Southern Highway – would you dare?

Now that the opening up of southern highway is just around the corner, a few of us at work have been contemplating when it would be “safe” to get on it. The estimates varied. Here is a summary.

At least after the first 6 months : Reason being that the moment it opens up, there will be a flood of morons who would try to taste what it would be like to legally drive at 100kmph – assuming that it would be very different to doing the same illegally as they have done since getting behind a vehicle for the first time. The only silver lining here is that it will probably eliminate some of these brain-cell-challenged-maniacs – probably a few offspring of some ministers together with their expensive duty-free rides. I just hope they won’t take a few innocent folks with them when they go.

In the first 6 months and then from 18 months onwards : Essentially stay away from the road 12 months after the first 6 months. The argument here is that during the first 6 months, sanity will prevail and people will hopefully take it slow – what this being a new thing and all. After that they will slowly gain confidence and try to push the limits. “If 100kmph is legal, what’s the fun in driving at that?”. This will last for about 12 months until authorities wake up and start putting cops behind trees with speed guns, sniper guns and bribe collecting tins.

Never, infact take the Galle road : Two reasons for this. First is that our drivers don’t use their indicate lights for a toss and the break-lights don’t work on most vehicles that were made two years or earlier – and as my friend rightfully pointed out, at 100kmph both those mistakes can often be fatal. The second reason being that most morons out there would have started using the new highway. Galle road will become relatively moron-free.

Personally, I will adopt a wait-and-see policy on this.

Dodgy Petrol?

As many of you might have already heard by now, there is a general concern among the Sri Lankan public (the ones who own/drive vehicles at least) that there is something wrong with the petrol that is available at the ol’ “petrol-sheds” out there.

I don’t read newspapers. Don’t even watch local “news” programmes on the Telly. So it is not surprising that I only heard about this issue yesterday. Only when a colleague of mine at work informed a few of us of an interesting telephone conversation he had just had with his friend who worked at a prominent car dealership in Colombo. He said that there are droves of pissed-off owners brining their sputtering vehicles to this particular dealership to figure out why their vehicle doesn’t run so smoothly anymore. The cause? Apparently, dodgy petrol.

“Oh sh*t! My tank is almost empty” I thought. I was planning to stop by a petrol-shed on my way home tonight to fill her up. During the next 30 minutes, I had called up someone I know who worked at Ceylon Petroleum Coorporation (CPC) and a couple of vehicle dealerships I knew to see if anyone can confirm this. The funny thing is that all three confirmed the story but the dealers were blaming the CPC and CPC was blaming the petrol-shed owners. Now what?

I had very little choice really,.. ignore the warning signs and pump petrol as usual or take the bus. If you had ever travelled on a bus in Colombo you would know that it is not much of a choice at all. So on my way home, just as I planned earlier, I stopped by a petrol-shed. I asked the attendant to fill ‘er up. While waiting I thought I would try my luck with the fuel attendant who looked cheerful enough. Cheerful enough for a petrol-shed attendant pumping petrol at the peak of evening traffic in Colombo that is.

“So what is this fuss about contaminated fuel then?” I asked casually.

Suddenly his cheerful demeanor vanished into thin air. He said, “I don’t know why people believe all these stories.”

Glimmer of hope,.. but I wanted confirmation. “You mean there is no problem”?

“Did I say that?”

Huh? I thought…

“There is a problem. But don’t believe what they say sir”.

He was clearly irritated by my ignorance. But at least he called me “sir”. So I pushed it…

“So what is the problem then?”

“Cars do have problems with this petrol. People come and complain to us sometimes. But how do we know it is our petrol? CPC says their petrol is pure. We take good care of petrol here. But the customer complains. Who knows what is going on?”. He picked up a pebble and threw it at a stray dog that got a little inquisitive – he missed the target but the mongrel was street-wise and didn’t hang around.

“Click” – it was the auto-cutoff of the petrol pump indicating that my tank was now full. That is my cue, I thought. So without another word, I paid for the petrol and drove away.

The way I see it, this is not something I can control even if I get to the bottom of this. So I decided to stay happily ignorant. By the way, the vehicle still works.

How to clean fogged out Headlights

Brasso!

That's it.

If your automobile's headlights are discoloured or fogged-out, wash and dry them thoroughly and polish them with Brasso. I tried this out on my car and it worked wonders. I know some car detailing joints who will charge approximately Rs. 3k per headlight for this closely guarded secret. Now you know better.

Here's the fine print; it is always prudent to try it out on a little area of the headlight - just in case for some reason your headlights react differently to this stuff. And of course, try it at your own risk :-)

Divine intervention required - Parking available.

