the universe unfolds

We took the big step on Tuesday of putting down a deposit for a shiny new car. We were told that it would be registered and ready to drive away on Thursday. We've been here long enough to know that that wasn't going to happen. This is the middle east. Things don't work like that, and of course they didn't work like that.

The car dealer can get much cheaper finance through the banks than we can, so we left it in his hands to organise that. Well, the first three banks he tried rejected us. Why, you ask? The problem is that we've got a joint bank account and our bank statements list K's name first. It shows his Surname, his first name, his middle name and then the statement says '& Mrs' but it doesn't get any further. So my income is going into the account, but my name isn't on the statements. The other banks don't like it and they say they'll only give us the finance if the account is in my name only! Sigh! We haven't heard back from the 4th bank yet. The 4th bank is our own bank, surely they won't reject it ... ? I guess we'll hear the next instalment of that saga on Sunday.

There is another spanner in the works ... of course. To get a loan you need to have a salary statement from your employer. I got one of those a while back when we first started thinking seriously about getting a car. The catch is that the salary statement can't be more than 30 days old. Mine was 28 days old on Tuesday when we put down the deposit on the car. It was 30 days old on Thursday. So I'm guessing that the next thing that will happen is that our own bank will approve the loan pending a current salary statement. The last one took me almost two weeks to get by the time the employer had lost my application for it and I'd reapplied, then they'd given me one with wrong information and finally 14 days later I got the right one.

So I've got a car in waiting, but I don't expect to see it in my carport any time soon!

What drove us to finally make a move to get a car was our utter annoyance at the hire cars we were getting. The one we've got now reeks of cigarette smoke. As soon as you put the a/c on there's a huge dose of eau de fag. The car doesn't have central locking let alone keyless entry ... how did we ever survive without those necessities? The auto gear shift is clunky, there are scratches all over the body and to top it off it costs Dhs 200 more than we were paying when we left for hols a few weeks ago.

If the universe unfolds such that our shiny new car never actually gets to us, we'll let it rest there and say it wasn't meant to be and we'll probably keep hiring for a bit ... or maybe we'll just walk everywhere! But, all being well I'm hoping to be the proud owner of the new beast by week after next, or the week after that. Inshallah.