The Car struggle
Mwhaha.
The headline is exactly what it is. A story of struggle with lessons learned on the way.
During my first week here in Auckland I met a guy from Estonia and offered him a stay at my place because everybody else went for the holidays so our house was free to do everything I want.
He once wrote a viral post in Estonian that had around 3k shares that described how fuckkked up our world is — everything we eat is poisoned, chickens are pumped on antibiotics and so on, which is true.
Because of him I stopped eating meat for a month, currently being on a last week. Not too bad for a person that actually loves eating meat.
Anyway, he said he is dealing with cars — buying them on auction and selling for at least 2x profit all times. That's how he lives. I was pretty much impressed because it promised to be a quick buck and could be a great side hustle that will generate few additional k's per month. It was really interesting for me and few days after I followed the auction live while sitting at home drinking my morning coffee. It was really interesting because the prices were really low. So low I was hooked. I also made some bid's while not seeing the car live, just pictures. Thank god I didn't won any of them back then. Anyway, there are 2 auctions going on every Tuesday and Thursday, so 2 days after we went there to see the cars live and bid live as well.
What I saw was different than I expected. The cars were not as good as shown on the pictures neither they did respond to the given description. Some of them didn't have keys and were damaged. I understood that it is a must to see the cars live before buying them. While being there, not so many cars were sold very cheap but I still managed to get one for a very good price. It was 2002 Nissan Brassara that was on sale for around 4k in Trademe.nz but I got it for 1k instead. Good price, isn't it? :)
Well, there were some additional fees as well so all in all it was 1,2k + 2 days of hustle going there, doing s h i t and etc.
After we got the engine started and went to drive home, I went out of fuel so we had to refill the tank and start it all over. When I started the car the radiator blew off as probably it over boiled. BOOM! Fuck!! Fucking hell!
Then, on the next day I came back to the car to see if it works. Nope, it didn't. So we came back with the towing car, that bring us to the mechanical center where we checked the engine that was completely out of work. When we checked the oil, it had water inside lol, the mechanic said the engine is completely wasted without even looking at the engine. So, thankfully he offered me his old car VW Polo 1997, that looked like this —
A good car, but with some funky damages. The car looks like it was on the verge of overheating many many times, and the wheels were shaking, so there was no way I could keep the car.
I listed it on every possible FB Auckland Car group so that it could get a lot of attention. It did, eventually, but didn't sell as I expected as I listed it for around 300NZ more than it was worth. 1800 was the price I wanted to get for it. Eventually the work paid off and after another ring of putting the car on sale I got a call that wanted to come NOW, it was midnight lol, and buy the car for her daughter. Yeah, got 1600 NZ for it compared to 1100 + 50 + 700 what I spent on it I still consider it as a good deal because if I couldn't sell the first car, the 1100 I spent on auction would be thrown away.
Anyway, it's just the beginning of the story lol.
Now, while the car was sold I really understood what it means to live without a car here in NZ. Does not feel like human at all. So we quickly started following different cars and the first car that we wanted to see was again VW Polo, but this time convertible. Convertible sounds like a fucking dream to be honest, doesn't it, huh? Yeah, that's the way I am thinking — we are not backpackers but smart guys in new country that has a lot of offer.
Anyway, we missed our ferry and as I was in charge of the dealerships, I quickly arranged a meeting with a guy who sold his car on FB group for 2k. It looked nice but had a small issue with window so it was okay for us.
Now, he promised to meet us in 10 minutes, but eventually it took much longer and while he arrived, it was too late — dark, we were not in a mood and the ferry was about to leave so when I saw the guy I was fucking S C A R E D of him lol. Tattoos on his head, huge like a fucking cow. He would have killed me. So (lol) I wrote to him that I am not coming, sorry. He immediately started CAPSLOCKING me on FB and promised he is going to kill me (as I guessed right here), called me cunt cunt cunt cunt many times inbetween everything he said etc… well, shit happens. Karma maybeh? :D
We went to the ferry happily even though I was pretty much scared because he knew we were going to take the ferry to Birkenhead and the meeting point was just few minutes away. Nothing happened.
