this is the time where things got better.

3:06pm:

i have been forced to cab to bbdc because it is raining heavily. wth man. everytime i cab there its $10+. each lesson is $59.60 so it works out to almost $70! just to get stuck in a barely air-conditioned honda with all the hatred in the world transferred onto the person next to me. i better pass on my first try! i hate bbdc!

*
10:15pm:

ronald siew was my instructor.

cue: F***!!!!!

hahaha. a million bad words ran through my head when i saw his name on my allocation slip. i was like damn black-faced waiting beside the car. but SURPRISINGLY someone was in a good mood today and he was damn nice throughout the whole lesson, less naggy and quite fun too. he even told me my driving improved a lot since the last time he taught me. (not that i believe him cos i know im not that good. if i take the test now i sure fail. but at least i have finally finished stage two and i can finally book my test. YAY!)

so. it wasnt too bad. i dont hate ronald siew that much anymore.

full entry here.

this is the time where driving became a painful affair

there was this time not too far into my driving course where i really, really dreaded driving lessons because of the instructors. somehow i just kept getting super annoying instructors. my face would be really black everytime i saw a familiar name on the slip. going to bbdc felt like a gamble every single time because i just wanted to get instructors not from my group. of course this attitude changed later on.

driving was awful- i was having a lot of trouble concentrating cos i was so tired and ng hl's bad attitude didnt help. honestly, he has no business showing his customers attitude. bah.

i sense my driving skills deteriorate because of the instructors. its psychological but when you really hate the instructor its very hard to learn from them? its really bad cos i keep harping on the wrong things. things like how 1) if i pass on my first attempt instructors in my group - those i hate - are going to get a bonus. like really; thats what the guy at the service counter told me the purpose of fixed group was. thats not really my concern per se, but people like huimin 'graduated' from bbdc without getting the same instructors more than once, which means her instructors only taught her once, but they got their bonus all the same cos huimin passed on her first attempt. i dont really care about them and their bonus considering im not paying it, cos in the first place 2) i dont even think i can pass on my first attempt if this continues cos i freaking hate driving lessons with these instructors.

i really want to change my group but they said i can only change to another auto group, but my fave instructor's teaching manual (WHY WHY WHY?!) and i have no idea which auto group i should choose. also, if i change group i have to give up all my current training slots (which ive booked 2-3x a week for the whole month of september, which would theoretically allow me to finish driving lessons by october) so i am very very unwilling to do that.

its really weird how im typing like this cos not too long ago i was looking forward to each of my driving lessons. this is sad and unfortunate. mr lu shouldnt be teaching manual!!!!

entry in its entirety here.

complaints

reading this again was really funny for me cos i no longer feel the same as i did when i typed this entry. read it with a large pinch of salt and please understand where i was coming from when i typed it.

today i went driving, the whole time during which it was threatening to rain, it finally did after the class so i was half-drenched while walking out of bbdc. the good thing about rain is that you no longer have to endure smoking idiots outside the gate. i hopped onto any random bus (literally) which brought me all the way to marsiling (!) then i took mrt back to jurong east (!) so stupid right, i just needed shelter. the ride was kinda thrilling anyway.

...

by the way, bbdc, for all their good service, can be really inflexible. they insist i have to pay $20+ for a 'fixed instructor scheme account' and $4 more for every lesson if i want to change my group. thing is, i hate 4 out of 6 instructors in my group. they're weird, unhygienic, naggy (but useless in improving my driving skills) and annoying.

ok they are not that weird but they do annoying things, like wind down windows with the aircon on (and refuse to wind it back up when i ask- hello, its damn noisy and dirty outside with all the roadworks going on), or nag and insist that what im doing is wrong but refuse to tell me what is right. one tried to show, but some of us just aint that visual, communicate it vocally! the worst is how they dig their noses and touch the same steering wheel i touch. SICK!!!!!!!!!!!!

