Right off the bat, I just want to say that I'm not feeling nearly as awful as I'd be when writing a Turkey post, as group therapy is reinforcing what my counsellor has told me before: that I'm way too harsh on myself and I beat myself up too much. And so I'm well on a personal journey to learning to accept and let things be, learning to be happier, in a sense. Learning healthier thinking habits. Yes, I'm so insecure about myself to the point where I need trained counsellors, several therapists and even more therapy goers to tell me I beat myself up too much before I dare believe I'm being too harsh on myself. Fuck. Me.
I'm... just... here to indulge in some procrastination, from trying to write a rather difficult post on fourth wall, about my bullying in brief and codad/ wbb in more detail, sort of as a psych profile to outline my upbringing, and to perhaps try to sell the idea that I'm dealing with PTSD. Most of its symptoms do seem to match, some scarily well. It's just how I've come to rationalise my thoughts, feelings, and reactions. I may well be wrong, and to be honest it scares me to be right about mental issues because I always seem to dig up the worst sounding terms to label myself with.
And I'm also here to indulge in what I'd like to call "routine relapsing", because as my professional trained psychotherapists and their weekly handouts have stated, relapses are normal and to be expected on the path to recovery, and the important point is to not be too harsh on yourself, lest you feel worse about yourself and go back to square one for a true relapse. And, hey, I had an episode this morning before bed.
-details doctored out-
I'm just extremely hurt and puzzled that another woman, also taking a Business course, would be injected with the same "poison" by the Business course, see the world for what it truly is, and realise how worthless I am, and thus desert me. I'm so confused and hurt I'm coming up with whack ass scenarios like that in my head.
But, you know, it's fine. All of it.
No, really, that's not spite or sarcasm! Why don't you believe me?!
I've come to accept that I can't control how others feel. That is to say, I've come to learn and accept that I shouldn't hold myself responsible for how others perceive my words and actions, and in turn, to not hold myself responsible for how others feel.
I've learnt... well, I'm learning, anyway, to not give a damn, and to discern what I should or shouldn't give a damn about. My problem is that I care - too much. About others specifically. I want to be happy. I want everyone close to me to be happy. I want the world to be happy. But that's really stupid, isn't it? The world isn't that perfect, and neither am I. What position am I in to decide for others what happiness should be, to impose my own idea and brand of happiness onto them, especially when I myself am not happy? How hypocritical is that of me?
You're free to think what you will of me. I've stopped caring. I think it's high time I hardened my heart for good, and felt proud for it. If I can make you happy, if I can brighten your life in any way, hey, great! If not, pfft, right?
It's weird. It's not like I'm in denial, lying to myself. Yet for some odd reason I feel so... angry, saying all this. It's like I believe wholeheartedly what I'm saying, but I'm so so angry at myself for having come to this conclusion, like I don't wanna believe what I'm saying, but resigned in fighting common sense. Like I'm saying it all not because I've finally achieved peace and understanding, but rather out of spite.
Which leads me nicely to the Turkish part of this post.
This past Saturday night/ Sunday morning, I was suddenly invited out for a Karaoke session by JJ and YS. Can you believe that we've known each other for almost ten years now, yet have never heard each other sing? I'll spare you the details, mostly because there aren't much; it was three brothers going for a sing and enjoying every moment of it, myself included. Heck, I was even praised for my singing voice, and YS even said I should seriously considering writing my own songs, HA! I know I'm no pop star material, but the compliment certainly did float my boat all the way around the globe. Group therapy has also taught me to not be so skeptical of praise from others, and, you know, this whole "being too hard on myself" thing. I think the compliment really opened up my voice more, even after the 3 hour session.
But then I reach home, alone, in the dead of night, ahah.
I don't know, dear blog. I really don't know what came over me. It wasn't like I was sad, or lonely, or helpless, as are my usual excuses. Quite the opposite, actually: I was happy, I had good friends, good company, and I was feeling great about myself. And I know, I know full well, that looking Cypy up, digging up the past and what would never have been, would do me nothing but harm. I don't know why, knowing all this, I went and did it anyway.
I suppose I really want a woman, a love interest, to share moments like these with. That, or maybe I sang too many sad songs in Karaoke because my taste in music is weird and I'm so badly catered to in a predominantly Chinese centred K scene in Singapore, so what little songs I knew in the database are all pretty sad romantic crap and to emotionally invest myself into the songs to make them sound good I had to really deep fry myself in those emotions. I dunno, take your pick of excuses.
I just looked up her Instagram. I'd have kept that accursed app deleted from my phone had it not been for my sis always wanting to send me cat pictures. I tell myself it's of no use blaming society and materialistic model girls on Instagram that make me feel worthless in comparison and anxious with inadequacy when I could just not look at the damn app entirely. I tell myself it's up to me and my own self control, of which I apparently have none, because I looked up Cypy.
She isn't very active on Instagram, with very few new photos. But then I decided to be a smartass and check out her story, which shows her kissing a guy on the cheek in the dark, with some text along the lines of, "welcome back from reservist". Aaaaand that's when I knew I went and done fucked up.
I was irreversibly bitter and angry for, what, that entire day. I couldn't get it out of my mind. I couldn't stop swarming myself with negative, useless, bitter, spiteful thoughts and scenarios. Stuff like, -this stuff really isn't fit for public consumption-. But at the same time I also very strongly wish I didn't care enough to have these thoughts and scenarios to begin with.
Whenever I think of how the relationship between Cypy and I soured to an end, I can't help but to blame it all on myself. I always view the ending of that friendship that has spanned some ten years as me not being good enough for her. I'm not handsome enough, I'm not rich enough, I'm not generous enough, etc.. And, well, I don't distribute the blame of that entirely to my self esteem and self blaming issues either, because she has made it abundantly clear that I'm an ugly sack of shit on top of not putting enough effort into his appearance. She can with no hesitation tell me straight to my face that she wouldn't date me even if I were the last guy on earth. She says she wants a rich husband who'd keep her fed for the rest of her life because why else would a woman marry, right? She loves a "hot guy" and if there's anything the last ten years I've spent with her tells me, that's like, priority number one for her. If a guy is hot she can overlook any flaw and wrongdoing, time and again, actively finding excuses and justifications for his behavior each and every time, simply because he's hot.
Take that however you will, but to me, especially in self beating up mode, that means that she's an exceptionally kind and accepting woman; after all, that's what I loved about her, wasn't it? And if she's that cold towards me, especially nearing the end of our friendship, that must mean that I'm doing something horrendously wrong, right? After all, she was for the longest time one of the most understanding, accepting, and wonderful woman in my life, bar none. Not even my own family can say they've made me more comfortable than she did. I at one point felt so indebted to her that I felt like I could spend the rest of my life taking care of her and making her happy, and still be unable to return the favour of her friendship. In a sense, I think I redefined a lot of myself, and my expectations, in accordance to the time I've spent with her. She made me :THIS: happy, and I believe what I felt towards her to be strong enough to see us through marriage till death does us part. I believed THAT much in my own idea of happiness and our chemistry. And so it's only fair that I make her as happy as she made me, isn't it? If she wants a hot guy... if she wants a rich guy... then... well, there's no other option but to pursue those goals to make her happy, is there? Even if it drives me up the wall insane.
But, in keeping with the theme of group therapy and what I've learnt from all the help I've gotten from mental health professionals... I think I've come to see things a little differently now. All I can say is I tried my best, gave it my all, and I was 110% honest, sincere, and open throughout, which is to say, sometimes a little too much so. And, well, she has every right to pursue her own brand, her own idea of happiness, just as I have tried to with my own, even when it meant forcing it down her throat at times. Maybe it was stupid of me to have believed that two people could share the same idea of happiness and be bound together by that idea and goal. But I know what makes me happy. I know what I want out of a woman, out of a marriage, and if she can't be happy with what I want and what I can offer her, then simply put she's not wife material, even if she made me the happiest I've been my whole life thus far.
I can't control what she wants and feels. I've given my best and I'm proud of myself for that. That's enough. Or, at least, that'll have to be enough. I'll have to make do. Most importantly, I cannot shoulder the blame for her preferences in a relationship any more, and I'm glad I seem to finally have realised that, perhaps a little late. I deserve better. I want better. I don't regret cutting her from my life the way I did, but I'd be lying if I said I don't think of her at least several times a day, every day.
I suppose, using the excuse of hypocrisy as a crutch, that I've learnt to prioritise my own happiness over those of others.
Maybe it's because I'm super lonely. Maybe that's why I'm so upset that I've come to this conclusion that my own happiness takes priority over that of others', and that only people who find my company helpful should stay, and that I should only stay in the company of those who make me happy. I feel that it's so... surface level, you know? With --, --, and Cypy, it has went way past surface level. And when things are way past surface level... what are friends if they don't stick with you through thick and thin? What are friends who just up and walk away the moment something upsets them? I want to feel connected, valued, cherished, helped, elevated, and I want to do the same for others. I want friendships and relationships where the other party's best interests are a personal priority, which just can't happen if people are so nonchalant with dropping people who fail to make them happy. I kinda... want to try. And I want others to try for me as well, to make each other happy.
