Changing Lanes

In march 2004, I joined a car forum. I was 17 years old, used to communicate online in SMS language, my English was dreadful (still is in some ways), made a few friends, quite a few enemies and made a fool of myself trying to argue with some people who were making fun of Islam. In the end I got banned.

Yesterday I met Sagaris, a friend I'd made on the forum who's here on vacation with his parents. It was good to at last meet him as I was unable to meet him when I was in the UK last year as he was busy driving across America in a mustang. Anyway decided to play a guide to him and Sanj (SJ's cousin brother) yesterday.

Was woken up by SJ at 5:45am as we had to leave by 6am. Managed to get out by 6:10am and headed off to Sheraton Deira to pick up Sagaris. Then picked up SJ and Sanj.

Sj wanted to take Sanj to the beach so we headed straight to Jumeirah beach residence.

After several boring minutes, I managed to drag them off to the Arenco building in Dubai Media City to enthrall both the tourists with a view from the 31st floor. After spending an hour or so there (that included 10mins of contradicting the receptionist who was comparing the London tube and the Dubai metro), we made our way to Al Reef Lebanese Bakery to munch on some cheese manakeesh. Sagaris wasn't feeling adventurous so he skipped it. Then we headed off to the the Textile market in Bur Dubai to show them the Dubai creek and Al Bastakiya area.
We then took an Abra ride to Deira, walked to the next abra station looking with awe at the men loading boxes bigger then themselves onto boats
Took the Abra back to Bur Dubai and briskly made our way to some air conditioning i.e. the Dubai Museum. This was my first time there after it was refurbished/upgraded. It wasn't very exciting and we got done with it in a mere 30 minutes.
We made our way next to the Al Aweer used car market being the car freaks me and Sagaris were. It was 38'C which meant it was quite hot for my fair skinned friend, but we still walked around for around half an hour making fun of a few Aston Martins, staring dreamily at a Red Ferrari 328 and getting tempted by some cheap mustangs.

After a quick stop over at a petrol pump to replenish ourself, we randomly drove into the industrial area of Sharjah where I pointed out some garages that sell pieces of cars and explained about the shady business where parts of different cars are put together. Something Sagaris found interesting and weird at the same time.

We made our way then to Khalid lagoon where Sagaris found the Blue souk (also known as Central market souq) quite interesting. We had even decided to stop and check it from the inside but a quick plan change had us driving down at the legal speed limit on the university road as we tried to figure out where the Old Car museum was. We managed to find it and started gawking at the huge collection of vintage cars. With a entrance fee of just AED3, it's a must for any car affectionate. Sagaris and me had a ball of a time checking and commenting on the cars.
Then it was time to head home. 7 hours and 200+kms of fun. Hopefully the next time I'll meet Sagaris, we'll be hurtling down in a mustang on some British country road...

Driving all the way to Sharjah to video the fire behind National paints seemed like a great idea yesterday. I don’t feel the same way about it anymore.

The place where I had parked and where I was standing was the area where the wind was taking all the smoke. Even though the smoke was quite high, there was some wet sticky soot falling over the area. It fell on me and my car. A quick bath made sure I was all clear but getting it off the car was a completely different story.

Started off by trying to clean it with water, then tried some soap and then tried some scratch removing car wax. None of it worked so decided to go for a car wash today. Told the cleaner about the soot and he tried to remove it with a liquid and then blasted the areas with water. He managed to get some of it off but there were still a lot of it left. I paid AED35 for the wash and AED15 as tip to the cleaner for trying.

Disappointed, I drove off to the Yellow Hat outlet in Nad al Hamar. Showed the sales guy my car and he said that it would be better if I showed the car to the detailing guy who then told me it would take ages to remove them all and that I should make a booking instead. Booking for external detailing done for tomorrow morning and it’s going to cost me AED340 (after a 15% discount).

Total cost AED390 (assuming I don’t tip the guy tomorrow)
Financial benefit from video AED0
Earnings this month AED350

Life’s good…

My lame effort at DSLR video.

I think going there was a bad idea cause I can feel my breathing getting worse....tonight is going to be a tough one for me. Atleast my morning corporate shoot went well...