i went to complain and the guy, though friendly & cordial, insisted that i have problems with my group cos they have the "responsibility to ensure i pass on first try". he drew a parallel saying its like how "aunties and uncles are always nicer than parents." WELL I AM SORRY, but my parents are a lot nicer than my aunties and uncles. though not all of them suck but following the same parallel it is (some of) my relatives who are useless in improving my life & annoying. i said to the guy plainly, regardless of what kind of stress they face in having to ensure their students pass on first try, it still doesnt undermine the fact that their true responsibility lies in communicating how i can become a better driver, and since they dont, it just means they're not doing their jobs.

its just like pilots who are under a lot of stress cannot possibly crash the plane and have their airlines say in their defense that the pilots are under a lot of stress what.

the other problem with his parallel is the notion of choice. we dont get to choose who we are born to, but certainly it is within human control who my driving instructors are. seriously, i frickin hate sim, ronald siew, alex tan and ng hl. alright, not so much ng hl but he speaks really slowly, which annoys me. ronald siew is the worst. i got him twice already. hes unhygienic, unfriendly, and answers my questions with other questions (like, "do i definitely have to use the hand-over-hand technique when turning?" his answer was "then what you wanna do? you dont think hand-over-hand can help you huh? then do you think you can be a safe driver?" like bah, JUST "YES" WOULD SUFFICE YOU KNOW, IM NOT ARGUING AGAINST IT.) alex tan kept asking "so, you got question to ask me?" throughout the whole lesson, pointing out generic comments and didnt teach much, if at all. sim is simply impossible to understand. view their mugshots here: http://www.bbdc.sg/bbdc/bbdc_web/autoGroups.asp my group's the first. i like the instructors outside my group much better. but strangely the instructor i like the most is listed under manual (!) - which is strange cuz i remember him telling me that learning auto was a "明确的选择"!

anyhow, guy @ complain counter finished up by stating that he hopes that i dont come for every lesson hoping i dont get those instructors, and i told him it is exactly what has been happening. i said 'f***' three times when i got ronald siew the second time.


ok enough bitching. i hope potential bbdc students out there dont end up in g8001 as i did. (complain guy also told me there are students who chose them under the fixed instructor scheme. wth man what are those people thinking???)

looking back, i really cannot understand how come mr siew (now shi fu) used to react like that. anyway he became a lot nicer to me after i talked to the guy at the counter. as far as i can remember he still loves winding down the window but i got used to it after a while. i still hate the rest though!

my hope for a nice instructor

tomorrow i watch laughing-gor, maybe, and visit cd-rama before driving. driving is the yay. i hope i get a nice instructor.

this was the stage in which i really dreaded lessons with some instructors even though i still enjoyed driving in general. there's nothing much else in the original entry but it is here if you're interested.

alex tan

school complaints aside, i went for my 5th driving lesson today after a week of not driving and i thought it was quite screwed but the instructor passed me for 3 (!) subjects. which is bad cuz i dont feel confident about making sharp turns at all nor do i about driving at 70km/h.

the rest of the entry is available here.

ps: that was alex tan j. j. who passed me for three subjects even though i didn't deserve to. actually he doesn't get anything out of passing me for three subjects so i have no idea why he did.

more brief mentions

made brief mention of my learning to drive in an entry i wrote to conclude my 3-month break last year.

first time on the roads

had my first driving lesson on the roads, as well as the first in english. wow. striked two kerbs and almost smashed the car cos my turning was too wide and i cant seem to turn the steering wheel back fast enough.

and more @ http://ycroxmyworld.blogspot.com/2009/08/first-day-of-last-week.html

ps: i remember i hated the instructor for this lesson. hes damn lucky i cannot remember his name. he wasnt in any of my groups but he was damn unfriendly.

so it was my fault that i mounted the kerb. actually maybe not cos apparently i was inexperienced in handling the car at that stage?! besides i struck so many kerbs with mr chan later on and he didnt scold me, not even once.