Notsoprivate

Previous Dioramas

2012-01-26T21:06:00.000-08:00

For the latest one plus the making:

http://miscellaneousmiscellaneous.blogspot.com/2012/01/hobby-classroom.html

P.S: Some rant: I don't provide the link to this post from The Making of Hobby Classroom post, because I don't want to edit the post anymore since it goes haywire everytime I edit. The spacing will be randomly paced, font size changes, title disappears, part of text missing. It's maddening!

PREVIOUS DIORAMA

I have idea of displaying my minis in dioramas not long after I started collecting, but I have to find a cabinet to keep them so they remain good and intact.

The very first and original diorama that I create was a combination of Old Kitchen One and Two, random size, no display and almost falling apart because I can't make the portable display permanent so that I can still access it.

With that, luckily I found a simple glass cabinet with glass shelves in IKEA.

It's supposed to be a CD cabinet, each shelf module is approx 30.3 L X 16,3W X 15.5H centimeters. It's the best option I can find and I like it. So I have two of these cabinet, side by side, means I can put 20 dioramas, it will take me years to fill up the cupboard.

(to this day, 14 modules had been filled, 6 more to go. Not so bad! It's faster than I thought :))

Here are the 12, since 2 latest dioramas have been posted in separate post.

I will just include brief descriptions, I hope.

1 & 2. OLD KITCHEN ONE & TWO

Old Kitchen One

Old Kitchen Two

They are twins, so their story is about the same.

I have these sets of traditional Japanese kitchen props, chinese festive food and chinese traditional kitchen, I also have the vintage looking sewing machine, some mini wooden furniture I got randomly from 100Y shop and Art&Friend, and mini porcelain kitchen wares with traditional chicken pattern.

With that, obviously, the idea is to put in traditional kitchen, with mixture of two cultures but it's not noticeable. Because of very limited furniture, I made use of those plant display/base, with hubby's help with sawing, voila, almost no serious planning is required. No sketches, no confusion, just some trial and error and I get the lovely kitchen that reminds me of my childhood. Kitchen with chicken and sewing machine inside.

Anyway, the picture look horrible with a lot of bluetacs here and there, pictures always show too many details. It doesn't look as bad in the real miniature. One day I will take better pictures of them, but for now, I can't take off the diorama from the rack without moving the rest. It's domino chain because every diorama had to be fixed into the cabinet from the bottom (not from front), then i will put the legging for it to sit in before another diorama is being fixed below the previous.

3. GIRL"S BEDROOM

This is probably the easiest and least complicated diorama.

I have the wooden mini bed and dresser I found randomly from Art & Friends. It's basically already the major fitting there. I had good idea how to fill in between because I have the beige rack from another set and it is already very fitting with the rest.

For the color, again, easy, it's almost always pink for girl. I have a set of pink flower origami paper and leftover pink fabric from a bolster, ex-bolster for the curtain.

The chow chow is a gift from my Dad many years ago, he gave me sets of mini cats, mini dogs and mini rabbits, this chow chow is my favourite and it will be belong here. The teddy bear is a wedding souvenir from a friend. It might looks big, but in real life I do have a gigantic teddy bear that looks similar to that. The chair and the boot is from another miniature set, the colors can't be more fitting for this diorama. The Hello Kitty stationery item also fits. Teddy bear on the bed is from a birthday bear for my friend but never had a chance to pass it to her, the small teddy bear is bought during my uni time just because it was cute. So everything is really meant for this room. I just found few suitable pictures and scenery to decorate the wall.

Casualty: a new pink-orange micro fiber towel for the carpet on the floor. Many times, in miscellaneous household neighbourhood shops, there are always colorful so-called micro fiber towel sold in very ridiculous price. For example, this one only cost fifty cents for the size that can make four of this carpet. Too bad they are too furry and thick, otherwise it will be excellent props for craft.

Girls' Bedroom is probably the diorama that take the least time, if I'm not wrong, only 2-3 not full days.

4. FRUIT STALL

I have a miniature fruit set, and there comes a humble fruit stall. The rack and display are either made from balsa wood or from the wooden boxes that is supposed to be for planting. The wine rack is a magnet contributed by my parents. They put in together with my other miniature display and I found it's suitable here. (once in a while they will put something they found on my miniature shelves without my knowledge because I'm fussy..he he. the other time I found mini jackpot lighters, and another I found a pair of mini bride and groom clay souvenir on the bed of Girl's Bedroom).

There are not as many fruits in a set, so I added in some artificial mini grapes that can pass a big sized plum, I also added in lemon and orange from eraser sets that I have eventhough it's a bit gigantic, the colors brighten up the scene. The wooden crate from 100Y shop is also a great addition.

5. SUSHI BAR

My first completed set purchase is a Japanese sushi set. It started from an innocent visit to toy shop in Hong Kong year 2008. At that time, detailed miniature is foreign to me. (although I had the idea when I was a kid twenty over years ago that someone should makes realistic daily stuff in small doll size ~ they steal my unexpressed idea!)

To my surprise, I found a lot of mini figurine in HK and purchased some mini Doraemon figurines and I thought that's it until I stepped in a toy shop for fun, and discovered a display full of realistic miniatures; from street food stall, tiny cart, tiny plastic chair, chop stick, noodle, friend tofu, fish ball to daily stuff, kitchen stuff, food, all in mini size. It was a four-five story toy shop so there was enough stuffs to captivate me and my husband for quite a long time, which for me, mostly spent just in that particular area. The big dilemma was, if I left, hopefully I can forget their existence. Bahaha.. but if I buy, just a little, just a piece, I know there is no looking back, although I still try to fool myself. Anyway, finally, if your childhood imagination comes into reality, would you let it pass? Difficult!

Anyway, I chose that set that time because it will be easier to display as it is. Some other set, as great as it was, are part and pieces of stuff or furniture that is not so nice standing alone. So after I got back, I bought a mini acrylic shelves for toy display and put them up in barely few hours, then I feel the withdrawal, bad.

After I acquired another set and displayed it the same way, I was not satisfied and from then on the idea of making it into diorama born.

Beside being the first set, this diorama was the fifth diorama created because I had reservation and doubt about how to make the furniture since there was no pre-made stuffs that I could use. It's also difficult to fit a sushi bar into such a small modul and still make sense. So with some wood, paint, sticker, bamboo mat, print-outs I finally got it up.

6-KINDERGARTEN

By far, this one needs the most improvisation. There are so many things from different sources being put up to form a scene. It's one of my favourite based on the amount of effort, but if there is a thing that I regret, it's the floor material. I would probably change it into a more bare or monotone pattern and color so that the diversity of the stuffs will stand out more.

The main inspiration for this diorama is the Sam tuxedo and Hello kitty set (a more plus, after I had this set, the full set had became very rare therefore became expensive).

The cute mini orange bicycle is probably the best detailed mini stuff from my non-mini era, I got this from a toy sale fair. They pack big bag with various random toys inside for ten bucks. It's great! I eyed it especially because of this bicycle, which I got together with curious george, ball, magic beanie toys, rubber toy ropes, and various other things.

The plastic blue and yellow chairs are from 'stacking chair' toys just like those other stacking game concept. The sizes are just nice and the primary colors fit perfectly.

The flower table & round cupboard is from another miniature set. Wooden colourful cabinet is made from painted balsa wood. Some pots and drinks are from eraser set. The various wooden animal figures on the wall are stripped from wooden paper clips. The small house figures on the left wall are part of random key chains. The shoes are from some third party Barbie's toy accessories, although one or two pairs are original. The rabbit and elephant toys on the floor are from those ball machine key chains.

The blue shoe rack and table is from the 3d wooden craft. I thought it would be suitable and it's a jackpot. The color came out very nicely on this wooden material. Too bad they don't produce more modern looking furniture.

Only the small side table is utilized here.

The cupboard is utilized as shoe rack, the rest of the chair and table is utilized in diorama 9, Mahjong Room.

As random as the origin from every part of diorama, probably the most random from all that I've created, it's good fun and I'm very happy that everything come perfectly together.

7 & 8. MICKEY MINNIE BAKERY & COSY CORNER

Bakery

Cosy corner

When the main miniature manufacturer started to market in the US, they collaborate with Disney to create Disney theme furniture. The first few sets were still good, the details, quantity of the set are still the same, however, they come in slightly bigger scale. When I bought some of them, the prices were still normal, however, as recently, those in Disney theme are sold in ridiculous price just because they are Disney. Yaiks, luckily I stopped buying them anyway when they started to put much less pieces and even less significant pieces in sets.

Okay, I think I made it clear that I'm not really a fan of too much Disney theme miniature (even though Donald Duck is my favourite man :) because I prefer realistic mini, but they do have few very good set and the Mickey & Minnie bakery & Cafe are some of them.

I made it a goal to find mini red and white checker fabric because for me, it's a must have item for these two diorama, based on one of my favourite steak house in the uni (not so much for the food, but for the memory) and some other cosy restaurants that I have visited in the past. Luckily I found it in the fabric shop and they sell it in half-a-meter.

This is probably the first diorama when I started to do sketching. Because it's so thematic, the sets are hard to be incorporated in another diorama. The bread, the coffee grinder, the spoon, cups, burger, everything are in mickey head or pants shape. That's why I have to display as much as possible in the diorama and decided to make it a double diorama.

Originally the idea is to make double storey diorama with a staircase leading to the cozy corner from the bakery. However, staircase takes too much space so at the end of the day, it's just the same related theme with my made up story that the bakery and cosy corner are separated by small outdoor space where the customers can walk over to each place. Bahaha..

Since it would be too cramp to put in more than one sets of chair (the 'wrought iron' chair and table set from 100Y shop, supposed to be planting accesories) I have to fill in the space with a magazine rack and memorabilia. Those nostalgic Disney comic book, paper, bottles of spices and figurines.

9. MAHJONG ROOM

As much I like computer games (not so much when they start to convert everything in 3d), technology has taken over a lot of social connection and activities, which is a pity in a way.

When I was young, in my family, we like to play card and as bets, we used colourful candy wrappers that we kept. I still remember it had 'monkey king' print and come in colours like red, blue, green, yellow. I always looking forward to the card session before sleeping time.

The card game stopped for quite a long time when we grew up, moved to Jakarta, etc etc and we resume the family activity in mahjong game everytime we reunite. So it always has soft spot in my heart. I created this diorama based on how my mom likes it. Bright room, big window, a lot of flowers, food for everyone, her favourite book, and doggies for me. :)

10. LAUNDRY ROOM

My favourite pieces of miniatures are the one that resembles the realistic things in life. So the iron, cloth hanger, cloth clips, dehumidifier boxes, detergent, bucket etc are driving me crazy. The best way to display the various items like this is in an utility or laundry room.

