the car incident

It was supposed to be my first day parking at my office carpark, so I woke up earlier to make sure I had time to slowly find a good spot and to park nicely. But it was not to be.

I stopped at a red light just a block away from my office. When the light turned green, I misjudged the biting point on the car (yes, we own a MANUAL car) and the engine stalled. No problemo, I thought. Just switch off the headlights and restart the engine. But it wouldn't restart. Argh. I tried a few times and knew that the battery was dead. It had happened to us once before, but that time after waiting about 5-10min, it came back to life. But no such luck this time.

Since my battery was dead, I couldn't even turn on my hazard lights, and I didn't have one of those triangle signs, so got honked at by many impatient swiss drivers. Thank God it was a 2-lane road, so they could get past me. I picked up my phone to call my insurance (they cover car breakdowns too). More honking, probably cos the drivers thought I had stopped the car to chat on the phone. Sigh. Thank God my colleague drove by and saw me. He stopped his car behind mine and turned on his hazard lights. We called another colleague, and together we pushed the car into a side lane.

The insurance sent a mechanic to jump start my car (he came only 1 hour later though) and we drove to my garage. Turns out there was something wrong with my car battery and they had to change it. Thank God my car was still under warranty so no need to pay.

On hindsight, it was probably a blessing in disguise. After all, had it not broken down, I would not have known of the battery problem and the car could have died somewhere more dangerous (like in the middle of the highway). And God did send help in the form of my colleagues and the nice mechanic who insisted I go directly to the garage to get it checked. But still, I'm praying that tomorrow will be a less eventful day! :P