Confidence or lack thereof

For sometime following my failed test I had confidence issues in terms of driving. And when you drive, confidence is the most important. It's always a bad thing to be under or over confident when driving. Both ways you'll be a hazard to fellow road users.


hau kw for driving! considering i booked the lesson last night, im lucky. but i really think im losing this whole driving thing cos i just cant seem to enjoy it anymore and the confidence is just not there. very erps i know. but true. i dunno how.

Original entry here.

No more poles?!

DID YOU KNOW THAT WITH EFFECT 15 MARCH 2010, ALL PARKINGS WILL BE DONE WITHOUT THE POLES???


how lame is that!!!


i thought it was a good thing when i first read the news on bbdc's website. at least blur people like ME wouldnt be knocking down poles anymore. besides, the sound of poles dropping still freak me out today. but on hindsight, how the hell are people expected to even learn how to park without the poles? then again it probably makes more sense since there are no poles on the roads outside the circuit.


stupid bbdc has decided to open slots for jan and i have, expectedly, NO SLOTS booked for the days leading up to my test. i take back whatever i have said so far about bbdc. bbdc sucks. if you're reading this to decide whether to learn driving at bbdc, dont! they dont give a damn about whether you pass or not, and that sucks!


full entry here.

Driving woes again

first driving lesson after traumatic monday and, it rained- nice and heavy. unfortunately, only at the start and end of the lesson. still i made even more mistakes than i did during the test. i knocked down the inner pole during parallel parking THREE times. i think theres something psychological about it.

or maybe i was just too irritated with alex tan to drive properly. i figure bbdc instructors can be categorized into those who care more about safety, those who care more about skill, those who care about both, and those who dont care at all. alex tan, like ng hl, belongs to the last category. (hau kw is the first, ronald siew the second and chan hy the third.) instructors who belong to the last category often have something else in common: which is they exaggerate the mistakes you make in terms of their reaction, but do nothing to make you improve. they also have a penchant for keeping things really quiet in the car even when things go wrong.

i neither see nor appreciate the value in keeping quiet when things go wrong. everyone else, even sim kh, ensures you improve thereafter. alex tan on the other hand, either has no clue how to make me improve or simply cannot be bothered to communicate it. (i think its the former.)

met chan hy right after i came out of the car. when i first said hi i realised he forgot that my test date was monday and that if he was right, i wouldn't be there and then saying hi to him, so i told him i failed my test. as expected, i got that jaw-dropping 'what happened??' reaction, which changed to that 'what a waste' reaction when i told him i knocked a pole down during parallel parking.

just how much will i pay to not get alex tan again? the amount required to be under that fixed instructor scheme. unfortunately i forgot to quiz the counter about it today. my only fear is that they're all changing groups and chan hy and hau kw may not be in the same group.



Original entry here.

FAILED

so the worst possible thing happened. ok maybe not. after all, i did have zero immediate failures. thats a plus considering how i used to collect them. but i made mistakes i never thought i'd make - like forgetting to release handbrake, knocking down a pole during parallel park, and not checking mirror before slowing down. i knew that mirror thing was a problem right from the end of stage 2. but i somehow never did anything about it because none of the instructors have ever pointed it out. nevertheless... i failed. that is really not so much to document the experience as much as it is doing my best to make this the ultimate bbdc review blog.


besides, it was raining so heavily (chan hy's words are a prophecy) i could barely see the arrows on the road; and i have never driven at night before i had no idea how to turn on the headlights. not that i was penalised for that, but still. after i knocked down the pole i thought i had failed already so when he told me to go out onto the roads i was like, HUH? and as a result, it affected the rest of my test (as i said, chan hy's words are a prophecy).


ironically the only part of chan hy's words that failed to come true is the thing about me passing. im sorry to all my instructors, cos me failing means they dont get their year-end bonus. and still i wish i got hau kw right from the start considering the rest of the points came from safety issues.


but y'know after the debrief it became apparent to me how the traffic police standard is so different from the instructors'. not because the instructors are slack, but because the tester is just looking out for different things. as such i think the traffic police should release an entire list of official test criteria.






anyway! im not upset anymore (i felt awful after i knocked the pole down and even worse after i got out of the car) and what remains is just the embarrassment from not being able to pass on my first try (cos everyone else passes on first try, right, but its bbdc and most of my friends who learnt it @ bbdc didnt pass on their first try). the truth is i didnt deserve to pass today either - driving in the rain reminded me i wasnt confident enough to deal with such changes in the weather.


