Yep, I did reached my lowest point in my entire working holiday adventure in the past week.
Just a short recap in case you didn’t read last week’s entry – my car broke down on Sunday night and it had to be towed to the workshop.
In just one week, my account balance dropped from 4 digits to 3 digits cause I had to pay $1k+ for my car repair works + servicing. After the expensive bill, my car is still not functioning that well but it seems to be a manufacturer’s problem and I had people telling me that their car (with the same model) faces the same problem but they continued to drive anyway. Sadly, I’m one scaredy-cat and unconfident driver who stresses out every time I need to drive. I hope I can get used to the annoyance but the opinions I received from the various workshop is that I can still drive my car but the fear of a break down still scares me like crazy. I don’t even dare to turn on my air conditioning and I step on the acceleration with extreme caution and I pray hard every single time I’m on the wheel. Things can only get better right? I don’t want to be putting in more money without a certainty that the issue can be resolved and.. I don’t really have much money left right now; and I’m not taking out anymore cash from my own savings. #lifegoeson
Well, on the lighter note, I did manage to get back to work on Thursday & Friday – which means that I have enough money to pay for my rent and petrol this coming week. For the first time ever, I seemed to be living from pay cheque to pay cheque? Thankfully, I stock up quite a bit of food at home so I think I don’t have to buy much staples (noodles/rice) for the next two months.
Okay so basically I didn’t get to go to work from Mon – Wed as my car was stuck in the workshop. Every afternoon I called, they said there were still issues and I had to pay more money to get it fixed. Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, it was well, kind of ready, and a kind friend drove me down to collect my car. Oh gawd. the bill was 4 digits and it scared the hell out of me. Somehow, I was thankful I had enough money, Should I have not been working the week before, it would have been pretty tough on my finances.
Well, the drive back home was kind of fine on Wednesday afternoon but on thursday morning (while I was driving to work), the horror set it when I realised that the jerking acceleration still exists and it did throttle a few times but the engine light didn’t came up. I was basically freaking out the entire drive; afraid that I would have to call for a tow truck again. It was slightly better as now I know that I have bought the AA membership which gives me 6 callouts per year. However, the fear of not being able to go to work and not get money for the following week scares me as much as getting a car engine failure by the expressway. As I drove, I surveyed the road to see if there was sufficient space for me to stop should anything bad happen. Yes, I was freaking out real bad.
After work on Thursday, I went back to the shop to inform that about the wonky acceleration. Brought the mechanic out on a joyride and the car did jerked which means I wasn’t being lying. They ran the computer test on my car and the result didn’t show any error messages. The only solution they could think of was to do a reset of my car’s computer and hope that it will re-learn whatever nonsense. The mechanic claimed he test-drive for 10 mins after that and didn’t face with the problem anymore. Sad to say, when I drove the car few hours later on my way home, the problem still existed, but I still made it home eventually.
Same thing happened on Friday morning and I think it might just continue to happen for the rest of my mornings until a miracle happens; or perhaps I find enough money to fix it. The only issue now is that I’ve read forums of people replacing a whole shit lot of items and the problem still remains so I’m also skeptical to spend that amount of money with no guarantee. WHY is adulting so hard. WHY is owning a car so hard. WHY is it so tough and decisions are so hard to make? Urgh.
I went for a second opinion at another car workshop and they looked at the report and said that, it seems like its the coils (cause that’s what they wrote) and said that I had to pay $85/hour for a full inspection of the car. Should the coils be the issue (that’s if they can find the problem), it will cost me about $600-800 for the work.
So I went for a third opinion. It was a smaller workshop and the guy took pity on me and offered to do a check without extra charges but he was super busy and that I had to wait. So now, my car is in the workshop and all I have to do is to wait for a call and hopefully they can pinpoint the exact problem and not asking me to change the coils like everyone does.
Yep, that’s the sad story of my car and how it’s gonna bankrupt my entire bank account balance.
As a result of ‘the fear of driving a wonky car’, I stayed home the entire Satuday and right now is Monday and I can’t remember what I did the entire day. I think I cooked curry and roasted vegetables for dinner. Right.
Sunday was awesome. My friend’s friend offered to do a daytrip to Lake Tekapo (to see the Lupin Flowers) which was like a 2.5 hour drive one way. The flowers were pretty much in full bloom and it was such a good weather day where the skies were blue and it was.. hot. Probably got a few shades darker but I can’t complain because the photos turned out really good. You can go to my instagram for more photos 😀 There were shades of purple, lavender, violet, pink and blue and it smelt so good too! The lupins fragrance was very light and subtle and it makes you feel pleasant by just walking through the sea of flowers.
Went to work on Monday (today) and the sun and heat was pretty horrendous and all my rashes are acting up again. Well, the one good thing that happened today was that a friend moved into my current house (yes with the comfy beds) and she got a job in my vineyard as well. Which means that I would have a more relaxing journey to work tomorrow as I won’t be freaking out while driving. I can finally sit back and enjoy the scenery without the fear of breaking down.
On a side note, after listening to countless audio books and witnessing the number of dramas happening in my life, I did have a slight thought of writing my own book. I’m not thinking of like the physical hardcopy kind of book but perhaps writing something that is really organized well and that people would actually bother reading till the end. It would not be as long winded as my blog post but it will be crisp useful information and entertainment. This is just the infancy state and I’ll think it through across the next few months.
Yep that’s it for this week’s update. Things can only get better from now on right?
Agenda for the week: look for accommodation.
^Ciao