Archive for July, 2006
July 22nd, 2006
Assalam’alaikum
I haven’t been updating my blog recently because I’ve been so busy at work and then in the evenings I usually have to take my sister out.
I live for the weekends really. A full time job can be hectic but I’ll tell you something; It’s WAY better than any institute of higher education. Why you ask? Well you see, if you’re not in a position of responsibility, and I’m not, you can leave all your work and related worries behind at the office. But not at uni; there your work follows you wherever you go. Now I go home and just chill, nothing on my mind, nothing bothering me.. except my stomach. 
About the car.. I’ve bought one!!! 
It’s a 1998 Land Rover Discovery in olive green. I paid more than the market price but man it’s beautiful. It looks and sounds amazing, it’s engine is very smooth and there are no creaks or groans. But it does suffer from your typical Land Rover problems; It overheats when it’s stationary with the air conditioner on and when I go over a few MPHs it feels like I’m driving a marshmallow. This car has the biggest turning circle in the history of mankind and add to that a front bumper that extends way beyond the front of the hood and a huge bull bar that you can’t see from the cockpit and you have a BIG BIG problem. I’ve learnt to avoid taking U turns and I’ve had to give up my fast food habit because it finds it difficult to navigate the treacherous obstacle course that is the modern fast food restaurant drive thru. It’s steering feels very heavy when the car’s slow and much too light and wobbly at speed, the brakes feel as if they’ve come off a 1980 Royal Enfield Bullet and the accelerator pedal has more travel than an oil well derrick.
But I love it, it’s so amazing to drive, so fun, so brilliantly awesome. The V8 makes a lusty sound that just makes me want to keep the pedal floored the whole time. The sound is not raspy like the Japanese cars nor is it the deep growl of the American V8s, it’s more of a smooth throaty murmur.
I need a few parts for it and knowing that the dealer here has the most outrageous profit margins ever, I’m relying on our dear brother yusuf a.k.a ‘heartsofgreenbirds’ to get them for me. I asked him to find a pair of rear light guards (pic here as well) and he did… in a scrap yard. The only problem is that the guy at the yard wants sixty quid for them, 60 QUID! That’s almost as much as Land Rover charges for brand new ones. I also need fabric floor mats for the front rows, rubber floor mat for the load space, leather gaiter for my 4WD transfer case gear stick and hand brake and a cup holder tray. Apart from the OEM stuff I need a compass, altimeter, thermometer and clock all rolled into one; preferably something that has a backlight and connects to the mains. So if anyone can procure these parts for me I would greatly appreciate it; my budget for everything is about 60 quid.
I also intend to buy running boards, roof rail, fog lights, search lights, CB radio and a 4-6 ft antenna. I’m also thinking of buying a good winch for when I get bogged down in the sand; the only problem is that when you’re in the desert there’s not much you can do with a winch because there’s nothing to latch the towing strap onto so I think I’ll leave that for the last.
And don’t think for a moment that I’ll be wasting money on brand new parts, no… I buy a lot of parts from the scrap yard. Saudi Arabia has one of the highest accident rates in the world and many of them are serious. That means there are tons of cars just lying around in junk yards, waiting for their parts to be picked clean by vultures such as myself. I obviously don’t buy everything from there; just cosmetic stuff or accessories like spoilers, alloy wheels, bumpers, roof racks, running boards etc… I make sure that the parts are very clean or at least can be fixed so that they don’t look too old. The very good thing is that two of the three cars I’ve had have been cars which not many people drive because they’re generally expensive to maintain, that means I can easily get the parts I need because I’m one of the only few vultures who are interested in that car. HAH!
July 14th, 2006
Assalam’alaikum
I need to buy a car within a week because I destroyed my old car.
The gearbox is gone and the engine, where it meets the gearbox, has deformed and leaks oil. The suspension is not very far from collapsing, the front axle has bent and the steering wheel… that’s a very long story. And all of this can be attributed to my brilliant driving style.
And so I need to buy a new car sometime within the next few days. I travel a lot and also do a bit of offroading so I need something that’s comfortable, reliable AND capable. Not a very tall order; there’s the Nissan Patrol, Landcruiser, LX470 (which is really just a landcruiser in slightly different clothes), G55 and I can’t think of any others… but they’re all very expensive cars and don’t lose much of their value over time. I can probably buy a five year old S600 for less than how much it’ll cost me to buy a Landcruiser from the same year. Keep in mind that a brand new S600 costs almost 3 to 4 times as much as the Landcruiser.
