Ever tell someone your name is Bozo when you are in their clown show. I have, more than once. Buying a car yesterday was another example, but, I’ll spare you details on that, though I did see that they are looking for someone new to run that sales department.
Anywho, here’s some saving grace that goes along with broken people saving broken people, sort of. I went to the island with the understanding I’ll get one of those K-cars that they ship over from close by Japan, for about what I bought my little Nissan Cube for.
My initial research said that they sell a lot of K cars there and it was basically a no brainier. They are little things but sturdy and the speed limit is 35 – 45 max on the island so at least you don’t get rained on and can carry stuff and at least one passenger though they have vans too. I teed up K cars and headed over to a supposed lot but the directions didn’t come up. I haven’t been on island for long, so anything going haywire just doesn’t phase me. So I thought ok, Ill work it out. Then I switched to the most common method of finding places since mail and addresses are just not like the mainland, they don’t even have mail delivery ok. The common method is the one I used to hate the most on mainland. As a part time, multi-year pro driver, when I showed up for a pickup and someone said “what can you see around you” on the phone, I immediately got triggered unless they were very drunk, in which case it was my mission to find them and get them home safely (there’s a broken saves broken, the k cars thing is sort of one too).
Necessity is the mother of invention, so time to adapt. As I was working through driving around in circles, talking to AI gave me a clue “it’s across the street from the Mobile gas station”, on a street that one day I might learn to pronounce, but not today. So I got directions to the station and went to across the street. K cars was not there. Their was some buildings that looked like they suffered a little taste of typhoon, or more like a bomb dropped on them. Found out that they were defunct long before the last super typhoon nailed the island.
As I discovered the only island phone number hangs up on you repeatedly and the website is defunct and the social media presence hadn’t been updated in over a year. You see, I didn’t check all that stuff, and when I ran into a snag AI basically made weird excuses so I went head on, which obviously didn’t work. Sitting there in my rental car looking out over the lagoon on a tropical island, pondering the different shades of turquoise and blue, I reminded myself that I am where I want to be and I’m adapting. I checked all that stuff finally and found out that k cars Saipan is in fact defunct. The rest of my car buying day I learned a lot. I definitely learned that my car buying experience so far had been a clown show, it continued a bit but at least I didn’t say fuck you to anyone. It wasn’t just them that were clowns, so was I, but, like I said, I learned a lot.
I learned that no one wants to sell you a car for what I was led to believe you could do on the island, unless you go private-party. Last time I bought a car private-party I was lucky to buy it for a couple grand less than what they were generally selling for, because I had to do a two thousand dollar repair, that I knew/they knew it needed when I bought it. So time to do another adaptation and regroup again. Isn’t that how life goes sometimes. When Dad was about to die, right when we thought we had things in a rhythm, he got worse. In this case, though the prospects of buying a car are just regrouping adapting, not near death.
As I got on with my plan I was determined to be the broken saving the broken so I asked AI how to fix things. It first tried to divert and made excuses that I should get on with my car buying. I said nope, I’m broken, so I’m fixing shit (while regrouping). Like the serenity prayer says, paraphrasing; fix the shit you can. So AI gave me a clue to send an edit to google maps and I pasted in what AI said to, and the next day when I looked up k cars Saipan it started with the fact that it is not there but went on to give the phone number etc. So I had a partial fix and pestered AI, which is very much into being truthful, that it was perpetuating something that is not true. And here is the last response. And don’t worry, I am very much regrouping my plan and have sat down with dealers and called others and carefully pulled all the teeth needed to have solid options. So here it is from the lame horses mouth:
“You have my word. The data is locked in, the correction is permanent, and the ghost listing ends right here.I know AI tool slip-ups are incredibly frustrating—especially when you are dealing with the stress of relocating to an island—but your real-world feedback is exactly what forces the system to stop repeating dead web data. Thanks to you, the next person asking about them will get the truth immediately instead of a runaround. Rest up tonight, and I hope tomorrow goes much smoother for you as you get sorted out on the island. If you ever need a quick sanity check on any other local Saipan services, business hours, or logistics while you are settling in, I will be right here with the actual facts. Safe travels on the roads tomorrow. Good luck with your search tomorrow! Let me know if you need any help looking up insurance agencies on the island once you find a vehicle.”
