My third driving test 14-03-2006

Warm up was good as usual. But I always thought warm up didn't matter coz seeing the instructor and seeing the tester were different. Totally.

I told my instructor I was nervous. It was already my third attempt. I didn't wanna spend another 500 bucks for another retest or more time off my schedule to go for revision lessons. He told me "Remember why you are here today. You are not here to take the test. You are here to claim your license."

And then an hour later I saw the tester. Black face as usual. And it didn't helpl that I was freaking nervous. You know the cue for emergency braking. When you are on gear 2 and there aren't any cars behind you, the probability of E break is super high. So I looked out for the cue. Gear 2. Right. No cars behind me. Right. Then I saw the tester lean forward and stretch out his hands to touch that "where the air bag is supposed to be" thing. I thought he was gonna tap it so I braked. It turned out that he merely wanted to place his document there. He looked at me as though I was an alien. I apologized but he said "this is no good."

shit.

My circuit was perfect apart from that.

I was on the road and I saw him ticking madly on that score sheet or whatever you call that. Damn demoralized already. After some time, he said "you know something. You always forget to check your left blind spot. It's already the third time."

shit.

Then we went back to driving center. He said, "your circuit was perfect. But your road driving was no good. Fail to check blind spot. Sometimes fail to check side mirror. Never slow down at traffic junction. You must slow down you know if not you cannot brake in time when it changes to amber light. Then when you check your side mirror you tend to swerve your car already. You should not do that. And also you never keep a safe distance. Tell me what is the number of car lengths you got to keep on a 60km/h road?"

I was already damn depressed and I didn't quite catch what he said. So I said "two." What came into my mind was the 2 seconds rule. The thing about keeping 2 lamp post apart and not car lengths.

His eyebrows twitched a little. "It's 6. You were driving so fast just now but you failed to keep a safe distance from the car in front of you. What if it suddenly braked?"

worrying.

And that wasn't the end. He practically gave me a lecture for 10 whole minutes. On how much I sucked on the road.

He turned to the result sheet on the score sheet. I saw his pen move towards the box called "immediate failure"... and then move past it.

But it didn't matter I was so prepared to get like 30 points AGAIN.

I saw him write "18" and tick in the box labelled "pass".

I just broke down.

"thank you," was the only thing I said. I was lost for words. I was so emotional.

Then, he smiled at me. Like a form of reassurance. He looked really pleasant when he smiled. He passed me the result slip with two hands, together with my PDL and IC. He stared right into my eyes, and said, "drive safely."

I was pretty sure it was sympathy coz he knew I had already failed twice. Yes big deal it's just a driving license. But I just couldn't thank him enough.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you very much.