Since i have the idea, I always wanted it to be in fresh lime green color. So much that I made special exploration to find the right paper color for the wall paper.

Normally when I start with diorama project, I keep it going until finish. However for this one, after I create the cabinet, I had mood block for a long time before I continued and finished the whole diorama. Mood is really really important, I had few days to few months to more than a year non productive time in between creating diorama because of mood. Ha..

11 & 12. RESTAURANT

I like them all, but if I had to choose one diorama that I like the least, it is this one.

I have one set of miniature that can only displayed in one way, restaurant. It's a mini food display, really food display with flying spoon, chopstick or pouring cream.

So this one probably has the least story of all.

Beside this set, majority of miniatures made in the market are food, so I took this opportunity to put as many mini food as I could, especially those in the table. They came from various sets, older and newer sets, from various manufacturer companies.

To add to the continuity of the diorama, I put mirror at both ends. I bought two cheap square table mirrors from household shop, broke the plastic frames and used the mirror only.

The tables and chairs are made from painted balsa wood. Food display cabinet are made from hard plastic and painted styrofoam.

So those are a little bit of background story for each of my miniature before the last one in previous article.

The Making of Hobby Classroom

2012-01-26T01:18:00.000-08:00

I decided to make a documentation of this diorama making, because this will be a very interesting and complex diorama project for me. Anyway, for every diorama there are quite a lot of making story that I could only put in caption thus far.

So I think it's worth it to write it down in full, with pictures.

Tips: skip the sidenote for pure story of How It's Made. It's just me rumbling around and it tends to happen when I write. It doesn't affect the full story but it's relevant enough. I tried to put in in different color but again, blogspot feature can be annoyingly unresponsive many times.

See? Yup, here we have the first one already!note: I'm never good in documenting. I only take scenery during most of the trips I went, then found out it's lack of continuity and pictorial descriptions when I write the journal. Reasons because it's inconvinient to whip out camera anytime, and I also have 'camera concern' (they don't have term for 'narsistic-opposite/anti narsistic' yet?), so as much as I really want to take picture of locals and everything in their daily life, I always share the feeling of not wanting to invade their privacy). Above all reason, I'm actually LAZY. Yah, that is probably the most accurate. He he... So it's always nice when I travel with travel mates who are good in documenting, from airport, food, street name etc to help me with my journal later on.way, for this one, I really try to document everything I could. Of course I miss some, still, but it's not that bad. There are a lot of pictures!'

It would be a full scale double diorama with a lot of details and cute stuffs, full of colors and story, and I imagine I would have a lot of fun making it.ARTING

I have collected some amount of miniature for the span of 3+ years. Mostly they are from the older days of diorama when the details and varieties are still very nice. Nowadays, not so.

From every piece that I have, I have imagination of what kind of diorama I can create.

'Sidenote: So I actually have unoficial (read: written somewhere, normally at the back of any kind of writing material I'm holding when I started to think about minis, always missing and need to be rewritten everytime) list and had crossed some of them.

Done: bakery shop + cozy corner, fruit stall, old traditional kitchen, girl's bedroom, kindergarten, mahjong room, restaurant, laundry room.

The ones that are still on my list such as beach, back yard, bathroom, birthday party, market, mama shop, boutique, confectionery, nursery, full size kitchen, street food. It might or might not happen because there might not be enough material.'

Anyway, I like to stroll through 'weird' and unusual toy, craft or stationery shop.
Normally I found things like art & craft stuff, fabric, stationery that I like, I will buy them without planning and most of them ended up being useful. There are a lot of examples that I will put along the way.

Back then there used to be an old style stationery shop below my block and I could always find something interesting. Now that traditional and modern stationery shop below (there were two!) had been replaced by other shops. Maybe I'm the only one who miss them, but I do.

Another rule for me, this is a hobby. Hobby gives enjoyment, but waste money, so I don't want to waste more money that it should. Therefore I will not spend unreasonable amount because there are many more useful things I can do instead of spending too much on the minis. Some prices in cyber world are ridiculous because good minis are not really in production anymore.

Anyway, this is the example of how the diorama idea started.

So I have this cute set.

This set consists of ten small boxes of school related thingy. I bought the last box (the pink sewing box) separately from e-bay long long time before I found the entire set at reasonable price.

Out of the blue, I found the set when I went to Taman Anggrek Mall Jakarta in 2010, I had few hours of transit after a trip and my friend wanted to know how Jakarta mall looked like, so I chose Taman Anggrek (my Jakarta knowledge is sooooo year 2000), we took a cab from the airport, spend two-three hours there and went back to catch our flight.

Box 10. Sewing kits

Box 3, chemistry experiment equipments.

Box 4, musical instruments.

The suitable diorama to display this set is in classroom setting. It's almost one and only option, unless I separate them out for supporting other diorama, which is not a rare idea but not for box no.3.

Box no.3 contains stuffs we can only find in laboratory or class, if I don't have classroom diorama, I will never ever have a chance to display this box because I will not make Laboratory diorama. Siao! Except this box, nobody on earth who are capable will create more lab bottles, tiny microscope, germs or bacteria, and it's certainly too rigid and not easy if I want to custom-made the whole laboratory. (Read: I'm lousy) Also, laboratory might not be as cute.

Anyway, even for classroom, I actually only have so much material. For the whole set above, there is only 3 full box that I can use; sewing kit, laboratory & musical instruments. I can use some pieces for the rest of the boxes but it's quite dissapointing that I can't use the bag on 1st and 2nd boxes, because they are slightly too big to be put together with my other school bags. Anyway, they are monotone and waste too much space to be incorporated.

So, long story short,

Okay, classroom diorama it is.

What is next....

ETCHING

SKETCHING

Sketching is not a must-do, for some diorama they are very minimal to none, especially the earlier ones. However, for this one, I need a lot of planning to get it to the standard that I want.

spent a lot of time in sketching, partly because I didn't have the mood to actually start building it for sometime, so I would just refine the sketchings and ideas.

This is one of the unofficial list and the first time the classroom idea was throw into play. I named it kindergarten with wrong spelling still. I already had kindergarten and the activities here are way too mature for kindergarten. But I just anyhow named it. Scribble paper is not for judging.

(Decide to call this Hobby Classroom at the end. I'm sucker at names I know)

See the preliminary planning is single diorama with basic classroom layout. Few pieces of table, blackboard, some cabinet. I toyed with this idea for some time, but didn't like it. My three main displays are sewing, chemistry and music. How on earth should I have to put each theme in each table and make sense? A classroom setting like that is suitable for something uniform. Same table, same seating, same book, same subject of learning. Maybe different stationeries which certainly not what I'm looking for. They don't need blackboard too.

The idea developed. What I should do is to create a classroom, but an unusual classroom. At first I'm worried that I didn't have enough material to fill it up (again, the idea started with only 3 usable boxes), eventually I found ideas enough to even pull a double diorama, and to make it interesting, with a mezzanine. Light bulb has 'ting' ..

'Sidenote:'Sidenote: Reason why I want to make a mezzanine is to create a cosy corner with children scale.

Everyone may have some chance to go back to their childhood home. I had that chance once, and it amazed me about how everything seems much smaller now; The cement yard I used to run around, the chicken cage I used to sit inside and starred at the sky, the water pipe that I used to climb up to second story (I never used staircase unless my parents are around nearby), the living room etc etc.

Everything seemed so big when I was small. That was why we/children like to turn around the sofa, covered it with blanket and pretended it was our house. Because we need something on our scale, and mezzanine it is. It brings the roof closer and the scale more relatable to children to achieve more cosy look.

(Yah, I probably think too much)'

sketches

sketching is not messy, so it was still possible to do it mobile, before sleep, while watching teve, I dragged this process a bit longer because once I started with the works, there is no turning back until I finish, the mess, eye strain, back pain, sticky and colorful fingers, etc etc..

I don't really do full scale sketch much, but it's quite essential now because I have to make the furnitures myself. With very limited space, precision certainly helps a lot in producing and not wasting materials.

sketches

voila

isclaimer: this is going to be learning classroom with activities for very very talented kids.

my favorite ruler, be-loo-dy usefull that I have three of those. Well, not because I need three, because I abuse them greatly, unintended. First one is not perpendicular anymore because I cut with it (yah, it's horrible but it's really help the accuracy). Second one is melted. Yes, melted. No I didn't use flamethrower. Yes, I'm still not allowed to have my own flamethrower. It's melted because i put it together in the drawer with UHU glue, that leaked all over the ruler and melted the plastic. Powerful UHU!

ORK STATION

WORK STATION

This is my work station, it's small, but not bad. Anyway just outside the picture, I have a neat charging station (read: few power socket), so I can listen to music or podcast, plug in my laptop to watch anything if I want some visual company, play WOF and other games while charging my handphone, plug my glue gun if needed.

I try to keep it neat at all times. But when I'm working on something, it looks like train wreck with spilled paints plus a dozen of chickens and ducks running around.

Stationery drawer. Before I have this, I can't even find a pen easily. Now this helps a lot. Believe me.

Below is where I keep my art&craft stuff. It's only been up for about a year plus. With very very limited space, these containers really help keeping it neat. Anyway, it's also fast and efficient when I start packing it back, after I scatter every box and everything inside the boxes all over my room when I'm working on diorama.

But I hate all these paper roll, they fill the spaces in between nicely, but not nice to look at.

Inside the boxes are all the bit and pieces thingy that I have, fabric, wooden pieces, glue, ribbons, sponges, paints, wire, brushes, sticks, strings, beads, mats etc etc. For bigger pieces I put it somewhere else. Ah ya, the UNO Stacko doesn't belong there, the weight also. The purpose of the weight is to keep the box's lids neat by gravity. He he.. the UNO was out because initially I dug it out from my store room so that I can play it with friends in a short trip few weeks earlier (but I ended up never bring it because it was too bulky and my friends are way more resourceful with games).

PREP

ince I'm documenting this down, this diorama probably has the best preparation. No rush, nothing compensated, I try to make everything as satisfactory as possible and take my time.

This is the print out of children book covers. Easy, internet search, photoshop to put them efficiently and access to printing. I need a lot lot lots of books.

These are the candidate of the possible minis that I would probably use for the diorama. I never did this for other diorama, but for this one I really have to make sure that I have enough to display. I ended up using probably only about 35-40% of them, the rest I have to improvize from another sets.

MEZZANINE

THE MEZZANINE

Starting the work by creating the mezanine first. No product placement here, but I happened to have a box that is very suitable for the mezzanine because of the thickness. For the rest, I can add many small boxes to make up for the size and the steps.

