car

The mysterious physics behind my vehicular self-accident

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car scraped

I’ve always trusted in my judgement when driving, despite my less-than-stellar history of vehicular safety. I have, in my slightly-more-than-a-decade-long driving experience, ran down a person, totally crashed my car, and have a static road sign pole run into me. Nevertheless, I’ve always believed in the rule of “If the front can pass, the side can too”. 

That theory was put to the test yesterday evening as I was making my way out of my lunchbox sized assigned parking lot. I’m located next to a pillar and have had no beef with said pillar in my three months of parking here. I pulled out of the parking spot, clearing the front, just to hear the sound of concrete scraping my car. I tend to accelerate so the scraping sound continued for a rather long time before I realized it.

car peeled

I got down to inspect the damage – it seems that the close encounter with the concrete pillar requires a trip to the workshop this weekend. It took a whole piece of paint off, revealing the alloy underneath. It also “repainted” the side of my car, making it a distinctive shade of yellow that doesn’t go very well with the black paintjob.
worrieshmm-car

I’m still pondering about the physics behind the unfortunate event.

Q: Which is harder?

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Disclaimer: It is to be assumed that this entire post is a work of fiction for insurance purposes.

accident
I can reconstruct a partial picture of the night from third hard accounts and other sources. I personally can’t remember much except the vague notion of not being able to find my way out of Rajang Park (a housing estate) and something unyielding attached to the front of my car.

debris

I seem to have run into a lamp post under unknown circumstances and from what I’ve been told, I dropped off one of my friends earlier in the night before she pointed my car in the right direction and told me to take the exit right out.

bumper

Anyway, 5 minutes later, while attending to her dental hygiene needs, she heard/saw a black Toyota VIOS speeding past the back of her house and crash head on into a utility pole/lamp post. She didn’t see the license plate so she called another one of my friends (since my cell phone battery was dead that night) and told her I might have misjudged a certain turning radius while navigating the corners around her residence.

plate
I did remember attempting to switch on my cell phone and calling the friend in question, telling her that I seem to be stuck somewhere around Lane 23 (it was actually Lane 21). She got another friend to drive her there and a couple of minutes later, she told me Lane 23 was deserted and asked me to take my beer goggles off and look at the street sign again.

close

Anyway, long story short, she drove my car (with me in it) home so all’s well that ends well. Except that my car will probably be in the workshop for at least a week – initial assessment says that I have severed a hydraulic cable and they will have to order these parts in.

grill

Hmm…I had thought that the all new sixthseal.com would not have posts like this, but there you go. 😉

My apologies.

You can take your chances, but there’s so much to lose
Another bumpy road, there’s so much wasted booze

A: The lamp post is harder. It’s ALWAYS harder.

The Style by Toyota

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the style by toyota

The Style by Toyota is a huge café cum concept store located at Siam Square in Bangkok. We saw the illuminating lights changing colors on the imposing glass enclosed building and wanted to check it out but it was closed.

toyota the style

I went the next day with my gf to The Style by Toyota and I must admit, it certainly impressed me like no other concept store…it’s gotta be the best place to hang out in Bangkok. The Style by Toyota is sponsored by Toyota and it’s not just about cars but more of an art establishment.

toyota counter

There are Thai girls manning the counter with a friendly “Sawadee!” and I got them to pose for a photo. The place is very chill and the ambience exudes friendliness.

toyota concept car

The first thing you see in this art cum concept store facility is a working concept car by Toyota as the main display. There is a cordon around it…

toyota photo op

….but it’s a great photo op nevertheless.

toyota coffee

The Style by Toyota has a coffee and juice bar at the ground floor of the three floor structure. There are LCD and plasma screens practically everywhere displaying Toyota ads.

toyota merchandise

There is also merchandise on display…

toyota event

…and we realized that there was an anime fest going on in there coz some people were in costume.

toyota cosplay girls

I got some of the girls to pose for me.

toyota cosplay girl

Cosplay is fun.

