Pay up

It finally happened! After a solid two weeks of driving, I hit another car!  I'm doing all the things I think I should be doing - staying in my lane, driving slowly, staying on the left side of the road, but I just can't judge that turn to the left while I sit on the right side of the car.  

This lovely van pictured below was in front of me as I was beginning to turn left into a parking garage (taking Ellis to a dentist appointment); and I thought he was going to continue to move forward while I turned left into the parking garage, but I just couldn't clear that bumper. I hardly felt the hit. Do you see the right side of his back bumper? It's dented - by me. 

Just after I hit his van, I continued to pull into the parking garage, but only to the edge of the entrance, so that I could get out and talk with the owner of the van. But, as soon as he saw me moving in the direction of the garage, he started screaming at me in Cantonese (my windows were down because it's only November here and we have at least one more month before I can comfortably wear jeans). This is when I am thankful I can understand essentially nothing in Cantonese.  He left his car in the middle of the road (traffic was really heavy, but he didn't care) and walked over to my car. I told him, via hand motions, I was going to pull into the parking garage and park my car to get out of anyone's way. He started screaming again and pointing toward his van as if he had run in to similar trouble with other drivers like myself, but I just pulled away from him and parked my car. Ellis and I walked out toward the entrance to the parking garage where we saw a guard, so I asked for his help and he told me he didn't want to get involved and I should call the police. Nice. I kept walking toward the man in the van, who was clearly about to blow his top. He pointed to someone sitting in his van and this sweet looking woman smiled at me.

Miracle of miracles, this woman sitting in the back of the van (who was only with this lunatic because she had hired him for the day to move some items from one flat to another) SPOKE ENGLISH!  She looked at me and said, "He would like for me to translate for him." Great, I'm thinking, I got lots to translate to him, as well.  So I'm standing in the middle of the road with traffic going right by me and this man keeps telling me that I hit his car, as if I didn't know this.  The woman said we should call the police, but I just didn't see a call to the police going in my direction, so I offered to pay the man what he thought it might cost to repair his van. The woman translated and the man said $2000 HKD would fix his bumper, which is about $250 USD. 

I told this crazy man to pull his car into the parking area and I would get the money. So, after twenty minutes of holding up traffic, he got in his car and pulled it into the parking deck. I gave him the money  and then took a picture of his car. He asked me (through the lady) why I was taking the picture and I said I would might call the police later. I have no idea why I said that, but it made me feel somewhat better about handing a strange man $2000HKD. 

There was one bright spot to this experience - Ellis. As we walked up to his dentist appointment, he commented on the man's anger over this small dent in his van. He said, "Mom, we were just talking at school about people getting so upset over things that just don't really matter in life." Thank you Ellis.