Day 12: Tomahawked

This post also diverges from a focus on Kazakhstan and instead is a bit more of a window into life abroad, I suppose. Today, we invented new a new verb to describe a phenomenon known as "to Tomahawk."

Stumped? So were we. Miraculously, we managed to get all of the paperwork in order to drive the car we purchased to drive here in Astana. Pre-installed on our machine was a techno-gadget and remote starting system called Tomahawk.

I've never had a remote start and the guidebook that I found in the vehicle was in Russian. Oh, boy! We fought to get the alarms system off to get into the car to air up the tires and move it. Success after madly punching a million buttons. Our new car is a manual, so we parked it in gear with the parking brake on to use the next day after the insurance came through.

The next day when I headed to work, I found my car in the fence with a dented fender. Harumph! The fence didn't suffer so much. The car could now use a bit of plastic surgery, sorry to say.

Completely confused about what had happened, we finally deduced that the auto start was set on a timer and somehow the vehicle turned itself on during the night, and, since it was in gear, rammed itself into the fence. Now that really is something -- a car that can have its own accident!

A few more frustrating incidents with the alarm system and I think we finally have a handle on it. Apparently, if you have a manual transmission with an auto start system installed, you need to leave the car in neutral for auto start. The auto start function should not work if the car is in gear, but our system was apparently installed incorrectly, something that would have been better to know before rather than after. But the lesson is learned and there's not much we can do about it now. Our next car adventure should be the trip to a local body shop to make the car look pretty again.

We returned home and made a spectacle out of fighting with the alarm system in a few parking lots along the way only to find that our new car does not fit into the parking space designated in the garage of our apartment building. The overhead clearance is too low. In fact, we cannot even drive around in the garage without scraping the roof -- something I guess we'll have to resolve before the temperatures hit -40 this winter. But that battle is for another day.

And now you know what it means to be Tomahawked -- feel free to use the coinage as necessary!