a new bicycle

this has to be one of the most wuliao posts i ever put up this year. but then the year is ending, nothing better 2 do, n wat r blogs for but for recording every trivial detail in our life in the hope that, in retrospect they might juz reveal some great hidden truth about our inner selves....eheh

anyways

for over a year n a half, since coming here, i had been putting up wif a lousy piece of junk they call a bicycle. it rusts like nobody's business, needs 2 b fed air into its tyres every 2 weeks or so, n is so notoriously unstable dat if going at a fair speed i need 2 actually come to a near complete stop b4 making a 90 degree turn. wat else. its lamp started flickering 3 months ago n gave out completely last month so i had been riding in the dark (since it gets dark at 5pm here nowadays) whenever i come back frm uni....not 2 mention the fair number of times its suspicious (read: cheap-looking) profile plus lack of functional lamp has caused me 2 b stopped by the ubiquitous traffic policemen 4 'routine checking'. around 2 weeks ago its basket suddenly started ripping down the side n d last time i saw it one side of the basket had almost completely came off. wif the high service costs in japan, it wud probably cost more than the bike itself to hv 2 put back into shape.

oh yea, forgot to mention, it threw me off once, resulting in the loss of 1 pair of jeans (i had 2 pairs at dat time, which meant i went around for almost 2 weeks wearing the same pair). or mebbe i shud blame the slopes for that.

so anyway, i wasnt particularly fazed when i left it at d bicycle park at kita-senri, the nearest train station, n came back 2 find it gone....along wif the other 20+ bikes dat were not inserted into the parking lot's bicycle locks properly. prob management had them all moved 2 some remote location 4 not making use of their locking facilities (which cost 150 yen per lock; tho i wasnt there more than the minimum 2 hrs so i cud hv got off free). if my experiences in tokyo were anything 2 learn frm, it is dat i'll prob hv 2 pay like 1000 yen to get my junky old bike back. so, sayonara bike.... (n thanks, kita-senri management, for taking the problem of bike disposal off my hands :P)

so i went for bout 2 or 3 days without a bike n then went to kohnan yesterday lookin 4 a new one. n the very SAME model i had (by a company called southernport..warning: dont buy any bike frm them) dat cost 9800 yen when i bought it, is now 12800 yen! sheesh...talk about inflation....n shudnt the price hv gone down after the model has aged for nearly 2 years? but anyway i learnt my lesson n picked up another one. the cheapest bike without gears was 8800 but it was real kiddies-type so i took the 10800 yen....wif insurance that came to 11300 yen (insurance, by the way, is the little label on the bike dat tells police 'come stop this rider n check his name, then match it with the 5-digit number printed on me'). so im set back by 11300 yen for a bike without gears. ah well, gears r largely useless in osaka anyway, wat wif all the slopes... but i cant help having a nagging feeling dat ive replaced one piece of junk wif another...heheh.

new bike, u better serve me well or u'll suffer a worse fate than ur predescessor >.<

well anyway so thats the story of my bike, thanks for listening n come back tml for another of Shao Thing's Boring Life Stories ;)