Look! Eyelashes for your car! How awesome would Gina look with a pair of these?!

Of course, we live in the Philippines, so if we actually bought a pair, five bucks says people would steal them off my Hyundai Getz in two minutes. Sayang, no?

It hasn’t been a good week for Gina, my Hyundai Getz. Earlier in the week, someone tried to steal her front left tire. No kiddin’. The would-be thieves tried to pry open our little plastic hubcap. Little did they know – amateurs! – that the nuts and bolts keep the hubcap securely fastened to the tire. So they weren’t able to steal my tire. However, they damaged my Hyundai Getz’s hubcap beyond repair. Ugh.

In the course of their robbery, they found – as I did today – that one of the nuts is fused – again!!! – to the bolt. This is ridiculous! It’s the second time this has happened to me in a span of a few months. When the folks at Hyundai Otis said this was the “sakit” of the Getz, they weren’t kidding. I inquired at the Hyundai Fort Bonifacio branch as to how much it would cost to replace the nut and bolt if it was beyond repair, and the initial estimate is Php1,500. (Wowch, right?)

I’ll bet I could pay Php500 at Banawe. But I’m the hardheaded play-by-the-rules stick-in-the-mud who insists having everything done casa-style. lol Suze Orman says we should keep our cars for ten years minimum to get the most mileage out of them, and I tend to agree. If you know everything in my car was done by the folks at Hyundai, and that the checkups were done regularly, wouldn’t you think that Gina would be in better shape than most other Getzes of her age and make?

So here’s what happened. I scheduled an appointment this Thursday with Hyundai Bonifacio Global City for them to check out my tire. I then take my little girl to school. That’s when it happened. A crack in the left rear tire made itself known. ARGH! I took my car over to the Banawe Car Center along Banawe Avenue in Quezon City to buy a tire to replace the tire, and that’s when I was told by Warren, one of Banawe Car Center’s managers, that the size of my tire was difficult to find. Not completely sold out, but hard to find.

“Do you have any other options?” I asked.

Our Getzes’ tires are 165/65/R14. 165 is the diameter, 65 is the profile, R14 is the rim diameter. Most tires of our kind are harder to find, so he recommended an upgrade to 175/65/R14, a mere 10mm increase in diameter. “It’s a stronger tire,” he said, and offers more traction. The tiny difference in wheel size makes little to no difference with our cars’ suspension, too.

The Federal tire (it’s a Taiwan make, my first time to buy Taiwanese, but come on, my Korean tires have been less than satisfactory lately) in the 175 option retails for a little less than Php2500 each, but I needed two (obviously, if I was replacing one tire with a different size, I’d need at least two to balance things out), he offered me a slight discount. I then proceeded to pay with my credit card – they take VISA, Mastercard, and JCB, cool! – and was out of there in ten minutes. Blazing fast, quick service (cold water or juice on the house), and quality tires. If y’all are looking to buy tires and pay with credit card, I wouldn’t mind recommending Banawe Car Center. Look for Warren, really nice guy.

Yesterday, my beautiful wife and I bought two folding sofa-beds for our two children. The salespersons at SM North EDSA, where we bought the sofa-beds at an P800 discount (YES!), asked if we had space for it. I told them I had a Hyundai Getz. The salesperson looked skeptical.

After he put it in, his exact words: “parang sinukatan.” What can I tell you? The Hyundai Getz’s trunk space is HUGE! I just folded the chairs back, and BOOM! Two sofa beds, plus groceries, and my son’s school things.

See? Perfect fit!

Bit of a mess, but hey, I’m not known for impeccable organizing skill.

The green revolution has reached home base! According to this article, the Australian edition of the Hyundai Getz has gotten a makeover, courtesy of Australian innovators Blade Electric Vehicles. The revamped Hyundai Getz has an electric motor driven by a lithium iron phosphate battery that can power the car 100km per single charge.

The folks at Blade have christened their new baby the Blade Electron. How different is that from Hyundai Getz? Other than the fact that it’s electric and has a different name, not much, apparently. The Electron has passed Australian safety standards on its two-speed automatic transmission. According to the article, “the great thing about this car is apart from the drivetrain, everything else is just Getz. The air-conditioner and power steering are driven by an auxiliary motor, so most of the driving experience remains constant and the Getz retains its character. The batteries take up little space and the luggage area is almost unaffected. Only 10cm of this space is taken up by the batteries and related electronics.”

Right now, the Electric Getz Blade Electron sells in India, and apparently, Australia, for our equivalent of – are you ready? – Php2,000,000!! Ouchies! I mean, I love the concept, and it’s terrific that we’re doing something to promote sustainable technology, but greenergy shouldn’t be this expensive. What do you think?

Happy holidays, Getzers! May 2010 be a year of upgrades, lower gas prices, & personal joys for all of you. Thank you for passing by and sticking with Life With Gina!

Hello! For the next few days, I’m going to experiment with the look of Life With Gina. I’ve had this theme for way too long; it’s time to change the look, methinks. Please bear with me while I update the theme. I hope you enjoy what I come up with.

My Hyundai Getz Gina is ready to go back into the casa for her 35,000km checkup. I’ve scheduled her for next week at Hyundai AutoHub Global City – the only place I really trust to do my checkups nowadays – and the initial estimate is somewhere near Php3,300 for the whole thing. That’s pretty good! (As usual, you can expect me to place the checklist of things they did to the car.)

No real problems with my Hyundai Getz right now, save for – and only because I’m particular – a possible windshield wiper replacement. The right wiper seems to be curling up, and no folding seems to be helping. That’ll set me back somewhere near a thousand bucks, PHP1,500 at most, because it’s a special wiper that isn’t available over the counter at Blade. (Or is it?? I should check!)

I’m scheduled to meet up with my friend Hazel Gonzales, a Philippine makeup artist who owns a Philippine photography studio in Quezon City. I want her to be impressed by the quality of my two-year-old Hyundai Getz, so I hope everything’ll be perfect before I meet up with her. She and I will collaborate on some projects together – these may be out-of-town, so you can bet I’ll be taking pictures with my Hyundai Getz!