(It works either way, vice versa. The diorama have to fit with the resources that I have, or I will find the resources to fit the diorama. The first option happens way more often).

Tiny boxes from toys

Paper stuffing from unused brochures. There are unlimited amount of brochures you can find in every mailbox here daily. It's amazing how many waste papers are produces by advertisement industry.

I stuffed the boxes with crumpled papers so that it's at least won't sink in irresponsibly where there are weights on top of them. However, this method is not perfect as it would make the boxes slightly curvy as much as I tried to press them down or reduce the mass. It ends up giving me some accuracy problem later on but it was all solved.

The small boxes are the boxes I kept from toys, I hardly keep boxes, somehow luckily I know those neat boxes will come in handy someday.

With a layer of thin cardboard + wood texture sticker for the floor, and brown sticker for the section, here comes the mezzanine.

These are the table mat I got from IKEA for good price. It has nice color choices (although I can't find the Olive color, it's in the dining room display, but they don't have stock for sale. No particular reason why I want the olive except I like it). These mats suitable for minis because of the fine texture and material. They already have some cameos in my previous dioramas.

During the making, I felt that carpet floor is more suitable for the mezanine because it's supposed to be more cozy area. Instead of changing and ruining the existing wooden sticker, I just add it to the top. It added significant thickness and problem at the end when I try to fit in into the display cabinet.

Since I ran out of balsa wood, I explore new shop I found few months ago, and found their price is significanly cheaper than Art & Friend. It's a engineering model shop that sell kits for remote control. So they have new customer.

Balsa wood is favourite for crafting, because it's easy to cut using only cutter. The downside, it's more expensive and not good for painting. The wood might bend and the color won't look as nice as normal wood. However, even with the downside, it's still preferred choice compare to the option of having to use woodsaw for crafting.

THE FURNITURES

Since I have a lot of furnitures to do, I decided to mark on the wood to get efficient cutting and minimize wasting of material. However, it's very very bad idea, because apparently it can't be covered with many many many layers of paint. So I will go back to my old way of just hacking it instead of playing neat and nerd by marking them first.

cut cut cut

The making of the book. Wood, book cover print and glue.

Wah... am I making way too many. Actually I planned to make more but I stopped myself.

Temporary container for the books.

Now I'm starting to make the major components of the dioramas:

MINI KITCHEN

E MINI KITCHEN

Look at this cute kitchen above, it's produced by a manufacturer that has stopped making miniature, so it's a vintage! But came into my possesion at reasonable price, much to my delight. However, there is one unknown problem until I saw the real thing. The size is too small to go with other miniature. It's children size (in mini), probably can pass as something like Easy Baked Oven, or those realistic kitchen toys for kids.

That is why I think it's appropriate to be part of classromm, where the main users are children, a reason to have mini children scale kitchen there. And this is also the reason why I dared to span the diorama into double diorama because kitchen is already a big filler of the space.

The sink and the oven will be lonely by themselves, so I will create more extensive kitchen with numerous cabinets.

After the plannings and cuttings etc, here is the cabinet.

Using poster paint, I'm trying my best to match the beige color. Mixing color can be tricky and difficult to repeat, that's why it's good to make sure that I made enough amount. Sometimes I mix way way way too much paint but the paint can be stored inside very tight mini container and still can be used perfectly in the future. For this project, as the local slang is, the paint's amount are all 'cun cun sui sui'. No more no less.

Now I'm trying to match the darker yellow (on the sink) and brown (on the oven).

Painting started and there comes unfortunate revelation that no matter how many layers I put on the wood, the pen marking would still appear.

Preliminary fitting with colors.

Ohya, there seems to be a lot of colors in my pallete, but it's not. Above is the picture of my palletes in CLEAN condition. The colors are permanent, resulted from perhaps 'too lazy to clean fast enough' from previous project, especially if I used fabric paint, which is more rubbery, fast drying and almost impossible to wash away once they stick (that's why they are good for fabric!)

Ohya, I have this nice looking watercolor brought from neighborhood market long long time ago. I thought I can use it to color some wooden stick but watercolor is not meant for wood.

OTHER FURNITURES

Now I will put together other furnitures.

Notice that I purposely made hole at the cabinet corner, to fit it in my display cabinet nicely. This can be PITA (Pain in the ass) and spoil the look, but if I forget to take it into account, I will have to hack the completed diorama later on or find another cabinet to display. None of them is good option.

'Sidenote: In my previous laundry room diorama, I made a full cabinet and forget to allow some space in the corner for the rack support. Since it's impossible to cut it without damaging the diorama, I push the whole cabinet in front, resulted in diorama being shallower than the others. Luckily, Laundry Room didn't have a lot of display in front.

This is the book rack for the art & craft mezzanine.

Chemistry laboratory table & chairs, sewing cabinet & drawer, stepping chair, staircases etc.

Sofa cabinets, wooden stick and low tables.

These are all the main furnitures, clockwise: kitchen cabinets, laboratory table & chair, sewing cabinet, book rack, sofa cabinet, tables for each class subject and Doraemon stepping chair.

Book rack, each color of the locker represents the colors I had used previously.

Sewing cabinet and sewing drawer. Note that the left side are seriously scarred from the marking, which need some damage control later on.

Chemistry laboratory table and high chair.

Doraemon stepping chair

AFTS

CRAFT

Since I have quite limited relevant mini that I can display, I have to make some.

I need more musical instruments. These are xylophones, made from painted wood and clay for the button and round end. The small white buttons are driving me crazy for the whole course of the project. They - don't - stick - easily and they are too freaking small for glue applications.

Some of discovery might not see daylight for years. Such as these ones, I bought it 12 years ago (!) for a model making project that actually made money. These are ... uh.. furry bits, not sure what they are for.

I use them to fill this 'pieces & bits' rack, together with the realistic-color beads I just got few days ago.

This is the idea for fabric roll.

Since I only have very limited pieces of small-patterned fabric (leftover from another DIY projects), I have to find a way to make it look like a full roll.

So, it's cheating using paper.

However, during the making, I found that it's more natural to use the real fabric roll, but the only small-patterned fabric that I have enough is the red and white checker I especially bought from my previous Mickey Minnie Bakery shop diorama.

Luckily, I have some colorful batik fabric piece I got from my sis-in-law. The patterns are tricky, but somehow I find it fitting quite well.

Fabric station

I'm making some string rolls using real strings and hard paper.

Before I find out a simple white piece of plastic and string can do real wonder.

Check this out. The string rolls look really realistic.

Another printing works for measurement tape and ribbons.

There comes the ribbon station.

I have to dig the whole bottle of beads to find a similar looking white beads to be used as drawer handle for sewing. But, look at the first 20 white beads I dig out, none of them are in the same shape and size.

Look what I found accidentally few days ago

It could probably be a perfect prop to display these eight adorable strawberry pattern transparent tea cup from independent unknown brand, love them!

Transparent tea cup reminds me of our own back then, where they belong in our metal dish cabinet, something that looked just like above.

Here you go, with help of Mr. Pliers.

Super duper cute mini strawberry patterned glass cup

I'm sucker for paper, I love colorful papers. These are tiny origami paper in my possesion for a long time. Back then I used it to make 1000 origami birds for well wishes for one of my relatives.

It has 14 different colors.

With just one pages for each color, I could make a stack of mini origami paper in the size of 1.5 X 1.5 cm. For the fun (and suffering) of it, I made the mini origami birds also.

I think it's close with the world record size for mini origami bird!

Ice cream stick is popular props for arts and craft in real world. So I have to include them in the mini. If cutting them is not much of a problem, painting them is quite a messy affair. I managed to make 8 different colors.

I need washing soap. This is made from clay, paper and printed label. This is an unplanned object and I'm pleased with the result.

'Sidenote: sometimes I have good idea about how to make an object, but it ended up in disaster and failure. Sometimes I thought it wouldn't be decent and it ends up working well visually. I love this handwashing soap. It's really an emergency put up plan. I only have a very very small lump of yellow clay and soap label I printed for my previous Laundry Room diorama.'

It's my luck that I found this art wire by chance.

With that and some thin craft mattresses, I can make tiny slippers

without glue, good for me

Why I say everything without glue is good for me? Because of these horrifying molecules that I make to add to the chemistry scene. It was killing me, everything falls apart one at a time. I glued my hand to the table, to each other, in the joint, lost part of my finger prints, and it's still an ongoing battle long after it was supposed to be a completed object.

This is the uglier tryout version of the molecule, I might still use it to add colors.

I need more things for my chemistry laboratory, but there are not many objects suitable.

Lab bottles, of course, but I can't make those, what else is easier?

There comes above, grinder. This kind of grinder normally found in chemistry laboratory, made from soft-air-dried clay.

MINI OBJECTS

THE MINIS

As I mentioned previously, I am not a collector, I'm a just freak hobbyist. That's why I don't fancy spending unreasonable amount of money to hunt for those items that I like (well, main reason because I can't afford to do so). Some of these products are sold at very ridiculous prices, some collectors buy two or three same kind sets just so that they still have the original untouched set when they used the others. Some bought them just to look and to keep. Blessing in disguise, I enter this hobby a bit too late that many of the manufacturers do not produce good quality minis anymore. It's not good, but it's good for the pocket.

So I only buy those in reasonable prices and that is with a lot of consideration (believe me, a lot! I'm never a spender for physical stuffs (read: can't afford)). This collection comes into my possesion in few years span, and just recently I found decent place to store them, in my upper wardrobe.

Beside full sets, I have loose boxes that normally sold at more friendly prices.

So, let's start utilize some of the minis!

This is a more recent set, I got is as a gift from a good friend of mine when he went to the mother country of the minis (Japan) and he got me this cute box. It based on Rilakkuma character.

This is the contain of the box

It has a very cute pan that will fit very nicely on the mini stove in the mini kitchen.

This is a doggy hot water flask from another set, same manufacturer with the kitchen set. It's small and nice, and the childish doggy theme will be suitable.

This is another set that is suitable for mini kitchen and it's very kiddy.

Real porcelain cups from independent manufacturer

Another random eraser set that happens to fit into the diorama

Doraemon super mini sticker to decorate the blue backpack

Cute bags from various sets + the eraser blue doraemon bag

Ball from another set, I happen to have the net from a random eraser set

Book set with traditional carrying band, I still had one of those band in real-life size, a gift from my cousin-sister. This is from another kiddy miniature set.

A Hello Kitty box. It's slightly big, but so called used for keeping art & craft mini stuffs.

Mushroom tic-tac-toe set! No one is winning.

Watering can, another eraser piece.