I suppose I'm upset because walking away is such an easy, cop out answer. Yet I've this sneaking suspicion that I'd be wholly okay with the common sense of walking away from others who don't make me happy, if I weren't so lonely myself.
Saturday, 28 July 2018
Monday, 16 July 2018
12-1-2018
I'm thinking of quitting my job. *sigh*
It's the third day in a row I've missed work just this month. The past two, I've missed about three days due to sickness as well. My body just can't seem to get used to the workload I've to put up with at work, it seems. Either that, or my mental health is destroying my body's immune system, I dunno. I just know I'm sick as hell, and very frequently, too. I've a 2 day MC that excuses me for work for the past two days, and today is my first Psychotherapy session my Institute of Mental Health Psychiatrist referred me to. I've yet to tell anyone at work that I'm going to the IMH for paychiatry and psychotherapy for anxiety and depression, so, no doubt I must look like a completely disinterested jackass and lousy team player.
Don't get me wrong; I like my job. I recognise how good I have it, with a friendly team of colleagues and a super knowledgeable boss who's always looking to nuture local talent. A part of me is angry at myself whenever I miss work, because I feel like I'm letting down my team and missing out on learning opportunities. I'm not super in love with my job of course, since I spend most my time being a useless, clueless jackass, and being their dedicated tyre pressure/ car cleaning guy who works 6 day weeks for a paltry 1.6k a month. For some perspective I make for my own keeping around 50 dollars a day. Even part time jobs pay more than that. But it's a start for now.
Still, even with all that said, more often than not I find myself dragging myself to work. A huge part of it is just anxiety, really, which as I've said hits me the hardest in the mornings. Not to mention, I've pissed off my colleagues unknowingly, so that just makes convincing myself to go to work each day all that much harder. A part of me still wishes I could end everything and for nothing to exist. These emotions are too tiring and too cruel to endure.
At every job I've had thus far, I always seem to go in with all the advantages and momentum in the world, only to blow it big time by unknowingly being rude, confrontational, and somehow simultaneously a clueless fuck. I feel like I've learnt nothing since my last job about a year ago. And, trust me, I've tried. I've tried being as low profile, modest, quiet, non confrontational, and humble. I have thrown my personal pride down as a doormat for others, yet SOMEHOW people find a way to get mad at me. Or, rather, I find a way to make people mad at me. I don't know.
If I were to quit my job now, I'd feel like I'm throwing away another good opportunity, another amazing job. Not to mention, I'm really quite afraid of going back to unemployment because I know I'm not going to get anything productive done at home on my own, and I'll regress into a lazy, philosophical, miserable piece of shit that bugs his too few friends too much, and then resorting to watching too much porn to pass time.
Still, it's not easy to stomach what my immediate superior said to me. He basically told me as directly and politely as an uncouth, uneducated ape could muster that I'm stupid, lack common sense, is rude, has not improved at all, learn slow, and that he doesn't know how to get through to me, much less teach me anything. He says that he doesn't have nearly as hard a time teaching ITE interns as me, and whenever he tries to speak to me or watch me do things, he wants to vomit blood. So bad is my performance at work that he has gone as far as to say that hiring me is akin to not having hired any help at all, or even worse, that he's more stressed because I'm here.
Yeah, part of me just wants to say that he's an uncouth foreign chimpanzee with hardly a grasp of the English language, hence why I never get what the hell he's trying to say. But that's just the negative thinking I'm trying to change, isn't it? What's the use of looking down on others? Maybe it's my inability to comprehend human interaction and adaptability in question more than his communication skills and expectations. I mean, after all, who's the single backbone of the workshop all the reviews rave about, and who's the clueless mechanic?
I'm thinking of quitting because... I suppose this is just anxiety speaking and my brain coming up with excuses to mask said anxiety, but I don't want to half ass this. I'm tired. I can't focus. My memory is as if I've dementia. I'm destroying my health, both physical and mental, for this job. I have anger management issues. I want to quit to have enough "me" time to solve this all first, which you may recognise by its distinct smell, is bullshit. The exact same brand of bullshit I tried to sell you about a year ago when I quit my 2.3k a month office job with shining prospects, friendly colleagues, and even a company car. We all know how that went. I went for a few more psychiatry sessions before giving up on it entirely, and did fuck stupid things that worried family and friends alike.
It highlights a question from my 10 month working hiatus last year I never found an answer to. Just how much is my personal happiness worth? Is there even a value to my personal happiness? I want to learn my way into the industry, but I don't want that to be at the expense of others' happiness. For as ugly a picture as I paint my superior to be, the whole workshop sans me is still a very cohesive, happy working environment. They emphasise that they want to be happy at work and thus want to foster a happy working environment, and I very much want to be happy at work too. Who doesn't? I want everybody to be happy, but I don't know if it's possible. I don't know if it's right for me to persevere for my own happiness when it's causing others, and myself too for that matter, so much anguish.
I actually have no idea how this is supposed to be done. My counsellor urged me to find a job, or just volunteer work to get used to being around people, so as to find out more about myself instead of going back month after month repeating the same things to him. So I get a job and now I find that the psychiatry and psychotherapy I need are weekdays office hours only. Sure, I could quit my job, but how would I make any progress if I didn't challenge myself with an actual working environment?
I'm puzzled. So lost.
It's the third day in a row I've missed work just this month. The past two, I've missed about three days due to sickness as well. My body just can't seem to get used to the workload I've to put up with at work, it seems. Either that, or my mental health is destroying my body's immune system, I dunno. I just know I'm sick as hell, and very frequently, too. I've a 2 day MC that excuses me for work for the past two days, and today is my first Psychotherapy session my Institute of Mental Health Psychiatrist referred me to. I've yet to tell anyone at work that I'm going to the IMH for paychiatry and psychotherapy for anxiety and depression, so, no doubt I must look like a completely disinterested jackass and lousy team player.
Don't get me wrong; I like my job. I recognise how good I have it, with a friendly team of colleagues and a super knowledgeable boss who's always looking to nuture local talent. A part of me is angry at myself whenever I miss work, because I feel like I'm letting down my team and missing out on learning opportunities. I'm not super in love with my job of course, since I spend most my time being a useless, clueless jackass, and being their dedicated tyre pressure/ car cleaning guy who works 6 day weeks for a paltry 1.6k a month. For some perspective I make for my own keeping around 50 dollars a day. Even part time jobs pay more than that. But it's a start for now.
Still, even with all that said, more often than not I find myself dragging myself to work. A huge part of it is just anxiety, really, which as I've said hits me the hardest in the mornings. Not to mention, I've pissed off my colleagues unknowingly, so that just makes convincing myself to go to work each day all that much harder. A part of me still wishes I could end everything and for nothing to exist. These emotions are too tiring and too cruel to endure.
At every job I've had thus far, I always seem to go in with all the advantages and momentum in the world, only to blow it big time by unknowingly being rude, confrontational, and somehow simultaneously a clueless fuck. I feel like I've learnt nothing since my last job about a year ago. And, trust me, I've tried. I've tried being as low profile, modest, quiet, non confrontational, and humble. I have thrown my personal pride down as a doormat for others, yet SOMEHOW people find a way to get mad at me. Or, rather, I find a way to make people mad at me. I don't know.
If I were to quit my job now, I'd feel like I'm throwing away another good opportunity, another amazing job. Not to mention, I'm really quite afraid of going back to unemployment because I know I'm not going to get anything productive done at home on my own, and I'll regress into a lazy, philosophical, miserable piece of shit that bugs his too few friends too much, and then resorting to watching too much porn to pass time.
Still, it's not easy to stomach what my immediate superior said to me. He basically told me as directly and politely as an uncouth, uneducated ape could muster that I'm stupid, lack common sense, is rude, has not improved at all, learn slow, and that he doesn't know how to get through to me, much less teach me anything. He says that he doesn't have nearly as hard a time teaching ITE interns as me, and whenever he tries to speak to me or watch me do things, he wants to vomit blood. So bad is my performance at work that he has gone as far as to say that hiring me is akin to not having hired any help at all, or even worse, that he's more stressed because I'm here.
Yeah, part of me just wants to say that he's an uncouth foreign chimpanzee with hardly a grasp of the English language, hence why I never get what the hell he's trying to say. But that's just the negative thinking I'm trying to change, isn't it? What's the use of looking down on others? Maybe it's my inability to comprehend human interaction and adaptability in question more than his communication skills and expectations. I mean, after all, who's the single backbone of the workshop all the reviews rave about, and who's the clueless mechanic?
I'm thinking of quitting because... I suppose this is just anxiety speaking and my brain coming up with excuses to mask said anxiety, but I don't want to half ass this. I'm tired. I can't focus. My memory is as if I've dementia. I'm destroying my health, both physical and mental, for this job. I have anger management issues. I want to quit to have enough "me" time to solve this all first, which you may recognise by its distinct smell, is bullshit. The exact same brand of bullshit I tried to sell you about a year ago when I quit my 2.3k a month office job with shining prospects, friendly colleagues, and even a company car. We all know how that went. I went for a few more psychiatry sessions before giving up on it entirely, and did fuck stupid things that worried family and friends alike.
