Friday, August 20, 2010

Just another not-so-ordinary day in the life of A

I should have known that today was going to be rather eventful when my alarm clock failed to wake me up on time, and made me late for my class. Another sign should have been my nose deciding to bleed, an occurrence that I have been lucky to avoid since I left my primary school days behind (until today that is).

The day seemed to redeem itself when I caught up with my lovely friend R for lunch. Even the fact that the bagel place (which I have previously mentioned here) decided to disappoint us with their lack of blueberry and apple-cinnamon bagels didn't ruin the day too much - especially since it led to the consumption of a lovely Smoked Salmon sandwich. But how a bagel place runs out of bagels before the lunch rush even begins is something I will never quite understand...

After a leisurely lunch and catch up it was time for me to head back to campus and head home. I got to the car feeling hopeful since the traffic looked good and I it seemed I would get home in good time. And that my friends is where the day went bad, very bad!!

As I sat behind the wheel getting ready to leave I noticed this yellow envelope on the windscreen.


These yellow envelops are the kind that can make your heart stop dead in its tracks. I frantically jumped out the car to grab it, my mind racing to think of how or why I could possibly have been fined by the university's security patrol. I was parked within the marked lines AND I have a valid parking permit.


Surprisingly (and thankfully) it was empty, and that's when I noticed it had something scrawled on the back.

The kind security staff had left me a note to say that they had noticed one of my tyres was "low". As I jumped out to inspect the tyre it wasn't just low, it was absolutely flat and punctured. Swallowing the rising panic in my throat as I turned into a walking stereotype of a helpless female driver who cannot change a tire I called my sister to get a bit of reassurance. Then I called up roadside assistance, and to be quite honest I have never been more happy and appreciative of the work of the lovely NRMA than today.

It turns out that a nail had pierced the tyre, not too surprising when I remember that the university is essentially a big construction zone. The NRMA representative replaced the tire with the spare. The spare tyre as I discovered is of the temporary kind and has a speed limit of 80km/h. I miss the good old days where car manufacturers gave you a real spare, instead they now leave you with something that doesn't look remotely stable enough to support a car. My feeling of trepidation was not helped by the NRMA guy who remarked that these new kind of spare tyres never look strong enough.

The good news is that I got home safe. The bad news is that the flat tyre has to be fixed or replaced ASAP, until then my car will be useless.

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