The 2012 BMW F20 116i in 2026

Hello again long time readers! It’s been a while! I want to announce that Singcarpore isn’t dead. Quite the contrary, I’ve

It brings me mixed pleasure and varying degrees of odd joy to announce that I’ve gotten the BMW F20 116i back in November 2025. I now understand why people say that Bimmers are full of electric gremlins fussing around the car throwing error codes in every nook and cranny.

Jack. You ask. Why the F20? Why the one series?

And I say to you: Long-time fans, readers, friends and family will know that I really only drive hatchbacks. I appreciate and enjoy the practicality of the form factor. My criteria for a car boiled down to the strict inclusion of a rear wheel drive and rear air con vents because I wanted my passengers in the rear to feel the air con freezing their legs and thereby experience great difficulty when exiting the car.

Before I dive further into the review, I should announce that I will be performing a site infrastructure migration and upgrading the backend to be more performant and snazzy. I count my lucky stars that I possessed (and still do, to some degree) developer chops and will therefore get downright dirty to fuss around with command line, scripts, and stuff.

Hang in there, folks! I will write again!

Driving Again In 2024

Ever since I scrapped the Honda Jazz in June 2022, the thought of owning a car had never really left me. Sure, going green, saving the planet (saving ourselves), and saving money resonated with me.

But, I treasured freedom. This is something drivers truly understand and feel deep in their beating hearts. So, when 2024 swung around, the Wife–through many months of uttering “if only we had” and “car” and “saving time” and “too far” and “waste time” must have caved in to my overt suggestion.

And so car hunting I did and car hunted we did. My pal’s brother happened to work at OneShift and shared a blue Ford Fiesta 2014 Titanium 1.0L EcoBoost model with low mileage for sale. We’re talking under 40,000KMs here.

Long story short, I am back on the roads again. First impressions and review to come some time later. 🙂

Retrofitting A Temperature and Hygrometer Sensor To The Honda Jazz

Since I started driving the Honda Jazz GD1, I adjusted the aircon temperature through a knob, like any other driver would.

Many new cars however, now come equipped with digital readouts. I thought how nice it would be to retrofit the GD1 with a sensor that could tell me the ambient temperature.

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Turn left on gone

Sometimes, the green turn-left light doesn’t make itself known until it starts blinking. In this case, a black Mercedes honked a white Lancer in the final moments before both cars zipped off into the night. I’ve driven down this road by Yishun MRT countless times, and such occurrences are common: Drivers consistently miss the left turn light and get honked at by others.

So, what is the morale of the story? When waiting at a left-turn only lane, get ready to turn left when you can turn left, and when it is safe for you to turn left, and especially when someone is waiting behind you, and also when you took that lane to turn left anyway.

Turn left.

Singapore’s shortest right turn traffic light

If you’ve ever zipped down along Yishun Avenue 2, and come to this junction towards Lentor and Yishun Avenue 1, you’d have experienced Singapore’s shortest, quickest, briefest green light; Call it what you will.

If anyone knows why the right turn light is set in such a manner, please let me know. Meanwhile, always be ready to slam the brakes when you turn right towards Avenue 1.

70mai Smart Dash Cam Pro

It’s been several years since I got behind the wheel and drove without a dash cam. That has changed. I purchased the 70mai Smart Dash Cam Pro (Global Version) on 1st October for $79.90 through Lazada. It arrived today, four days later.

Now, I (somewhat) fudged up the installation of the electrostatic sticker. Still, running the wires up and along the car trims was a piece of cake. 70mai included a pry tool that you use to open a gap in your car trim for stashing the wires into. If I can do it, you can too.

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I renewed the COE for my Jazz GD1 for 5 years

Jack’s Jazz has had its COE renewed for 5 years. While I contemplated scraping the car, the joy of driving the Jazz proved too much of a pleasure that drove me to renew the COE–which by the way, can be done online–and I did just that. As we also know, a 5 year COE renewal basically spells the death penalty for the car after that period of time.

But hey, until the 15th year rolls by, I’ll carry on bumming around with the stylishly bland hatchback. So, here’s to another 4 years and 9 months of Jazzing around!

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