The Little Red Jazz

We bit the bullet and bought a 1.5 year-old red Honda Jazz 1.4A on 11 October 2008!

Transmission: Auto
Engine cap: 1339 cc
Reg date: 09-Jan-2007
Mileage: 22,800 km
Features: Airbag (Driver & Passenger), ABS, Auto Retractable Side Mirrors and Indicator, Knockdown rear seats.
Accessories: Sports Rims, Leather Seats, CD Player, Reverse Sensors, Solar Films, Bodykit.


It's quite a nifty little car and mercifully small for un-confident parkers! I needed an emergency parking lesson from Elaine and Hans on Sunday afternoon, after I spent 15 minutes trying to park at church! My parking has greatly improved and I can now park in less than 2 minutes! :D I am full of admiration for people who can reverse park in between 2 cars in 1 go! My parking is getting better by the day and my (very ambitious!) dream is to be able to park in between 2 cars. Till then, I can only go to places with ample parking lots!

Having a car has really made things a lot easier for us. We don't feel so tired at the end of each day, and we can now do lots of things in the evenings, like spend more time with both sets of parents (in one evening!), drop by places to pick up food/groceries, drop by my mum's to bring her dinner when she's too tired to go out, bring Darcy out with us in the evenings (so he won't be alone at home)... All this without having to walk up and down to and from bus stops (on puffer-fish feet, no less!), spend lots of time waiting for buses, lug lots of things everywhere we go, or plead unsuccessfully with doggy-phobic taxi-drivers!

Car?

We are currently considering if we should get a used car to ferry the family from point to point, especially when Baby is out. We are praying that we will be wise on the choice of the car.

After nights of surfing online, test-driving and visiting used cars dealers, we are down to 2 choices:

Honda Jazz (1.4A Hatchback)

+ very smooth ride
+ great handling
+ excellent fuel efficiency (15-18km/litre)
+ easy to drive and park
+ great design that makes us melt
+ funky features like auto retractable side mirrors, side mirror indicators, seats that can fold down and fold up
+ easy to sell and good resale value
- back seats are bit narrower than a sedan
- smaller boot compared to a sedan
- costs 10K more than the Cerato



Kia Cerato (1.6A Sedan)

+ smooth, comfortable, well-cushioned ride
+ more spacious
+ sedan boot
+ 10k cheaper than a Jazz!
- poor fuel efficiency (11-13km/litre)
- higher road tax
- a bit noisy, you can hear the engine
- not so nice design
- hard to sell and poor resale value. A handful of people said it's almost not possible to sell.


We are now praying, thinking and talking to people to make a better decison.

The New Dual-core Driver

Despite being nervous, driving like a constipated snail and having a three-second reaction time to the tester's instructions, I passed! Now that I've just spent over a thousand dollars on driving lessons, I now have the license to spend tens of thousands on a machine that boasts a dramatic depreciation rate. I'm still excited and I'm thinking of starting off with a small little manual car like a Kia Picanto or Rio. I'd like to get a few months of experience before I start ferrying a tiny baby around. Slowly but surely, we're being sucked into the Singaporean life of cars, ERPs, and ferrying kids around.

It came as a sudden shock to me that I might not be able to cycle for a long time. Definitely not for the next 6 months, not with my changing centre of gravity, and not while baby is little. And who know when Number 2 will come? Then that'll be another 2 years. By then my bike would be nice and mouldy and rusty. This new life definitely requires some adjusting to, but I wouldn't have it any other way.