How My Axia Car Relates to My Career — And The Psychology Behind It

Stereotypically in Malaysia, Perodua Axia is labeled as the cheapest car for university students, B40s, and underpaid workers. This car is an economical icon 🚗 that serves the purpose of getting you from point A to B. Despite the stereotypes, I drive one with the main character's energy 🔥. I am very proud 😎 to drive a 2016 Manual Transmission White Perodua Axia SE.

I named my Axia 小白 (Xiao Bai) literally means Lil' White

I am emotionally attached to this car and had no 🚫 plan to upgrade. Zettai ni! There will always be voices that tryna brainwash and influence me to upgrade to a better car. My aunt said the bigger, the more branded the vehicle will make you more respectable. Yes. I don't deny that we humans are mentally biased to associate the finer things in life with higher life status. My neighbor also compared me with my other neighbor that works as a petrol pump cashier but owns a Suzuki Swift. Meh, who cares? People care a lot about other people while lacking the self-care they need themselves.

Throughout my career, I aspire to be the underdog, just like my car.

Sketching my car while sipping some matcha latte.

If you look at it, Axia is a low-profile, humble car that drives mainly on the third/fourth lane steadily. Other drivers won't expect us to go fast, because they know that our cc is low and only permits us to go up to 130km/h while vibrating hard like a Nokia 3310. The lesser the expectation, the better the experience. I want to be low-profile and naïve-looking like my car.

Why? So the bosses and my career competitors will have low expectations of my potential — enabling me to strike hard and become super impactful during the times that I was least expected – depends on motivation (lol)

Hehe. But in real life, Aan Hamdani is easily noticeable and shamelessly loud due to my ENTP personality. If my car is a human, I imagined him as a short guy ±165cm that is most of the time invisible, and colleagues couldn't care less.

Cloud9 is my fav snack!

How I relate my driving experience with my working environment

I am a highly observant 👀 person —I am trained to observe bad UI previously. But non-career-wise, I am a very conservative kind of person. This is bad, but mostly what I observe is whether this particular person/connection has the potential and possibilities to make my day easier. But that's for humans. While driving to work every Thursday and Friday, my brain can't stop relating the cars I see with the working situations.

Some people drive big fast cars like BMW and Benz but can't even use their signal stick—kereta besar, otak kecik. This feels like someone having 'senior/manager/lead' in their title but still lacking the worth of that title.

Some people drive their car leisurely during peak hours. That is acceptable but please be on the 3rd or the 4th lane. This one relates to me like those colleagues who take too much unnecessary time completing their Jira tickets. They know they're getting paid the same, so why should they do jobs in a time-efficient manner.

Some people drive some slow/low cc/haggard-looking car on the rightest lane. I bet they've already floored the car but that's the fastest they can go, lol. In the end, they ended up becoming a blocker to some faster cars. This is what a team leader should be taken care of, to observe if there are any team members that are overloaded/struggling/burnout and do some proper mitigation shits.

Some people drive family-sized cars although they are commuting alone to work. TBH (I'm sorry for this unsolicited personal opinion), I despise single people buying SUV/MPV/4WD when their primary need is just to commute to work. Malaysian traffics have too many cars, and you only make it worse by driving a big car FOR ONE PAX ONLY. This is not space efficient. If you're single and rich enough, don't buy a bigger car to flaunt your net worth, instead, buy an expensive compact car or a coupe. If only Malaysia has good, timely, less-crampy trains and busses, I should've been one of the daily users already. Hehe, this one is just my personal vendetta, not related to any career shits.

Why manual transmission?

Personally, I enjoy 'The Processes' of doing something. The satisfaction of shifting gears to hold the momentum of speed while driving uphill thrills me. Changing the aperture and zooming manually on an analog SLR camera made me appreciate the photos more. Similar to my career – progressing on the career ladder is nice, but somehow, managing and supervising my juniors work would make me miss the process of doing the product design itself.

But deep down I know, I'm just being selfish. Heh.

Despite driving a small car, my Axia is sufficient enough for me

My car is my third house. I carry a lot of items with me anywhere. During bad times, I even WFC (Work From Car) – p.s: I am strongly against this, but that's the reality for my last job, whilst working for an agency company. I can even fit my road bike inside my Axia. THIS IS THE BEST PART of owning an Axia. It is very spacious, at least for me.

My car can fit these all.

The road bike size for reference.

My Axia is a car to take me to places, and also a mobile storeroom. Career-wise, don't you love it when you hire someone that's multi-talented. I used to be a generalist cause I can do it all, but nowadays, I don't want to be the 'Jack of all trades, master of none' anymore. I want to be a T-shaped designer. For the next job, I hope I can work somewhere that can make me truly focus on usability testing parts of the product.

For me, a fast car needs to be driven fast. Or else, you're just wasting the given potential. With great power, comes great responsibility. But I get it tho. To drive fast here in Malaysian traffic sounds a bit unrealistic. At least you need to drive it in the first lane to make every fuel drop combusted worth it.

Nevertheless, the only thing that matters is the driver behind the wheel.

Like I said earlier on, you can drive a Toyota GR Supra (my dream car, btw) but still being an L. Well, it depends on why you're buying/driving that car. Are you buying the car to enjoy the driving experience? Are you buying it because that car is what you can afford? Or you are driving that car to flex your social status and achievement in life? I'm the second one though. Perodua Axia was the only car I can afford with my first job's RM2,300 salary (2015). 7 years later, I'm still driving my Xiao Bai to avoid unnecessary liabilities and commitments.

I assume a good driver to be 70-30 a good employee.

Drive efficiently, and competently up to your car's potential (optimization)

Always have an ETA – estimation of arrival target (set goals to motivate you)

When your lane is congested, look up for openings in the other lanes (be proactive)

Utilize your brain while driving, with the right application of knowledge, you can overtake more expensive cars, save more fuel and you'll feel good (hehe)

By default, I'll prefer the shortest distance on the highway.

Lol, I don't want to write a lot. This one has been in my draft since Nov 2022. Next post, I'll be writing about my new hobby, analog photography. Ok, bye!