It highlights a question from my 10 month working hiatus last year I never found an answer to. Just how much is my personal happiness worth? Is there even a value to my personal happiness? I want to learn my way into the industry, but I don't want that to be at the expense of others' happiness. For as ugly a picture as I paint my superior to be, the whole workshop sans me is still a very cohesive, happy working environment. They emphasise that they want to be happy at work and thus want to foster a happy working environment, and I very much want to be happy at work too. Who doesn't? I want everybody to be happy, but I don't know if it's possible. I don't know if it's right for me to persevere for my own happiness when it's causing others, and myself too for that matter, so much anguish.
I actually have no idea how this is supposed to be done. My counsellor urged me to find a job, or just volunteer work to get used to being around people, so as to find out more about myself instead of going back month after month repeating the same things to him. So I get a job and now I find that the psychiatry and psychotherapy I need are weekdays office hours only. Sure, I could quit my job, but how would I make any progress if I didn't challenge myself with an actual working environment?
I'm puzzled. So lost.
Friday, 13 July 2018
Car Thingies: A Quick Ramble About the NC1 "NSX"
Alright, real quick: this is a post where I geek out about cars. It probably will bore any sane person to death, and has absolutely nothing to do with my prevailing mental health struggles if that's what you're here for.
Also, I'm extremely biased, my opinions and experiences all come from a video game, and the only cars I've driven in real life are a Nissan Sunny, a Mazda Demio, and a Nissan Teana. So, hey, I didn't title this ramble a "review" for a reason.
Still here? You're something else, you know that?
As anyone who knows me for any length of time should know, the NA1 and NA2 Honda NSX was among my three childhood heroes, alongside the FD RX-7 and the Viper. And whilst I've always been a little skeptical and a little afraid of Vipers, even the modern, tamer ones, as a grown adult that has some knowledge of car mechanics and driving physics, the NSX has always retained it's charm to me. More than that, actually; the more I learned about it, the more I found to love about it. If the FD RX-7 were to be my wife, figuratively speaking, then the NSX would be my guilty pleasure mistress; one I can't pry my dick away fro-
wooooah that got weird quick. No, I'm not like that! No, really! Please, stop filling out that police report form!
But can you blame me, though? The original NSXes, the NA1 and NA2, are, in my opinion, a holy trinity of cars nobody can utter a bad word against, alongside the McLaren F1 and stable mate the S2000. As subjective as experiences and preferences are in general, especially to a group as finicky, divided and critical as car enthusiasts, the NSX is just one of those miracles of engineering that seemed to please everybody. It had seductive, timeless styling. It handled like a dream, especially the Type R versions. It proved to the world that reliability, comfort, and performance can all come together in a relatively cheap package, showing up exotics that cost several times more. It was the first production car ever to come with VTEC, and variable valve timing technology would find its way into every modern engine, essentially serving as a divide in this history books between the "then" and the "now". It was also the first production car to feature all aluminum chassis. It was developed with input from a man of equal legendary status: F1 star Aryron Senna, who praised the car for its composure at high speeds, so much so that you wouldn't even realise how fast you were going unless you looked at the speedometer. This was a car that is heralded as the car that single handedly changed how exotic giants like Ferrari made cars - no longer can Ferrari just make fast, good looking cars that broke down all the time and broke your back on a street littered with dried branches "just because" it's a Ferrari. It had to be more. It had to be reliable. It had to have creature comforts. It had to be faster. The NSX was also cited to be the inspiration for Gordon Murray to design the aforementioned McLaren F1, another car of mythical legend status that we as an industry may never see again.
But of course, you already knew all that, didn't you? If you were a car person, it's impossible to not have heard the name, "NSX". Such was the impact it had on the industry, and the hearts it was seemingly custom made to fill. Understandably then, that Acura would want to reuse the name, "NSX" in attempt to ballyhoo and hype up their new supercar in 2016. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, "that'd be like naming your son 'Jesus' and hoping he doesn't grow up to rob a bank".
Of course the NC1 NSX was never going to fill the shoes or match the hype of the NA1 and NA2 NSX; from an engineering standpoint it is a wholly different beast born in another world, in another time, meant for different people, and from a logical, sane person standpoint, the achievements and legendary status of the original NSX is no small miracle, one that'd be quite asinine to try and match, especially in today's insane super and hypercar scene. I've personally tried to be as rational and understanding as I could towards the NC1 NSX, but at the same time it's kinda like a bratty young girl of the same name as the wife you lost to cancer years ago coming up to you and claiming that she's your wife but better, and just by the virtue of sharing names alone, she expects special treatment and to be unconditionally loved. And it pisses me off.
Should a car be judged by politics, marketing, and names? To be honest if it were called anything other than the "NSX", I'd probably be fine with it. Hell, you could've even called it the "NSX2" or something, but noooo it just had to be called the NSX, didn't it? Not only does it make writing critique and Google searches unduly difficult, but as I've mentioned earlier, the NC1 is a wholly different beast from the original after which it is named. Being named the same on some level forces me to expect more of the same, more of that unfettered pure driving experience, that same "make the world stand up and take notice" kind of impact, the same timeless styling, the same world challenging attitude... it makes me yearn again for something I know will never come back to us. No longer will 276HP ever be sufficient to make waves. No longer will we ever have cars that low, that angular, that light, that pure, with today's laws.
But of course, as opinionated as I am, even I recognise that those are all just my very personal biases and expectations for a car, for a name. Maybe it's amazing. Maybe it is good enough to challenge the world. Maybe Honda will make amazing drivers' cars again. Maybe, like the RX-8 I love so much, this isn't a numbers car. Maybe it wouldn't be fair to compare it to something of the past, but rather should be appreciated for what it is.
And so I hopped behind the wheel of one in GT Sport.
The first things that quickly jump out to me on the specs sheet before the run are the mass of the thing, and how many freaking gears it has. At 1725kg it is by no means featherweight, but considering how it has two electric motors, a mid mounted V6, and THEN another electric motor behind that for good measure, and still be comparable in mass to, say an R35 or an Aventador, with their *pshh* ONE engine, and the engineering feat that is the NC1 NSX starts to come into focus a little. Also, I'm sorry, but NINE forward gears? You can't even use fuel economy as an excuse for having a million gears now, since this thing is a hybrid car that's capable of going full electric to save fuel. The hell do you need NINE forward gears for?
As a result, driving the NC1 on a circuit can quickly become cumbersome. It'd be, kinda like, if you're so, used to read,ing sentenc,es in one mental br,eath, but suddenl,y you need to. pause and !punctuate- sentences? so freaking much. Having so many gears to work with means you have to segment your thoughts and action plans more than usual, and it can quickly become annoying when you're focusing on a corner, or on passing an opponent, judging how much space you need and have, reading an opponent to see if they're skilled or rude enough to pass on that corner at that speed, and then suddenly your dash is flashing at you urging to shift. I mean, sure, it's an automated manual, so in theory you could drive it in auto. Not to mention, with nine gears, each gear is so short, and the powerband thanks to the electric motors are so ample that oftentimes you can be in the "wrong" gear and by the time you realise you're in the wrong gear it has already become the right gear. But I'm the sort of person that falls asleep behind the wheel if I don't shift myself, and engine braking is still a huge component of a fast track time, and I'm still not willing to hand that task over to a computer just yet.
The nine speeds, along with the admittedly brisk shifting speed of the automated manual does highlight another flaw of the NC1 that was immediately apparent after the mass and number of gears: it's mass (again) and rather soft ride. To reiterate: 1.7 tons is far from what anyone would consider light for a sports car, but I have to commend how little of that 1.7 tons you feel when hammering through the forward gears in rapid succession. It's... only when you have to slow down for a corner does the full 1.7 tons smack you right in the face. Let's just say that braking isn't this car's strong suit. The suspension setup stock is rather soft for my liking, and as such, when you slam the brakes (especially if you left foot brake) there's a very palpable delay between your brakes coming on, and the weight fully shifting over the front tyres. And in that split second delay where you're asking so much of the brakes but no grip to work with, the ABS sort of freaks out and doesn't know what to do, almost. The tyres will more than squeal, and your car will dive and squirm about as you try to hold it in a straight line, and the ABS doesn't seem to account again for the increased grip you have when the weight of the car is firmly on the front tyres, so I find that I almost have to pump the brakes even with ABS on to stop properly, in a 2017MY car! Or, you know, I could just not left foot brake, or be more gentle with the brake pedal but pshh if I don't have to deal with a clutch pedal, there's literally zero reason to not left foot brake HARD on a track. I mean, it IS a sports car, right? It's meant to go fast, right?
The news only gets worse from here. Technically this thing is an AWD car, right? Quick, open your racing textbooks 101, tell me what are AWD cars good for: corner exit traction. Translated into my boorish driving habits, that means mashing the throttle wide open once you're past the apex of a corner. And in the NSX... you can't do that.
