car thing - part 2

Please read car thing - part 1 before reading the following car thing -part 2.



II. Court

Kim is a fellow, but unlike me, she is a clinical fellow, meaning that she sees patients. Meaning that she is far busier than me, a research fellow.
She took off early for me on Dec 5 because I needed someone to drive me to the court. Without a registration card, I refused to drive my car near the police.
My scheduled time was 5:30pm. At 4:30pm, we left West Orange (where our work is) to Orange. See? By town names, you can figure South Orange, West Orange, and Orange are neighbors. But it took one hour for me to step into the court. Traffic was not bad, actually. North Jersey is a mysterious place to drive. Roads go every direction and change names as they like. We got a bit lost from West Orange to Orange. Later, we got a bit lost from Orange to South Orange. Arh.... this can be another story, which may be told in other blog entries.

Because we were almost late, Kim dropped me off, and I walked in alone.
After getting my paperwork and passing through an X-ray gate, I sat down in the court with other hundred people at 6pm.
Kim came in at about 6:20pm. She had almost decided to leave. Cellphone was not allowed, so she did not know the court had not started yet. She simply just tried to see if she could come into the court. I was glad that she tried and that she was with me. Because I was totally bored. The judge showed up a bit later than Kim.

Waiting is one essential element of this whole "car thing" story.

This judge was sharp and doing a good job. However, there were too many people. Some of them did not bright enough to keep their mouths shut, and made the process unbearably longer. Some of them were quite entertaining. For example, a guy got a ticket because he parked at a handicap space.
"Did you park at a handicap space?" The judge asked.
"Yes."
"Do you plead guilty or not for parking there?"
"No."
"But you just admitted that you parked there. Which means you are guilty."
"No, I am not."
"This is not logical," the judge took a deep breath, "you are contradicting yourself."
"No, I am not. Please let me explain."
"Fine. Go."
"There were two handicap spaces, which were requested by a house resident who were handicapped years ago. He requested one, but two came. So we lost parking space for no reason. And he moved away. That is, no one is using those two handicap spaces. So I deliberately parked there to protest this unfair arrangement."
"You should have contacted the parking authority."
"But..." The guy wanted to argue more, but was stopped by the judge, who said "Why are you holding a New York license? You do not live in New Jersey?"
"No, Sir. I only came here several times a year."
The judge shook his head and remained silence for a minute before he continued, "Case dismissed. You do not park in the handicap space any more in New Jersey."

And I found many of them were here for the same reason as me: they took a left turn at a green light.
New Jersey is weird, and it makes normal people like me to make mistakes.

We were hungry and tired. So was the judge. Thus, he called a break for 15 minutes. The break was of course actually 20 minutes.
During the break, the attorney called names and discussed things with us and summarizes things for the judge. It was like making an agreement before the judge officially made a decision, so that the process could go faster.
From the attorney, I learned that I could plead not guilty for my registration because my temporary registration sheet covered the date when I got pulled over. However, I should plead guilty for making that left turn. And this needed to be negotiated.
The original ticket would get me a 250-dollar fine and 2 points.
But if I agreed, the judge could tone it down with a different charge, which would not come with any point but the fine was about twice higher.
I did not want points. Points mean records. Records mean higher insurance price. So I chose the latter.
The agreement was done, and the conversation with the judge was short. Finally, about 8pm, I got out and did the paperwork.

I felt like I had just thrown time and money into a black hole. Nothing bounced back.
Kim drove me back to South Orange, comforting me, cheering me up. She and the sunny boy dinnered with me.
But my anxiety became depression.
That was also the last night I saw the sunny boy. I was really truly depressed. Emotionally tired. I lost my confidence of doing anything.

When confidence bailed on me, nothing in my life seemed right anymore.
I had been working on a grant application. Many problems gradually surfaced during the process. I started highly questioning about the purpose of my persistence in pursuing an academic career. I was not happy about my job. I could not drive my car happily. Happy suddenly was not the word to describe my life.


III. Failing Registration, again

Trying to get some control back, I called VW. They told me that the title had been mailed to NJ DMV on Nov 30.
Oh, really? Why wasn't I notified by DMV?
NJ DMV does not like people to call them. They simply let you wait forever. And when a receptionist finally talks to you, he/she will transfer your call to a wrong department. For example, my call was transferred to International Plate. I did not want an international plate. And I did not have an international plate. I wanted an NJ plate, for god's sake.

So I went online to DMV's website. They have an emailing-your-question service. So I emailed. In 24 hours, I got a reply from a person named Tom.
He needed more information such as the VIN (vehicle identification number). I emailed him. And he emailed back in 10 minutes! I felt lucky that he was actually online somewhere in Jersey right now replying my email. He wanted to know which DMV agency. I told him. He said the title in fact was received some days ago.
"You didn't get a post card?"
"No. Do I have to show the post card in order to have the registration done?"
"No, you don't. You can just go in. And by the way, they open until 7:30pm today."

That's cool. Tom's instant emails gave me courage. Yeah, I felt lucky for someone actually was doing his job right and good.
I got very excited and nervous. Because I was going to drive Bungbung without a valid registration card into a DMV agency. Because I was not sure what kind of difficult tasks they would ask me to do and fail me.
Quickly stopping by home to gather documents, I drove to DMV.
I failed.
Because the co-owner of the car did not come with me, it was not ok.
I told DMV the co-owner lives in California, and she could not come over here. They gave me an attorney authorization form. The co-owner had to sign it and other forms with a notary public.

When I walked out of the DMV, it was pouring. It was 6pm and dark. It was Dec 19, and I knew the co-owner was in Taiwan for a month-long vacation. She would not fly back to California before Jan 3.

Further worse, South Orange Parking Authority sent me a notification: If you want to continue parking in our friendly community since Jan 1, 2008, please come to us with your driver's license and valid registration card. And we will give you a parking permit. Oh of course, it's not free but pretty cheap.

Now I was in deep depression, worrying where I should park without a registration card.


(... to be continued)