My world loves me too much (L)!
Yep, so this is just the beginning! Wait for it! :D
The next day we went for a new car. I always negotiated in a way that the car seller would come to us instead of we coming to the sellers place. This time we went for 2008 Holden Vivo which was promising as the price was 2k. It's very cheap considering it's age. We didn't expect surprises but eventually they were there since the start already. The car was seemingly over painted to matt blue, which was different from the original colour. When we went for the test drive, the lady was on back seat and as I speeded up, there was a shitty smell that promised no good. When we told we won't buy the car, she was pissed off and told me that I just broke the car and we now MUST buy the car or FIX it, there was no way she will be bringing it back on this condition. Suddenly when we stopped, his husband came out of the other car as well and started rubbing his fists. lol. I would easily beat him up as if I wanted to. The more so we were together w Madis. Anyways, they didn't gave up so I decided to call the cops because there was no way we could go out of this with just explanations. I called the cops and talked them on the phone but they decided not to come as it was civil case.
Now, I decided to use a trick that I learned in a Vadim Zeland book. A principle that I have been using second time in a row in this kind of situation and definitely will use it more. Here it goes. Turn 0 attention. Just walk away. Or run away, so that you will have absolutely no contact at all. The other person will lose it's momentum and there is no energy coming from you that he or she can consume. Needless to say there will be deescalation of the fury.
When we came back in 20 minutes they were gone. Thankfully!
Thanks Vadim. Btw, he wrote my all time favourite book “Transurfing in 78 day” Give it a try. Absolutely the best one with concrete value. No BS!
The next day we asked another car seller to come over and this time the car owner didn't let us down. He came to us, showing his Toyota Altezza 2001 which is ducking pretty badass car. Loved it from the very first sight plus it made a lot of sense to buy it for 2,9k instead of 4k that he wanted. The thing is, his gf listed the car to FB for 3k instead the 4k he wanted to ask for it. Then we negotiated another 100 to full the tank which at that price was pretty hard though. We got a perfect car that has a great potential to flip and earn another 1k as a commission. The decision was made.
Alright, so now as we were quite lucky to have this beauty riding our hot asses, we were quite happy now. But not fully satisfied. Actually as the initial plan was to get a convertible, I quickly searched Trademe.co.nz if there were any convertibles and how much did they cost. Well, there were quite many and most of them expensive as hell and so as we were looking for a cheaper one, there was not so many options we'd consider. Except one. The red beauty was the one that catch my attention from the very first sight. I clearly thought it's going to be too pricey for us but still saved it to provide me a reminder as it has 1 hour running. As soon as I had the e-mail and checked the price was not moving too hard, I decided to follow it until the end. Luckily the price didn't seem to go up that much and I decided to bid for around 3k max after discussing with Madis. We agreed we could go for 3k max and that would be our limit. As somebody outbid us by 50NZ, I still decided to give it last chance and took it for 3070NZ, which turned to 3050NZ while we met with the seller.
The story actually is not ending here yet, because when we came to see the car 6 days after we won the auction, it come out that it has an electrical issue that needs to be fixed in order for it to work properly. Sometimes it just die out in the middle of the drive and it needs to be restarted. This I didn't know as it was written on the comments. Anyway, as the seller was a nice guy that gained our trust, we still decided to buy it as it seemed a great bargain buy. It is definitely a very comfy and delicious car for summer. More over we can fund it from the sell of other car.
We didn't expect it to die out often but as we were driving home it died for about 4 times — once of them happened in a fucking 4 way highway lol. Anyways, we are confident we can fix this issue anytime soon and it will become our properly working car for the whole summer. I will let you know, but now enjoy the ride. ;)
The next story will be probably talking about the though environment of not native speaking guy and how to love the process.
