I’m a Proud Owner of a 2007 Yamaha C3 Scooter!

Over the last week, I’ve been tweeting my intentions to buy a scooter. Today, you’re looking at a proud owner of a 2007 Yamaha C3 Scooter. The C3 is also known as the VOX in Asia and the Giggle in Europe. With a massive 49cc’s of displacement, it’s probably weaker than a John Deere ride on mower.

Why a Scooter?

The motivation to buy one didn’t come from seeing scooters in Taipei. Far from it. Those people are crazy. It came from me realizing that I refilled my tank for $65.00 in my Subaru Impreza after coming back from Taipei. Gas was around $1.20/L when I left…then shot up to $1.49/L when I came back. The news the other night was also talking about the impact of a $3.00/L gas price with similar stories coming up from the US. As I filled my tank up, I remembered that I used to fill it for less than $50 less than a year ago. What a difference!

Because I work from home, I rarely have to drive anywhere to be honest. My only daily commute is to the depot to pick up parcels. Because of all the stop and go traffic I have to endure, I end up filling up once a week, or at least topping up every Monday for around $30 - 40 on average. Add to that I have to climb out of a hilly area, and my gas mileage is utter shit. To be honest, my only real need for a car is to come out to Richmond for Dot Com Pho because of the distance.

The Short List…

Because I didn’t have a Class 6 Motorcycle License, I was limited to the growing 50cc and under range of Scooters. In British Columbia, if you have a full blown Class 5 drivers license, you can buy a scooter and drive it without passing the Motorcycle test. Basically, you’re limited to regular road speeds which is about 50-60 km/h.

In this range, there are a number of Scooters available from names like VESPA, Yamaha and Honda, as well as Korean and Chinese brands. I decided to stick with either Honda or Yamaha and ditched VESPA because they tend to be extremely overpriced for the features that you get. However, try to tell that to a VESPA owner. Not to mention, I wanted somewhere to pull my Scooter to locally in case I had any issues and both Yamaha and Honda had service centers very close to where I live.

I narrowed my search to three scooters: Honda Ruckus, Yamaha BWS and Yamaha C3.

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Five Things I Observed About Traffic in Taipei…

Wow, I can’t believe that COMPUTEX is here again!  In less than ten days, Michael Kwan, Ed Lau and myself will be in Taipei, Taiwan for the second biggest Computer Show in the world. The biggest is CeBit in Hannover, Germany. This will be my third time going, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing all the cool toys and of course, reporting to you live about the whole booth babe situation. We’ll also be enjoying tons of free stuff and lots of parties! Since I’ve sworn off oversized free T-shirts, expect a few giveaways when I get back.

All the big websites that matter will be there like Tom’s Hardware and Anandtech including many huge overseas websites like HardwareZone etc. It will be great to run into old friends from other overeseas publications. Last year, I was so surprised when I ran into people that were just as excited to see someone from Futurelooks as I was to run into them. The last couple years, I stopped in Hong Kong, but this year, the weather here in Vancouver is starting off too nice to miss out on. I was going to head to Japan this year, but I’ll let Ed Lau scout it out this year before I head over next year. He’s heading over for a couple months after the show so I expect to hear about “Beautiful Girls direct to his Hotel”.

One of the things that Taipei is known for is the huge scooter population and the heavy traffic in the city core during rush hours…or hours…as the city is pretty much open 24/7. While in Taiwan for COMPUTEX over the last couple of years, I had a really good chance to observe the driving habits of the locals. I mean, it explains a few things when you head to Richmond and almost die. Here’s what I observed that may keep you from dying if you decide to go there and tempt fate by walking across the street…

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Even a Monkey Can Do It!

Ride a motorcycle that is. Check it!

The monkey even has a wardrobe, and unlike those drivers out in Richmond, he even looks before he heads out into traffic. What a smart monkey. Monkeys should drive in Richmond. It would be so much safer out there.

How Fast Do You Need to Have Your Evening News?

In order to settle the score of which news station reigns supreme, KDBC 4 and KVIA 7 decided to drag race their news vans to settle the score of who gets on the scene the fastest. After covering a horrific drag racing accident, the two news van drivers laid the pride of their stations on the line on the drag strip. At least they weren’t street racing…

At the end of the day, both of them ended up being losers. Both drivers and crews got fired for their misconduct. Personally, I thought it was a great publicity stunt for the stations, but I do think that it might have been a better idea to set a day where they weren’t on the clock and it wasn’t after an accident on the track. Do you think the news stations overreacted or do you think they were justified in their dismissals?

The Biggest Snowfall of 2008…So Far…

 

The Lower Mainland of British Columbia received the biggest dump of snow in a long time. It far surpassed the snowfall that we had at the tail end of 2007. Snowfall accumulations ranged from 10 CM’s to 30 CM’s in my own backyard of Port Moody, BC. There was so much snow here that they even mentioned my area on the evening news.

 

The snow really started to come down around 9 PM yesterday and fell strong till the late morning. I found my Subaru Impreza covered in nearly a foot of snow and entrenched quite deeply in my parking stall. At the same time, Kelly’s Honda was also quite stuck in the snow. In fact, her doors were frozen shut. It started up again early afternoon and taunted us through out the day. Wanting to get out, I heated up the inside of my car with the remote starter so that my doors would open. I guess that would be the least of my worries because I still needed to get OUT of my parking spot. Also, since I live on the side of a hill, I not only have to come up to my place, but I have to climb out of the hole in the side of the mountain. Luckily, I got my Dunlop Wintersport 3D’s put on back in December so all I really needed to do was just rev the engine and plow my way out. Ah…the beauty of all wheel drive!

 

Although most of the main roads were already plowed, many of the sidestreets were still covered in lots of snow. It was funny seeing so many cars parked at the bottom of hills while driveways further up the hill remained totally empty. It looked like someone shook the hill and they all slid to the bottom. As I drove around, I saw more cars stuck in ditches and a large number of SUV’s slipping around sideways. Apparently only about 28% of people in the Lower Mainland have proper winter tires and most of the accidents are caused by people running the standard all season tires. I can believe it. My Pirelli P-Zero Nero’s were something scary in the snow before I got my Dunlops put on.

 

If you ever wondered if the Postal Workers really worked through sleet, snow and rain, well, they do. It’s just another day for them, and apparently, this is just another shorts day for this postal worker. How’s the snow where you are?