Can of colorful paper roll, random addition to the scene

'Sidenote: I was in 2nd grade when I came early to school one day and found a set of brand new gorgeous eraser shaped as yellow slipper with red bans on the floor. As owner of inheritated white green eraser with picture of country flag (maybe those in thirties can relate to this), it's a very luxurious thing for me and became my lucky charm. I wish that many children nowadays still treasure little things like we did last time. Anyway, eventhough fancy erasers are normally useless for erasing, keep making them manufacturers!'

Tiny tiny rabbit toy

Mini book, it's actually a very accurate functional books, with pages, lines for writing and everything.

This is one of my favorite favorite sets, look at this, mini watercolor set of ten with each individual paint bottle. Faint!

It always breaks my heart a little that I have to open and use minis, especially the ones that I like and very difficult to find in the market anymore, however, I believe they will be happier in diorama instead of hidden in the box. (I just happened to watch Toy Story marathon)

Mini skipping rope from box no.8

I've forgotten to take many mini pictures that I use, but you can see them in the completed diorama.

Now....

PUTTING EVERYTHING TOGETHER

PUTTING ALL TOGETHER

The completion time!

SHOE RACK & ROOF GARDEN ACCESS

Slipper rack below the staircase to roof garden. If you don't want to get your feet dirty, grab a slipper before you go to the roof deck. Of course I support barefooting also, as long as you wash them before you come back.

Access to the roof garden. With all the fun with cooking, sewing, chemistry, art & craft, don't tell me I forget something important because I'm not. Of course there are plants, outdoor, skies, but it's located up there you can't see. Climb this ladder with the guide of the lady bugs.

(Lady bug is made from normal hole puncher + white pen)

Enjoy some sports when you are up there, skipping, ball, don't forget to bring the can up to water the plant. Added a tiny pattern to live up the yellow water can.

ART & CRAFT STATION

Water color set + paintings

Color sticks

Homer Simpson 3d origami set. Making the tiny 3d origami head is quite a pain in the ass too.

Stack, colorful and pattered origami papers with the origami birds

The tiny dinosaurs and animals are eraser set I got from a random bookshop last year.

It's tiny, detailed and cute, I knew I was going to have chance to use it.

Added in the unfinished octopus and lump of clay

The most important test, those tiny pieces should be able to fight gravity.

This is the completed art and craft station. Clay modelling, origami, cutting, 3d origami, stick craft, watercolor painting..

KITCHEN

Basket & flask

Tea cooking pan I believe

Cereal collection from real cereal labels in the market

Cute kiddy theme kitchen set, just nice

Washing dishes will never be easier with 3 choices of sponges

Completed kitchen scene
I have the extensive cereal rack idea based on what I saw from Seinfeld. I always notice that he has something similar. If you like cereal for breakfast, I don't see there is anything wrong with having that many choices!

The basket is from older vintage set that I like a lot, and it's small enough to be included in here. Dishwashing sponges are just some cut-out craft fabric.

There are some cookies inside the oven. It's good fun making the cabinet, except for the cabinet door and drawer handles. Keyword. Glue. Flimsy. Glue. Small. Argh.

CHEMISTRY STATION

Nice chemistry experiment set. I add in the pipe, pipe is leftover from bead's necklace string.

Nice lab bottles and cute wooden rack

Molecules

This is the completed chemistry station. Beside the original sets, and things that I made, I added in a mushroom shaped candle and transparent base from another set, and 'pipe' from the leftover of bead necklace I made for my niece.

This station has to be all nerdy, Periodic Table of Elements, Molecule, chemistry reaction etc etc. Chemistry is my favorite subject in high school. Yah.. nerd? I remember all the arrangement of the periodic table back then, with all the numbers and codes. Now I can't remember beyond H2O. I will move the molecule to the table when the diorama is split into two inside the display cabinet.

BOOK & SOFA CABINET

Cute mushroom clock & toys

Completed book cabinet with spidey

This is the completed sofa cabinet and message board in the art&craft room. Originally I want to put kiddy calender but scrapped the plan last minute because my attempts turned out horrific. So calender is replaced with message board decorated with children crafts and colorful post-it notes.

SEWING CABINET

I like the measuring tape. It's quite brutal to create..

Ribbon + bits & pieces station

The finished sewing table. It's pinkish!

Sewing cabinet for fabric, beads, buttons, models, ribbons etc. Edge wooden piece that is quite unpleasant to the eyes is actually added to cover up the other unpleasant-to-the-eyes because of leftover marking on the wood.

NOW THE WHOLE COMPLETED HOBBY CLASSROOM

Left/Diorama One: Mini Kitchen, Chemistry Lab, Sewing and Music Station. I suppose it's not advisable to have kitchen beside chemistry lab and sewing area, but in here, it's okay!

Right/Diorama Two: Art & Craft station, book rack and ladder to roof garden.

There is a sliding stair for kids to take the books on the upper cabinet.

Bike Course Tale

2011-12-29T05:46:00.000-08:00

Celebrating one year of getting the license: 22 December 2010....!!!

Many nice places in Singapore are not public transport friendly. Nice places to me means natural parks, beaches, somewhere quieter, less people, and of course, they are all almost always located far away from main transport line.
I would also like to find my own secret spots if I have chance and facility to explore.

Singapore public transport is, well, as much as it’s in higher standard than other countries in the region (although not always) it’s sometimes unreliable, especially busses. When you count on it daily it becomes big fat annoying problem.

Other mode of transportation is expensive, especially car. If you could buy it, it would be difficult to maintain; petrol, road tax, insurance, parking, electronic road pricing system, all add up to a lot of expenses, not to mention that car is not always the most convenient mode of transportation. In my previous work place, my colleague would park his car one station away from the workplace, then take mrt. Tell me what is wrong with that. Everything! You fork up money to buy car, yet instead of getting the convenience, you have to take public transport to avoid higher parking charges. Isn’t it less troublesome to take mrt all the way? Maybe so, maybe not.

Public transportation like bus and mrt are not necessary cheaper than riding a bike. Without calculating the cost of the bike, of course, the daily and other expenses will add up cheaper when I ride bike than taking bus and mrt.
Overall, the time that I save. A lot. And time is good. For hobbies, for rest, for any other more useful things.

So I decided to take up bike license.

If in Indonesia learning how to ride a bike is simply try to ride and there you go, in here, it actually bloody bloody tedious. Bloody!

I know that Singapore learning system is different and I know that it’s going to be tedious, yet I didn’t expect it to be that horrendous.

After registration (money):

1. Plethora of theory classes.
Theory class schedules are not abundant so it kinds of affecting the schedule, especially because you have to attend previous class before the next, so it’s impossible to do concurrently. I had to attend 7 theory classes in total if not wrong, and each had to be book one month or at least two weeks before since I only have time after works or weekends.

2. Theory evaluation, practices and test.
To take the theory test, you need to pass theory evaluation. To pass evaluation, you better take multiple practices. Theory test only available once a month, with limited seatings. Once you miss, gotta get another booking. Theory test is valid up to one year (or half?? -à rotten memory, sorry). So once you are eligible for test, it’s better to get it done soon.

3. Practical subjects.
I think in total there are 16 subjects to take. After passing the previous one, then you can take the next one. Included are three assessments where they will mark you with points, just like practical test.

4. Practical test with Traffic Police (TP).
Can only book one month in advance. No sooner, but can be later. This is the final step that will decide whether you’ll get the license, or not.

This system of gradual passing of subjects or classes and limited availability affect a lot in the schedule. It drags the whole process, especially when you are stuck in one subject. It can be maddening.

THE PRACTICALS

The practical subjects are killer for me. I never handle any motorized vehicle before, unless you count dodgem and go kart. I’m especially good with dodgem (fondly known as boom-boom-car) and with that, it certainly not a good experience to rely with.

For practical courses, the required attires are: long pants, long sleeve, helm liner (if you are using center’s helmet, which I did) and glove (since I don’t have other glove, I was using my diving glove).
On top of that we would need to put in number tag, tag color is divided according to the subject. So basically you will know who attend which classes.

Waiting area before the course was annoying part. Sometimes they didn’t on the TV, so there was nothing to do. Since I don’t like to carry handphone in my pocket, I had to leave it in the locker. Sometimes I would meet familiar people who happened to share same classes in the part, but most probably everyone would sit by themselves. It could also be nail biting moment if you were nervous about the subjects, which I almost always did.

Each session lasts about 100 minutes.

The subjects:
1.01.Introduction, first gear, clutch, bike handling, mini circuit.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have any problem for my first subject. Everything went smoothly. It’s my first time handling bike. The center is using street bike imported from Indonesia, Honda brand. It’s heavier and bulkier than moped/bebek. I was learning manual gear.

So first lesson, first gear, clutch control break. We were introduced to the bike feature, and tried not to ride to the wall covered with tyres. On the machine, half clutch, throttle, clutch-in, brake before you touch the tyre wall which was a mere three four meters in front of you.

After a few times, we rode around the mini circuit, practicing the method in longer distance. We had a very kanchiong (nervous) classmate, he felt down two times, once in front of me, luckily I remembered where my brake was.

1.02. Up to third gear handling, mini circuit.
Starting with this subject, I already having difficulties. Somehow it was the time when I encountered a rude instructor who almost yelled at everyone.
We needed to learn to switch to third gear, ride and brake smoothly and properly. The main obstacle was the mini circuit. It’s so mini that it was frightening to ride in third gear. The circuit’s four bends was so close to each other.
So from the starting point I had to maintain half clutch and constant speed so I could change gear while negotiating bend, by the time I finished the bend I had to change to second gear before another bend, same thing with third gear. Because the track was too short the speed was not enough for third gear to go smoothly. Just after the third gear we have to break.

That was the beginning of my nightmare. It’s not easy to control two hands and two legs doing different things at the same time. Left right, clutch, break, gear, which oneee is which again???? When the speed was not fast enough, but had to change to higher gear, the bike would wobble, or if the gear was high but we couldn’t go fast because of bend, the bike would stall and wobble too.

I hate the mini circuit wholeheartedly. I think it’s life threatening. If you got the outer circle of the circuit, it’s more manageable, but if you got inner circle, which I always got, the space you had and the distances was cut short significantly. With additional of 1.01 students who rode as nervous as you around the circuit, it’s mess.

On the session where I passed this subject, third try, the instructor let me go out to the main circuit. Main circuit was much bigger, but there were cars also. However, it was much better to learn in main circuit, at least you have more sufficient distances and space to do all the gear changing and to maintain the speed needed. I felt so relieved when finally went out from mini circuit.

