"Edmund Hasibuan" (hasibuanedmund)
12/08/2013 at 01:46 • Filed to: oppositelock
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"Edmund Hasibuan" (hasibuanedmund)
12/08/2013 at 01:46 • Filed to: oppositelock | 0
| 0 |
I've always been interested in cars and other mechanical things as long as I remembered. I remembered when I was a toddler, I used to almost always, sit beside my dad in the front of our family car, which was a Suzuki Escudo, and most of you guys probably know it as the Chevrolet Tracker in the US. This leaves no choice for my mom, who has to sit in the back with my sister. As I got older, I got interested in tamiya and RC cars, like most of the kids my age at that time. My favourite activity to do on holidays was to go drive the ATVs and off-road buggies in Sentul, near Jakarta. But because of the distance, we didn't go there often. Since then, I got interested in driving.
The first "real" kind of racing I've experienced was to drive a go kart at the age of 13. At first my parents were hesitant to let me drive because they fear I might crash and be injured or something. But finally, I got into the go kart... and drove. It was literally the best thing that I've ever done, turning corners (didn't do it properly though, got too excited power drifting the go cart) and going at high speeds. Well, a while after that, I gathered enough courage to tell my parents about my interest in motorsports and racing. Again, they fear the danger of driving anything at high speeds. And here's the other thing, my parents really wanted me to go into the medical field, which in my family was a big thing. So since I was little, the only career they pretty much go in depth with me was medicine.
The biggest change in my life was moving from the tropical Southeast Asian region to Canada. In Canada, there is something about the people here that interests me. It was PASSION . Yeah, that was my new English word after 10 years of knowing and speaking English. It's just the way they do things that I don't really see much in Indonesia. The way they play musical instruments at church, the way they talk about their careers, and etc. Youtubers awed me with their musical, filming, and of course, automotive knowledge.
Top Gear was the first proper automotive show I watched, which got me even more interested in automotive and for the first time, the engineering aspects of it. My parents' reaction to me watching all the Top Gear video I could find on the internet was not particularly a really good one. And this was the first time that my parents said something so offensive to me. They said that what I was doing was "childish". Yeah, so that got me quite a bit frustrated. You see, auto mechanics and other kinds of mechanics are not particularly respected jobs in my country. They think that the only thing you should worry about choosing a career is money and security. I know that what my parents are doing is their effort to give a sense of security to my life, but this isn't working. Being in college now as Biology major, I kinda feel left out because of my non-interest in the field. My grades are not so good, and my parents blamed it on my lack of study. I've tried talking to them, but the only thing they do is just telling me about the bad things of the automotive and motorsports industry.
Well, the point of this post is just my effort to encourage all the parents out there to give their children a chance to choose their own life, and how to live them. And also to point out the neglect, ignorance and even scepticisms that some people and institutions has placed on the automotive industry.