The last 72 hours has been a costly pile-up of bills for me and for the next few days my beloved computer room, my blogging space, my physical my-space, will not be my favourite place.

Yesterday morning, before work, I downloaded a few pics to clear my camera memory. My computer is falling apart (can’t remember exactly, but its about 3 years old), but with the decent amount of RAM that it has, it still serves diligently and I can even edit video on it. The CPU battery has croaked, but that’s not a problem unless the power goes out, which then requires a time reset. The fan is also on it’s way out, and sometimes needs a manual kick-start to get it going - which is also not a problem as I leave the casing open for better ventilation and it’s easy enough to reach in and give it a flick.

However, my flat panel LCD is only slightly older than a year though. I had to get it separately as the CPU was given to me without a screen. Last night when I got home, I switched on the computer and went into the other room. I have a dual boot with Windows XP and Sabayon Linux (which I never use really, but Linux is the default boot menu selection). By the time I got back to the room, Sabayon had loaded and the familiar orange log-in screen was waiting for me, but with a very weird graphic to the right of the screen. I looked at it briefly, but not long, as I was anxious to reboot to get into XP to start blogging.

When Win XP had loaded the same odd graphic was sitting there, but in different colours and I did a double take. Upon closer inspection I saw that the graphic was in fact liquid crystal which has ran behind the mesh of what was now my broken LCD. Even closer scrutiny revealed what looked like two points of impact. But there’s honestly nothing to explain what caused it.

I live alone, I left it in one piece this morning, came back and this had happened. Perhaps one of those little lizards had a fight with a cockroach and they had a kung-fu fight ala Matrix on the screen and Agent Cockroach Smith smashed at Lizard Neo, who ducked and Agent Smith smashed right through the mesh of the screen. Perhaps.

My mood slumped and thumped audibly on the floor.

On the weekend, I got a quote for what I thought was minor damage to my car, but the minor impact fractured the headlight’s support arm, and much like the LCD, to fix it, would cost as much as replacing it. Even if they used non-OEM parts and replaced the headlights, the exercise will still set me back a good RM700 to repair.

Add to that the fact that the LCD screen will cost me at least another RM650 to replace and there goes the Christmas kitty. I snapped a few pictures of the broken screen to uploaded in my time before work this morning, but when I plugged in my Blue Tooth dongle that didn’t work either. At first Windows recognised it, but it didn’t want to identify my phone - then I unplugged it and replugged it and Windows didn’t even know what it was. “Please,” it said politely, “remove that foreign object that you stuck in my hole”. This toy luckily is only around RM20.

So anyway, I had an active weekend with loads of pictures, but I just couldn’t blog last night - my LCD sitting there with it’s broken black eye, multi-coloured puss dripping from the wound.

What to do but sulk?

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In the aftermath of my recent little interlude with wet tiles and a concrete barrier in which I did my car no favours, I took her for a scheduled service, but was also hoping to fixed her (and my) battered pride - after all, in my expert opinion there were no major damage and it was simply a question of replacing a few plastic rivets… ha!

I went to the Perodua Service Centre (the makers of my car, I trust them) for one of their infamous 1-hour-or-its-free services. I can’t actually remember ever getting one of those and today, after a nearly two-hour service, it was no different. But I don’t complain as I’m sure there’s some fine-print somewhere which says “1-hour or it’s free, unless we have to do more than open the bonnet and look at it“.

And, it’s probably in Malay so whilst waiting a bit doesn’t make a fool of me, arguing in another language, which I don’t command, might - and who wants to be made a fool of while he waits for his car to be serviced, right?

Anyway, after real experts had a look at my ding’ed car, the prognosis wasn’t as optimistic as my own. The good news was that for a mere RM300 they could pull the panel that had shifted 3 millimeters (how many inches is that?) and replace 8 or so rivets costing RM5 or RM8 each.

For another mere RM 300 they could respray (respray what?) to make it look good as new - or as good as fixed at least. The bad news, which they discovered after a more thorough inspection, was the one of the brackets on the head-light has snapped and… the entire headlight would have be replaced at a cost of RM450.

At this point my eyes glased over and started to roll up into my head, which I could luckily control with some deep breathing. I declined any such action until I could a second opinion.

I service my car at the manufacturer’s service facility on the premise that they know my car best and thus, she is in the safest hands possible. What I also know is that they charge a premium for exactly this reason. But when it comes to replacing plastic rivets and shifting a panel 3mm (how many inches is that?) , probably with their bare hands, then my wallet might not be in their best interest - or more to the point: my wallet might be their only interest.

Now I have to identify a suitable shop to work on my baby. I have to find such a shop, because it’s not like I’ve ever required this service and yes, there are in fact parts of KK that I haven’t been to and so might not know the location of the best shop for the job. This is when networking with friends are really handy.

I just joined the MyVi Club, my type of car is quite popular, so I’ll find some good deals, or places for it, on there and can hopefully save some money without compromising quality.

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