I have a car! =D

Whew, what an arduous process it has been. Between finding the “right” car, getting finance, and dealing with sneaky salesmen, this experience has left me slightly overwhelmed and a little more wary of The Real World.

I have always wanted to drive an automatic, but they’re quite difficult to come by. I was on a limited budget so the only two viable options were the Polo Vivo 1.4 Trendline Tiptronic or the Kia Picanto EX and both were out of stock. In the end, I settled for a Polo Vivo 1.4 Trendline (manual), and figured I should get an automatic once I’m comfortable with driving stick.

I went to the dealership to get a quote and it was much more than anticipated. It turned out that

1) The salesman had given me the “Dealership Price” for the optional extras (central locking, alarm and radio) as opposed to the “Factory Price”. The difference was significant so I requested him to give me the factory-installed price, which he did.

2) The cost for the service plan was different to what was shown on the VW website. The salesman claimed the website listed the VAT-exclusive price for the service plan… except the website had clearly said “All prices are VAT inclusive”. It came to be R2000 more.

3) He also charged me ~R3000 for “admin” fees, which I thought was a bit much so I decided to buy the car in Kimberley rather. (Funny enough, shortly after I left, he emailed me with a sweet “Let me know if things don’t come right in Kimberley. I can even get you a better deal…) Ha! I have a strong dislike for dubious personalities so I wasn’t going to give him my money, just on principle.

The salesman in Kimberley had agreed to match the discount that was offered to me by the dealer in Cape Town, and he was willing to charge me R1500 for admin and related costs. I thought, GREAT!  I can get my car the first week of Jan! Except… none of the banks were willing to give me finance because I had no credit history and my contract with E&Y was only 3 years so a 5 year finance period was out of the question. If I were to do it over 3 years then the monthly repayments would have become unaffordable. (Article clerks earn surprisingly little for the amount of work that’s expected of us AND the firms get a nice R30 000 deduction per article clerk per year with an additional R50 000 deduction on completion of the training contract. You’d think they’d be more generous but nooooo!)

In the end I had to get it under my mom’s name and Wesbank was willing to finance it over 72 months. At that point, I was getting rather desperate so I didn’t negotiate a better interest rate – I just accepted the terms. When I went to fetch my car, I was told the red one (which was what I was quoted on) was not available but I could have the silver leaf one instead. Okay, whatever – a car is a car right? After my mom had signed the paper work, I discovered the invoice they sent to the bank was different to the quote that was given to me. WTF? Isn’t this all kinds of illegal? Maybe not, but it’s definitely unethical. How could they quote me one price then charge the bank another WITHOUT TELLING ME?

As it turned out, they had left out the service plan and the rationalization was that the silver leaf car came with a metallic colour as well as 14″ mags – both of which I didn’t need or want – and that was the set-off. The dude, let’s call him Mark, made up some crap excuse about how if he had included the service plan the car would have become unaffordable… except my mom was the applicant now, not me. There would be little reason for the bank to reject the application.

After threatening not to buy the car from them they eventually agreed to add the service plan, as per the original quote. To top it off, the dude made me give him a 10/10 for his performance rating. What a cheek.

Spot the Scammer

I spent the last couple of weeks apartment hunting and it was a rather gruesome exercise. I wanted a place close to work so I wouldn’t have to sit in traffic every day. Unfortunately the CBD isn’t the cheapest area around so finding the “right” apartment has been difficult. I scourged Gumtree multiple times a day to no avail until one ad caught my attention. I emailed the poster and received a response soon after. In retrospect, there were so many signs in that email that screamed “scam!” that I should have been aware of, but because I was so eager on finding a place I let my hopefulness over-ride my cynicism.

1. When I opened the email, the first thing I noticed was the poor grammar. Even my mom can draft together something better than that and her English is mediocre at best.

2. He claimed to be a British citizen, yet his grammar reflected that of a 5th grader. The email was extremely detailed, yet he couldn’t be bothered to run spell-check?

3. Most scammers do a thing I like to call “emotional arbitrage”. They weave up a soppy story which normally involves death and a inheritance, and they use that as leverage. When we see something we want, we tend to over-rationalize even when at the back of our minds we know that it’s simply too good to be true. I wanted to find an apartment so badly that I wanted to believe he was genuinely doing it for his father and that maybe he really was a good guy without a profit motive.

4. The average rate for a low-end 2-bedroom apartment in that area is about R6k – R7k, yet he only asked for R4k. The email came with a set of pictures which showed a decent sized apartment with nice furnishings which would have gone for R9k in an arms-length agreement.