See, real quick: the 3.5L V6 mid mounted, electric motor complemented gasoline engine drives the rear wheels of the car, with the two motors in the front of the car driving one front wheel each. This creates a rather perplexing situation, as oftentimes I mash the throttle expecting the grip of an AWD, only to find that the puny front motors, there primarily for fuel efficiency in city driving simply cannot keep up with the engines at the back. And so what happens is this car lulls you into a false sense of security in the phases where you're getting to know the car, with promising AWD acceleration out of a corner, but when push comes to shove and you really need the car to perform at ten tenths, such as in a hairpin or in wet conditions, the car cannot deliver on the "promises" and trust that it has instilled into you as a driver. And while the rear end of the still technically AWD NSX is by no means difficult to catch once it does break out, especially in the hands of someone with more experience with mid engined cars than I, it's still frustrating, especially in conjunction with how a slight spin will probably necessitate a gear drop due to the ultra close gearing afforded by a nine speed gearbox.
I say it's mid engined, but I honestly have no idea how you'd want to classify the layout of the NC1. It is at the same time, a front engined car, a mid engined car, and a rear engined car. And bafflingly it somehow seems to distill the worst traits of each layout and package them into a car, with the strengths of each yes, to be fair, but I find that the cons of each layout to be far more pronounced than the pros. Again, for an AWD car you expect effortless and savage corner exits, which the NSX won't do because it behaves more and more like an RWD car the lower the speed. It doesn't have that featherlight front end and effortless front end turn in you'd expect from a mid engined sports car with hardly anything up front, because again it has two electric motors up front. And while the pros of having a mid mounted engine is the most pronounced pro in the whole car, providing genuine weight and traction over the rear, it of course comes with that sick, sick feeling of having the entire Leaning Tower of Pisa bolted onto your engine head when the rear end starts to break loose in a midship car with a large engine. What you end up with is a car that I find has a horrendous center of gyration, with engines placed end to end along the entire length of the car. That's not to say it can't corner, mind you; it can absolutely hang with industry established behemoths like the R35 in the corners, but the way it does it, and the complaints it gives you as the driver when doing it, is what breaks the entire experience for me. I never felt like I was dancing in unison with the car, but rather having to accommodate its increasing list of demands time after time. There's a certain way, a certain method it wants to be driven in to be made the most of, and, I don't know about you, but that just isn't exactly fun to me.
If I had to sum up the NC1 NSX in a phrase, it'd be "Identity Crisis". It wants to be loved like the classic NSX, it wants to be as economical as a family sedan, it wants to be as fast as Godzilla, and it wants to be as ergonomical as a 911. Yet tragically every element within it seems to clash when driven at the limits. The soft suspension, the ridiculous center of gyration, the ABS, the gears, the motors, the engine... they all work well on their own but together it's just a cacophony of a waiting disaster. An especially deadly combination that I found out the very hard way was the soft suspension, the engine and motors clashing. I don't know what it is about this car. It might be the tyres, it might be the mass, it might be the computers, but this car lets go of its grip in the blink of an eye with absolutely zero warning. It's not like your traditional, lightweight Japanese sports car with slimmer tyres that will give you ample feedback via tyre squeals, steering wheel lightening mid corner, and gradual loss of traction from grip to slide, like the original NSX. You would not know where the limits of the car lie until you've exceeded them, which is dangerous enough on its own, but coupled with how it earns your trust at seven, eight tenths, is absolutely deadly. Where this car is the scariest isn't the tight hairpins where trying to accelerate out would break the rear out, but rather in a high speed sweeper, where the gasoline engine can easily overwhelm the front motors because of its own torque curve, and that would break the rear tyres loose, which would be unrecoverable because of the stupid centre of gravity and gyration of this car.
You'll have to excuse me if I really can't find anything nice to say about the NC1 NSX. The styling itself doesn't win me over, nor should it be the selling point of a car. The handling is a fucking mess to say the least, and given how forced down our throats it is by sullying the "NSX" name, I really don't know who the heck this car is supposed to be for. You want civility? 911. You want track performance? R35. Or the 911. Or the Ferrari 488. Or literally anything else. You want economy? Prius. It's mind boggling to me that the original NSX unified every contrasting element and made them work, but the NC1 is perhaps the embodiment of the most convincing argument that such unison is impossible.
Is there any saving grace? Well, the elephant in the room is adorned with a red Honda badge on its face. I realise that this is "just" a base NSX, and I'm comparing it to the Spec Vs, the GT3RSes, and admittedly even the Type Rs of old. With a lightened body and stiffed suspension, along with more calibrations to the engine and motor settings, I can definitely see this thing winning me over. It's just... you have AWD, nine gears, 573BHP, and no excuses for getting punked in the 0-60 department by a RR 911, or around the track by an R35 on a ten year old chassis. Hell, the GT3 spec of this car, you know, the one that's actually made to go fast? That ditches all the motors and becomes RWD, and I'm willing to bet it's everything I wanted out of my NSX, but doesn't that go to prove how asinine a concept the NC1 was if you have to strip away everything about it to make it go fast well?
Also, I'm extremely biased, my opinions and experiences all come from a video game, and the only cars I've driven in real life are a Nissan Sunny, a Mazda Demio, and a Nissan Teana. So, hey, I didn't title this ramble a "review" for a reason.
Still here? You're something else, you know that?
As anyone who knows me for any length of time should know, the NA1 and NA2 Honda NSX was among my three childhood heroes, alongside the FD RX-7 and the Viper. And whilst I've always been a little skeptical and a little afraid of Vipers, even the modern, tamer ones, as a grown adult that has some knowledge of car mechanics and driving physics, the NSX has always retained it's charm to me. More than that, actually; the more I learned about it, the more I found to love about it. If the FD RX-7 were to be my wife, figuratively speaking, then the NSX would be my guilty pleasure mistress; one I can't pry my dick away fro-
wooooah that got weird quick. No, I'm not like that! No, really! Please, stop filling out that police report form!
But can you blame me, though? The original NSXes, the NA1 and NA2, are, in my opinion, a holy trinity of cars nobody can utter a bad word against, alongside the McLaren F1 and stable mate the S2000. As subjective as experiences and preferences are in general, especially to a group as finicky, divided and critical as car enthusiasts, the NSX is just one of those miracles of engineering that seemed to please everybody. It had seductive, timeless styling. It handled like a dream, especially the Type R versions. It proved to the world that reliability, comfort, and performance can all come together in a relatively cheap package, showing up exotics that cost several times more. It was the first production car ever to come with VTEC, and variable valve timing technology would find its way into every modern engine, essentially serving as a divide in this history books between the "then" and the "now". It was also the first production car to feature all aluminum chassis. It was developed with input from a man of equal legendary status: F1 star Aryron Senna, who praised the car for its composure at high speeds, so much so that you wouldn't even realise how fast you were going unless you looked at the speedometer. This was a car that is heralded as the car that single handedly changed how exotic giants like Ferrari made cars - no longer can Ferrari just make fast, good looking cars that broke down all the time and broke your back on a street littered with dried branches "just because" it's a Ferrari. It had to be more. It had to be reliable. It had to have creature comforts. It had to be faster. The NSX was also cited to be the inspiration for Gordon Murray to design the aforementioned McLaren F1, another car of mythical legend status that we as an industry may never see again.
But of course, you already knew all that, didn't you? If you were a car person, it's impossible to not have heard the name, "NSX". Such was the impact it had on the industry, and the hearts it was seemingly custom made to fill. Understandably then, that Acura would want to reuse the name, "NSX" in attempt to ballyhoo and hype up their new supercar in 2016. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, "that'd be like naming your son 'Jesus' and hoping he doesn't grow up to rob a bank".
Of course the NC1 NSX was never going to fill the shoes or match the hype of the NA1 and NA2 NSX; from an engineering standpoint it is a wholly different beast born in another world, in another time, meant for different people, and from a logical, sane person standpoint, the achievements and legendary status of the original NSX is no small miracle, one that'd be quite asinine to try and match, especially in today's insane super and hypercar scene. I've personally tried to be as rational and understanding as I could towards the NC1 NSX, but at the same time it's kinda like a bratty young girl of the same name as the wife you lost to cancer years ago coming up to you and claiming that she's your wife but better, and just by the virtue of sharing names alone, she expects special treatment and to be unconditionally loved. And it pisses me off.
Should a car be judged by politics, marketing, and names? To be honest if it were called anything other than the "NSX", I'd probably be fine with it. Hell, you could've even called it the "NSX2" or something, but noooo it just had to be called the NSX, didn't it? Not only does it make writing critique and Google searches unduly difficult, but as I've mentioned earlier, the NC1 is a wholly different beast from the original after which it is named. Being named the same on some level forces me to expect more of the same, more of that unfettered pure driving experience, that same "make the world stand up and take notice" kind of impact, the same timeless styling, the same world challenging attitude... it makes me yearn again for something I know will never come back to us. No longer will 276HP ever be sufficient to make waves. No longer will we ever have cars that low, that angular, that light, that pure, with today's laws.
