van driver ordinaire

I enjoy driving a van. Yes, I do. Driving a van is an enjoyable thing for me to do. The very first time I did it was during the UM inter college games when van drivers are scarce. And I was pretty good. Not 'fairly good for someone who never drove a van before' pretty good, just plain pretty good. I mean, some of the passengers actually asked whether I do it regularly (drive a van, not be pretty good. And yeah, I am pretty good on a consistent basis, while we're at that :p). And I am actually saying that without boasting. Seriously.

Thing is -and those who are already sick of this narcissism may go read something on Soccernet or whatever- I only noticed my being pretty good yesterday. I sent some of the girls from the Kelab Penyayang (I'm the advisor of this club. I love unconcitionally, you see) to return some unsold souvenirs to a rumah kebajikan in SS2, which is located just next to a Chinese primary school. And the schoolchildren were finishing their last lessons of the day before heading home, so vehicles were abundant; cars and vans and buses and whatnot. Before long, I had to do an almost impossible manouvre -this included reversing the very long HiAce and slipping through in between cars- through the vehicles. And then, upon stopping, I noticed that we were parked just beside a huge trash container. Pitying the girls, I reversed the van and parked -this is side parking, you see- somewhere else, vehicles abundant on either side of the road.

OK, here's a confession; as Borro would no doubt agree, I drive recklessly -although I'm lucky never to have been involved in any accidents barring the ones while motorcycling- and I have this mild fear of reversing a car. It seemed like the reverse manouvre is where I felt that a car is actually out of my control and I'd have to rely on pure luck to do it successfully. Kinda. Let's just say I'd always feel a mild discomfort when reversing a car. But this feeling is non-existent when I reversed the van. And I actually did not notice this until yesterday! And I assure you that the length and size of the van is not what caused my fear to go missing, as my fear of reversing is actually directly proportional to the size of the car (that is, reversing a Kancil would be much less scary than reversing say, a Perdana).

Rully, who've been at the college longer than I do (and no doubt have had more attempts at driving the van) confessed one day that he'd had his fair share of accidents while driving the HiAce. So I was pretty proud that accidents while driving the HiAce never even crossed my mind. Talent? I don't know. Maybe. And by any chance driving a van skillfully is hardly something to boast about anyway. But I sure enjoy doing it. It feels...natural.