Overall. Yucky. Yucky. Yucky. 1.02 (since beginning) was the official moment where I began to feel a lot of stress. (Yes, THAT early)

1.03. Up to fifth gear, negotiate bend, low speed control, main circuit.
Another challenge to ride up to fifth gear in short distance then drop to third gear and negotiate the bend. We had to do it properly according to instructor’s requirement. The sequence of action have to be right, step by step. Otherwise you fail.
So, technically speaking..
- Ride to third gear, make turn at the bend
- Pick up speed and change to 4th gear then fifth gear, all in probably less than 30 meter
- Then press the hand break and step on foot break little bit, clutch in, drop the gear to 4th, then 3rd
- Release clutch, release hand break, release foot break
- Negotiate the bend
- Press hand break + step on foot break a bit, clutch in, drop to 2nd & 1st gear
- Break.

By this time, you would have reached cone marking where we were supposed to do low speed control, useful for proceeding smoothly during jam or red light queue. The distance of the first cone was probably 4 meter, second was merely 2 meter.
On the throttle, half clutch, ride, off throttle, break while clutch in, all in very short distance and time. It’s challenging not to get wobbly and unstable, but this low speed control proved to be very valuable in the rest of the course and also in real life outside the road.

2.01.Slope, breaking and starting on slope, turning.
The slope looked quite intimidating and I kept thinking that it must be difficult not to slide back down. I was wrong, it’s quite easy not to slide down, however, starting off the slope without wobbling is the main challenge, and also when negotiating down the slope, again, there are a lot of technical steps that is very rigid by sequence which I always hate.

We needed to kick up to gear two before going up the slope with very short distance to do so after a bend (seriously, if the circuit was bigger, I guess it would be much more easier to learn), then brake, clutch in, kick down to first gear, keep the rear break, switch to right signal, check blind spot, on throttle, half clutch , release foot brake, move, release clutch, change signal to left, minimum pressure on front brake and brake at the end of the slope, clutch in, check blind spot, all in five meter during the slope. Bloody busy.
I think this subject was the first time I fell. Nothing to do with the slope though. It was rainy day and I happened to wear a very slippery Converse shoe (excuses), I rode in the road approaching the slope, when a car suddenly appeared from top of the slope and went down very fast. I didn’t know if it could brake on time, anyway, they were learning also, and if they couldn’t brake it would hit me by the time I passed by the slope, so I braked. I must have used too much of front brake that the front part of the bike spun to the left. It was about to fall, so I stuck out my left leg to hold it, but damn, I slipped, (yah in slow motion it might be comical) so the bike fell with me and I knocked my lips on the mirror. Hurt, not so much. Embarrass, hell yes, lucky no one was around except the stupid car, I took the pleasure looking at the driver being scolded by the instructor next to him. Me, however, looked like Angelina Jolie for a while.

2.02. Slope, lane changing, signals, turning, traffic, main circuit.
Similar with previous subject but now we have to take more complicated route and learned line changing. All the blind spots, head turns, mirror checkings, body languages, traffic judgement, right turning, left turning properly (not as easy as it sounds).

3.01. Ride through and hanging on 20cm width elevated narrow plank more than 6 seconds, and zig-zaging through rows of orange cones (pylon slalom) in less than 6 seconds in 2nd gear.
Narrow plank was my nightmare at first try. I barely made it though the course without getting off the plank. We were supposed to use low speed control and hang on the plank as long as we could. Once you wobble, it’s not easy to recover the direction, if you off the plank, that is immediate failure in the test. Magically, I managed to do pylon slalom well.

Anyway, my first lesson for this combined subject still failed like chicken failed to fly. However, after I got good instructor who could explain very well and got the grasp, plank didn’t scare me anymore, I didn’t care how loud the throttle sounded, I just controlled it with the clutch, eye line proved to be very important, look front and more likely I’d be able to maintain straight line, but human nature, sometimes I always wanted to look down to see whether my tyre is off the plank, and then it was off the plank because of that.

While my plank improved, my pylon slalom was becoming a disaster. Once I got too fast or too slow passing by the first cone, I knew that it wouldn’t be smooth, got nervous and ended up trying to avoid hitting the cones and fell down. After a while anytime I was about to hit the orange cone, I would just hit it (It was soft and would bend under the bike) instead of avoiding it and skid myself. I had good amount of falling down during this lesson, however, I could pick up my heavy bike (heavy!) very quickly, rode off and pretend nothing happened while collecting my dignity.

Good thing about cone, once you get the first one right, it’s not difficult to get the rest right as the momentum would be there, as long as you dare enough to maintain the speed and confident, and not thinking about falling. Easy to say. I found that once I think about falling (basically when my bike is wobbling and difficult to control, I found that 60% I would fall). It happened quite frequently in early lesson but as my skin thickened, falling didn’t scare me and it actually helped me not to fall. Euh.. confusing??

3.02.Emergency break.
E-break could be a very annoying subject. First, all we did was just to ride through the circuit, queued and then did the E-break process in I think 30-40 meter track. Repeat. We basically spent more time in queuing than the lesson itself. Second, the first instructor I got was awfully picky and if I have to be bitter for one subject, this was it. I got everything right, brake on time, correct position, not exceeding the red line, yet he failed me because I didn’t look in front long enough half the time. Urgh, I guessed he made it his goal to fail someone on that subject and chose me from the other six guys. Bleh.

The technical, we started with first gear, in less than twenty meter we had to change it to second and then third gear and reached the 30kph before we reached the cone marking. We had to keep glancing on the speedometer to achieve and maintain 30 kph. (only 30-35 was acceptable. It’s very easy to reach 40-50 if I didn’t monitor frequently) After that, we quickly closed the throttle, and breakkkkkk. The break had to be done in certain manner that it was not too fast or too slow, then clutched in time to prevent engine off. It was okay if the engine died after the E-break. (although some instructor mis-informed the student about this). After the bike stopped (before the red line), right foot down, kick the gear multiple times to first gear, left foot down, right foot up, clutch in, signal, blind spot, then moved off while (!) maintain the eyeline in front!

Sidenote: the training bike is equipped with indicators in front of the bike that would indicate front brake being pressed/footbrake being pressed/light up when bike reach 30kph. So the instructors KNOW what you are doing.

As rigid as the posture we needed to get it right at the end of the E-break, it was actually even more rigid. After doing everything right, the TP still marked me down as incorrect posture. I eventually found out that they demanded the right posture throughout the course. You see, it was a very short distance from the start to when we changed the gear up to the third gear. While changing to second gear, the left foot was below the gear pedal, kick it up and the left hand need to pull in the clutch. In spilt second we needed to change to third gear. In such a short time and for practicality, I sometimes forgot to put my left foot back on top of the pedal and my finger back on the handle after I changed from to first gear to second and before I change to third gear. Just like that! In real life situation, it would be much more practical if I want to pick up my speed from start to 3rd, 4th, 5th gear by not robotically placing every limbs on it correct and *template* position after every gear changing. Ridiculous. Apparently I think the instructor think the same. I had never heard advise or complaint from instructors regarding this, only after finding this suspicious mark during TP, and proved it again on another test that I got the conclusion. Nuts.

Ohya..since E-break had good casualties in the past for students to potentially screw up and endanger ourselves, we were required to wear back the elbow and knee guard we discarded since 1.03, and for every starting briefing, the instructor would picturing all the horrible scenarios about broken leg, ankle, broken collar bone, hitting tree and flying rider through the fence that..well. .. I don’t know, it's good to be careful, but it was not a good motivator for a start.

4.01.Negotiating figure eight (S course) in less than 11 seconds, and crank course less than 6 seconds.
This was the most nightmarish subject for me. It was basically the course where I stuck the longest and a course that first made me think riding was not meant to be. It’s funny enough that on the first lesson I got good grasp that eventhough I failed, I was quite sure I was very close in getting it next time. However, it was not the case and it got worse overtime. The first half of the figure eight was the hardest, the pressure of getting it fast enough was tremendous, it was unnerving to navigate through the curvy narrow course with very little room and short distance while maintaining certain speed. It’s hardest to maintain the bike stability because the speed might not be fast enough for second gear, once it was unstable, it's very easy to fall. If first half was good, second half normally go well, just need to apply the necessary rigid technicality of blind spot, signal, postures etc.

Needless to say, changing bike every time really took its toll. Adjusting the bike everytime was a good challenge. One bike rear’s brake is deeper than the other, or the gear or everything else. Eventually first half of the lesson would be unstable and the other half was not enough to score me a pass. Horrible-horrible subject. With the most fall and blue black. Nightmare! Uh! Eventhough there were few other external reasons, I blame myself for doing this subject horribly. The more I was scared or entertaining the thought of falling, the more I will fall. The pressure also played a lot in making me nervous. Other trainee bikes queuing in the line behind, many instructors for different classes around. Uh. But to be fair, it seemed quite a common nightmare subject. As bad as I was, there were some who were worse than me, including those who took 2A (higher class for 200-400cc) who encountered a fall everytime they tried the circuit, or those who made even worse falls than me like straying outside the circuit and of course, there was an instructor who fell to. Well, not to be mean (but I am) it’s actually nice to see some reminder for them about how we might feel under pressure. Too bad, the instructor who fell was the one who was actually nice and fair to the student, not those obnoxious ones.

4.02. Overall circuit evaluation and pillion.
This is the first overall evaluation for the whole circuit and the first test to feel how it’s like to have a person sitting behind as a pillion. It was definitely different, the balance is affected, the throttle power needed to be added so much more and there is somebody who would be twice as scared as you for every move you make. Haha. My first pillion tryout ended well, surprisingly, I got a nice lady as a partner and she had more difficulty with engine stalled few times and she couldn’t manage kick start. She was nervous and the whole bike was shaking during the S course but amazingly she managed to go through it.

5.01. First assessment of overall circuit with pass points. I think it’s 24 points?
This is basically the same with before and after subject. Subject 4.02 didn’t have scoring and 5.02 with 18 points passing scoring implementation, everything else is the same. Note: pillion riding was just for us to experience it, it didn’t count into the scorings.

Side story, this is the subject when I encountered a super annoying guy who was also a trainee. What is a line when a guy crossing the line or making impolite passes? Same thing with what is the line when you feel someone being racist towards you or give inappropriate remarks? The answer is there is no clear line, no clear boundary, it can be different in different situation and with different people, it's hard to justify, but you KNOW it when it’s being crossed.

As often, I was the only female in the class. It’s not uncommon and totally fine with me. Anyway, going to class was not a good time for me, tired after work, worried about the course, it’s a stressful chore and hassle, every time. So, I’m not in good mood to start with. We were in the class of six, it was 5.01 subject, where we had to go through the whole circuit and practiced every skill. At first I didn't pay attention, until after sometime I noticed this guy, whose bike was in front of me, separated by one or two bikes. Everytime the bike stopped, he would turn around, in fix position that would make owl and chiropractor happy, and stared. I am not exaggerating anything, because not only me, the two bikes in between us were wondering why this guy looked behind in that manner until they also turned around to check. Scaling Jakarta’s road for years, I’ve known too well and ignore this kind of idiocy. But ignore to ignore, it was getting very annoying especially the queue was super slow, I decided to stare him down, although I think my ugly stare could kill and I normally won, he didn’t bulge and even started to wink etc. I gave him a fist, and he conceded, at least I thought, or it was his turn to do the plank. The guy behind me also noticed and said, what the hell he thinks he is doing, staring at people like that?