But of course, as opinionated as I am, even I recognise that those are all just my very personal biases and expectations for a car, for a name. Maybe it's amazing. Maybe it is good enough to challenge the world. Maybe Honda will make amazing drivers' cars again. Maybe, like the RX-8 I love so much, this isn't a numbers car. Maybe it wouldn't be fair to compare it to something of the past, but rather should be appreciated for what it is.
And so I hopped behind the wheel of one in GT Sport.
The first things that quickly jump out to me on the specs sheet before the run are the mass of the thing, and how many freaking gears it has. At 1725kg it is by no means featherweight, but considering how it has two electric motors, a mid mounted V6, and THEN another electric motor behind that for good measure, and still be comparable in mass to, say an R35 or an Aventador, with their *pshh* ONE engine, and the engineering feat that is the NC1 NSX starts to come into focus a little. Also, I'm sorry, but NINE forward gears? You can't even use fuel economy as an excuse for having a million gears now, since this thing is a hybrid car that's capable of going full electric to save fuel. The hell do you need NINE forward gears for?
As a result, driving the NC1 on a circuit can quickly become cumbersome. It'd be, kinda like, if you're so, used to read,ing sentenc,es in one mental br,eath, but suddenl,y you need to. pause and !punctuate- sentences? so freaking much. Having so many gears to work with means you have to segment your thoughts and action plans more than usual, and it can quickly become annoying when you're focusing on a corner, or on passing an opponent, judging how much space you need and have, reading an opponent to see if they're skilled or rude enough to pass on that corner at that speed, and then suddenly your dash is flashing at you urging to shift. I mean, sure, it's an automated manual, so in theory you could drive it in auto. Not to mention, with nine gears, each gear is so short, and the powerband thanks to the electric motors are so ample that oftentimes you can be in the "wrong" gear and by the time you realise you're in the wrong gear it has already become the right gear. But I'm the sort of person that falls asleep behind the wheel if I don't shift myself, and engine braking is still a huge component of a fast track time, and I'm still not willing to hand that task over to a computer just yet.
The nine speeds, along with the admittedly brisk shifting speed of the automated manual does highlight another flaw of the NC1 that was immediately apparent after the mass and number of gears: it's mass (again) and rather soft ride. To reiterate: 1.7 tons is far from what anyone would consider light for a sports car, but I have to commend how little of that 1.7 tons you feel when hammering through the forward gears in rapid succession. It's... only when you have to slow down for a corner does the full 1.7 tons smack you right in the face. Let's just say that braking isn't this car's strong suit. The suspension setup stock is rather soft for my liking, and as such, when you slam the brakes (especially if you left foot brake) there's a very palpable delay between your brakes coming on, and the weight fully shifting over the front tyres. And in that split second delay where you're asking so much of the brakes but no grip to work with, the ABS sort of freaks out and doesn't know what to do, almost. The tyres will more than squeal, and your car will dive and squirm about as you try to hold it in a straight line, and the ABS doesn't seem to account again for the increased grip you have when the weight of the car is firmly on the front tyres, so I find that I almost have to pump the brakes even with ABS on to stop properly, in a 2017MY car! Or, you know, I could just not left foot brake, or be more gentle with the brake pedal but pshh if I don't have to deal with a clutch pedal, there's literally zero reason to not left foot brake HARD on a track. I mean, it IS a sports car, right? It's meant to go fast, right?
The news only gets worse from here. Technically this thing is an AWD car, right? Quick, open your racing textbooks 101, tell me what are AWD cars good for: corner exit traction. Translated into my boorish driving habits, that means mashing the throttle wide open once you're past the apex of a corner. And in the NSX... you can't do that.
See, real quick: the 3.5L V6 mid mounted, electric motor complemented gasoline engine drives the rear wheels of the car, with the two motors in the front of the car driving one front wheel each. This creates a rather perplexing situation, as oftentimes I mash the throttle expecting the grip of an AWD, only to find that the puny front motors, there primarily for fuel efficiency in city driving simply cannot keep up with the engines at the back. And so what happens is this car lulls you into a false sense of security in the phases where you're getting to know the car, with promising AWD acceleration out of a corner, but when push comes to shove and you really need the car to perform at ten tenths, such as in a hairpin or in wet conditions, the car cannot deliver on the "promises" and trust that it has instilled into you as a driver. And while the rear end of the still technically AWD NSX is by no means difficult to catch once it does break out, especially in the hands of someone with more experience with mid engined cars than I, it's still frustrating, especially in conjunction with how a slight spin will probably necessitate a gear drop due to the ultra close gearing afforded by a nine speed gearbox.
I say it's mid engined, but I honestly have no idea how you'd want to classify the layout of the NC1. It is at the same time, a front engined car, a mid engined car, and a rear engined car. And bafflingly it somehow seems to distill the worst traits of each layout and package them into a car, with the strengths of each yes, to be fair, but I find that the cons of each layout to be far more pronounced than the pros. Again, for an AWD car you expect effortless and savage corner exits, which the NSX won't do because it behaves more and more like an RWD car the lower the speed. It doesn't have that featherlight front end and effortless front end turn in you'd expect from a mid engined sports car with hardly anything up front, because again it has two electric motors up front. And while the pros of having a mid mounted engine is the most pronounced pro in the whole car, providing genuine weight and traction over the rear, it of course comes with that sick, sick feeling of having the entire Leaning Tower of Pisa bolted onto your engine head when the rear end starts to break loose in a midship car with a large engine. What you end up with is a car that I find has a horrendous center of gyration, with engines placed end to end along the entire length of the car. That's not to say it can't corner, mind you; it can absolutely hang with industry established behemoths like the R35 in the corners, but the way it does it, and the complaints it gives you as the driver when doing it, is what breaks the entire experience for me. I never felt like I was dancing in unison with the car, but rather having to accommodate its increasing list of demands time after time. There's a certain way, a certain method it wants to be driven in to be made the most of, and, I don't know about you, but that just isn't exactly fun to me.
If I had to sum up the NC1 NSX in a phrase, it'd be "Identity Crisis". It wants to be loved like the classic NSX, it wants to be as economical as a family sedan, it wants to be as fast as Godzilla, and it wants to be as ergonomical as a 911. Yet tragically every element within it seems to clash when driven at the limits. The soft suspension, the ridiculous center of gyration, the ABS, the gears, the motors, the engine... they all work well on their own but together it's just a cacophony of a waiting disaster. An especially deadly combination that I found out the very hard way was the soft suspension, the engine and motors clashing. I don't know what it is about this car. It might be the tyres, it might be the mass, it might be the computers, but this car lets go of its grip in the blink of an eye with absolutely zero warning. It's not like your traditional, lightweight Japanese sports car with slimmer tyres that will give you ample feedback via tyre squeals, steering wheel lightening mid corner, and gradual loss of traction from grip to slide, like the original NSX. You would not know where the limits of the car lie until you've exceeded them, which is dangerous enough on its own, but coupled with how it earns your trust at seven, eight tenths, is absolutely deadly. Where this car is the scariest isn't the tight hairpins where trying to accelerate out would break the rear out, but rather in a high speed sweeper, where the gasoline engine can easily overwhelm the front motors because of its own torque curve, and that would break the rear tyres loose, which would be unrecoverable because of the stupid centre of gravity and gyration of this car.
You'll have to excuse me if I really can't find anything nice to say about the NC1 NSX. The styling itself doesn't win me over, nor should it be the selling point of a car. The handling is a fucking mess to say the least, and given how forced down our throats it is by sullying the "NSX" name, I really don't know who the heck this car is supposed to be for. You want civility? 911. You want track performance? R35. Or the 911. Or the Ferrari 488. Or literally anything else. You want economy? Prius. It's mind boggling to me that the original NSX unified every contrasting element and made them work, but the NC1 is perhaps the embodiment of the most convincing argument that such unison is impossible.
Is there any saving grace? Well, the elephant in the room is adorned with a red Honda badge on its face. I realise that this is "just" a base NSX, and I'm comparing it to the Spec Vs, the GT3RSes, and admittedly even the Type Rs of old. With a lightened body and stiffed suspension, along with more calibrations to the engine and motor settings, I can definitely see this thing winning me over. It's just... you have AWD, nine gears, 573BHP, and no excuses for getting punked in the 0-60 department by a RR 911, or around the track by an R35 on a ten year old chassis. Hell, the GT3 spec of this car, you know, the one that's actually made to go fast? That ditches all the motors and becomes RWD, and I'm willing to bet it's everything I wanted out of my NSX, but doesn't that go to prove how asinine a concept the NC1 was if you have to strip away everything about it to make it go fast well?
Tuesday, 3 July 2018
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
Spoiler Alert: I didn't have a very good time as a mechanic in the 4-ish months that I had been one.
Long story short, I had a horrendous time trying to get along with every one of my colleagues, which meant that they didn't feel super inclined to teach me much, even if it meant alleviating their workload in the long run. Heck, you might even chalk it up to me being a burden they didn't feel like dragging along. Or maybe it's because I'm a young local who is passionate about cars, and therefore an immediate threat to their livelihood. I don't know. I honestly don't. It could be any of those reasons and more. I'm no psychic. I was only a very bad mechanic.
