Friday, September 22, 2006

Stealing broadband

For those of us who have taken on the burden of adulthood, one of the chores that most of us have as boring, dyed-in-the-wool responsible men - apart from the interminable bills - is servicing the car. The few lucky buggers around the world with excellent public transportation should count their blessings since there's nothing quite as frustrating as getting the car serviced since it involves careful, precise planning ( taking the day off and such ), excellent coordination ( between the harassed mechanic and yourself ) and plenty of dull hours catching up with outdated magazines.

Despite Charming Calvin's enthusiastic praise for the seemingly efficient train service, I have my suspicions. In most developing Asian capitals, the public transportation still needs more than a little ... tweaking ( if not a desperate overhaul ) - and till that happens, speeding around in a personal vehicle seems to be the easier option. And while it does raise my stress levels some ( raising the terrifying spectre of early hypertension ), it does give me some alone time to think.

Still that doesn't make servicing any easier. Bringing the car in for servicing certainly marks another adult milestone since I can easily recall my dad catering to such dull chores when I was a kid.

Over in the mechanics' workshop, one would reasonably expect studly, gorgeous specimens of manhood, all stubbly, sweaty and liberally painted with grease, dressed in only painted-on jeans that has seen better days. Usually offering a free oil check and engine tune-up - while tugging on his burgeoning gearshift.

Mechanic!
Could you fiddle around with my gearshift?

Obviously most of those steamy apprentice mechanics have been hired by the gay porn studios since what we find in the workshop is usually far from palatable. What we get instead is a portly uncle with belly overflowing his straining pants leering as he runs his fingers over the car hood and talks about engine thingamajigs. While scratching his rapidly thinning head, the mechanic would be rattling on about the mileage and the oil usage and I'd be nodding away semi-knowledgeably while my curious gaze runs over the workshop searching futilely for a greasy Chris Evans lookalike hopefully stashed away somewhere under the hood. No such luck however. Somehow or rather in the midst of such overwhelming testosterone and grit, any trace of feather boa swishiness seems to melt away leaving a grunting neanderthal in place and even my voice drops an unbelievable octave when I mumble rubbish about horsepower and pumping pistons.

Then I look up again and I see the uncle with an oil-stained finger up his nose. Which is how I usually end up with the outdated magazines mentioned above.

Then I realized that I needed to write up some reports for work and brought out my laptop only to find the wireless LAN blinking away. Hell, who'd ever guess that the isolated workshop acually received wifi - God knows from where. Life's certainly full of surprises and I spent the time tapping away at the keyboard - writing this post - vaguely imagining the uncle drooling over porn sites in between fiddling with carburetors.

...***...


You know what! I take it all back. I'd marry the old portly uncle, fuck the belly.

Hell, he practically left me penniless selling medical prescriptions by the highway. For the amount of money he just made off me - and of course for changing my tyres - I might as well just bend over and let him have it all. :) Might as well marry him. Then of course I'd slowly poison him with my knowledge of pharmacology, take over his shop and hire studly young apprentices to man the shop.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Over in the mechanics' workshop, one would reasonably expect studly, gorgeous specimens of manhood, all stubbly, sweaty and liberally painted with grease, dressed in only painted-on jeans that has seen better days. Usually offering a free oil check and engine tune-up - while tugging on his burgeoning gearshift."

hehehe.. wishful thinking!
i'm reminded abt that line from Friends, where Jopey and and Chandler keep expecting the pizza delivery agls to start stripping, after they spend 72 hrs watching porn nonstop! ;-)

Las montaƱas said...

Well, if you patronise some upmarket workshops (where there is airconditioning), they wouldn't be too sweaty and grumby. And certainly you really dont want them to sit on your nice leather seats!

Anonymous said...

haha, i guess, not only mechanics, many other places such at the shipyard etc etc etc, usually brings hope of hunky sweaty eye candies but only provide big belly uncles :(

anyway, the broadband does help i suppose, which workshop is that ya?

Matt. K. said...

