When Cheap Costs More

Living in a safe neighborhood made me complacent.  “Safe neighborhood’ means we only heard of one case of snatch-robbery in the last 3 months.  After all my precautions of not leaving any bags, hand phones or costly items in view inside the car, I get the feeling that nothing bad is ever going to happen anyway.  So complacency sets in and carelessness takes over.  And that’s when bad things happen.  Maybe it’s not that bad, but it’s costly and troublesome.

I was on the way to Penang Island to visit my old folks and other relatives along the way.  Remembering that I may need a larger trolley bag for my probable, upcoming, one-month trip to Deutschland for a project transfer, I decided to get a discounted 24-inch unit at Carrefour.  I don't travel that often anyway.  (If you think about the way baggage are being tossed around, broken into or stolen at certain airports, why bother with expensive bags?)  Well, cheap ended up costing more for me and my luck on this day of 14^th September 2007. 

At 12 noon, a younger brother who was also going the same destination called to inform me while I was still shopping around, there was a heavy jam on the bridge (later found out to be caused by a broken down bus since 9.30am).  He opted to abandon trip.  So we changed course and went to a brother-in-law’s place in Kota Permai in BM instead.  While there looking over his new house which was under renovation, I left my car by the roadside under a cool shade of a tree, about 2 houses away. 

When we came out 30 minutes later, I noticed some broken glass beside my rear tire.  My right rear window was smashed.  My brand new cheap trolley bag was gone from the backseat, together with my daughter’s denim jacket, 2 pairs of new shorts, and a thermos bottle stuffed inside the bag. 

A guy from a house opposite said there are at least a few cars broken into each day on this same street, and the highest score was about dozen cars in one day.  A few guys on motorbikes are prowling the neighborhood, day in day out.  Well, sir.  Thanks for that piece of news.  Huh!

It just wasn’t my day.  The service center told me the replacement glass can only get here next Tuesday.  To cap my misery, dark clouds hovering overhead threatened me with a drenching.  I managed to make it back to bother-in-law’s place before the storm broke.  I wanted to stick a piece of plastic over the window but sis-in-law suggested using her daughter’s Kelissa.  I had to abandon the Myvi at her place and come back for it later.

On the way home after the storm slackened, we got caught in another traffic crawl from Auto-City, Juru to Sebarang Jaya.  There was a badly mauled-up twisted whatever-model-is-it on the overhead bridge of the 3-tier interchange in front of the immigration building.  Whether whoever drove that car deserved it or not, it looked like some people had it worse than me. 

But still, I went home and nursed the pain of loss, frustration of helplessness and regret I took the wrong day off, or to be where I shouldn’t have been in the first place, for the next few days until the story has been told and retold for the umpteenth time whenever someone asks the question: What happened to your car?  One of my girls even laughed at the image of me driving a Kelissa.  So did I.  Que sera sera.