I was able to snap this on Castle Street, Colombo recently. Funny eh?

It got me thinking. As Joan Osborne puts it, what if God was one of us? Some might cry out “blasphemy!” even at the thought of God being compared to mere mortals. I mean no disrespect by this. But think about it; what if????

For one thing, I’d certainly like to know what he (by he, I mean he or she) drives. Would God drive a fancy fast car, a classic limousine-type, a common man’s Japanese car or maybe an environment-friendly hybrid? I’d bet on a hybrid... y’know him inventing the world an all... I’m sure he’d like to keep it clean.

Whatever it is, he will have no problem finding a parking space … at least on Castle Street.

Mayday Mayday Mayday!

It was the 1st of May or May-day! Simple interpretation – yet another holiday. The fact that there was a high probability of lesser traffic on the roads made me decide to visit Kandy and do some long outstanding social calls.

But what I didn’t bargain for is my car throwing up Air-Conditioning problems halfway on my way to Kandy. Yes, it did just that.

Over the years, Air-Conditioning (or AC) has become a vital component of some of our lives… especially with people living and working in the city. We’ve got accustomed to it so much that we find it difficult to cope in a non-AC house even for the weekend. So I had two options, either to turn back and head home or wind down my shutters and go for it. Being a member of the Male gene-pool, I chose the latter.

With hindsight, it was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made… it is right up there with me trying to conquer my fear of heights by climbing onto the cashew tree way back when I was 12 years old. My elder brother had to climb after me to get me down in that instant. I was never able to face my friends who were there that day for quite some time afterwards. But then that is another story.

The problem with holidays is just that. Just like you and me, everyone else like AC repairmen are also on holiday. So by about 2pm I was really feeling the heat. The winded down shutters blew in all sorts of smells and smoke right into and thru my car. By the end of the trip I smelled like a garbologist at a smoker’s convention.

It was an incident worthy of a Mayday call right on the 1st of May or May-day! Is that weird or what?

KITT

If you were a kid like me growing up in 1980’s you would undoubtedly recall the TV series “Knight Rider” and “KITT”. Back then we thought it was the best TV program and of course the coolest car ever! I even recall people fixing the signature “moving red light” onto the hood of their vehicles to give it that KITT look. It didn’t matter what their vehicles were; cars, vans, lorries, trishaws, and even the good ‘ol push-bikes.

Well, guess what? Knight Rider is back, but without David Hasselhoff (thank God for that). It is supposed to be a new made-for-TV movie. The best part is it has got even a cooler KITT – a still-to-be-released Black Ford Mustang Shelby GT500. The word is, it has got a supercomputer that can hack into almost any system, an even better weapons system than it’s predecessor (guess the flamethrower is still in then), AI,… and get this – it has nanotechnology giving it the ability to shape-shift. WOW! It is the best car ever!

I’m sure I got you all interested in it now. So check it out.

Spruce up your ride

I’m pretty much a chocolate-ice-cream guy. I like my biscuit-pudding made with a lot of dark chocolate. I don’t much fancy those orange rinds and cashew nuts which according to my wife, “completes” the pudding. Likewise, I like my car to be unmodified and still be in it’s original condition even after a decade.

I used to make fun of people who “pimped up” their rides. I used to laugh at those ridiculous “spoilers” that so often resembled a clothes-line used to dry your undies than a performance enhancing accessory of an automobile. And those neon lights underneath the vehicle body? Were they expecting the car to breakdown anytime and the neons able to help the mechanic sliding underneath it? How about those things called body-kits? Surely the additional baggage must not be good for the poor engine.

Then came NFS. No Viranjan, not Network File Systems, NFS as in “Need for Speed”. Yes, I’m referring to those awesome series of computer games. In no time, I was an avid player. Sleepless nights hunched over the keyboard modifying my ride. Adding 18 inch alloys, new exhaust systems and complete Nitrous systems to give me that extra boost on the stretch. I was addicted. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier, they started releasing movies like “The Fast and the Furious”… most recent being “The Fast and the Furious – The Tokyo Drift”.

It was like a virus. I’ve got it now. I was pretty much pulled in by the sheer power and adrenaline in the experience. Suddenly I found myself chatting about such modification with people 10 years younger to me driving modified Subarus and Hondas. And I was enjoying it too. Can you believe at one stage I even seriously contemplated getting rid of my faithful Nissan for a two litre twin turbo Subaru Legacy? Not that the thought has completely vacated my mind either. Aren’t humans supposed mature as they aged? Maybe I am not human - I’d like to think I am not as old as some might think.