UMP's and the art of car maintainence

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On Earth – when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one
place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.
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Inspite of what Douglas thinks , I believe the Internal Combustion engine was probably the coolest invention ever made ...Followed closely by the Colt 6 cylinder revolver and Teflon Coated Ties..(The patent for which is jointly held by Trillian and yours truely)... Accepted that its precisely the reason why theres a hole over Antartica the size of Europe and also why the Americans fly their F-22 raptors with advanced stealth technology to hunt down those
extremely dangerous camel riders and blow the shit out of them with laser guided bombs which cost more than what Id probably ever make in my life ...
But then again all thats SEP anyways....For the benefit of non readers of the book,following is a bfief description of an SEP field..

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Simply put, an SEP field is an energy field similar to an invisibility field. When somebody, or something, is surrounded by a SEP field, the human brain perceives it as "somebody else's problem", and therefore will be incapable of paying attention to the object (or even seeing it, or recognizing its existence) unless it is being specifically looked for. In order for this to work, however, the object being hidden by the field must be sufficiently bizarre. For example, encompassing an ordinary mountain in an SEP field would have no effect. But if one were to first paint the mountain pink, then the SEP field would cause anyone who sees it to ignore its existence, a pink mountain being a sufficiently bizarre sight.
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Sometimes I am inclined to think that the universe also has anti SEP fields ... I call them UMP fields ...A UMP (Unecessarily My Problem) field for all logical reasons is even more bizzare than an SEP for the simple reason that it validates the basic assumtion of human behaviour which is - People want to be happy...
Let me take an example ... This saturday night I was at ISB with a few batchmates of mine .. Now I know being an Ex student of the institution , it is quite creepy of me to hang out at that place all the bloody time , but then again I had a valid reason .... Beer ...ISB is the only place in hyd you can get alcohol after 1 am... However some of my esteemed peers were there for a mission they considered much more important .... To watch the Argentina - Mexico Match ... Frankly speaking from the bottom of my heart , I dont give a rats ass which of the two Cocaine snorting malaria infested countries win.. but then again , football is surrounded by an exceptionally strong UMP field ... I hear its epicentre is somewhere in Calcutta ... So people who unlike me are not immune to UMP fields can be seen crying , shouting and swearing while two far off nations they will never visit play a game they will never play ....

Neways back to the topic of Automobiles...Am thinking of getting myself a car ... To be honest ,have been thinking about it since 1994 when I learnt to drive ... My dad had a Fiat back then ... That car was evil ...and Im not kidding ... it hated me like nobodys business ... every time I took it out for a spin , something happened... I learnt more about automobiles standing by the roadside watching mechanics fix it than I did in 4 years of Mechanical engineering ... But my dad loved it .. it never troubled him so he didnt share my enthusiasm in blowing that heap of metal and getting a new automobile .. preferebaly one which was not Possesed by Satan...
Neways so thats when the thought of buying my own car first crossed my mind ...
Buying a car is not an easy discision to make ... You got to think about the looks ,cost ,performance ,maintainance, reliablility, in some cases past owners record ... If people put in all that thought while marrying , I am sure the divorce rates would drop by a factor of 10 ... Neways I shall do that when the time comes .. Right now I want to give my total undivided attention on cars ... Am planning to test drive a few next weekend ... hopefully would make my
descision in a month or two ... (trust me thats fast by my standards .. Ask Trillian how slow a descision maker I am ) ... Will keep you guys posted ... In the mean time if you have any suggestions , please dont share them with me .. I have too much advice on the topic as it is ..