"Hey, I'm gonna need your help to drive."
"Oh the van ah, no problem. I'm used to it already."
"No, this time its a big truck."
"What! You're kidding right? You sure its Class 3 license not."
"No, I'm not. I'm sitting in it right now. The driver says its Class 3."
And that was how I landed up driving a Isuzu truck out of a HDB parking lot at 3am in the morning. As much as I was relieved to find out it wasn't one of those ridiculous Malaysian "Kendaraan Panjang" kind of long trucks, there was no question of a rear-view mirror. The back of the truck was a huge metal box with 4 padlocks, the kind people use to transport furniture, frozen food and the like.
This is a picture of what the truck was like.
You know, as a guy, you always want to test your limits, but driving weird random vehicles is not exactly the way to go about it. The idea is to stay alive so you can brag to people after.I had my fair share of close shaves, but the good thing about a truck is, you own the road. If you want to change lanes, nobody is going to fuck with you. You can squash them into pecan pie and you probably wouldn't even realise it because behind you is an armoured metal box. Add the fact that you don't have any idea what's behind you, you could pretty much make ten pecan pies and still not realise a thing. I saw a dead cat and after my truck rolled over it it was dead pecan pie. Da-dump. 70km/h in a tank babeh!
It was a cat, which means that it had ceased to be cat some time ago. So no animals were harmed in the production of this article, in case you're a reader who also doubles up as an animal activist. Before you go all crazy on me, let me remind you that I'm also an animal.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the truck was actually easier to drive than the van, but in a typical lucky fashion, I drove it right out of the carpark right into a police roadblock. I swear I panicked when I saw the police officer start to walk over towards the lorry. And the only thing my friend said was "Quick drive! Drive! Don't let him stop us!" Good thing it wasn't like GTA where if you try to ram a cop with a truck you get a one-star rating, because I sure as hell wasn't ready to have five or six police cars on me.
Later I found out why the police officer was probably walking over. I'd forgotten to switch on my headlights. I was really lucky that he had not taken down the license plate number. And a minute after I'd switched it on, my friend who was driving her car called me to say "Hey your headlights aren't on!"
I told her I knew, before I realised that all four of my limbs were doing distinctly different things. My left leg was on the clutch, the right on the accelerator, my right hand on the steering wheel, and my left hand on the phone. And my eyes? They were also on the phone, trying to end the call, because it was a touchscreen phone.
I think I made a very interesting right turn right about there. I went from the right most lane into the left most lane, before cutting across two lanes into the right most lane again. Once again, I was lucky it was 3am, before the pattern I'd just traced across the roads resembled a driver on coke, and I don't mean Coca-Cola.
However, only on the expressway did I find out the real problem with the truck. When you learn driving, the thing they always tell you is when the vehicle is too slow change down the gear so the vehicle doesn't drag on the wrong gear. Well, that was what I did when I went into a slip road.
After I'd changed the gear, the engine made this weird sputtering noise, and all of us in the cabin felt the distinct whine associated with a loss of power. I rammed the accelerator, trying to kick the engine into life, but all I succeeded in doing was producing an angry RRR! out of the truck. The speedometer never even went above 20km/h.
I think I had changed the vehicle down from 5th gear to 2nd, because I was unfamiliar with the gearbox. I swore like a sailor, which did little to inspire confidence in my friends who were sharing the cabin with me, and I also started mashing the stupid gearstick around, which made some very weird noises. Kind of like mechanical chafing, the kind that usually causes sparks to fly out. But to no avail. The truck just died on me.
And that was how a lorry came to block up a slip road one lane wide on an expressway. You know, people don't normally stop on expressways. I have a feeling that it is supposed to be illegal. If a fatimah had showed up then, like how fatimahs always show up when you least want them to to hand you a summons, I think she would have made enough commission to feed her five kids for the next month and still go on the haj.
I eventually managed to drive the truck to my friend's place, where we had to unload some props, only to find that the truck still had something in store for me. At the back of that truck is a huge metal box. Inside the metal box, as you can imagine, is pitch dark. So obviously, somewhere in there there must be a light switch. What they don't tell you is, IT'S A TRAP!
Flipping the light switch one way switches on the light. Flipping it the other way sounds the horn. And no matter what, by the divine rule called Murphy's Law, the first time you flip that switch, it will be the horn.
And hence some estate in Pasir Ris got a full blast of a truck horn at 4am in the morning. I am very thankful that nobody threw a crate of eggs down, but I think my life expectancy was shortened by five minutes from the shock.
But yes, now I am officially van and truck enabled.