Well, I guess that's reality, ain't it? I mean, practically, we don't have hot, hunky, sweaty, gorgeous gardeners or plumbers to gawk at. It's usually the old ah pek or belly-scratching uncles who make jokes that we find less interesting that comes around to get things fixed. Heck, we don't even have buffy construction site workers slaving under the sun to spot. Kind of frustrating at times.

thompsonboy said...

When you set up a wireless transmitter, there's a radius whereby ppl in it can receive and use it if you don't set it password protected, probably the neighbours have wireless?

Anyway, what am I? IT Geek...bah!

Gay boy comes to London said...

Here's what we need - a gay mechanic shop where we can take our gay cars and get a good old gay service while looking under the hood, heh.

ZEYN, THE PERPETUAL STRANGER said...

why don't we have loads of hot mechanics here? too engrossed with their jobs that they don't really have time to work out.

Sue said...

I hate taking my car to get serviced (expense + they never do it right). So I married a man that can fix my car himself in addition to being an architect. Actually, when I first met him at work he fixed the fuel injection on my Audi and I thought, gee whiz, this could be useful. So, in essence, I married the mechanic as you propose in your post. But, I do love him. :)

hrugaar said...

Sounds like you picked the wrong workshop. Find one that has a hunky apprentice, and then get together with him to poison the boss and take over the business. Simple la. ;oP

Um, can't think of anyone else I know who takes the day off work when their car goes in for service, though.

Anonymous said...

Oh you should have asked me where to go. Perhaps you won't get WiFi but you wouldn't be staring at your laptop when there's a hunky young mechanic tooling around with his fly open :P

S said...

As long as they can do a pretty good lube job, I couldn't care less.

Anonymous said...

How long does it take to poison the uncle to death? You've gotta hurry! There is a hunky muscled engineer when I have my car serviced. No, it's not my imagination but he is so married. :-(

Annie said...

Thompsonboy beat me to it, but I was just going to say the exact same thing about the wifi. Oh geez, does that make me a Geekette! ACK!

Luckily for me, I'm mechanically inclinded and I've been so poor, I've had to fix my own problems with my car. I even had a girly scrungee holding up my clutch cable for a year!

I have to take a day off so my mechanic can fiddle with my truck too. It sucks; but what can you do? Attend an all-day Spa?

Anonymous said...

Hmm... I smell a business opportunity to cash in the pink dollars:

"Welcome to the Rainbow Garage!

Everytime you bring your car in for a repair, we call all our young male mechanics to line up before you. Choose one to fix your car, or choose several! They are all specialists in Public Relations in addition to being extra handy with their wrenches.

Why sweat it out when we peek under the hood? Relax on our comfy IKEA sofas in our waiting room. From the waiting room you can sit back and watch our mechanics hard at work through the glass wall.

And finally, we switch on the heater in the garage so that no matter the temperature outside, the mechanics WILL have to remove their shirts in order to cool off.

What are you waiting for? Set up an appointment today by calling Ryan at 1-800-FIX-MY-BUMPER."

Oh, and I'm NEW. Do welcome me to the blogosphere by checking out my blog ;)

savante said...

OMG, closetalk! I was thinking of that episode too!

Upmarket shops... guess that's the one I went to but for some reason, the guy was greased, las montanas.

Depressing, isn't it, xavier! There should be a rule that there must be at least one hot specimen on board.

Actually, construction is different, matt. i have seen some hot ones around.

GASP! IT knowledge, thompson!

Good old gay service does sound good, gayboy.

But their jobs are arduous and would constitute physical labour, shah.

Married a mechanic, sue. That's so cute :)

Will go around looking for the cute mechanic then, ru. Maybe drownedglass has an idea.

True enough, steve. And charge me less dammit!

But I'd have to bring my car to Japan, shigeki!

OMG Annniiieiei.. fix my car!

Hey, I wanna be your business partner, Ryan!

Paul

William said...

I dread going to the mechanic. I don't speak their lingo and maybe I have the word "sucker" on my forehead. I alway feel that I'm being fleeced. When you think a mechanic that you've been going to is honest, he starts to pull numbers from thin air when he is writing up the bill. They'll just lube you up and ...