Cars.

I am male and I'm studying Mechanical engineering. I must like cars. Thats the general stereotype that goes round, I suppose. I can't say that its very far off the mark. A lot of my classmates do like cars. Not me though, at least not in the way that they do.

I like cars for what they can do, not for what they are. In other words, I'm a driver, not a petrol head. I love driving. Can't say that I'm particularly good at it, but I enjoy it all the same. Driving alone, when I'm in the car, just me, the road and the car has proven to be quite effective at taking the edge off for me. I can't explain it, but I feel at peace when I'm driving like that. There haven't been many times when I needed the roads to keep me sane, but when I did need it, it provided me with a sense of calm. Funny thing is, my love for driving is very strongly attached to my love for manual transmission. Admittedly, if I drove in KL all the time, auto transmission would save my life. But taking traffic jams out of the picture, I really do like having the clutch. It gives driving the feel that it should have.

I like to drive, but the workings of a car do not interest me all that much. I have a rough idea how internal combustion works, but all the stuff that have been developed in the last 10 years baffle me. Active differentials, Continuously Variable Transmission, i-DSI, i-CTDi, VVT-i, VVTL-i, VVTL, VTC, Neo VVL, CVT. I have no idea what any of them do. Neither do I care.

Having said that, I do still find cars exciting to a point. I still see cars as more than a tool to help us get around. I can see myself buying a car the drives properly in the future. (Some might argue that all cars drive properly. What I mean is cars that don't take forever to get to speed and don't feel like they're going to kill you when you corner faster than 40 km/h). Type-R Civics and Golf GTIs come to mind, but thats a fantasy for a later point in my life. I wouldn't mind a Ferrari, but thats getting ahead of myself.

If I do buy a Ferrari, I will drive it. Not store it in the garage to be taken out every so often so that your friends can see how well off you are. Half the ingenuity of the car lies in the fact that you can use it everyday just a easily as any other commercial car. Making a car go fast is one thing. Making it fast and comfortable is a whole different ball game altogether.

If I really went berserk one day, this is the car I'll end up with. In my books now, this is the ultimate escape from reality. If something pisses me off or gets me depressed, driving this is one of the few things in the world that can make things a little less painful. That is of course assuming I don't get killed driving it.