I relied heavily on my car for unplanned food explorations and it's with great sorrow to announce that i have decided not to renew the exorbitantly priced certificate of entitlement (COE) to drive my trusty Toyota Vios for the next five / ten years.
With that decision made, usage of the car was pushed to full force and i purchased quite a number of items all over Singapore given that my house's renovation is slated for completion in another one or two weeks' time. p.s. that's why i didn't have much to blog!
We also had to follow up on the necessary procedures to scrap / de-register the car by the deadline; in our case, the expiry of our car's COE is tomorrow, 20 March 2016. The above is an easy illustration on what you should do to de-register your car. Number 1 is not applicable to us as our loan was for five years and i cleared it back in 2011.
Didn't know i can apply for the transaction pin online though and our ignorance brought us to LTA early this morning as dad insisted that the queue would be bad and the Authority works half day on Saturdays! Trust me, dad's nagging skill is potent and it's easier to follow his call rather than endure his endless torment..
Wait was thankfully less than 20 minutes and we got the pin in no time; in all, we spent only about 30 minutes at the LTA building in Sin Ming estate!
After which would be a drive to any one of the LTA-appointed scrapyards! Why not make full use of the COE and do it tomorrow? I cannot because none of them is open on Sundays! Technically i can but the car has to be towed instead of being driven to the scrapyard on Monday.
Kheng Keng Auto Private Limited - our choice for no particularly strong reason as Sungei Kadut is simply nearer to home than Gul Road in Tuas.
Seeing the numerous cars parked in front of me within the compound was just so sad and the reality of taking public transport for good sank in; those who benefited from the ten-year 100% loan with super low COE of less than S$10,000 in the past and couldn't afford the certificate are likely to be suffering from the same symptoms as i!
While waiting for the staff to assess the scrap value, i thought it would be meaningful to take a few photos of Toyota-san's final moments before i finally bid him goodbye.
Front grill which was broken in the middle yet hidden pretty well behind the cut-out of a leather bag i used to have. The history was that that the driver of a car who was turning out of a carpark in Simei suddenly reversed too fast and hit my car which was at the back. I didn't spot the breakage then and hence, didn't claim for insurance. We lived with the sore eye for quite a while until my dad accidentally cut his hand when he was washing the car.
My uncle had the same model / make and dad had kindly agreed to change our "good" material with my uncle whose car had slightly dented bonnet and trunk. Well, good to recycle anyway.
Road tax on the right; the disc on the left was for season parking at the open-air carpark centering my block. For those who are scrapping their cars, do note to cancel the season parking; as i have utilised the parking for slightly more than half a month, there was a refund of about S$24 bucks!
Tear on the driver's seat - this resulted due to a pair of shorts that had a metal buckle at the back; after i tore the fabric with it, i was so pissed that i removed the buckle once i got home!
Lucky tokens - there's another one concealed behind that's given by Karen; according to her, that particular design was meant for ease of finding parking lots! Key action; rub it so that it can perform its magic.
This wasn't the original tyre rim and Alex changed them to this so that the car had a "sportier" feel to it. The only issue was that the rim was bigger than the original and in the beginning, we can feel the wheel scrapping against the undercarriage when we made a u-turn!
We couldn't find the culprit for the damaged body kit and in my almost ten years of driving this car (one day short of 10 years mah), there were a number of incidents that some of you might still remember; the side mirror that got dislodged and the misfortune continued.
Total mileage in the ten years - 240,314 kilometers!
Apparently, i am not the only one who was overwhelmed with emotion and there was even a photo wall in the scrapyard's office showing many pictures of car owners with their about-to-be-scrapped cars.
There were message-signs like "very wasted lor", "so sayang", "i will miss her" etc that you can use to express your emotions. Funny that we can attach such emotions for an inorganic object! Anyway, we were not offered the photo opportunity; guess it was because there were too many people bringing in their cars for the final "slaughter".
Got the official stamp on the acknowledgment slip (to be kept in case LTA asks) and the cheque for S$100 scrap value. There is a Preferential Additional Registration Fee (PARF) rebate which is of higher value that would be transferred to your bank account (bank details must be provided and rebate has to be applied here).
Time to make full use of my legs!
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My immense gratitude and endless thanks to my toyota vios; you performed remarkably in the ten years with us and i would always remember you for the hardship you endured under my stewardship! Friends who had "touched you" before had also requested i said goodbye on their behalf. 一路走好!
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