My First Drive

Two days after I got my license, I had my first drive on the road.

It was exciting, but "scary" at the same time! After driving for five months I am so used to driving around Bukit Batok area, that other roads seemed so foreign. It doesn't help that there is no instructor around who will tell you to turn left or right!

I am left all on my own (Of course, I still do not dare to drive without somebody else with me, what I meant was, I had to make decisions and judgement all by myself.)

It is a weird feeling. Afterall, it is expected that after I have earned the license, I could start driving. However, I cannot help but feel "danger" without an instructor next to me.

It was a nice Sunday afternoon and I happily stuck two triangular "P" plates on the front and back windscreen of the car. I then started the journey with my boyfriend in the east and drove to Tampines Mall.

If you have been to Tampines Mall on a weekend, you would have known how busy and chaotic the traffic can get.

And for a greenhorn like me, I was left shaking behind the wheel, not knowing when to make my move.There was a little bit of swerving here and there, but generally all seemed to be going fine until I reached the carpark.

PARKING time.

No more poles to guide me, it is now SHOW TIME.

As the carpark was very crowded, it took me quite sometime before I found an empty lot.

"Finally!" I heaved a sigh of relief.

I mentally "revised" the steps for vertical parking, turned on the hazard light, took a deep breath and was about to reverse...when a car from behind turned in and "seized" my lot.

"But I was here first!" I grumbled lotly in the car."How could he do that?"

My boyfriend said my mistake was to stop the car too far ahead of the lot.

"But I turned on the hazard light to indicate!"

The man in his 20s alighted from his car and acted as if he had done nothing wrong, and he even had the nerve to glare at me.

The thing I did next, was in a moment of folly, and it made me guilty the rest of the day.

I HORNED at him.

I realised afterwards that it was such a silly, ugly and ungracious thing to do, and I shall never, ever repeat it again.

Anyway, I was so angry that I could not remember how I managed to squeeze my car into another parking lot.

Later on, I drove from Tampines to the expressway (Yippee!) and all to the west. I was horned once when I was hesitant in switching lanes on the expressway. Other than that, I did not run into too much trouble.

Well, that was because half the time I was holding tightly to the steering wheel for dear life, and with my eyes fixed on the road, the rear mirror, the side mirrors and the blind spots.

At the current stage, driving and gaining real life experience on the roads seem like a big adventure. And I am looking forward to the next adventure!