5. As an internet friend pointed out, the “posting the keys” part sounded like complete bullshit. The fact that he wasn’t physically present in SA and he didn’t do this via an agency just didn’t compute.


Later on, he emailed me an application form which, as before, was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. However, the author of the document was something other than the name he proclaimed to be.

He didn’t ask for money; instead, he wanted my photo and all my details. Identity theft much? Needless to say I put him on my blocked list.

A Million Little Pieces

What once was green
Is now brown
What once had leaves
Now scattered to the ground
The bitter wind
And blackened frost
Your gentle name
Is somehow lost.

What once brought laughter
Now laughs no more
What comes hereafter
Remains to be explored
Fragments of my mind
In time falls apart
The memories left behind
Just an imprint on my heart.

What once was strong
Is now weak
I try my hardest
But end with a losing streak
What once brought light
Is now filled with darkness
What once was whole
Is now in a million little pieces.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

The past couple of days have been hellishly stressful (I know this because my elbows have flared up again). Waiting for the exam results is definitely not a ride in the park. Luckily, the wait is over AND I PASSED EVERYTHING WOOT WOOT! I am now officially done with university (for the time being :P) and it feels great.

Next on the agenda:

* Find an apartment for next year
* Attend the Board Course
* Prepare for Boards
* Write the Boards
* Work
* Get a puppy
* Get a bf
* Start exercising
* Write more
* Buy a kindle so that I can start reading something other than my text books

Introspective

I never realised how hard this would be
What comes naturally to others is a stumbling block for me
I watch them move with such ease
Like performers on a flying trapeze
But every time I try, I don’t succeed.

Whose fault it is, I’m never so sure
I wish and pray there might be a cure
To rid my bad fortune and give me a chance
To prove myself worthy of a real romance
But instead, loneliness I endure.

I’ve tried to be naughty, I’ve tried nice
I’ve danced with fire and drank with ice
It wasn’t enough; I was one step behind
Moving backwards, my love’s in rewind
I’ve done my best and it didn’t suffice.

Time is nobody’s fool – the joke will be on me
If I surrender to my Insecurity
Where to from here? I do not know
Can’t suppress the feeling of vertigo
I’m scared, you see, of injury.

Faulty

I listen to the sound of Silence
Scream inside my head
Faulty wires spark,
Cutting at life’s thin thread
A broken fuse ignites
The hatred within my soul
And in the darkness of the night
My hunger embraces the Cold.
Moving closer
Towards the threshold of Insanity,
I’m slowly decomposing…
No longer my own referee.
Staring into the eyes of deceit
I see Loneliness’s reflection,
Clouded by a green-eyed Jealousy,
Bring Love’s sweet extinction.

FML

FML: a simple, three lettered acronym that became popularized not so long ago. I’ve never used it to describe my life/situation because I feel it should be reserved for something serious, like cancer or male pattern baldness. Luckily I don’t have either of those. I get a little judgmental when I see people complain about a generic first-world problem and then say “FML”. It makes me want to yell at them and go “Hello?! Stop yapping about your BBMs not delivering – at least you have a smart-phone (albeit a very shitty one). I’m still stuck here with a 4 year old Samsung that’s become a favourite amongst beggars… you don’t see me go ‘FML’ all the time.” — The point is, even with all the random craziness that goes on in my life (such as my flatmate throwing cat litter in the toilet and then in the bathtub) life is still pretty sweet in general. It’s when too many things go wrong all at once that makes me feel deflated and dejected enough to say “FML”.

A couple of days ago, I went for a vitamin B injection because I’d been feeling really tired. The injection gave me a nice energy boost; unfortunately, it also gave me an allergic reaction. Apparently, I’m one of those “rare” cases who develop hive-like rashes upon receiving a vitamin B injection – most people take vitamin B to stop their rash from appearing. Go figure. I have never been allergic to anything before this, so it came as a nasty surprise. My exams start next week and I am freaking out. It’s pretty difficult to study when I’m scratching myself to death, and it would really suck if I have to repeat my honours year. — Anyways, to combat the itchiness, I’ve gone back to taking antihistamines. They help to a certain degree, except they also make me sleepy which is bloody ironic because sleepiness was the reason I went for the vit B injection in the first place.

Between visits to the nurse, waiting for the nurse, visits to the chemist, and time spent dozing away, I have now arrived at the same point where I started, plus the rash minus the cash. Fantastic. If I fail the year, I think I might have to go eat a puppy, or something.

I don't know what that pink gooey stuff is but it looks gross.

 

Edit: Just my luck. Still 2 exams left and my filling decides not to stay attached to my molar anymore. Sigh.

