car shopping

Over the past week I've been looking at new cars. My employer gives new hires a car allowance (equivalent of up to $30,000 USD). I'm slated to pass probation in a few days which means that I can qualify for that four year interest free loan. I've looked at the Mazda 6, Honda, Subaru, Mitsubishi and last but not least - Volvo. I liked the 2007 Mazda 6 four door hatchback as it has much storage room. The engine is only a four cylinder as the V6 is not offered in the Gulf. Price is about 18,000 under the car allowance limit and the car was loaded with options. But the ride wouldn't be really smooth and expats here have told me that the car doesn't have a strong resale value. I couldn't test drive it as they had no 06 models left and only one 07 model in the showroom.

The Mitsubishi Outlander didn't look too bad but it's classed as an SUV which we decided not to buy. Honda had no cars to test drive when I visited and the new Accords are not cheap. Ditto with Subaru which also has poor resale value. People here love Toyotas. I've been told that for safety from all the idiotic drivers that it is smart to drive an SUV. Dubai Police recorded over 900,000 traffic violations over the last eight months. That works out to 157 an hour! Sixty-three percent of those were recorded by radar. I was still thinking of looking at stationwagons but there aren't too many models here to choose from.

So I naturally turned to Volvo as I've driven them most of my life. I loved my old Volvo Max despite the mechanical problems that it had. It was a heavy car with comfortable seats and was great for cruising. So I decided to test drive a 2007 V70 stationwagon. It's got the venerable 5 cylinder 170 hourspower engine and 17 inch mags. Despite being owned by Ford the car still has the Volvo feel. We bargained the price down to 106,000 Dirham which is 6,000 over my limit. I need to go back and do some more negotiating. One of the best sites for looking at new and used cars here is Drive Arabia.

We tried unsuccessfully to get our UAE driving permit last week. We discovered that the Canadian Embassy requires Arabic translations of your driver's license to be stamped by the embassy. Plus if you license is less than one year old then you may be required to take a driving test first. I got my Alberta drivers's license in April and I stupidly didn't keep my Florida driver's license number so I may end up having to take the test. I'd like to get my license and buy a car within the next two weeks before Ramadan starts. The month long religious holiday makes for strange business hours and some people not wanting to work much (especially the poor Muslims who are fasting all day). I paid $7.00 USD and watched a Canadian Football League (CFL) game online yesterday. The CFL seems to have a new broadband service for this season so I will take advantage of it. Now if only the Edmonton Oilers hockey team could offer the same thing as the new season starts in a month!

Darcy and I created a video tour of our apartment but the files are a bit large. The Mac imovie software can compact it down to a maximum of 10 MB and our first year honeymoon viedo was well under that. But it would be nice to post a link to video somewhere. Unfortunately Blogger doesn't seem to offer that service so we'll check around for other sites. Using our digital cameras and Mac are easy to use to make videos but we'll likely get a camcorder at some point....