Sometimes World, Art Imitates Life Imitates Art

i first heard about the new Filipino Journey vocalist in the news early this year. I thought it was just some tryout rockstar contest that landed our Pinoy brother the dream job, and I just shrugged it off as something cool but not spectacular. That was before I got the details.

Arnel Pineda, Journey’s new vocalist, was discovered thru Youtube. A lot of us would probably say “now what are the chances of that?” You think about the foreign bands you idolize, they seem so far away, almost as if existing in a different dimension, and then one day you receive an email from one of your gods asking if you’re for real and would you like to be their new vocalist. Insane!

Then I realized how big Journey was, that Steve Perry was the original vocalist, that they’re toe-to-toe with those other 80’s one-name bands like Chicago and Toto and so on. But the most amazing thing with the story is always Arnel Pineda. I watched selections from Journey’s Chile concert from Youtube, and Pineda is for real. Close your eyes and you can imagine it is Steve Perry singing “Faithfully” (the song that landed Pineda the job) but not quite. The range is a bit farther, a bit less restrained compared to the original, the way Filipinos sing and win all these singing contests all over the world. The performance can pass for “plakado,” but listen carefully and you’ll figure out how Pineda is adding his own vocal signature to the songs. Incredible. Journey has been Filipinized, haha.

I’m writing like a fan now. Fantastic. Imagine your favorite band, then imagine fronting that band. Brilliant.

Arnel Pineda sings “Don’t Stop Believing,” and somewhere Mark Wahlberg is smiling.

 

Sometimes world…#1

This is the first of a series I’d like to call Sometimes world. In essence, each entry under this category will start with those two words.

This first entry is about car maintenance, but it is also about our way of looking at things and situations. I recently had Beetlecar serviced, so i remembered this short piece I wrote a little over two years ago, when Beetlecar and I were just getting to know each other. So many things have changed!

 

Sometimes world, you can be so strange. I have something fixed, and it comes back needing a bit more fixing. Or no fixing at all. Maybe I’m the one who needs to be repaired.

       

       My trusty Beetle was recently tuned up. I had it done because it was really scheduled to be tuned, and because I couldn’t keep up anymore with the speedfreaks in the highways. So it got tuned, and it ran better. No problems there till I subjected it to twenty minutes of turnpike driving.

 

At the tollgate, as I stopped, the oil light came on. Problem with the oil is always bad. I broke in a cold sweat, since the oil warning light coming on usually meant that I needed to stop and check things. Lord knows what I would find if I stopped and checked. Running the engine with oil problems could ruin it in minutes, as what most books say.

 

I couldn’t really get an accurate measure of the oil from the dipstick because of course most of the oil was still in the engine. Nevertheless, I poured a quart of additional oil, then drove on.

 

The light didn’t come on again, but my father suggested that I had the ignition timing checked. The oil light could’ve come on also because the engine got so hot. So I had the timing checked, and the mechanic swiftly diagnosed another problem, something about needing a new part. More expense. So that part was replaced, some parts like the points were inspected, and the ignition timing was corrected—sort of.

 

After driving back from the mechanic’s garage, I noticed the engine to be even hotter than before I had the timing “fixed.” Now the heat was really obvious, the oil smelled, and this occurred even in short travels.

 

I consulted the mechanic about it, and he said in exasperated tones that he had done the timing correctly and I was worrying needlessly. So I half-took his word for it. When I drove back from the garage this time, the oil light really came on and steadily.

 

I felt like the protagonist in Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, the guy who brought his overheating and seizing bike to a shop and got the bike back worse than before. He had it checked and fixed by the same shop, and again it came back worse, with more things to fix.

 

I was also reminded of what the Top Gear folks said regarding Mercedes ownership: it’s the road, then the shop, then the road, then back to the shop. But I didn’t have a Mercedes, I had a Volkswagen, the “people’s car.” Cars like mine aren’t too fickle, because they’re so simple that there’s little that could go wrong. But there was something wrong.

 

The mechanic must have thought that it was my attitude and lack of Volkswagen expertise that needed fixing. I thought it was his attitude that needed fixing—really. What a bind, isn’t it? I thought so myself, but the solution readily presented itself: I looked for another mechanic.

 

Turns out there was another Volkswagen mechanic within a five mile radius of my house. This other mechanic was actually just five minutes away from where I lived, instead of the previous one whose garage was about twenty minutes away without traffic. This new mechanic didn’t have a garage full of waitlisted customer’s cars, just a home garage with lots of trees and grass. This home garage was accessible by a tiny street in a small subdivision, compared to the previous mechanic’s commercial garage that was beside an especially fast curve of the national highway. All of this constituted, in my young car owner’s point of view, a world of difference. To top it all off, my new mechanic happened to be my old mechanic’s older brother. Sometimes world you can be so strange.

 

So I had the Bug checked, fixed, and re-checked. I even had the chance to test drive the results first before paying, something I had not thought about before. Everything was back to normal, even better. The car ran smoother and didn’t “overheat” too early.  Though the oil light came on again in standstill traffic after an hour’s worth of driving, I got assurances from other “people in the know” that there was no cause for worry unless the light came on while I was driving at moderate and high speeds. And though the changes can be attributed as psychological for my part as the owner, it made all the difference for me. I was going to have to live with a few different things from now on, like the oil light coming on more frequently than usual, or at least it was a better place to start in having things really fixed. At least I had a bit more peace of mind this time—and that was a big fix.

 

All of this started when nothing was actually wrong, I just wanted something to be better. Sometimes world you can be so strange.