I THINK Viv can, I THINK Viv can...

I decided the little purple car I'm buzzing around in at the moment needed a name. The sounds of "V" and "B" are difficult for Japanese people to distinguish between, and therefore some people hear Vivio as Bibio. I told my friend I was on a quest to come up with a name for the car. She thought long and hard about it, and then told me: In Japanese, "bi" means beautiful, and "o" means man. So "beautiful beautiful man". Not bad, not bad. But it's a bit long. The whole idea of a nickname is to shorten the original name. So I decided on Viv.

Anyway, I was driving Viv home on Tuesday at about 10pm when suddenly, the blinkers stopped working. They were working fine before, but when I went to indicate at one intersection - nothing. Not even a hint of trying to indicate my intended direction. Checked to see if they worked using the hazards - yep, hazarding was an option. (Is hazarding a word? I have been using it ever since I have been driving in Japan, because drivers here use their hazard lights all the time. So much so, there needs to be a verb for it.) But the poor drivers behind me; if I did hazarding at every intersection, they'd have no idea where I was going.

Also, it was a rainy night... and the wipers started doing some funky business on the windscreen too. It took them 3 attempts to get across the windscreen each time. "I can't see! I can't see! I can't see! Oh, I can see!"

So I took Viv to the doctor on Wednesday morning. They fixed the blinkers, but the wipers... Now, I only have high speed wipers. Well, no that's not true. I can use all the speeds of the wipers, it's just that I have to put them on high speed first, let them do their thing for one cycle, then take them down a notch, let them do their thing again for one cycle, then take them down a notch until I get to the desired speed.

Ah, Viv. I'm not going to miss you.