Introducing...

Having been laid low for the past few days by my worsening cold, I had no way of getting into a proper Christmas celebration. This was compounded by fact that the weather also changed for the worse. On the 25th, a heavy fog set in which disrupted airport operations and as a result we suddenly had overnight visitors. My in-laws were to depart from Manila and should have transitted to San Francisco via HK. But because of the poor visibility in HK, their flight was held back and hence missed the onward connection. No problem with having visitors for Christmas but by the time they got to our flat it was late, the temperature was in the low teens and everyone could hear my coughing and sneezing throughout the place. Not the ideal formula for a restful night.

Fortunately, the fog lifted enough by the next morning to allow normal flight schedules to resume and so after Tina took them to the airport, the rest of the day was spent tidying up and then watching DVDs.

For some reason, the idea of coming up with a name for the car kept popping up in my head the whole time. Some of the more corny choices I thought of were RESty (for Restored; also probably the most obvious choice but reminded me of a former boss), RESurrecion (as in Car Resurrected), REServado (Reservations Needed), REStricto (Use Restricted to Jowin) and other even weirder variations. My cosmopolitan nature thought RamESh and RamsES exuded the required masculinity but in the end they were just too exotic for my taste. I wanted to stick to my method of having a name based on the plate's three letters but no matter how hard I tried, I just could not come up with anything appropriate.

And then this morning, while continuing to wallow in bed after waking up as is my usual practice, it suddenly hit me that the car will be called SERgio. Quite clever if I may say so myself. I'm still able to base the name on the plate's letters even though its in reverse and most importantly gives off a robust, macho image. Very fitting.

Sergio it will be then...