Not all about money
Thank you for your attention. This is the 2nd extension article for my hybrid memoir The Snowy Battlefield of Ohio, which was published on Amazon earlier this year. (Amazon link). My audiobook is now in production.
Speaking of driving, I was not a seasoned driver back in Columbus, Ohio. To recap, in order to work in the hospital off-campus, I had to get my driving license that summer of 2014. I failed the road test in my first attempt, because I drove too slow by the American Standard, braked too hard in front of the traffic lights, and slowed down when I saw a school bus coming in the opposite direction. Before taking the road test for a second time, my classmate Antonio (now a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology ) analyzed my behavior and found out the subconscious blocker of my immature breaking— I did not know I could press the pedal very deep without damaging it from the beginning. While most driving coaches in China would only yell at the trainees into tears, human scientists try to figure out the psychological causes.
Driving was still full of challenges after getting my driving license. People who have learned to drive all know this. I only had 1.5+1.5 years of solid driving experience, including eventually on the convoluted highway system with or without GPS, without feeling nervous. I bought and sold two Japanese sedans, one 2003 and one 2005, and it was never a good deal for me. The 2003 Nissan in Ohio served as part of the “educational” experience (sorry, no spoiler for the book, but for folks who have already read my book, it was mentioned in section 13.4). With mixed feelings, I sold it at a very cheap price and abandoned the idea of driving across the country from Ohio to California. I wasn’t mentally prepared for that back in 2015, though my Korean colleague told me it wasn’t that hard. “You just need to rent a U-haul. I’ve done that several times.” She said.
Some folks in China liked to ask me if I had earned any money through these transactions, and it frustrated me to answer this ridiculous question. The old ages of these cars I drove determined that the financial loss had an upper limit. When I sold the car, what I realized was that American kids tend to have their parents around when purchasing their first vehicle. In contrast, my biological parents couldn’t drive vehicles. They still can’t. I have lived an auto-free life for years due to my musculoskeletal issues as well as my aversion toward memorizing traffic laws printed in Chinese. Even if I go back to the driver’s seat someday, I will not be excited anymore, unless it’s some futuristic type of vehicle that uses motor imagery for steering and uses the hands for emergency control only. In case you didn’t know, motor imagery means imagining the movements of your body parts. It’s a concept used in psychology, neuroscience, and biomedical engineering. As a college student, I was luckily involved in training a multi-modal brain-computer interface (BCI) system that adopts motor imagery as one of the modalities.
Regarding the second car, the 2005 Honda Civic, the story was simpler. I purchased it from a private seller, a rookie driver. After the first year’s lockup situation in Davis, I waited a whole month before I could take over the car in the chilly January. It was old but wholesome, better than the car I had in Ohio. I even invested in a new serpentine belt for my own safety, after the inspection by a third party was done. What I really want to talk about was the process of selling it, or say, finding the next owner for this “beloved” vehicle before leaving Davis for good. Those days, my Irish landlord was overly enthusiastic about connecting me with a potential buyer, but it didn’t work, despite the Irish discount I offered, which made my Italian friend jealous. That potential buyer later told me that he wasn’t in a hurry to purchase another car at all. Meanwhile, after I posted the ad on Craigslist, a variety of people on Craigslist came for a test drive, and I will not forget the following cases:
(1) An international adjunct assistant professor at UC Davis was trying to look for a cheap car for a new colleague from his country of origin. The first thing he did upon arrival was to tell me “I am a professor here”, but I already knew his background by researching his name on the Internet. I was not affected by his attempts to undercut the price when he pointed out the scratches on the car’s skin and the tires.
(2) A non-Caucasian man wanted to buy a used car for his THIRD kid, who was in high school, but it turned out he was looking for something worth $1000 less than my car. He wanted a huge discount from me.
“Why did he even message me if he can’t afford the price range?” I thought to myself.
“Help me, I have so many kids to raise,” he said while test-driving my car. You hit the wrong spot, dude. Go ask my former colleague Mr. Shapiro how many kids I want.
“I don’t help people,” I replied. He was amused and speechless. Not only did he not believe in the value of my car, but he was trying to convince me that all dads, including my biological father Dawg, were good — just because he thought he himself was a good dad. You hit the wrong spot again, dude. All of my readers know how much I loved Dawg: zero.
(3) Some guy from a Middle Eastern country was trying to find a sedan for his girlfriend, who was an international grad student at UC Davis. I met them both. His bargaining logic was insane: he kept saying if he purchased the car at my named price, in a few years when he decided to sell the car, he would lose money. In his worldview, the seller is supposed to lose money on behalf of the buyer. I told him firmly, “A price is a price.”
Besides, he didn’t ask the opinion of his girlfriend in this entire process. I asked, “Are you sure she’s okay with the gray color?” He said, “That’s fine.” Well, at least in this case, the actual user did show up.
(4) Another UC employee was doing car trading as a side hustle, after getting a work-related injury. During the test drive, he had more interest in showing off his antique car in his own garage to me, than bargaining with me — yes, he drove back to his home… Then he made a ridiculously low offer: $1000 below my price. I told him I wasn’t into cars and I wanted to move to New York City where I could live without a car. After traveling to many cities in America, I no longer thought it was an honor to live with a car. If a car is a must-have where you live, I won’t like your city.
(5) A younger friend of mine was looking for something cheaper, and he wanted financing assistance from a bank instead of borrowing money from his family, because he had other siblings. I told him the price of this used car would not even meet the required minimum price for an auto loan (because I had consulted a banker before). He then said he would think about it and give me notice. Of course, as expected, he would not give me a definitive answer until I asked him again. As Mark Manson told us, “If it’s not a F*CK YES, then it’s a NO.” As I understand it, in American culture, many people want to be nice and feel uncomfortable saying no to other people; when they intend to say no, they may remain silent, hoping you’ll forget them. (Meanwhile, certain people perceive outright rejection as an insult as they expect warm hospitality and special treatment by default.) I understand this friend of mine was probably struggling too, and I appreciated his negative answer in the end.
(6) After returning from my 2nd OCON in Pittsburgh (June, 2017), I clarified certain things on my Craigslist post, because I realized this website had its limitations. For example, it wouldn’t let you differentiate between “good” and “very good”. The potential buyer from the Middle East mentioned my car was overpriced because I didn’t say it was “very good” — an option available on KBB. I explained it simply wasn’t an option on Craigslist, and I didn’t want to describe my car as “excellent”.
One morning, I got an email from a Latino lady who wanted to see the car immediately. She brought a dude with facial hair, who forgot to bring his driver’s license. While she was test-driving around, I asked the guy if they were married, and he answered, “She’s my mom.” She did not bargain much, and I decided to give them a lot of free accessories in the end. And I left my CD in the player — the live CD of Jukebox the Ghost, my favorite indie band from D.C.
When I heard she was a psychiatric nurse, I was ready to make a smooth transaction with them. But most importantly, she brought him from another city to see the car and feel the car just to make sure he liked it. It was going to be something he would use for a long time, so how could he not show up himself? Making decisions in delegation without getting the actual user involved in the decision-making process: this is too often a phenomenon in collectivist cultures. It is the same mechanism as how I got chronic RSI in my forearm as a work-related injury (detailed in my memoir). Amazon link
In this successful deal, I was acting on my values. I was selling my values. I was subconsciously choosing a buyer who embraced my ideal American values. I had free will.
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