So I tried Driving

In the late days of November 2014 I still had no work(2 months of unemployment). Not that I want it to be that way but because I was asked by my relatives to stay by my father's side for a while after my mother's funeral. 

At that time I was feeling conscious of the fact that I still was having no job experience or any skill improvements and will be still for the next couple of weeks. While my friends are working and gaining salary(so envious), I was at home trying to learn a program by reading a "how to" articles about it. I know that it sounds weird but the laptop I was using at that time was not capable of running the said program. I was busy visualizing the user interface of the program when my dad suddenly knocked on the door and told me, "You look like you have nothing to do right now and I just contacted your Uncle Nestor to teach you how to drive a car next Monday.". I immediately answered, "Great, always wanted to try driving a car but not your car.". My father takes care of his car that whenever there is a small scratch on it, he will always ask if it was us who did it and would be in in a very bad mood. 

So we headed at the Land Transportation Office(LTO) at that very same day and brought a photocopy of my NSO birth certificate. The first thing that I saw at the entrance was a fixer. Here in the Philippines, "fixers" serves as middle man between the person trying to get government services and the government employee. In simple terms, they were bad people trying to get money out from you.   

LTO in Legazpi City, Albay

The fixer was pestering me and kept on asking if I was renewing my driver's license or getting a medical permit. I ignored him for the fact that I did not even have a license and that student permits need not a medical permit. After entering I asked a man inside for an application form and accurately accomplished the application form. I submitted the duly accomplished papers and  my birth certificate. Fifteen minutes later my name was called and paid 318 pesos. Then my picture was taken and had to wait again for another ten minutes. Viola! My student driver's permit was printed. The picture was very blurred though.

LTO Student Permit

I was so excited. My uncle arrived at around 10 am. He was driving an "owner type" car powered by a gasoline Toyota engine. It was a manual transmission car which was the best to learn when starting. My uncle will always tell me that if I learn how to drive a manual transmission car, driving an automatic transmission car will be very easy. The car had two brake pedal. One for me and one for the instructor. Quite convinient I might say so myself after almost taking a dive in a gutter.

Owner Type Car

 

My uncle first briefed me on the overview of driving. It was plain and simple. If there is an obstacle, avoid it. If the obstacle is hard to avoid, use the brakes. After the short lecture I entered the driver seat and throttled the engine. The roaring of the engine as the fuel and air was burned made me feel ecstatic. We first tried circling around our neighborhood since there were only few cars around. Then suddenly my uncle suggested, "Let's go to Bacacay.". At this point of time, I was still frightened of driving on the main road filled with big trucks and fast cars, however my uncle told me that the only way to really learn how to drive was to try driving in the main roads. And so I tried driving, slowly but surely.

Learning about levers and pedals is easy

 Different thoughts of accidents kept me from speeding up. I was about 20~30 km/hour and a lot of cars were passing by me. A few times that the car engine stopped at an intersection, some drivers would shout at me saying "Hala! Hala!" which was meant to jeer at me since they probably know that I'm a beginner. I was driving for about an hour when we finally arrived to our destination then we returned back home. My body was so tired that I slept after laying down on my bed. 

On my second day of learning how to drive, my uncle suggested that I should try driving in the city where there are traffic jams. Here I truly learned when to shift to a higher gear, when to stop, how to enter a crossing and many more. Now I understand why my relatives were telling me that courage was all that is necessary to drive. 

After seven of more days, I finally grasped how to drive. Hurrah! We continued our driving sessions for a couple of days to gain experience. Now I can tell others who want to drive that all that you need is courage, or in my uncle's bicol word "kusog ki boot".