Steff and nonsense

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope that Santa brings you everything you wished for (unless you're just being greedy, then it'll serve you right if he doesn't!)
If your Christmas Cracker doesn't have a great joke in it, then read my entry in Wikipedia...the bit under 'Personal'. It's hilarious!
Have a great day with lots of sprouts,
Love
Wonky
xxx

It chucked it down all weekend, I was sick for most of Saturday, but it was still a great weekend.
My belongings all arrived, intact, and I finally got my little car. It is beautiful! I stopped on the way home to get some milk, and the little scallies stopped loitering outside the shop to come over and say, "wow....cooool car...".
No one ever said that about my 12 year-old Astra.

I'm nearly the proud owner of a new car. 'Nearly', notice, not quite, but it's only taken 256,000 stages, which is pretty good here...

Settle yourself down with a cup of tea, and I'll explain how it can take so long:

First you negotiate a price (in my case this took several days), and get a written quote from the dealer. You then take this quote to your work, where they give you 2 forms, both in Arabic, so I've no idea what they say, and you take these back to the garage.
Next you have to arrange a bank loan. The bank man will meet you somewhere to have a cup of sweet Arabic tea and he helps you fill in a form. Then he'll go away and think about life for a while, before calling the garage to let them know you've been approved (or not, if you're unlucky)...or in my case telling me the bank had lost all my details and asking me to fax them over again...

Still following? We're not there yet...

Then you have to go back to the garage and arrange the insurance. My dealer didn't have any way of taking a credit card payment, so I had to disappear off and get several thousand Riyals of cash from the nearest drive-thru ATM, pretending I was in a car (which was obviously still in the garage), and take that back to him.
Now I'm just waiting for the registration to happen, but as it's Friday it won't happen until Saturday...in shallah.

So hopefully this weekend I will have a completely impractical sports car and the first time I go over a speed bump, I'll probably take the exhaust off, but still...if I can't have a completely impractical car here, where can I?!

Right, that's it. I've now been here 6 weeks, and I've still only got with me the contents of my suitcase. It's finally time to take the plunge and get my belongings flown over. Today they're starting their exciting journey from Wembley, hopefully in this general direction. However, Doha airport is still rather backlogged, so I wonder if they'll ever get to me.
Guess I'm going to find out...

I would like to say a massive thank you to the person who sent me the huge box of PG Tips which arrived today...however, as you didn't write your name on it, I've no idea who you are!!!
Whoever you are, you can be sure that every last drop will go to a good home - me!

Finally the puddles are beginning to dry up after the torrential rain we saw on Friday...and guess what? There's more rain forecast for tomorrow. My parents are visiting this weekend. I don't think they'll be impressed if they come to the desert and it does nothing but rain...oh hang on, that's what's happened to me!
Still, I'll be very pleased to see them, they're bringing me a suitcase full of things including some table lamps and photo frames etc. I don't think i'll tell them that I just found a Next with a homewares section...
Oops.
They also insisted on bringing a load of Christmas cards for me to write, which they are then going to take them back to Blighty to post. It sounds to me like an elaborate plan to make sure they get theirs!

It's throwning it down, but I'm no longer surprised. With the exception of yesterday, it's rained every single day this week. I'm beginning to think that I've been drugged and I'm not in the Middle East at all. Three very scarey words have just entered my head "The", "Show" and "Truman"...