Bad driving mojo

Corbett | May 19, 2003 4:11 PM

The stars are against me this week. The Chinese have a word, pronounced "daomei," which sort of means "cursed by bad luck." This weekend I've really been daomei.

Yesterday I drove Tiff up to the corner to buy some groceries. Less than 200 meters in all, since it was pouring rain. On the way back, traffic was lined up as usual for a Sunday, and I had to wait forever to make the left into our lane. Finally a guy stops and lets me make the turn, and when I do, blam, I slam head-on into a scooter screaming up the hill without lights. The guy flips over his bike, across my hood, and drops into a puddle at the entrance to my lane. I stop the car, jump out, and see if he's ok. No broken bones, just a little confused. I get him and his bike out of the rain, and to my house to clear his head. Luckily I was only going like 5kph. The rest of the afternoon was spent with police reports, ambulances, more police reports, etc. The kid was ok, and will now probably drive a little slower going around corners in the rain.

While the cop was measuring out the accident with his little roller thingy, I saw a little kitten flipping around in the middle of the road right by where I had just hit the scooter. The kitten was only like a couple months old, and had apparently just been hit. The cop didn't bother to pick it up, so I stopped traffic and ran out to pick him up so his head wouldn't get spilled all over road. I managed to get to him just as he died, so I carried him over to the side of the road, said a little sending away prayer for him, and put him in a trashcan.

That was enough to convince Irene we needed to go to Lungshan Temple and bai-bai. I prayed a bit to Guan Shi Ying Pu Sa, and told her what a terrible day I've had, and all about the recent crap going on in my life and asked her if I could buabei, which is Taiwanese for asking a god a question through crescent shaped wooden blocks and the fortune sticks.

"Things are getting better slowly," she told me, after I fumbled through several wrong sticks before getting to the right one.

This morning, Irene reads me my horoscope, which says that I need to be very careful with anything related to driving, because the stars are against me. I'm thinking about this as I head into the office for a meeting, and am trying to coordinate my staff on my mobile while driving. I turn a corner, and am immediately pulled over by a motorcycle cop, who sees me on the phone. Oh oh...so I pull out my license, which is from NY, and supposedly acceptable in Taipei, but he refuses it, and writes out a heavy fine for not having a Taiwanese license. He takes away my plates, and tells me I need to go immediately to DMV and exchange the license for a Chinese one. I tell him that I've tried many times, and they have always turned me away, saying that I can just use the NY one since I'm in and out of the country so much.

So I go to the DMV, and they of course tell me that they can't exchange it.

So now I can't drive to the office anymore, and have to take the SARS bus and the SARS subway until I can send away and get an international license from AAA by mail, then take that to the DMV so they will exchange it in to a Chinese one for me, and I can get my plates back after shelling out the US$250 fine.

Man, I'm really daomei.

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Category: Ramble

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