Apparently, after the plank, we queued again for E-break and there he started again, I gave him another fist and stared until I won, but again, at least I thought. Somehow one bike in between us change queuing lane and I ended up right behind him. He had the nerve to ask me why I was angry, which I managed to tell him calmly that it’s staring that way is annoying. Then he started with all those BS that maybe he thinks will work, (well, probably for young naiveté craved for attention and compassion kind of girl and if the guy is a bloody hybrid of the most handsome guy in the world with plethora of charisma, maybe, only maybe, it wouldn’t come across as poorly written jackassy bullshit drama pick-up lines), told me that because I’m attractive, he wants to know me better, wants to be friend, so on and so forth, all those sort of crap etc etc. Seriously, is it high school? How old did he think I am, my high school classmate can tell how much I would be impressed with this kind of elephant shit. Or maybe it was the way of speaking and his attitude that was offensive. Anyway, I tried to take it easy and told him I just found the staring offensive and annoying, so please don’t do that again. After that, I knew I shouldn’t acknowledge his existence at all, because he then blabbed about anything on the planet, repeat with additional of asking various particulars, various coffee or dinner appointment. He was either obnoxious clueless or freaking obnoxious clueless or effing obnoxious clueless with dead nerves thinking he was charming. Seriously, I think I’m not an easily offended person but his attitude really offended me, I think this guy very young and probably think every woman can be easily manipulated by mushy words and unintelligent face, and he probably read my ready-to-punch face as interested with him. So I just pretended that he was dead and I’m deaf and blind, unfortunately we stuck in the same line for every circuit.

Anyway, I got my revenge. I knew I did my lesson poorly I would not pass, not to blame others but myself, however, I was really pissed and had too bad mood to concentrate on my lesson thanks to this idiot. Near the end of the lesson, we needed to do pillion practice, and as suspected, the instructor paired me to him, because he was the smallest size from the rest of the guy. I was thinking of telling the instructor but didn’t want to make mount out of molehill. Another guy who was apparently noticed asked me whether I’m okay with that. See, this is how a guy supposes to behave. I told him I’d be fine. We started off with me as the rider, I swear I was angry enough that I didn’t mind to ride the bike to the wall to send him flying if I really couldn’t take it. Anger comes a lot with bravery I guess, I rode everything, even the S course with high speed because I didn’t care, it must be quite scary because he started to get pale faced, stopped talking thrash and started to ask me to ride carefully. Magically, I survived the S course, crank course, and I was the only one who didn’t drop from the plank with pillion. How nice is that? Even though the riding was not good because it was wobbling and unstable, which made it even more sweeter because it frightened the idiot so much and you know what, he started apologized if he made me angry while I was speeding up towards the pylon slalom and turned nice for the rest of the circuit, saying he didn’t mean to be impolite and sorry if I’m offended, etc etc.

Anyway, I don’t want stupid things to get in my mind, so it’s fine with me, and I was happy he didn’t dare to speak much to me anymore when the class was dismissed. I was still pissed because I didn’t pass, but everyone else also failed except two students.

5.02. Second assessment of overall circuit, pass points.
This one with scoring “exam”, exceed 18 points, fail. There are few miracles that I had during my course and this was one of it. It was the first time I was being guided with this instructor (later on I nominate him as the nicest instructor). We went through first trial for the whole circuit, then it came to the time where the instructor would do the scoring as if we were in the real TP test. Everything is still fresh in my mind, started from parking area, passed by pedestrian crossing, signal, mirror, bla bla, change lanes bla bla, slope, S course less than 11 seconds, crank course less than 6 seconds, narrow plank more than 6 seconds, pylon slalom less than 6 seconds, E-brake, and then some.

I thought I was doing okay, but also thought I might not meet the requirements of some of the timing and it would be hard not to exceed 18 point. When I rode back to the bike parking point as the last trainee, the instructor caught up with me and asked whether I had passed the theory class exam. (Note: the 5.02 passing mark is only applicable for a month, together with passing theory exam, you would then eligible to book for Traffic Police test. The timing of the theory exam is very far and between, there were many cases that student needed to repeat their 5.02 because it would have exceed one month before they managed to clear the theory exam). I told him I passed the theory quite sometimes ago. He nodded, smiled and gestured me to continue riding back.

There were two ideas running in my mind, maybe he was just asking to find out the student’s progression, or maybe, maybe I pass? On the first try, for the part that matter? It must be snowing! Anyway, it was not snowing and I really passed. Icing on the cake, the instructor actually complimented me on my riding that day (it WAS a miracle day) and I actually passed with much lower point than 18. I think it’s 8 or 12? I don’t have the assessment letter because I had to exchange it with my PDL (Provisional Driving License) that would make me eligible to go out and ride on the road under provision of an instructor.

6.01. General riding and bike handling on public road. Staggered formations.
It was the first lesson when we went outside in the public road. We had to sit down through a long briefing for how we were going to conduct ourselves in the road and the road regulation for new rider like me, especially with Singapore road regulation that is slightly different. We were all going to move in staggered position, to improve visibility of the group and to make us less likely to be cut by other road users. There would be one instructor in front and one behind. We would ride around and be assessed with our general riding. It was quite nice riding outside where the instructor would bring us further around, getting us familiarized with the riding instead of being restricted with all the rules inside the circuit.

At first I was quite worried about passing the subjects before the test, which was around one month after I booked. It’s the requirement and the test would be fortified if you don’t clear all subjects. One month sounds like a lot of time, but with hectic working life, training schedules, and of course, whether it’s easy for me to pass every subjects and assessments, I had reason to worry. Luckily, I didn’t need to. The rest of the course actually went smoothly for me, I only stumbled a bit in the U-turn.

7.01. General riding and bike handling on public road, U-turn, test route.
We would do the test route in public road and learned to do proper U-turn. After long briefing about the test route, we practiced U-turn in the mini circuit. U-turn is difficult! At least the one they required. By the time we positioned ourselves to do the U-turn, we should never ever drop our right foot (anyway, all along the riding, dropping right foot almost means immediate failure. Why??? How would I know? There is no logical reason that I would understand except maybe they want to implement proper riding habit while we are learning). After practicing it over and over, it was quite easy not to let your right foot down in the circuit and road, but for U-turn, somehow it’s not, because by the time we turned to the right and stopped, we basically leaning to the right. With the posture and the weight of the bike, and sometimes unavoided abrupt stop, it’s quite easy to drop the right foot accidentally to support everything.

Also, one more important thing, the U-turn shall not take more than one lane, not even touching the first road line, it shouldn’t be wide turn, you shouldn’t wobble. Making U-turn in one lane is not easy at all, and while trying hard to do so, a lot of thing can go wrong. Again, there is nothing wrong in making wide U-turn in real life, two lanes or three if you may, as long as make it safe and wait for the road to clear. Again, the logic is to make you learn the proper way while you are obligated to.

After the long briefing and practice in the mini circuit, we only had so little time to try the test route, about 2 rounds or three rounds the most.

Starting off, we would have to watch the traffic before turning left. There were a lot of side road where we needed to remember: turn head, check blind spots, bla bla, signal, and more often than not, because the side roads are basically the entry points for the building around we had to watch out for cars and made necessary signaling and decisive about how to react. After that we would go the filter road, and again, made judgment about when to go, turning to 70kph road (we had to hit 70kph, too slow would make you collect handsome points) and do multiple line changings before we hit the traffic light, proceeded, made U-turn to the junction again, turn right and went through a road with plethora side roads and pedestrian crossings, before riding to another road and back to the center.

8.01. Overall assessment for test route.
We would do overall test route consisting on circuit and road. I think it’s more likely to fail in the circuit because of many immediate failure spots and points, but the road is also very intimidating because of the unknown factors like traffics and pedestrians. I thought I was definitely needed to repeat, but again, to my surprise, I passed. The instructors stayed to give us some tips for the test. Some suggested to come early on the test day, some said drink coca cola, some suggested to take a couple of self practices to prepare ourselves better. Basically, all the suggestions lead to one thing, controlling the nerves.

Not-so compulsory additional subjects,

Self-Practice (SP): After 5.02 (if remember correctly) we were eligible to take self-practice, the cheapest and the most fun subjects of all. It’s basically renting the bike and having fun on our own, without instructors, but restricted in the circuit. It’s nice because I could make use of my time efficiently. The crowd on the circuit depends of what classes were conducted on that day. I liked to practice plank and cone, or changed to S course when the crowds was not there. It’s nice to have the whole S course to myself where I could go round and round and round even multiple times without stopping when no one was around. Everything seems nicer without the pressure of people, and seems much easier too.

Revision Circuit (RC): Going around the circuit with an instructor who would observe and guide you. As many fellow trainees agree, this is basically just an expensive Self Practice. My first RC was good, with a very proper instructor. He was very serious and gave great feedbacks for every student, properly recording our timings and diligently conducting the whole circuit trains. That was why I had good impression on RC on the first try. I took second RC before the test, and I got this jackass lazy instructor who had more fun hitting and attaching himself to a young female trainee (hey, hey, no jealousy here, I swear) he basically abandoned the rest of the class. So the rest of us just practiced ourselves, he wasn’t even there for us at the end of the lesson to give a wrap-up, such a crap. Considering RC cost a lot more than SP, I didn’t take another RC anymore based of this experience. Apparently, everyone else that I happened to know along the way agreed with me.

Road Revision (RR): The only way to practice the test route outside the circuit. Two RRs were required for every repeating tests. We would have our own going around for two rounds in circuit, then went out to the road with instructors. When there were many students, we could only get two rounds maximum, on very good days, we could get four rounds.

When we had subject out in the road, we would have few queuing points to wait for other students because we only have two instructors for one class that could consists up to 8 students. The longest queuing point is the junction after making U-turn.

100 minutes seems like a long time for riding, but for course, not so much. Getting ready, briefing, queuing on the course took a lot of time.

