For the first time in over two decades, I am no longer a driver. Faced with spiking petrol prices and a prospective bill for much-needed repairs, I finally donated my Toyota Corolla to an organisation that takes care of orphans.
It's an odd feeling to be on this side of being green. Without a car, my sense of time and space has been immediately altered. What was once a matter of expediency is now an effortful navigation.
'I'll be there in 15 minutes!' I used to tell a good friend who once lived nearby but who now resides, without a car, at an inconvenient distance. Going to my favourite Asian food market suddenly has turned into another arduous chore: once a 30-minute event, it has become a two-hour ordeal, with bags in hands, and bus transfers.
Indeed, when I came to San Francisco from Vietnam with my family at the end of the Vietnam war, I remember such delight when my older brother bought his first car; as we cruised the streets at night, it felt as if we were becoming Americans.
The automobile, after all, is intrinsically American, and owning one determines how we arrange our daily lives.
For immigrants, the car is the first thing we buy before the house. Vietnamese in Vietnam marvel at the BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes that their relatives drive in America, and no doubt the photos sent home cause many to dream of a life of luxury in the US. It seems a natural progression that the housing crisis should quickly lend itself to a car crisis. Both were readily available at one time, with easy loans and cheap fuel. But, now, with skyrocketing petrol prices and faltering mortgages, many have had to give up one in order to keep the other.