Needless to say then, that I've had a lot of bad memories and experiences, along with the classical buried feelings that had to stay buried for me to stay somewhat functional a human being, associated with my mechanic days, cars, and workshops in general. It got so bad at one point I legitimately found myself hating cars. I got so stressed out and frustrated, that, even away from the workshop, I'd frantically look for bolts, seams, clips, anything, trying to mentally tear the car apart, wondering how they ran, how they are to be disassembled, etc.. Of course, because I was hot garbage as a mechanic, often such frantic thinking got me nowhere, and it'd of course piss me off. Other telltale signs that I was rapidly losing interest in the job include, but are not limited to: arriving later and later, even skipping work with no MC or even telling anyone, more and more frequent toilet breaks since I'm not needed anyway, choosing to chill on my own when the workshop slows down when I could be observing my seniors perform work on a car, or just cursing and swearing in my head whenever I see a car arrive.
It's scary how my brain snowballs thoughts and emotions so rapidly. I've always wanted to be a mechanic. Always. Ever since my days as a Polytechnic student, enrolled in a course for a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering and never having even touched a screwdriver in the three angst filled years, I've always wanted to learn about cars my own way. "If they won't teach me, I'll find my own path and learn along the way!", was sort of my naïve, starry eyed mindset back then. One I kinda didn't outgrow even as a 24 year old man trying to support his family. As such, I think I always put immense, soul crushing pressure on myself. "You have to work hard for what you want", "Nothing in the world is free, you have to earn/ take it", or sayings to those effects, I think is safe to say are pretty common. I guess in my own way I've always felt so... alone, and hopeless. Even when I get the job I always wanted, with a direct bus to and from home, within an hour's travelling time, I seem to always find a way to be dissatisfied and sad. And I dare not be kind to myself and pat myself on the back because what if I ever get content with what I have? I'm legitimately so afraid of being content and... happy. I'm afraid of being happy. Because I don't have what I said I want.
Fucking funny, isn't it? Don't worry, I acknowledge it. You can laugh. Hell, I'll even laugh along with you. Ready? On a count of three: 1, 2, HAHAHAHAHA!
A psychotherapist, within an hour, made such a scarily accurate assessment of my mentality and fears within an hour of talking to me. There's a very big feeling of emptiness within me, which is why I always try so hard to achieve stupidly impossible things, or strive for perfectionism in all that I do.
The irony is real. To think someone could figuratively try to move a car using the emptiness in the fuel tank to drive it.
Anyway, in accordance to that "I have to do this on my own, since no one understands me, nor will anyone even teach me" mentality, I bought a game during the Steam Summer Sale 2018: Car Mechanic Simulator 2018:
And thus I relive my mixed bag of emotions in trying to become a mechanic: prior to buying the game, I felt so pumped about it, I felt like it was the perfect way for the currently shut-in, desk bound me to learn about car servicing, repairs, and assembly. Then I get the game, I can't figure out how to take apart a car I need to take apart, I get frustrated, and I start to hate cars all over again. And this isn't even with me bruising my delicate hands, getting scalding hot oil draped over me like hot fudge on a sundae because my colleagues insist on working on a car hot, etc..
But perhaps the most intriguing about my experience with CMS2018 so far is just how the game can so accurately draw out my real life tendencies and faults. The usually careful, thorough, and pedantic me gets all befuddled, clumsy, forgetful, and, well... a real life car workshop really doesn't have space for people like that. Hell, after taking apart the car's engine and reinstalling it, I attempted to start the car without even putting any engine oil in it. Of course, the game didn't let me start the engine, instead telling me there's no oil. In real life I'd have destroyed a perfectly serviceable engine easily worth several thousands. I could feel my body bracing for my superiors' irate and uncouth scoldings, and my mind was already frantically searching for excuses/ reasonable sounding lies as to why and how it happened.
I feel so small, pathetic, and useless. Even when a game guides me along so much it's almost a brain dead experience, I could fuck up something so... urgh, you know? I don't even have the words for it.
Of course, this is where my therapy and exercises come in. Of course I'd screw something up; it's my first time playing the game! And I went ahead and did the most difficult thing anyone could attempt in a workshop: tearing apart and rebuilding a whole fucking engine. In real life technicians need years and years of experience to even think about attempting that, and even the very best of each workshop gets entrusted with that task! I still did it. Me, 24 years old, 4 months' workshop experience, overhauled an engine!
It's just so... odd, you know? Being a mechanic is something everyone makes sound like such a "lowly" job, from friends and family who chide a Diploma holder who'd want to get his hands dirty for 6 days a week for 1.6k a month, to even my own colleagues, who constantly put the fact that they have no education at the forefront, almost as a brag, almost to put themselves down as false humility. "If we can do it, you should be able to!", "I only needed to watch this once to learn how to do it!", "you don't even know how to reverse the direction of the air gun?!", "I can't explain how to do it, I learned by watching others", "there's nothing to it!", were all common when I was a mechanic. They talk themselves down to make the work they do sound easy, yet I had trouble with even the simplest of tasks like handling a screwdriver, or figuring out clips. But of course they'd occasionally break character to boast about how important the job they do is, and how society can't function without us. Then they emphasise safety, doing a flawless job, making the car figuratively fall in love with us... which is it? Is this easy or not? Do you want to suck yourself off or not? Pick a side, Christ.
And now, playing through the game with no one to even reprimand me, I get frustrated a lot as I fumble through options and parts, trying to figure out WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING IS THERE SOMETHING MISSING MUST MORE BLOOD BE SHED?! For the first time, I felt like I was forcing myself to play a game I didn't enjoy. Forcing myself to play a game that seemed to torture me, feeling as though I needed that torture, somehow. Still, I think playing through this game at least made something start becoming clear to me: why I seem to be such an airhead when I'm in a workshop.
It really is bewildering to sit back and peel off the sheets to reveal the inner workings of a daily necessity we've come to take for granted. It's still a surreal experience that I can find fault with, disassemble and reassemble parts meant to handle hundreds of kilometres per hour, that's meant to be aligned within hundredths of a degree, whom people will put their lives on each day. It kinda makes me feel really small. Each beam, each component, each linkage requires so much thought, innovation, and evolution to become something great and reliable enough for us to put our lives in their hands without a second thought, you know? To fully understand the stresses, required strength, redundancy, tolerances, life expectancy, etc., of each part would probably takes months of intensive studying, let alone how they connect to and work with each other, and yet we're just expected to blaze through them all to get to the next part to disassemble, until we get to the problem part that needs replacing. I feel so... overwhelmed, trying to figure it all out as I take off part after part. On some occasions it makes me question my life and what I can really do with it. Can I work together with people like these parts, to create something trustworthy and life changing like these parts? Am I easy to understand like these parts? Are these parts easy to understand? Am I stupid, or just unlucky? Am I wanting too much from "just a job"? Am I thinking too much? Can one want to know too much from a non sentiment, emotionally moving pile of metal?
I love cars, but having to figure out how to tear them apart... urgh. Maybe it's because I have to scratch and claw at it all on my own that's making me so frustrated; I really can't tell. Could one really do a job that deals in what they enjoy? I love cars, but as a mechanic, after 6 the last thing I want to see is more cars, you know? I stopped playing racing games, I stopped looking at my car collection... There's a rather crude, yet philosophical question I heard from somewhere a long time ago, which I find myself asking a lot throughout my life since then: Do people who produce porn still want to watch porn in their off hours? With porn and sex, it's a biological guarantee that the people who produce porn will still seek out erotic material, right? Can a job burn a person out so badly that they can even reject sex? And, in the same vein, can a job burn a person out to a point he no longer enjoys what he's passionate about? Should a person find a job that deals with his passion as a result? I don't know.
Don't get me wrong; being a mechanic has its amazing moments, both virtually and in real life. I especially fondly remember when our workshop was getting so many cars in a day, we wouldn't even have time to sneeze. Stretched hours into overtime, moments where the small workshop of 4 would band together like a well oiled machine to rush out the last car of the day will stay with me for a long, long time. I guess I've always wanted to feel needed, and to feel like I belonged. Who doesn't, right? In a cheesy way of speaking, it's almost like it restored some faith in humanity for me, to be able to band together with people who dislike me, to put aside our differences to make someone happy. And, of course, how could I describe the feeling of finally being able to wash yourself off, and then emerging to see a shiny, primed, ready to run car sitting patiently, awaiting it's soon to be awed and happy owner?
I just wish I had the ability to make these things happen more often to love my job more. I think being a mechanic at least has made me realise a little more of what I truly value in a job and in life. I think part of my hateful perfectionism at work is due to me wanting to be trusted and relied upon. Trusted that I'd do a proper job with your car because I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I didn't, and I want everyone to know that. Trusted to go the extra mile every time even if it comes at a personal or financial cost because that's what I do, that's who I am, and this is what makes me happy. I just want to wear my heart on my sleeve and be proud of and relied upon for it, but I suppose that's asking too much in this awful world we live in, isn't it? We always have to be fast. We always have to cut corners, so much so that the shortcut methods become the method. We never really have time to really well and truly baby a car as though they were our own, to respect them as though each part has a soul of their own. I suppose that's why I'm going to the "crazy institute" for therapy, HAHA! It just saddens me, you know? And I'm at an impasse, because I know I'm saying crazy talk, I see and know I'm insane, but it'd sadden me to not be myself.