Getting ready as in putting up all gears, choosing the bike and dragging it out from the parking area, and queue at the starting point until other students in the same class were all ready and the starting point is cleared for your turn to move to the circuit, this can take approx 10 minutes. Briefing, on big milestone of the course, especially those with a lot to do with routes and technicality like 2.02, 5.01, 6.01, 7.01, 8.01 can take as long as 20 minutes. For other subjects the briefings are much shorter in the beginning, however, there were a lot of short briefs along the course, while we were practicing new techniques and skills. Queuing for the course can take forever, especially all classes happened to flock in the same area. 4.02 and above, the classes basically went around the circuit, together with bigger bike classes, sometimes the queue was overwhelming and took bloody lots of precious time.
There is why, for me, the net time I had for one lesson seems like not enough. By the time I was familiar with my bike and finally get the hang on it at difficult subjects, it was almost time to finish.

THE INSTRUCTORS

Instructors played a lot of role in the course. Most of the instructors are kind and fair, but there were also few who were not professional and not capable of teaching. I mentioned the ‘hiao’ instructor and very serious and proper instructor before.

The one who was the kindest to my opinion was my 5.02 instructor who I would then encountered many times for the rest of my course. He taught well, fair and cracked good jokes to lighten the stress of the students, and always encouraged the student, he also had good method of teaching. I feel bad because he was confident that I could pass my test the first time and I didn’t. And when I did, he was not there for me to say thanks. What I could do is to write nice feedback for him to the center because I think he is really good and the type of instructor that really helps students to learn faster and better. I was lucky to encounter few of this kind of instructors.

There was another instructor who was also very kind, but too bad he couldn’t teach very well that it’s not easy to grasp the best method for certain skill. At first, I always happy to get him as instructor, because he was not intimidating or generous with scolding, but then, I really didn’t do well under his teaching because I didn’t really understand what did I do wrong.

There were quite a lot of capable instructors who can pinpoint the weaknesses and how to countered that, including one and only female instructor who was very sharp and had great teaching method but not intimidating. She was much braver than most of her male colleagues, she dared to hold my bike in front of her with the engine on to show me how is the right way to control throttle, clutch and balance for the plank, while my previous instructor only told me ‘control your clutch and break if you don’t want to fall…use both to manage your speed and balance..’, nothing wrong with advice, but clutch and brake that time for me is like relativity and centrifugal force theory for primary school kids, what the hell were they again?? Anyway, I don’t think, ever, I would have the bravery to hold a student bike down with engine on and let them practice the throttle and clutch. Would I ever. No. No. No. If you think this female instructor is burly with muscle and square jaw, nope, she looks just like a very common long-haired girl whose like to do shopping and cooking.

There was one instructor whom I remember for the wise words, he looked young, looks almost like those Ahbeng who would just chillax and I never thought wise words would came out from him. So it was the time when I started to feel very stupid of needing to repeat my subjects. It was my first try on that 2.02 subject, in the class that actually consisted of two, three and four times repeaters (2.02 might seems like a very easy subject, but the failing number is high because this is the start of every factor of riding comes into play. Still very rookie, it’s very easy to wobble, right leg down, unstable, engine stall, shaky turn, unsmooth line changing, abrupt stopping and low speed control, with that many factors and implementing ‘strict proper riding’, it’s very easy to fall below requirement to pass).

Anyway, without aiming on anyone, the instructor said that he understood many of the students felt discouraged after failing multiple times. He told us we shouldn’t worry about that, he himself needed six tries to pass Traffic Police test (more than me, yoohoooo!), and the record for failing this subject so far was…. Nineteen times. WHOA.. Anyway, regardless of how many times we try, it’s more important to think that every failure actually helps to shape you as better and safer future rider. Just count it as investment for yourself, think of it as additional practices and don’t stress too much on anything else. Which I think is very good advice.

Another type of instructors, quite a lot, are intimidating ones. They liked to yell and scold the students, which is not the best way to learn, for me. It’s intimidating and putting so much pressures that instead of doing well, everything became a mess. They also sometimes had irritating way of talking like a teacher talking to school children. However, to give credit while credits are due, they are normally very good rider who walk the talk, athough, yah, it’s not so impressive to be a very good rider among new students. Anyway, I found that the two most intimidating instructors I had, turned out to be very nice when I got them again further in the course. Maybe I got them in bad day, or maybe earlier classes are really frustrating because we rode like horse tries to cycle. They were actually encouraging and always gave me helpful advices even though I was not in their class, when they happened to station on certain circuit. One of them was the one who finally passed me for my most hellish subject, the S course and taught me to ride while smiling. It sound like crazy advice but smiling might actually enlighten the mood and stress so there was less pressure. It did help to grin like siao under the helmet sometimes.

Maybe I’m lucky that I didn’t get many bad instructors, the worst one, luckily I got him one time only, was the one who really annoyed me. I was learning S-course and with the rest of the students, we got difficulty with the subject. Instead of focusing on teaching our weak points, he showed up by going round and round the course, many times, while hogging the course for the rest of the users. Any good lessons or points he delivered? Nooooo… other instructor would say, watch how I do it.. at this point, I’m holding my brake enough to slow down the speed but I maintain my throttle, it helps a lot to maintain the eye line to that tree while on this turning because it keeps the bike direction correctly, so on and so forth while doing the actual thing.

For this instructor, no, he just left us, then suddenly hopped on to his bike, go round and round and round, while all students queued there stupidly. He would then go to us and say,”See? It’s easy what, what are you all scared about?” Well, captain obvious. If his achievement in life is to brag about something you should be good at to people who are supposed to learn that from zero from you, then I don’t understand what is the value of his smirk and his brain. We learned nothing nothing nothing from him, he took out too much valuable time and supposed to be charged by hogging the circuit to show off instead of letting us practicing. But that was not the worst of all, beside not capable of teaching, while he should observing the student doing the course, he chose to act like government force survey officer and ask me many personal private questions that got nothing to do with the class at all.

Completing and graduating from the course, this is the only instructor that I do not have a single positive impression and drop of respect, at all.

FUN THINGS...WAIT..NO, NOT FUN

There are many people who are talented and meant to be good rider or drivers. They have good reflexes, judgment and bravery to be natural.

I have confidence in many other activities that require physical and thinking, but I know I’m quite lousy in motoring skill. Not always, but I expected that it wouldn’t be easy, it ended up harder than I thought.

The whole procedure of getting license is stressful for me to the point that it kind of affected my life. I got nightmares from it, I was stressed out, and it really took a lot of my quality times. I was travelling a lot during year 2010, and freed myself from lesson at least one week before trips and of course, with my inability, the course stretched out for almost a year.

Maybe because I’m very lucky that I have never had hard time learning anything in school or in life, I found it’s foreign for me to have this inferior and incapable feeling, so I didn’t take it very well during the course. It’s good experience and I will forever cherish the embarrassment as something precious to learn.

The thought of quitting did come to my mind a few times, but I never gave it further consideration or think about it, because I know I will not give it a rest and there is no point of quitting if I would end up trying it again in the future, I might as well suck it up. However, I do admit that it was tough for me and I hate how it brought my spirit down so much, I hated thinking and talking about it, and it was actually scary for me to go to class. I had very low spirits especially for earlier subjects where I almost never passed on the first try, it always took me two or three tries, and for S course, five freaking times. Five! Luckily that is my record breaking tries exclusively only for this hellish course.

I don’t remember if my S course subject is before or after my Rinjani trekking, but I came back from the trip very full spirited and it lifted me up a lot. It will always be fresh in my mind about how many times I wanted to quit going to the summit but ended up reaping the most beautiful scenery by not quitting. So I went home with new courage and ready to face all the music and blue blacks that I might get.

TRAFFIC POLICE (TP) TEST

At first I don’t want to write this part, as the journal had been dragging too long (one year!!!) but it wouldn’t be complete.

TP is the scariest portion of all, scary because it’s costly, and scary because luck plays a lot. Like a classmate said, she never dropped from the plank once, but during the test, she dropped and it was immediate failure. So much for that.

Anyway, for every test, we would take turn with the bike, there is no freaking chance to ensure that you know/get used/familiarized with the bike, at all. Just pray furiously for whoever you believe that you would get reasonable bike, with normal depression for rear break, normal position of clutch biting point and normal hand break power. Other than that, count a lot on the luck, because as many bikes that I had tried there (a lot!), all bikes were different. And I had to totally change my bike more than five times because it’s not useable/got significant defect.

Imho, the whole test is designed for me to fail.
Maximum points you can have: 18 points.

So there are few IMMEDIATE FAIL:

1. Fail to give way to pedestrians.
Pedestrians are king of the road. I agree with that, I’m the pedestrians myself, however I hate them with my guts during my course. And now, I really2 understand it’s nice to be gracious pedestrians. Okay, if there is a zebra crossing, both green light for pedestrians and traffic (new for me because in here, traffic light does turn green for both pedestrian and turning vehicle), in any way, if there is a pedestrian on the road with face coming your way, you should stop and give way. Failed to stop, immediate failure. Very abrupt stopping, fail too. If the pedestrian is a gung-ho sprinter who run from far2 away to catch the green light, and you happen not to see that, once they are stepping on the aspalt and you happen to cross the zebra, Immediate failure.

Pedestrian jaywalking, breaking red light, also fail. So, everyone, get your ass of the test route if you can’t behave like well-mannered pedestrian, because you brisk adrenalin crossing the road abruptly moment can actually cost someone a license, time and money, not to mention risking your life on the hand of nervous rider or driver.

2. Fall in any kind, any style, any cause, any position. Fail.

3. Drop from the plank.
Drop. Fail. Go home. Nuff said.
On the plank less than six seconds, 4 points.
Less than five seconds, 6 points.
Less than four second, 8 points. (or 10? Or 12? Can’t remember)
Generous ah..

4. Any part of the bike touching the cone in pylon slalom. Fail!

5. Any time you ride up the curb. Fail.

6. Right foot drop. Fail. Although this one seems to be by case basis.

7. Dangerous driving. Fail.
In any way they feel that you can endanger yourself of other road user.

8. Fail to understand instruction. Fail.
There are many queuing portions along the test route. The tester would give you instruction about when to start and if you started before the instruction, good luck.

Those are the immediate failures that I can remember. For other things, there are four-five pages of items that are punishable with points.

- Wobbling.
4 fat points for every occasion. Wobbling means anything that looks shaky and unstable. In the beginning I like to move the bike, just a balancing style, it’s considered wobble. If you throttle and the body slightly jerked as the result, wobble. When turning and look shaky, wobble. Starting and stopping is the most generous time to be considered as wobble. With unfamiliar bike, hell it is. Press front brake too much, clutch released too fast, wobble. When you are sure you are not, they can still say you are wobble. You just need five unfortunate glances of woobling to fail the whole course.

