Lil' White

There she is. Isn’t she just the cutest thing? Yeap, she’s my set of wheels, my only mode of transportation to basically anywhere I go, unless a particular destination is so near that I’d use my feet to walk. But anyway, she’s among the very few things in my life that I absolutely can’t live without.  

She’s cute on the outside, spacious on the inside. You have 10 cup holders (10!) for your perusal, however most importantly, she’s seriously frugal. She just sips on the petrol as she goes. I fill her up with 40 litres every week, and she returns about 650 kilometres on average. That’s just staggering.  

She’s a Honda Jazz (or Fit, if you live in Japan or the United States). Not just any Jazz, it’s a Hybrid. For years since high school, I’ve always wanted to own a hybrid car from Honda. And frankly speaking, I didn’t really expect to own one in reality, because historically, I haven’t always been able to really achieve or obtain stuffs that I aspire to have. 

Yet somehow here I am, driving this little puppy around town and around the peninsular. Sometimes even I wonder myself, how? Well, looking back… 

Straight out of university, I was young, dumb and broke. But I was not without a car. Whilst I was undertaking my Bachelor’s degree, I took over the old Proton Waja from my mother, whom has gotten herself a courtesy company car, the exuberant Mazda CX-5. What can I say of that Waja? It’s a car well intended by Proton, but sadly poorly executed.  

Vibrations and noise were rampant throughout the cabin, but I was able to live with those for the 2 years I own the car. I was also able to live with the power windows that have a mind of their own. The car’s climate control system was so wonky that it gets freezing cold even at the minimum settings, at random times. Otherwise it’d just blow out warm air. Its fuel economy figures were rubbish as well. These were among the things I’ve faced with the car; at the time I didn’t really lament about it because I didn’t have the privilege.  

Then I started my first ever full time job with HPE. I was staying in Nilai and travelling to Cyberjaya daily really took its toll on the fuel consumption. I fill it up with 60 litres of petrol every 5 days and with each fill up, the car returned a max of 500 kilometres. I nonetheless soldiered on. I mean, what could be worse?  

The worst happened when its brakes decided to join the climate control in the wonky-wagon. I didn’t even bother to get it fixed, because it was then I have unanimously decided that the car was no longer safe to drive. So I set off looking for a new set of wheels. At the time the wacky new Civic Ketam was launched, and I was still young, dumb and broke. So young and dumb that I was deciding to buy the Civic with my puny salary. I was also about to be the most scumbag son of them all when I even considered accepting my mother’s offer of paying the car’s downpayment for me.  

I spent quite a lot thinking this through. My mum and dad have spent more than a lot of money on me, to ensure I have a decent life growing. And it has been more than a decent life I’ve had so far, I couldn’t thank them enough.  

I took many steps back, bought a banker’s cheque of RM10,000 (that was my entire savings by the way) and started searching on the classifieds. 

Lo and behold, there she is.  

Yeap, I purchased Lil’ White as a used car. The entire journey is quite a memorable one, simply because she’s the first car that I have ever bought on my own. I’m 25 by the way. 

Everyone’s got their first timers. What's yours? 

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