After my short lived stint as a mechanic, I feel as if I've tried everything I know to try, and still couldn't make it. I'm so lost, sad and afraid at this point...
Long story short, I had a horrendous time trying to get along with every one of my colleagues, which meant that they didn't feel super inclined to teach me much, even if it meant alleviating their workload in the long run. Heck, you might even chalk it up to me being a burden they didn't feel like dragging along. Or maybe it's because I'm a young local who is passionate about cars, and therefore an immediate threat to their livelihood. I don't know. I honestly don't. It could be any of those reasons and more. I'm no psychic. I was only a very bad mechanic.
Needless to say then, that I've had a lot of bad memories and experiences, along with the classical buried feelings that had to stay buried for me to stay somewhat functional a human being, associated with my mechanic days, cars, and workshops in general. It got so bad at one point I legitimately found myself hating cars. I got so stressed out and frustrated, that, even away from the workshop, I'd frantically look for bolts, seams, clips, anything, trying to mentally tear the car apart, wondering how they ran, how they are to be disassembled, etc.. Of course, because I was hot garbage as a mechanic, often such frantic thinking got me nowhere, and it'd of course piss me off. Other telltale signs that I was rapidly losing interest in the job include, but are not limited to: arriving later and later, even skipping work with no MC or even telling anyone, more and more frequent toilet breaks since I'm not needed anyway, choosing to chill on my own when the workshop slows down when I could be observing my seniors perform work on a car, or just cursing and swearing in my head whenever I see a car arrive.
It's scary how my brain snowballs thoughts and emotions so rapidly. I've always wanted to be a mechanic. Always. Ever since my days as a Polytechnic student, enrolled in a course for a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering and never having even touched a screwdriver in the three angst filled years, I've always wanted to learn about cars my own way. "If they won't teach me, I'll find my own path and learn along the way!", was sort of my naïve, starry eyed mindset back then. One I kinda didn't outgrow even as a 24 year old man trying to support his family. As such, I think I always put immense, soul crushing pressure on myself. "You have to work hard for what you want", "Nothing in the world is free, you have to earn/ take it", or sayings to those effects, I think is safe to say are pretty common. I guess in my own way I've always felt so... alone, and hopeless. Even when I get the job I always wanted, with a direct bus to and from home, within an hour's travelling time, I seem to always find a way to be dissatisfied and sad. And I dare not be kind to myself and pat myself on the back because what if I ever get content with what I have? I'm legitimately so afraid of being content and... happy. I'm afraid of being happy. Because I don't have what I said I want.
Fucking funny, isn't it? Don't worry, I acknowledge it. You can laugh. Hell, I'll even laugh along with you. Ready? On a count of three: 1, 2, HAHAHAHAHA!
A psychotherapist, within an hour, made such a scarily accurate assessment of my mentality and fears within an hour of talking to me. There's a very big feeling of emptiness within me, which is why I always try so hard to achieve stupidly impossible things, or strive for perfectionism in all that I do.
The irony is real. To think someone could figuratively try to move a car using the emptiness in the fuel tank to drive it.
Anyway, in accordance to that "I have to do this on my own, since no one understands me, nor will anyone even teach me" mentality, I bought a game during the Steam Summer Sale 2018: Car Mechanic Simulator 2018:
And thus I relive my mixed bag of emotions in trying to become a mechanic: prior to buying the game, I felt so pumped about it, I felt like it was the perfect way for the currently shut-in, desk bound me to learn about car servicing, repairs, and assembly. Then I get the game, I can't figure out how to take apart a car I need to take apart, I get frustrated, and I start to hate cars all over again. And this isn't even with me bruising my delicate hands, getting scalding hot oil draped over me like hot fudge on a sundae because my colleagues insist on working on a car hot, etc..
But perhaps the most intriguing about my experience with CMS2018 so far is just how the game can so accurately draw out my real life tendencies and faults. The usually careful, thorough, and pedantic me gets all befuddled, clumsy, forgetful, and, well... a real life car workshop really doesn't have space for people like that. Hell, after taking apart the car's engine and reinstalling it, I attempted to start the car without even putting any engine oil in it. Of course, the game didn't let me start the engine, instead telling me there's no oil. In real life I'd have destroyed a perfectly serviceable engine easily worth several thousands. I could feel my body bracing for my superiors' irate and uncouth scoldings, and my mind was already frantically searching for excuses/ reasonable sounding lies as to why and how it happened.
I feel so small, pathetic, and useless. Even when a game guides me along so much it's almost a brain dead experience, I could fuck up something so... urgh, you know? I don't even have the words for it.
Of course, this is where my therapy and exercises come in. Of course I'd screw something up; it's my first time playing the game! And I went ahead and did the most difficult thing anyone could attempt in a workshop: tearing apart and rebuilding a whole fucking engine. In real life technicians need years and years of experience to even think about attempting that, and even the very best of each workshop gets entrusted with that task! I still did it. Me, 24 years old, 4 months' workshop experience, overhauled an engine!
It's just so... odd, you know? Being a mechanic is something everyone makes sound like such a "lowly" job, from friends and family who chide a Diploma holder who'd want to get his hands dirty for 6 days a week for 1.6k a month, to even my own colleagues, who constantly put the fact that they have no education at the forefront, almost as a brag, almost to put themselves down as false humility. "If we can do it, you should be able to!", "I only needed to watch this once to learn how to do it!", "you don't even know how to reverse the direction of the air gun?!", "I can't explain how to do it, I learned by watching others", "there's nothing to it!", were all common when I was a mechanic. They talk themselves down to make the work they do sound easy, yet I had trouble with even the simplest of tasks like handling a screwdriver, or figuring out clips. But of course they'd occasionally break character to boast about how important the job they do is, and how society can't function without us. Then they emphasise safety, doing a flawless job, making the car figuratively fall in love with us... which is it? Is this easy or not? Do you want to suck yourself off or not? Pick a side, Christ.
And now, playing through the game with no one to even reprimand me, I get frustrated a lot as I fumble through options and parts, trying to figure out WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING IS THERE SOMETHING MISSING MUST MORE BLOOD BE SHED?! For the first time, I felt like I was forcing myself to play a game I didn't enjoy. Forcing myself to play a game that seemed to torture me, feeling as though I needed that torture, somehow. Still, I think playing through this game at least made something start becoming clear to me: why I seem to be such an airhead when I'm in a workshop.
It really is bewildering to sit back and peel off the sheets to reveal the inner workings of a daily necessity we've come to take for granted. It's still a surreal experience that I can find fault with, disassemble and reassemble parts meant to handle hundreds of kilometres per hour, that's meant to be aligned within hundredths of a degree, whom people will put their lives on each day. It kinda makes me feel really small. Each beam, each component, each linkage requires so much thought, innovation, and evolution to become something great and reliable enough for us to put our lives in their hands without a second thought, you know? To fully understand the stresses, required strength, redundancy, tolerances, life expectancy, etc., of each part would probably takes months of intensive studying, let alone how they connect to and work with each other, and yet we're just expected to blaze through them all to get to the next part to disassemble, until we get to the problem part that needs replacing. I feel so... overwhelmed, trying to figure it all out as I take off part after part. On some occasions it makes me question my life and what I can really do with it. Can I work together with people like these parts, to create something trustworthy and life changing like these parts? Am I easy to understand like these parts? Are these parts easy to understand? Am I stupid, or just unlucky? Am I wanting too much from "just a job"? Am I thinking too much? Can one want to know too much from a non sentiment, emotionally moving pile of metal?
I love cars, but having to figure out how to tear them apart... urgh. Maybe it's because I have to scratch and claw at it all on my own that's making me so frustrated; I really can't tell. Could one really do a job that deals in what they enjoy? I love cars, but as a mechanic, after 6 the last thing I want to see is more cars, you know? I stopped playing racing games, I stopped looking at my car collection... There's a rather crude, yet philosophical question I heard from somewhere a long time ago, which I find myself asking a lot throughout my life since then: Do people who produce porn still want to watch porn in their off hours? With porn and sex, it's a biological guarantee that the people who produce porn will still seek out erotic material, right? Can a job burn a person out so badly that they can even reject sex? And, in the same vein, can a job burn a person out to a point he no longer enjoys what he's passionate about? Should a person find a job that deals with his passion as a result? I don't know.
Don't get me wrong; being a mechanic has its amazing moments, both virtually and in real life. I especially fondly remember when our workshop was getting so many cars in a day, we wouldn't even have time to sneeze. Stretched hours into overtime, moments where the small workshop of 4 would band together like a well oiled machine to rush out the last car of the day will stay with me for a long, long time. I guess I've always wanted to feel needed, and to feel like I belonged. Who doesn't, right? In a cheesy way of speaking, it's almost like it restored some faith in humanity for me, to be able to band together with people who dislike me, to put aside our differences to make someone happy. And, of course, how could I describe the feeling of finally being able to wash yourself off, and then emerging to see a shiny, primed, ready to run car sitting patiently, awaiting it's soon to be awed and happy owner?
