Jonbu the baker

Not the typical blog update, but last year December, I decided that I’d look into upgrading my Tiguan speakers. The internet were not so helpful, not much info on the speaker sizes or what not. It’s apparent after taking a look at the actual speakers, that an upgrade work will require some drilling and maybe a custom made lift-ring. I’ve decided I won’t change them, but hopefully these pictures will help someone who is considering a DIY upgrade.

These are baseline stock config. This is the right door.

Woohoo first new car.

I have no picture of my car. No chance to (i.e. too lazy) to take a picture of it for the blog. Logically, I’m either driving it, or it’s parked in a garage – and no good picture will come out of either of those situations. In car brochures we always see pretty pictures of cars traveling on moody roads, or parked at some amazing locations. You’re really buying a dream when you buy a car. Consumerism at its best. It’s the same with almost everything we buy really.

My friend who got a new car recently was telling me, he didn’t feel very thrilled when he got his new car. I’m feeling the same. Getting a car seems to be more about needing it as a transportation, than it is about buying happiness. I was pretty happy when I bought the iMac, for example. And it’s also a utility item. So you’d think, buying something 15x the cost of an iMac, should give you 15x the happiness. I’m pretty happy about getting this car, but not 15x.

Anyways I got a Volkswagen Tiguan, base model with none of the options installed.

Three Easy Steps to getting a car:

1. Pick the Car
Stop dreaming about a Lexus and get a budget figured out. My first thought was the Corolla. It was too crappy and boring, so I moved on to the Mazda3. It was kinda small, and for a few thousand more I could get a Tiguan. So that’s what I did. RAV4 was completely sold out when I went to see it. Don’t like how the Civic looked. Accord and Camry seemed too big… It was more of a process of elimination.

2. Pick the Colour
Black and White, different shades of Grey, Red and Blue. I think it’d be awesome if we can pick our own RGB values for a car. But we’re far from that. We can’t pick our own colors for anything we get at any store anyways. Don’t like Red cars, don’t like blue cars. Grey didn’t look too good. Black.. didn’t suit this car. So White is the best colour again.

3. Pay
Curse the world for how this works, zone out when the salesman goes over the numbers, and hand over your money.

So it wasn’t too hard after all.

Our old family car suffered a hit and run incident, in a parking lot. The car was so old, that ICBC estimated the repair cost to be higher than the worth of the car. Which means it became a total loss. We still had to pay the deductibles, but the rest of the car was sold to ICBC, who will probably take the car apart and sell its parts for profit.

That also means we’re short on cars. I’ve been car shopping for more than a year, so it’s really time that I get one. Hopefully it’s the right decision.