Chris Saul's Blog

Sunday May 18, 2008

No too pricey...

Collected the RR today.

The oil leak was fixed easily, by replacing the oil filter - something was broken on it, hence the slight leak.

Wheels were balanced and the car test driven, so it looks like the vibration has gone. I still think it's pulling to the right slightly, which is irritating - I see no reason why this should still be happening on a car like this. Things weren't too expensive as there was nothing major to repair.

I'm driving it to Muscat on Monday for some customer meetings on Tues and Weds. A good five hour road trip each way should show whether the steering issue's fixed.

Fingers crossed this is the last issue for now. I'm getting tired of having the cars in the garage continually. I knew there'd be maintenance costs involved if we bought the RR, I just wish they'd occur conveniently around the time of each service, rather than randomly in between the usual 5,00Kmhs service interval... When it's working the car is simply beautiful to drive, so we'll stick with it for now, providing it behaves itself over the coming months. If it doesn't we'll bid a tearful farewell, write a rude letter to Land Rover and get a secondhand Nissan which will be boring but thoroughly dependable.

New visa time

It's that time again - my UAE residence visa is being renewed. August 8 will see my having been here for six years - look forward to another retrospective 'another year in Dubai post'!

When you renew your residence visa you take a blood test to ensure you don't have HIV, syphillis and one or two other things.

Each year I know full well that I don't have HIV (or anything else), but each year the worry kicks in. What if something hitherto unknown to medical science had happened and I was infected? It's ridiculous, but I can't get it out of my mind until I hear everything's fine.

I attribute this irrational fear to the terrifying AIDS awareness ads that ran in the UK in the 80s. You can get an idea of what they were like here. Pretty hard hitting. I expect they were pretty influential - they certainly frightened me!