I just wish I had the ability to make these things happen more often to love my job more. I think being a mechanic at least has made me realise a little more of what I truly value in a job and in life. I think part of my hateful perfectionism at work is due to me wanting to be trusted and relied upon. Trusted that I'd do a proper job with your car because I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I didn't, and I want everyone to know that. Trusted to go the extra mile every time even if it comes at a personal or financial cost because that's what I do, that's who I am, and this is what makes me happy. I just want to wear my heart on my sleeve and be proud of and relied upon for it, but I suppose that's asking too much in this awful world we live in, isn't it? We always have to be fast. We always have to cut corners, so much so that the shortcut methods become the method. We never really have time to really well and truly baby a car as though they were our own, to respect them as though each part has a soul of their own. I suppose that's why I'm going to the "crazy institute" for therapy, HAHA! It just saddens me, you know? And I'm at an impasse, because I know I'm saying crazy talk, I see and know I'm insane, but it'd sadden me to not be myself.
After my short lived stint as a mechanic, I feel as if I've tried everything I know to try, and still couldn't make it. I'm so lost, sad and afraid at this point...
Sunday, 1 July 2018
FUDGE015
What a start to July, huh. Urgh.
To be fair, I've had a whole slew of dreams today. Too many for my groggy consciousness to hold onto out of bed, and they aren't all necessarily sad. By that I mean, all but one was about my darkest emotions and deepest fears, HA!
It's about ----, again. I wonder if I can not type that name every month. Bleak reminders are awash in my life, not the least of which is my phone, which suggests "----" when I want to type in stuff like "Camera", or "Camshaft". Reminds me always of how big a piece of my life I'm attempting to live without, and in being reminded, I'm drawn back to square one of distancing myself from it.
Two weeks. That's the general guideline for seeking professional help. If you experience symptoms of depression for more than two weeks, it's recommended that you seek counselling, psychiatry, etc.. That seems to be the general consensus to the professionally uninitiated me, anyway. Anything, from breakups, to death, etc., has a two week "get over it" period. It's always blown my mind when I do my skin deep Google searches. Two weeks?
Why is it then that bad memories and experiences in my life always cling onto and haunt me for the better part of a year, at least? It's not even just unrequited love; I still get nightmares about my last last job at ----, the colleagues I had there, my last job at ----, the people and experiences there, etc.. Dreams of acceptance and belonging, dreams of "what if this happened differently". Nightmares of the humiliation, the ire I stirred up, and an uncanny tendency to be in just my underwear in public settings with a crowd of people.
So then, what does it say about me that experiences like that haunt me for life? Do... people, well adjusted people, get over these setbacks in just two weeks? Am I too fragile? Too sensitive? Am I expecting too much? Am I too emotional? Do I need more drugs? More power? More control?
Am I sick?
How'd I even turn out like this?
Why is it so oxymoronically difficult to be normal?
It's so difficult. So difficult for me to connect with people and make friends any more, let alone love someone the way I loved ----, the way I loved ----. Everybody feels like they have a mask on. I can't see them, I can't feel them. And even in group therapy, when I do see and feel people finally, I feel like a preachy asshole. I feel like a hypocrite, being able to say all the best things to them, yet being unable to do so for myself. I get scared and I run away. I immediately distance myself from them. I skipped a session last Tuesday because of that.
And so I try to patch up the holes in my heart with porn, with psychotherapy. I think porn stars and psychotherapists are actual friends. I think they can save me. I think I know them. I genuinely feel happy to see them come back to see me time and again. But at the end of each day I know that I know nothing about them. They aren't friends. They'll always have that very concrete and purposeful wall between me and them. They aren't meant to be a crutch like I'm using them to be. They feel like they're here for me, like they'll comfort me, like they'll make me feel better about myself, but they're just paid services, a luxury.
They're surrogate friends because I don't have many. Because I don't have enough. Because I'm lonely and I don't know what to do.
I want to talk. I want to have heart to hearts. I want to rely and be relied on. I want to trust and be trusted. I want someone to share my vulnerabilities with, and have them massaged, and I want to do the same for her. I want to smile, I want to laugh, I want to be happy, I want to make others happy.
But why does it always feel like I'm trapped in the prison of my own head, six feet underground? Why do I feel so ashamed of myself?
Oh, that's right. Because I never bother to do my hair. And I don't dress up enough for events. Because I never buy her the things she wants on her birthdays. Because I don't make the 4k a month to feed her, to make her happy, for her to rely on me. Because I'm fat and ugly. Because I'm too needy. Because I'm too proud and too immature. Because I have a short temper. Because I'm too horny and too pervy. Because I want dinners together. Because I want hugs. Because I want hour long talks in the dead of night. Because I love taking unflattering photos. Because I want to know about your past relationships.
Because I'm just not good enough for you, I'm ashamed. I'm unwanted. I'm worthless. I'm an awful person to be around. An awful burden with his depression, anxiety, and loneliness to have to baby. And I will forever be lonely because of this.
I want to talk with a friend.
To be fair, I've had a whole slew of dreams today. Too many for my groggy consciousness to hold onto out of bed, and they aren't all necessarily sad. By that I mean, all but one was about my darkest emotions and deepest fears, HA!
It's about ----, again. I wonder if I can not type that name every month. Bleak reminders are awash in my life, not the least of which is my phone, which suggests "----" when I want to type in stuff like "Camera", or "Camshaft". Reminds me always of how big a piece of my life I'm attempting to live without, and in being reminded, I'm drawn back to square one of distancing myself from it.
Two weeks. That's the general guideline for seeking professional help. If you experience symptoms of depression for more than two weeks, it's recommended that you seek counselling, psychiatry, etc.. That seems to be the general consensus to the professionally uninitiated me, anyway. Anything, from breakups, to death, etc., has a two week "get over it" period. It's always blown my mind when I do my skin deep Google searches. Two weeks?
Why is it then that bad memories and experiences in my life always cling onto and haunt me for the better part of a year, at least? It's not even just unrequited love; I still get nightmares about my last last job at ----, the colleagues I had there, my last job at ----, the people and experiences there, etc.. Dreams of acceptance and belonging, dreams of "what if this happened differently". Nightmares of the humiliation, the ire I stirred up, and an uncanny tendency to be in just my underwear in public settings with a crowd of people.
So then, what does it say about me that experiences like that haunt me for life? Do... people, well adjusted people, get over these setbacks in just two weeks? Am I too fragile? Too sensitive? Am I expecting too much? Am I too emotional? Do I need more drugs? More power? More control?
Am I sick?
How'd I even turn out like this?
Why is it so oxymoronically difficult to be normal?
It's so difficult. So difficult for me to connect with people and make friends any more, let alone love someone the way I loved ----, the way I loved ----. Everybody feels like they have a mask on. I can't see them, I can't feel them. And even in group therapy, when I do see and feel people finally, I feel like a preachy asshole. I feel like a hypocrite, being able to say all the best things to them, yet being unable to do so for myself. I get scared and I run away. I immediately distance myself from them. I skipped a session last Tuesday because of that.
And so I try to patch up the holes in my heart with porn, with psychotherapy. I think porn stars and psychotherapists are actual friends. I think they can save me. I think I know them. I genuinely feel happy to see them come back to see me time and again. But at the end of each day I know that I know nothing about them. They aren't friends. They'll always have that very concrete and purposeful wall between me and them. They aren't meant to be a crutch like I'm using them to be. They feel like they're here for me, like they'll comfort me, like they'll make me feel better about myself, but they're just paid services, a luxury.
They're surrogate friends because I don't have many. Because I don't have enough. Because I'm lonely and I don't know what to do.
I want to talk. I want to have heart to hearts. I want to rely and be relied on. I want to trust and be trusted. I want someone to share my vulnerabilities with, and have them massaged, and I want to do the same for her. I want to smile, I want to laugh, I want to be happy, I want to make others happy.
But why does it always feel like I'm trapped in the prison of my own head, six feet underground? Why do I feel so ashamed of myself?
Oh, that's right. Because I never bother to do my hair. And I don't dress up enough for events. Because I never buy her the things she wants on her birthdays. Because I don't make the 4k a month to feed her, to make her happy, for her to rely on me. Because I'm fat and ugly. Because I'm too needy. Because I'm too proud and too immature. Because I have a short temper. Because I'm too horny and too pervy. Because I want dinners together. Because I want hugs. Because I want hour long talks in the dead of night. Because I love taking unflattering photos. Because I want to know about your past relationships.
Because I'm just not good enough for you, I'm ashamed. I'm unwanted. I'm worthless. I'm an awful person to be around. An awful burden with his depression, anxiety, and loneliness to have to baby. And I will forever be lonely because of this.
I want to talk with a friend.
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