fact is, better to knock poles in the circuit and fail driving test than knock down people in real life and spend a couple of years in jail.


must move on. i look forward to passing before the expiry of my PDL. my re-test will be on 7/1/10. long time to go. for now, im going to take a breather from this whole driving thing. second try please. i'd seriously be too embarrassed to face any of my driver friends if i take it more than twice. xD


the worst part of 2009 was failing my driving test. original entry here.

the history of this blog, and more nerves

i keep thinking about what will happen tomorrow. on a lighter note, it will be my last time @ bbdc if i do pass. i will, upon getting the letter from traffic police, proceed down to the counter to buy p-plates, and make sure i get the $200-odd left in my bbdc account back. and if i fail, of course, the first thing to do would be to put more money into the account so i have enough for say, 3 more lessons, and to book test date. if i fail and meet any of the g8001 instructors i will be eternally embarrassed i think.


(the earliest re-test date is 29/12, which means failing tomorrow would make it just right for me to take my test early jan, with a couple of revision lessons in between holiday and school. im sure it'll suffice. bbdc has yet to open up training slots for jan, so getting lessons shouldnt be a problem if i stalk the website enough. other than their intention to change groups to 10 instructors/group next year, and the money aspect of things, i dont see any issue that may potentially turn problematic.)






i signed into nuffnang to check my hits and amazingly, readership has increased over the past two weeks. and guess why! ive been getting hits from google searches for "bbdc worst instructor" as well as a couple of instructors' names. i even got one from "young instructor bbdc". HAHAHA. i cant stop laughing at the thought of having people google such things and come to my blog. indeed, i am running a free-for-all bbdc review service. at the same time i also feel quite freaked out cos if some of the instructors google such things and get my blog, i wonder what they'll think.


they'll probably be damn pressured to be nice to me.


oh man, look at this and this. now it seems i have only blogged about the two of them which is untrue, since according to the statistics (which i intend to publish if i pass tomorrow), i have actually had ronald siew teach me most often. maybe nobody has tried typing ronald siew into google yet. now this becomes another reason to pass tomorrow because how can i risk instructors googling their names and finding my blog??? THATS LIKE THE MOST EMBARRASSING THING EVER, a reason why i dont blog profs' names!


i find it quite surprising nobody has googled sim kh. now there is one reason - sim kh is not computer literate. yes, he happened to mention that while telling me his life story. which would imply that the rest of the instructors, particularly those whose names have been googled, are actually googling themselves. thats quite probable/acceptable since if i were running a service like that i'd probably google myself every night to see what my students say about me.


i now have this terrible image of them instructors googling their names, finding my blog, knowing that its me and the next day going to tell all the other instructors about what ive written.


should be thankful for everyone who has been typing instructors' names into google and in the process raising my readership. thank you. although i hope i wont have any more chances of blogging about them anymore. MUST PASS TOMORROW.


okay, i will blog about my tester tomorrow. may i get one who is nice, lenient and quiet. and please may i pass tomorrow. i keep telling myself less than 11 points (when it comes to things where 20 is the max, i just have to benchmark it against my olevel score.) but truthfully im damn scared ill get some immediate failure crap. because ive been getting immediate failures all this while, get it???


hahahaha.


ok i just found some forum pages discussing driving and some girls (the posts are dated 2004 to be fair) are gushing about "yan dao bbdc instructors" and others are going "bbdc?? i dont see any yan dao instructors there leh!!!" HAHAHA. and i read a blog stating bbdc's passing rate is very low. which is, not unbelievable. i only know ONE person from bbdc who passed on her first attempt. truthfully, i dont know. i just dont want to jinx myself. after reading so much though i have practically zilch confidence, not in myself, but in the testers.


if i do fail though, please dont laugh at me the way my sister does over me not knowing a thing about complex numbers (this is like, the ultimate joke between the both of us, because till date i still know nothing about complex numbers). people pass and people fail. its all part of life.


Original entry here.

