Rubbin's racing!

I really wish I was into Nascar so I could give a reason why I agree with that slogan. Unfortunately, I think nascar is stupid, so it's not a good excuse for me. Because yes, you guessed it, I've started driving in Hong Kong. If you're here, go ahead and get all the get off the sidewalk jokes out of the way now.

You'd think that after 16 years of driving that it wouldn't be hard, but it feels very, very, very different to drive on the left hand side of the road. All of the habits that you have suddenly become wrong. You reach for the gear shift in the wrong location, you can't find the handbrake. It's like the first time you drive an automatic after a long time of driving a stick-shift and how you frantically try to find the clutch. Except ten times worse.

And it doesn't help that you're driving along, you turn onto the main road off the side street and the first thing that happens is you get pulled over by a cop. Yes. That sucked. Sitting there for 5 minutes while they peer at every single page in my passport, and look at my canadian driver's license was kind of nerve wracking. I was glad I knew what he was talking about when he poked his head into the car and asked in broken english what the class 5 and 6 on my driver's license meant.

So with that fun encounter behind us, we continued on into town, did our shopping and went home. Keep in mind that I had Darmita beside me telling me that I was going to have to pay a penalty for everytime I hit the curb, because that is something that she claims all North American drivers do when they move to HK, and of course, I told her that I wouldn't.

And I made it right to about 100m from home, on the tiny little sidestreet when we're cruising along and there's that raspberry of the car wheel rubbing up against the curb. Darnit. Oh well. Maybe next time, Gadget. Next time.