Haemoglobin

I’ve heard this word uttered plenty of times – on Grey’s Anatomy, on House, and in primary school we used to have competitions to see who could say it the fastest – but I never really knew what they were (or did) until a couple of days ago.

I had been feeling exhausted for quite some time – The kind of exhaustion that would knock me out for hours because my body was too useless to do anything other than sleep. It didn’t affect life so much because my lectures started at 2pm so an early morning nap was a luxury I willingly took. Unfortunately, now that exams are just around the corner, I can no longer afford to take leisurely snoozes whenever I like. The tiredness really hampered my study routine so I decided some medical intervention was needed.

I went to the school nurse who did a finger-prick test which revealed my low haemoglobin count (1.5 mg lower than the minimum threshold for an adult female to be exact). Basically, I lack sufficient “iron-containing protein attached to red blood cells that transports oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body”. Apparently anaemia is common among females and a healthy dose of vitamin B12 is all that’s needed.

Now, I’ve been told horror stories about the vitamin B injection. Even the nurse warned me how she’d seen grown men squirm before the needle. Well, frankly, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. The injection itself wasn’t painful at all, and sure, the vitamin B burned a little but it was hardly something worth moaning about. Pfft.

Oh, and I got some cortisone cream for my elbows and they seem to be working (yay!).

Pay attention to the warning signs

Some of you might be wondering why the heck I’m blogging at 1am on a midweek moansday (while others might be wondering why the heck I haven’t been blogging at random hours of the morning up until now) – although truth be told, nobody really looks at the time stamp of blog posts so I’m sorry if I have just wasted 20 seconds of your time. Fillers are important y’know.

The back story of this post started a couple of days ago when I noticed a slight itching on my elbows. (It got progressively worse, so much so that I have had to resort to putting band-aids on my elbows – I know, I can sense a trend manifesting too.) After some Googleling, I discovered that contrary to my worries of this being skin cancer, it’s actually quite harmless. Like a benign tumor, but not really (unless you categorize little bumps as growths, which I shan’t). Apparently, it’s some form of allergic reaction brought on by stress. I don’t particularly feel stressed out but maybe it’s a sub-conscious thing. My final exams are only 2 weeks away so maybe my body is trying to alert me to that fact, just in case my brain has forgotten.

Anyways, I went to the pharmacy today to get some antihistamines. I have never taken them before but I’ve heard that word being flaunted around enough times to know that other people take them quite often, so I reckon it must be good shit, right? The tiny box said something along the lines of “blah blah may cause drowsiness and impotency* blah blah” but I disregarded them in favour of the tiny yellow pills. To my defence, of all the medications I’ve taken, none of them have made me feel tired or drowsy – so I figured it was just one of those mandatory legal-lines printed there so that people wouldn’t fall asleep while driving a big tractor and then try instigate a lawsuit to compensate for their missing leg.

Two hours later, they hit me. I had to abandon my episode of Grey’s Anatomy in favour of my bed, and I slept from 6pm until, well, now.

I’m hungry.

I haven’t had any supper and the last things that saw my stomach were pieces of sushi which weren’t that appetizing and all they made me do was think about the parasites swimming in gastric acid. My growling tummy prompted me to get up and scourge for food – all I could find was a packet of 2-minute noodles which had been in my cupboard for so long that I was surprised it hadn’t grown mold yet.

P.S. I’d take pictures of my elbows but I don’t have any camera equipment.

P.P.S. *I might have slightly misquoted there.

Chance to win (for me, not you)

I’ve been following (somewhat religiously) this really cool, awesome, and thought-provoking blog called You Are Not So Smart. The owner of the site has since published a book (actually, I’m not sure if it’s published or if it’s still in the pipeline) but the point is, as part of his promotional strategy, he is giving away something FOR FREE. From Think Geek no less!

Not really sure what this is, or does, but it's marked $99.99 - Hell yeah, I want one (if it's free)! Hmm, wonder if the geek's included? :p

Now, I’m sure you all know how much I adore free things. They make me *happy* – more so than chocolates and smoothies (individually, not together… obviously). In order to qualify for an entry to winning this Free Thing, I have to embed his book trailer (I had no idea such a thing even existed until today but I digress) in my blog. The trailer isn’t badly made. In fact, I really appreciate how it brings up the dialogue, because the person voicing it pronounces “because” and “want” in a really obscure manner. (I’m allowed to make fun of his accent because I have one too, so nobody can call me accentist, or something.)

Anyways, not to be sidetracked, this post is dedicated to my minute chance at winning the Free Thing.

Edit: Oops, almost forgot to embed that video. *doh* Here it is: