I have pwned teh clutch!

June 28th, 2005 by lynnylchan under My Life

Arrrr har har har! I passed my test, I passed my test! *dances around madly, shaking bottom* In your face, clutch! Hah! Now I shan’t have to deal with that horrid thing again. And now, a blow-by-blow account of How I Defeated the Clutch.

The first part of the test is the hill, which is where the Clutch rubs its evil diabolical hands and plots your downfall. My problem with the hill, personally, is that I don’t go far enough up the hill. Mostly I’m just short of the ’stopping zone’. My instructor made me do the hill bit over and over until I had a reliable gauge of how far to go before hitting the brakes. (Not one for a gentle coasting-to-a-stop, me.)

There was a queue of cars waiting to go up the hill, but as most of those cars moved on to the time-comsuming parking bit, I had to wait until a car came back for me. The queue had shrunk remarkably by then, which for me is a bad thing, because you need time to adjust yourself to the car. I didn’t have much time, it was ‘into gear, release handbrake’ and off I went up the hill. I rolled up slowly and hit the brakes spectacularly. Sticking my head out of the window, I saw that I had hit the ’sweet spot’ of the stopping zone, where it is perfectly safe and you’re not in danger of rolling backwards into the ‘fail zone’. Foot firmly planted on the brake, I pulled the handbrake. Hard. Now, either the sun was too bright, or the damn thing is kaput, because there was no light where there should have been a little red ‘Handbrake on’ light. You know, the one that looks like this: (!)

No matter. Now to do battle with the clutch. All my training had been leading up to this moment - to release the clutch just enough to make the car shudder, then hit the gas. I confess that perhaps I didn’t release it as much as I usually did. I was a bit too ‘gabrah’ (slang for ‘flustered’) and I just let it go a little bit, but my conscience was centred on the gas. I stepped on it until the engine started purring nicely, and then I stepped on it some more.

The invigilator must have got facefuls of white smoke thanks to me. But those Road Transport officials are heavy smokers anyway, so whatever. The car was now going VROOM VROOM and those down below must have been having a good laugh at me. No matter. I passed.

Releasing the handbrake, I kept my foot on the gas and released the clutch and Vrrrrrooom… the car crested the hill. It wasn’t as beautiful as I could have hoped, it sounded a little laboured, but no matter. Descending the hill, I was on a high, but…

Some person had chosen to stop her car right at the foot of the hill. Fool! Don’t you know you might be rear-ended by a nervous examinee? Luckily I wasn’t going very fast (bearing in mind the fact that your brake lights should light up, so the examiner knows you’re not a reckless speed demon) and someone standing next to her car gave her the heads-up to move her car out of my way. I pulled up nearby (not blocking any cars, I’ll have you know) and trotted up the hill to get my form.

I knew I had done ok, but still I was a little tense as I watched him fill up the form and tick ‘Lulus’ (pass). He didn’t even acknowledge my thanks, just kept on filling forms, and I drove off to do parking.

The parking invigilator was rather nice, he was patient with a dumbo like me as I made sure where and when to get out of the car. After I successfully manoeuvered into the parking space, I raised my hand and watched his reaction in the mirror. He waved me onwards so I got out and went to do my 3-point turn. No problems there. (As my dad says, the Kancil is such a small car that 3-point turns should be easy.)

And I was nice when I returned the car. Knowing that the others, like me, needed time to accustom themselves to the car, I stopped as far away from the car in front as I dared. I would have stopped straight out of the turn, but the ‘car retriever’ was standing there. So I trundled on for a bit and spotted a yellow square on the tarmac.

Ah ha, I thought to myself. I’ll just pretend that I thought this yellow square is where I should stop. And I did. The car was a good 2 metres away from the car in front. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s a decent space in which to test out the clutch. I got out, skipped to the parking invigilator and got my test results. Yay. Clutching that carbonized form, I wandered around looking for my instructor. He was in the car park eating durians. *…*

It’s always a good idea not to piss off the invigilators. They oversee so many cars at one time, you know? The one doing the hill has a good life, he sits there in the shade under the trees and the shelter, and only watches 2 cars at a time. (Even then, I had to ask him if I could descend, because he never called my number and didn’t seem to really care who was in which car.) The ones doing the parking (there are 2 of them) sit under a shelter, but there aren’t shady trees around, bah. And they watch 2 parking cars and 1 3-point turning car, each. So they have a bit of a tougher job, I guess. (Although they probably don’t get facefuls of exhaust fumes.)

No more driving lessons and forking out money for me, yay!