- Proper mirror and blind spot checking. I resent this one a lot, fortunately I learnt the ‘proper’ way. See, you turn your head too much, not proper. Turn too little, not proper, turn too low, turn too high, not proper. Have to be the right angle. And have to show that you are checking both mirror and blind spot.
Turn the head aprox 30 degree to indicate you are checking mirror, then approx 100 degree to indicate you are checking blind spot. Body posture should not be affected or it’s improper too. Every improper checking is 4 points. And there are many many times you need to check blind spots (roughy counted 70 times if they keep track of everything but I suppose they are not THAT crazy). It would be awesome to collect 280 points base on blind spots.

One of my instructor joked that it's important to us to make sure that our helmet was turned, nevermind if our heads never turned, or if we closed our eyes.

- Improper lane changing, improper turning, incorrect postures of hands, legs, body,
every one got 4 points each at least.

- Fail to signal, wrong signal, too fast/too slow signal, 4 points each. Or 2 points? I remember there is only one section that has 2 points punishment, the rest are at least 4 points. But maybe not this.

- S course more than eleven seconds, 4 points. More than thirteen seconds, 6 points. More than fifteen seconds, 10 points. (I’m sure about the eleven seconds, but thirteen and fifteen I’m not so sure, but it’s around that.)

- Crank course. I hardly mention this, it’s right after S course, it’s the half of Nazi symbol shape kind of course you need to go through in less than 6 second in bloody second gear. Most of the time the starting distance was too short to pick up speed that the bike would tremble like high in caffeine.
More than six second, 4 points, more than seven seconds, 6 points, more than eight second, 8 points.

- Too fast on the plank. Mentioned above.

Anyway, there are many occasion where we could collect points, I can’t remember all. I guess E-break didn’t have immediate failure by many chances to get point if you cross red line or get improper posture. Ah ya, beating red light is 12 points, amber is 6 points. But it’s never black and white because they could also put immediate failure in consideration that you put yourself and other in danger with dangerous habit.
Of course as students we would never attempt to break red or amber light, but when we were unfortunate enough that the light changed to amber while we were cruising on the green, it’s your luck. Therefore I always wished for red light. It’s easier to predict.

Damn technicality.

Anyway, I shamefully say I failed three times, finally pass on the fourth time. It was embarrassing and I thought I was very stupid. However, upon finding out, it’s actually still average. Everytime I repeated the test, I had to take two RR as the requirement and from there I would meet all the other classmates who failed on the test. There were many who passed on first and second try, but there were also many that need five, six or more. Three and four was quite common.

I remember a girl who always dropped on the plank, I think on her sixth try, she finally managed to stay on the plank but sped it off to prevent falling. She got 8 or 10 points, but the rest of her riding was good she finally pass.

There was a guy who told me he rides everywhere in Malaysia and regular riders, but he already failed six times and still trying. He offered to coach me if I needed to. Well, he was kind, but thank you very much, I don’t feel like being coached if you still have yet passed, I did’t even feel like wanting to match the record. I’m sure his problem was technicality, he could be brilliant rider, just not by the book.

The most inspiring story was from a girl I passed the test together with. Get ready for this. She spent six years, failing 12 Traffic Police tests, broke an ankle, crushed her finger, being told to just take the MRT and stop trying by a very rude male chauvinist instructor, she finally passed. I can’t imagine the stress she went through and that is what I call determination. Never give up regardless the odds. I think I would never able to stand through half of it. My hat really off for her, if I can’t contain my excitement on that day, I can’t imagine how she must feel. Six years! Six bloody years! Longer than getting a degree!

THE TESTING PROCCESS

The test day is on weekday, normally either Monday or Wednesday. We would need to gather very early, 7.30, to get name tag and tag number for the test. The tag number is white color with red for the number, written there ON TEST. Doesn’t help the nerve. We would be tested based on number, the oldest would be earliest, youngest would be latest. There are normally around 60-80 people in a session, and my number never exceeded 20 because I’m considered bloody old for the class. I think I got 11, 13, 17, 19 if I remember correctly. Passing with 13, I think.
Number 1 would start first, followed by the rest.

So after getting the number, we would have chance to practice the circuit. Maybe could get around two rounds and the most is three rounds. After that we would go back to the class and sit. All this time, no one was permitted outside the class area. If they caught you in canteen or hall with number tag, immediately failure (As if they didn't have enough immediate failures). You could however by taking off the number tag. After everyone is gathered, the instructors would give us last briefings before finally, normally around 9.30, the testers would appear, they were normally retired traffic police, mostly scary and fierce looking. I started by hating them to the guts but soon I realized the one, especially the fiercest looking one, is actually the nicest and just normal human, not scary android that ready to crush your dream. When the tests were about to start, they would be dropped in their stations, around 5 inside the circuit, I think around 8 outside in the road.

So we were lined by numbers, every ten is coordinated by one TP. They would do brief checking to make sure the one doing the test and the one registering is the same person. (Forget it, no one can take the test for you).

After that we would stand by with the allocated bike. The good things about getting small number, getting it over and done with faster instead of biting your nail waiting for the turn. The setback it, the TP are all still very alert and having high standard in the beginning, willingly to pen down every mistakes you might make.

First try, I actually thought I did quite well, but holly molly I dropped my right foot at the U-turn. Everything else was quite alright. But I failed. I’m not sure if the right foot drop caused it, one of my classmate also dropped his right foot and he failed too, but I think I made too many small technical mistakes that added to the failing points.

Second try was the worst, the very very worst. I deserved to fail so much.
It started with the crank course, the bike was shaking I pulled the throttle a bit too much, I ended up running up the curb, just for split second, too bad I saw that the instructor noticed that. At that time, I wasn’t sure it was immediate failure, but I knew it was bad so I was distracted a lot when I continued. The rest of the ride was okay, until I reached the traffic junction on the outside road. I had to turn right.

Singapore traffic regulation allows right turning as the same time with the straight traffic if the road is clear. Regardless what, you should position yourself in the turning pocket and wait for your chance. (In Indo, can noooot.. I also not familiar with Indo traffic, but I know you can’t do so). So it was green, I positioned myself, the straight traffic passed by. Then the right turned red. When the light turned red, by right I should be able to move since I was already in the pocket, but I had mind block at that very moment and actually unsure for the moment. Still procrastinating, the right arrow turned green and straighted away blinked. I made my turn but once I started the green light was on and right arrow dissappeared. I was in the middle and supposedly I could clear my turning, however, while the rest of vehicles were still stopping, there was a taxi covered by another car sped and appeared right in front of me. I was so surprised but managed to do emergency brake, however, it was very abrupt that I fell. I quickly lifted up the bike but the engine failed to start, so what I could do was just to push it as fast as I could to the side road.
Other drivers were actually very patient and never horned me. I’m sure the taxi was guilty too by not properly scanning the junction before speeding from far, however, I admit I definitely I was at big fault too, eventhough I moved during my green light, I didn’t move rightaway when I was able to and probably didn’t move fast enough.

When I actually ride on the road after I got my license, I notice some similar situation on few junctions where the straight traffic is much more heavier than turning, the right arrow would sometimes appear for just split second and straightaway blinking. (It should be green first, not straightaway green-blinking I guess). For that cases, it’s quite dangerous for right turning if combined with speeding car from far who just continue with the green light cruise and doesn’t realize the traffic from the right is not clear yet.

Anyway, it was scary experience, I had to manually kicked start my bike and rode back to the center. However, all the while all I could think of was the disappointment of failing the test. Until chit chatting with the classmate, he reminded me that failing doesn’t matter as long as I was safe and sound. His words sunk into my brain and I was really really grateful that I was allright where there was so many potentials of me getting into more mess, injured or worse.

So I deserved to fail so much and even when the unfortunate incident didn’t happen, I still failed during the crank course. Another lesson learnt, it came in handy that I got used to pick up my own bike, fast. It’s heavy bike and many females couldn’t pick it up themselves. Silver lining in the cloud.
Anyway, the fierce TP that I mentioned earlier? He asked me if I was okay, advised me not to be nervous and be more careful, it’s more important to be safe and not be discouraged. And he actually smiled. When you see someone so fierce and smile, it’s nice to get the rare smile.

Third try, there is only one test that I really pissed off by failing, is this test. I felt that I did everything correctly, it was the first time I felt quite confident that I would pass. But I didn’t. Not to be a bitter failure, but I still don’t understand why. The TP marking my paper mentioned that I failed to give way to the pedestrian on the way out of the center. But there was no pedestrian crossing. And there was no pedestrians. I was aware that eventhough there was no pedestrian crossing I always kept watch of possible passer-by. That was probably the point that I was in my most careful because the TP station is located right in front and it was the turning point to the main road. So I always made sure the road was clear before I moved out and I was sure THERE WAS NO PEDESTRIANNNNNN… unless he counted someone who was far far far far far away but that doesn’t make sense. Anyway, when one of my instructors asked me, I told them the spot and the reason, he was also confused and said,” huh? where got pedestrian there?”
So yah, I really and still think it was unfair. Huh. Crap.

Fourth try, success.
Actually I was quite surprised I passed. I didn’t do anything badly but I dropped my right foot at the U-turn. I can’t explain how I felt at that moment, I remember cursing and swearing that if this little thing is the cause for immediate failure, I don’t know how many more times I had to spend my life doing this. Apparently cursing and swearing helped override my nerve, I continued the rest of the U-turn well and accurately to the requirement that the TP only gave me 4 points for incorrect posture. Actually I did remember one of the instructors said that, if you drop your right foot before the U-turn, which was quite common mistake, don’t be discouraged, do the rest of the U-turn well and show them that you know how to do that, and cross the finger hoping that they won’t mark it as immediate failure. I guess that was what happened to me and I felt really really grateful.

To my surprise, after I received the grading paper, I got points in S course, plank and pylon. I thought I was doing okay and all the while I never got any points on this areas in my previous tests.

For being too slow in S course, 4 points, too fast on the plank, 4 points, too slow on pylon, 4 points, and 4 points for the right foot, also additional 2 points I can’t remember what is about, all added up 18 points. Oh my holly molly. Hoooollly moooolly. I can’t believe I didn’t get points on any other areas but it just came at the right time, very very right time.

I would be awfully pissed if I rode without hassle and failed because of these timing requirements.

Anyway, whatever, I feel very very grateful that I finally finished the course. Getting bigger bike license?? Maybe someday, but I don’t think I fancy bigger bike if I have to go through all this ordeal again. Anyway, I am not a bike enthusiast, as it’s a mode of transportation for me, not something fancy or stylo mylo to impress other people with. I don’t need faster bike as I hardly ride above 100 anyway. The only thing that would capture my interest is that bigger bike is more stable on the road, therefore probably safer. But my bike is also fine, it’s much more stable compared to the center’s bike. So I’m okay. Thank you. No more bike lessons.