Week 2: Resolving Interpersonal/Intercultural Conflict (Post
#1)
This post will be based on the relationship between my
mother and me. As some may know, I have a passion for cars and have the
privilege to drive a Japanese legend, the Subaru Impreza WRX STI. It is true
that owners of such Japanese sports cars love to modify, or ‘zhng’, the car
according to their taste, such as to develop more horsepower, to make the car
look better (stance) in terms of its visual appearance, or to enhance the car’s
bassy boxer burble from the exhaust. It is also true that I do subscribe to
this view.
However, it seems that my mother is not exactly receptive
about the concept of modifying the car. According to her, I shouldn’t do it as
I would be “wasting my money”. However, my argument against this is that since
we already own the car, coming up with a small amount of money to buy nice
parts would value add more to the cost of the car. In my evaluation, the
benefit of being able to drive a nicer car more than outweighs the cost of
doing it. In addition, having a nicely modified car makes me proud as it
represents the freedom we have in modern society.
The problem comes when I want to modify a certain part of
the car. For example, take the spoiler. The standard high-mount spoiler has a
very factory-look, and is unsuitable with my plans of having a race-car look.
Thus, I wanted to put on a GT wing at the back of the car, which also had the
benefit of reducing weight. My mom, as usual, objects to this by saying I would
spend too much money and would attract attention from the authorities.
 | ||
| This is what the GT wing looks like, from the rear. Love that overhead bridge look! This was taken late late last year at Edge Tuning, on the day I collected the car with the wing. |
I tried to explain to her that it was legal and the cost was
actually not as much as she feared, but every time I approached her, she would
just stop the whole debate by throwing a temper and shouting. Since I had no
avenue to advance my interest, I decided to act on my own. There was an online
seller selling the wing, so I met him and bought it off him without the
permission of my mom. I then brought the wing back (it was in the dead of the
night), showed it to my mom and left it in the storeroom. The thinking behind my action was that if I had already bought the wing, there was nothing much she could do about it.
Of course, she wasn’t exactly very pleased about it.
However, since I had already bought the wing, she chose to control herself and
warned me about making sure it was legal. Since it was, I just had to go down
to the workshop to fix it a few days later.
Now, my question to you guys is this: What would you have
done in my position, assuming you really wanted to put the wing on the car?