toyota seating

The seating arrangements at The Style by Toyota range from the comfortable but futuristic…

toyota seating view

…to the more esoteric ones that look out of the glass building for a great view of Bangkok.

toyota seating art

The entire design of the place just screams “Art” and it gave me a really uncomfortable urge to smash something. 😉

toyota seating stairs

There are seating arrangements right on the staircase for two…

toyota seating pc

…and single seats in front of an interactive Toyota flat screen monitor.

toyota balls

There are even balls of fluffy cushions to sit on while you browse through architecture books if you’re so inclined.

toyota books

The bookshelves that lines The Style by Toyota is not limited to books about visual art but also music (though strangely, nothing about cars).

toyota pc

I got my coffee and sat at one of the touch screen interactive Toyota LCD monitors. There are games (one of which I played to the point of obsession with my gf to see who has a better score)…

toyota pc order

…and even a touch screen ordering system that allows you to order a coffee straight from where you’re seating instead of going downstairs.

toyota drink

I tried it. It works.

toyota end

The Style by Toyota is a must visit if you’re ever in Bangkok. It is a concept store unlike any other out there.

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The photo that locked me out of the car

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photo car lockout

This is a picture taken just now at the landmark Jalan Padungan cat
statue. It’s wearing CNY clothes, so I decided to pull up beside it to
get a shot before the clothes are taken down. The locality of this
Kuching cat statue is right beside a roundabout, but I figured that it
would take all of 5 seconds to take a photo, so I just got out in the
middle of the road.

This is the same flawed logic that got me an obstruction of traffic
ticket (which is still outstanding) while I popped into the local
7-Eleven “for a couple of minutes”.

I did manage to take several shots of the festive cat statue in less
than 30 minutes and walked back…to see the car engine still running,
with the doors closed and locked. This didn’t look right, but it took
another 5 seconds to realize that I’ve somehow locked myself out of a running car parked in the middle of a busy roundabout at night.

My first thought was to break the driver side window, figuring that
it wouldn’t cost as much as the other windows to regain access to the
locked car, so I wrapped my hand with excess shirt material and
forcibly hit the window…

…which didn’t even produce a hairline crack. That’s a good thing
in hindsight; coz the shattering glass would probably necessitate a
quick trip to the hospital.

I looked around and found a fire station about 50 meters away.
Salvation! The Fire and Rescue Department would have something heavy to
break windows with.

I walked over and told the amused firemen about my predicament. The
head was aghast at the fact that I wanted to break the window to gain
quick access (had to meet someone) and offered to jimmy the lock for
me. I’ve thought about that too, but I haven’t really had much practice
doing it, considering grand theft auto wasn’t one of my career path
considerations…

Thus, the firemen trooped down to the roundabout. Imagine the sight
of about 13 firemen gathering around a car to force the lock open. It
was a sight to behold, I imagine…

fireman open car door

It just took 2 minutes for them to flip the lock and open the
passenger side door. I thanked the firemen and offered to buy them a
drink, which they accepted.

I learnt how to break into a locked car in 2 minutes flat today. Thanks firemen! 😉

Behold! The new bright pink “Custom made” Perodua Kenari

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bright pink kenari

This picture practically speaks for itself. 😉 I noticed it when I
came in to work today and just had to stop and take a photo. I must
applaud the owner of this car for having the courage to modify the car
to such…er, interesting specifications. It’s bright pink with
a ground clearance that makes me wonder how the driver navigated into
Jalan Padungan in the first place, with all the speed bumps along that
road.

pink kenari back

Here’s a closer look at the posterior of the car. The identifying
features like the Perodua logo have all but been displaced by a “Custom
Made” sticker. I wouldn’t even have recognized the make and
model…except it’s pretty hard to mistake the distinctive Kenari form
factor. Oh, and it doesn’t even have a car license plate! I think the
color of the car gave me diabetes just from looking at it. This is car
modification gone horribly wrong. 🙂

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