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Feb
9thDriving on Fumes, or rather, NOT Driving on Fumes!
Heh, had to happen eventually. Chantelle has an annoying (well annoying to me) habit of driving her Hyundai Getz around until the petrol warning light comes on, before continuing to drive with that light shining brightly in front of her for a further couple of days, before only eventually deciding to stop in order to put some petrol in! Needless to say, this makes me very nervous, particularly when you consider I hardly ever let my car’s petrol tank dip below a quarter full! Anyway, she always admonishes me when I tell her to fill up, so I’ve long since given up lecturing her and rather just make alarmed noises whenever I climb into the car next to her and glance over at her fuel gauge. So the other day I arrived home after a long day of work, and after Jessica had been put down for the night, we’re sitting in the lounge on the couch and enjoying a nice cup of coffee, when she bows her head and shamefully admits – yup, she finally went and ran out of petrol!* Funnily enough, it happened just as she was on her way to fill up at her favourite Caltex petrol station (doesn’t it always), with the Getz coming to a spluttering standstill about a kilometre and a half away from the garage. As it turns out, you can’t drive for three days on petrol fumes alone after all! Stopped at the side of the road, she had to make [...]
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Aug
5thThe Case of the Sporadically Broken Hyundai Getz Central Locking System
My nifty little midnight grey Hyundai Getz is now around a year and a half old by my reckoning, with 40,000 km on the clock (ouch, I know). However, here is the kicker. It seems to have developed this sporadic habit of breaking the driver’s side central locking system. Every now and then, out of the blue, the “unlock all doors” functionality works as expected when exiting via the driver’s front door, but the “lock all doors” fails, which is quite inconvenient when you realise that you now have to walk around the car and lock each and every individual door by hand (because remember, the central locking was kind enough to still unlock all the other doors!) Funnily enough, Chantelle has a similar but reversed problem with the central locking on her older 2006 model Getz, where basically the other doors don’t want to unlock. Which by the way is a far more convenient problem to sit with than mine when you think about it! So the question is, has anyone else experienced the same problems with the central locking on their Hyundai Getz?
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Mar
29thIn an Effort to Reduce My Speeding Fine
I might have mentioned that during this period where I’m the most broke I have ever been, I had the displeasure of receiving a whopping R600 speeding fine for an infringement caught way back in December, over the period when Jessica was still fighting for survival in the NetCare NICU in Kuilsriver.
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Mar
23rdGetting Serviced
Two things getting serviced today actually, the first being Gina G. Getz who goes into the Hyundai Helderberg Service Centre for her big 30,000 km service (a couple of days before her 1st birthday actually) and the second being little Jessica who is going in for one or other big injection which costs around R8,000 a shot and which gets repeated for the next four months or so (i.e. it costs a truckload to get this one done!).
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Oct
8thHow to Spot Someone working from Home
No wonder the whole of Nagua Bay would know when I was working from home on any particular day – just spot the lonesome car out in the parking lot! :)
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Oct
7thGina G. Getz’s First Check-up
So my beloved little 1.4 Gina G. Getz has managed to clock up to her 15,000 kilometre mark already, after owning her for just over six months now, meaning she is travelling in excess of 2,000 kilometres per month!
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Sep
16thFoiled at the Pumps
This morning I was once again foiled at the pumps, but not by the lack of petrol attendants as has been the case over the last two weeks. No, as the guy who assisted me clarified, while the strike may very well be continuing on the television, the reality is that a lot of the guys on the ground have begun to return to work because simply put, two weeks off with no pay at that particular income level is not a particularly easy thing to do! I had left home a couple of minutes later than per usual thanks to me wanting to run some updates on my Ubuntu machines and the need to console poor old Chantelle who is so frustrated because she can’t get a good night’s rest at the moment, meaning that the last thing I wanted to see as I pulled out of the parking lot was an empty fuel tank. Great. Getting petrol in the early hours (i.e. 06:15) has not been a particularly smooth process this last little while, and so I thought I would hit a petrol station I don’t normally use, the BP garage on the corner by the Strand train station. And I was in luck – or so I thought – because as I approached I saw a petrol attendant in uniform, ready to serve. Fantastic. So the petrol went in, I struck up conversation and finally whipped out my debit card to complete the transaction. Except the stupid [...]
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Jun
10thReplacing Parts
Then next up is the hunt for a new bed. Andy needs her bed that we’ve been using in the flat for the last couple of years back (for her upcoming baby’s room in case you are wondering), which of course means we need to buy a replacement one. To be honest, this isn’t such a bad thing because Andy’s bed is pretty much slept through at this stage
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May
6thTo Nieuwoudtville and Back
Nieuwoudtville may be a small, speck on the map, but it comes packed with wonderful people, great food, and more importantly, that feeling of just getting away from it all – exactly what us city slickers sometimes need!
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Apr
16thA Thirsty Gina G. and a Sick Chantelle
The on the other woman in my life front we get Chantelle, who naturally managed to snag my cold that I’ve been sitting with and progressed through each phase just like I previously had done. Shame, the poor girl has been as sick as a dog and done her best to stay away from work, but we all know our Chantelle – a workaholic right to the end!
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Apr
5thThe Arrival of Gina G. Getz
At this point one realises that the scale which balances out running an old car against paying off a new car appears to have finally slipped in the new car direction, forcing me to make a snap judgement and decide that enough was enough, in order to get some reliability back in my life, I’d need to swallow the bitter pill of introducing my first ever taste of debt into my life and buy a new car.
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Mar
31stPhoto Gallery: Purchase of the Getz (2010-03-31)
My first every brand new car was a 1.4 Hyundai Getz, bought at Helderberg Hyundai in Somerset West.