(Not the) last driving lesson

guess who i got for driving today :)

if my hopes come true all the time, then may i please pass on monday!!

ronald siew for my last driving lesson, which would've been a damn freaking good pass if today had been my test date. hau kw also became the first instructor to acknowledge my presence while they're teaching someone else. not bad, considering he only taught me twice. but he was laughing at me doing vertical parking though (cos urm, i couldnt tell if the car was straight during his lesson).

and, i made this random and unimportant discovery about hau kw. i finally understand why he refuses to take off his sunglasses in the car even when theres no sun. hurhur.

ronald siew gave a lot of random advice at the end of the lesson. he said, "if the tester ask you how many lessons you've had ah, dont go and tell him 27, 28 (which is what i've had). inflate the number and tell him 35! otherwise ah later he say not enough then ask you do again." i couldnt help but burst out laughing. SERIOUSLY WTH!!!! im not wth-ing at his advice, but do such things actually happen??? he also said "when you enter the tester's office and he starts pointing out like why just now never do this never do that, dont tell him 'because whatever whatever'! just say 'oh ok yah i should have done that... thanks i learnt a lot from you'! make him happy cos they dont like people giving them excuses." now thats damn funny is it not??

he ended the lesson saying "...then just wait for LTA to endorse".

):

hahaha.


Pity the better the last lesson the worst the test goes :/ Original entry here.

Pre-test nerves

on a lighter note, i am DAMN GLAD it rained rather heavily today (ok not heavily, but it certainly wasnt a drizzle) at bbdc, because i finally had my chance to drive and do all the courses in the rain. parking is a lot harder with your rear windscreen all foggy and wet. but i succeeded. had no problems parallel parking at all. life is great.

chan hy thinks i will pass on monday. that is a plus, y'know, cos even though he isnt as strict as hau kw, hes still an instructor and hes not slack. the good thing about having an instructor you're comfortable with is that you have no qualms voicing your concerns/fears about the test. it was quite reassuring knowing that some testers are humane, even though a particular one apparently derives great joy from making people do the courses in reverse order. and, apparently bbdc instructors all have to undergo an assessment every year end, and that causes great stress for all of them alike us taking our test. its quite funny really if driving and teaching driving everyday isnt even enough to boost their confidence.

i cannot decide if i should hope for a mean/strict or nice/reassuring instructor for my last driving lesson tomorrow. i need to be able to perform up to standard even if i get an awful tester, so the former seems like a good option, but i really need the confidence boost a nice/reassuring instructor may offer.

ok, maybe i should hope i get ronald siew cos hes like The Mix. but i'd need to ask him to keep quiet (!) cos hes always prompting me.

i always imagine driving along bukit batok/teck whye and bumping into my instructors on the roads. but what i envision myself doing most is sending the g8001 instructors a thank-you card. i know, i am so weird; but at least both of these visions reflect my will to pass on my first try. (ill probably send a card to chan hy, one to ronald siew and a general one to the whole of g8001 which encompasses the annoying, deliveryman-turned-taxi driver-turned-bbdc driving instructor sim kh, the i-am-so-tall-i-can-barely-fit-into-the-car hau kw, the please-wait-for-awhile-i-need-to-go-toilet ng hl and the dude who passed me on three modules without teaching me a thing, tan jj.) no seriously. i know i should pass first then talk. but what im trying to imply is that the pressure on myself to pass is not simply out of pride and the $2k, but cos all of them put in so much effort into teaching me and making me a safe and competent driver, i feel the responsibility to pass on my first try.

Full entry, in which I also lament how much it costs to cab from BBDC to just about anywhere, here.

7 Days

hau kw for driving. because it was a revision lesson and not some trial thing (though my first and last lesson with him was also not a trial - so why was he so unfriendly that day?!) he was a lot nicer today. and i have, as a result, started to think that perhaps on the driving side of things, the situation would've been different if i got him earlier on. if i didnt have lessons with the first few instructors who couldnt be bothered to teach me properly. hes like, the best instructor in the group, aside from chan hy. but chan hy is a bit too nice sometimes. whereas hau kw is DAMN STRICT with everything - he even has problems with the way i put down the handbrake. but aside from being damn strict, hes also quite funny/nice without distracting you unnecessarily during lesson. he does have the tendency to give instructions a little late though.

OK AM I REALLY RUNNING A BBDC REVIEW SERVICE HERE???

was supposed to have two more revision lessons on thurs and fri, but i just booked one more for 4pm tomorrow, which means rushing off from nation-building lect ten mins early and having less time to study for the test on wed.

but i think i should give it my best shot next monday. i get the feeling there is a chance i can actually do well for my first attempt. i just need a bit more confidence.

lets all say "VAMOS!" and perhaps, ill have good news for you next week.


Original entry in full length here.