably stranded as we knew in the back of our minds that all if not, most workshops would be closed for the major festive season. The situation started to turn for the better when our neighbour came by and offered to use his car to jumpstart our car. It was at this moment when i realised the robustness of the manual car. (The manual car can be push started but not the automatic)

We had no choice but to get the help of my uncle so as to jumpstart our car as the earlier jump start attempt by our neighbour fell through. A subsequent jump start with my uncle's Camry also failed. In the end , we had to resort to temporarily swapping batteries so as to crank up my car directly first before using the car's engine to charge the car accumulator. Thankfully, the theoretically straightforward but logistically nighmarish plan succeeded.

But but... after we had went out separate ways and my family and I were about to leave Seng Kang i.e. my grandma's house, the car battery went kaput again... hais

So yada yada, my uncle had to come and do the silly jump start again if not I would be screwed. It is one thing to be caught with an engine that wouldn't start on a morning and it's quite another to have an uncooperative battery on a red letter day. I could tell that daddy was visibly irritated by this latest episode. About 3 months ago, the car's main headlamps gave way mysteriously and that irked him. Well, that might just nudge him off from the idea of keeping the car for the near future.

As for now, I have to go down to crank the engine and charge the accumulator again...