Here's my personal experience...

topic of the day 061 & video of the day 054

getting my driver's license

Domics

I want to thank Domics for giving me an idea to bring back to life this long forgotten segment by letting me telling you a story of my own quest for my own driving license.

The known stereotypes of strict Asian parents might have been right for my Malayan family and while it might have been because of them, I was always a goody two shoes and rode my bicycle almost until Form Five (or Grade 11, more or less...), doing so because I won't ride a motorbike without my license. Because of this though, I had to learn just when I was about to test for it in the driving school, certainly stressing my brothers and father that had to teach me in front of the house.

The same can be said for my (car) driving license as well as I would only learn how to drive a car just when I was about to do so at the school. It was purely coincidental that Domics use that brand of car in the video since my mother always have an affinity for the brand and her Toyota Altis was the first car I drove myself. It was definitely easier to drive the automatic rather than the manual Perodua Kancil I had to drive then (which I had to learn to drive at the school itself, to varying degree of success...) but I did accidentally clipped the side of the car on the heightened cement cover drain when I turned, teaching me a valuable lesson of spacial awareness when you're behind the wheel. Of course I didn't tell me mother about it! Since she's not reading this, I'm safe (well, safe enough as I can be).

I did well enough for the writing test but the most important thing was of course the driving test itself. Driving itself was easy enough and while I had to work on the smoothness of the acceleration and deceleration, the parking was something that I really had to take my time to wrap my head around. Parking my bicycle and my bike is easy enough since you could see everything around you but when you couldn't in the car and you're responsible on that big lump of steel, you really need to be extra careful. I was able to park by learning the tricks to pull them off in the test course there for parallel parking and gostan (Malaysian should know this) parking and now familiar enough to do them in real life if I have to. You know, the other nerve-wrecking thing was having to stop on an incline and then move back up again. I don't want to deal with this in real life if I can avoid it!

So there, that was it from me. No, I don't have to bribe to pass since we're really strict here and my accumulated points were enough for me to gain the elusive license. I prefer my bike but when I have to, I can drive the car pretty comfortably.

-x-