After careful consideration I narrowed my choice down to a second hand car. From second hand cars I had the Mercedes ML, Range Rover (old shape) and the Land Rover Discovery (Series II). I couldn’t buy a Merc because although it’s sort of comfortable car it’s not exactly capable and considering traditional Merc “reliability” I decided I wouldn’t enjoy being stuck in the desert because the engine had fallen out.
The Range Rover is a very good car but in my budget I would only be able to buy the old shape and compared to the new one it looks extremely dated. It also has so much character that it would really hurt to take it into the desert.
And that left me with the disco, series II, 99-02 year models specifically. I’m looking for one with the 4.3 V8 and all the option. The 99-02 models because they’d be cheaper than the 03-04 year models but exactly the same except for the front lights, grill and bumper; all of which can easily be upgraded. The 03-04 also have a newer 4.6 V8 which I can try to live without. All that said, the Disco is not without it’s problems, I’ll have to spend a lot of time and effort making it desert worthy and I also hear that the Series II discos are not very reliable. Any thoughts? Would I perhaps be better off if I bought a Series I disco instead of the II? HELP!
And before you mention it, I don’t particularly care about mileage nor about how it handles in the corners. As long as it doesn’t try to kill me everytime I go over 100 mph I’m fine.
July 5th, 2006
Britons see US as vulgar empire builder
Britons have never had such a low opinion of the leadership of the United States, a YouGov poll shows.
As Americans prepare to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence tomorrow, the poll found that only 12 per cent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975.
Most Britons see America as a cruel, vulgar, arrogant society, riven by class and racism, crime-ridden, obsessed with money and led by an incompetent hypocrite.
American troops are failing either to win “hearts and minds” in Iraq or bring democracy to that country.
More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests.
A spokesman for the American embassy said that the poll’s findings were contradicted by its own surveys.
“We question the judgment of anyone who asserts the world would be a better place with Saddam still terrorizing his own nation and threatening people well beyond Iraq’s borders.
“With respect to the poll’s assertions about American society, we bear some of the blame for not successfully communicating America’s extraordinary dynamism.
“But frankly, so do you [the British press].”
By Ben Fenton
The TelegraphÂ
July 4th, 2006
Assalam’alaikum
The place where I work…
Ok, 1 is the main IDB building and where I got my first cubicle. 2 has the ICIEC offices and this is where I am currently, Number 4 has the ICD offices and Number three I don’t remember.
July 2nd, 2006
Assalam’alaikum
I’m a trainee at IDB and I expect to be there for three whole months. Well, technically at IDB because although I’m on their payroll they’ve sent me to ICIEC, which is an investment and export credit insurance corporation within the IDB group. IDB is spinning out it’s different units into smaller corporations so that if one collapses the rest won’t go down with it. Right now they’re four and they’ve just approved a plan to demerge another unit.
Every year IDB selects around a dozen students for it’s summer training programme and sends them to it’s various departments. The candidates are selected a month before summer starts and the departments make a detailed programme on the various activities the traineee is going to undertake.
I hadn’t applied until a week after all the trainees started work, mainly because I had intended to take a few summer courses at my college in a bid to graduate six months ahead of schedule. But I needed a break after the end of my last semester so I didn’t bother registering for the courses; I reasoned that it would be better if I registered a week after the summer semester started, that way I wouldn’t eat into my allowed absences (go over that and you get an “Absent faliure”). That is pure genius but sadly the college administration figured someone would try this trick so they made it impossible to register after a certain period, which,in my case, had elapsed a few days before I managed to drag my sorry carcass to college.
So there I was, stuck, with no where to go. So I thought ‘Why not do your co op and get your six credits now?’. I went to the career center and asked them to print me a letter explaining that I needed to do 12 weeks internship before I get my degree and then I gave it to my dad who gave to to the HR guy at IDB. He sent it to the comitte and two days after I applied, my appointment was approved and the day after that they called me.
My case was so weird that I actually had to take with me the memo from HR to the IT department. They had no idea I was coming. They were confused and distraught “Oh! We haven’t prepared anything for you!” “We haven’t made a training plan” “We haven’t arranged a room for you” etc… So they quickly found me a nice big cubicle with an opaque glass door and got me settled there… for a while. After a few hours the IT head asked me if I wanted to stay there or go somewhere else, like the OMD (Organisation and Management Development Office). He assured me that they would love to have me there (yea right!) but my time would be better spent if I trained at OMD for a few weeks and then at IT for a few weeks. I agreed but OMD refused saying that they already had one trainee and couldn’t take on another one. Then the HR guy got a brilliant idea, why not send me to ICIEC, after all they need people for a new project they’re working on. I agreed.
And here I am, on the fifth floor of the ICIEC building, sitting in a room with three other guys. BAH!
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