My new ride

Found out that fixing my old car won't be worth it. I had never imagined that replacing a blown head gasket would cost me around £500/. I plan to put it up on eBay under "spares or repair". I would be lucky to get a few hundred pounds. However, I plan to remove the new tyres I fitted quite recently and replace them with older ones, remove the car stereo (I already have a buyer) and drain the fuel (I had a full tank when I set out on my journey on the unfortunate day my car broke down.

Anyway, after a few frustrating days of searching for a used car I liked, (read "Buying a used car - my experience 1" and "Buying a used car - my experience with Station Garage") I finally bought a Volvo S40. It won't win any award for good looks nor is it the best in terms of performance but it is still in great condition for it's age and was within our budget. Here's hoping (and praying) that it would not give us any problems.





It is slightly bigger than my old car and as our old car was a hatchback, I have to be careful with side parking and get used to the fact that this car has a boot. The light also comes on automatically when I start the car (even during the day). Initially, I thought that it was a defect until I looked it up on the web and found out that it is a safety feature. YOU CAN'T TURN THE DAMN HEADLIGHTS OFF.

Now that I think of it, I used to get annoyed with the guys who have their car headlights on during the daytime. Now I am one of them.

Changing currency

Planning for our trip to France gave me a good lesson in changing currency. I went around a few travel agencies and the post office as well. I ultimately found that the best deal is that offered by Marks and Spencer
They don't charge any commission on foreign currency and only 1% on sterling travellers' cheques. I went to the M & S outlet at Arena park near my house and got €245 for £200.36 (@ rate of 1.2228).

A lot of people tend to change currency in banks but ore often than not, their rates are not the best. Doing some research, I learnt that the worst rates are those offered by those money changers operating from small kiosks.

I too did make some mistakes on the way and bought travellers cheques worth £500 from the post office a few days before that. They charged me £7 pounds as commission.

If you are interested in currency Forex trading, do check out my friend Ahrasis' blog: "Forex Profiteer".

Ryanair to La Rochelle - Part 2

What was really disappointing about yesterday's events was that we missed the plane by just 10 minutes. Ryanair's FAQ says:

Ryanair flights check-In closes strictly at 40 minutes prior to the scheduled flight departure time

Had we left immediately from Kettering using a Taxi and not waited for our landlord to pick us up, we might have been able to make it. It would have cost us much less than the £200 we had to pay for the tickets for the next flight. That is not including the cot of the hotel for the night.

We might have had we known about this. Unfortunately Ryanair doesn't provide a customer contact number and we had no chance of contacting them. Trying to search on the net using my mobile also gave me no clues. Only found out about it after going through their website today.

Thinking about this really makes me angry. There is a saying "Pay peanuts, get monekys". However, I know that is not always true and we can get greats bargains without paying an arm and a leg. Sad to say but Ryanair seems to prove the sayign right. Makes me really appreciate Air Asia's service. Whatever people say, they are way better than Ryanair.

Ryanair to La Rochelle

I have never flown on Ryanair and we were supposed to fly with them to La Rochelle. I say "supposed to" because we never made it there. I am actually typing this from my house in Coventry. I guess I am lucky because I nearly died today. If it sounds dramatic, it isn't.

We started off around 2pm from our house in Coventry on our way to Standsted airport. As we were about to go off from M6 to A14, I suddenly saw this truck on my left slowing inching towards me. I was in the middle lane and I was well within my lane. The truck continued overtaking the truck in front and was going to hit me. I moved to the right. All this happened in a few seconds and I didn't even have time to horn. I think the driver didn't see me but he actually nudged me into the fast lane. At the speed we were going I almost hit the metallic road divider. Fortunately there wasn't any car in the fast lane or there would have been a major accident today involving our family.

I overtook the truck and gave a few angry bursts of my horn but it just drove away as if nothing had happened. Stopping later along the A14 I actually noticed scratches on the front passenger door meaning it had actually scrapped me. That's not the end of the story. A few miles later I started hearing some noises coming from the engine and experienced a loss of power. I also noticed the temperature gauge rising. Before long smoke started pouring from underneath the car bonnet. The engine died and I used the momentum of the car to pull over to the hard shoulder.


The scratch

Called up the RAC and had a hard time describing our location. Fortunately I suddenly realised we had our TomTom and was able to tell them our rough location. They told us that their roadside recovery vehicle would be with us in about an hour. The place we had stopped was not the ideal of place as it was overgrown and sloping down into some wheat fields. So we took some of the stuff and moved to the parking area about 200 yards away.

The RAC guy arrived about half an hour later and found out that the engine had blown a gasket and the coolant was flowing out the exhaust. He ultimately towed us to the Premier Inn Hotel in Kettering. I had tried calling a few guys but the only one I got through was our landlord. We had hoped that we would be able to reach the airport in time as the flight was at 7:30pm while the RAC guys towed our car back home.

To cut a long story short, with the help of our landlord we finally reached the airport around 7pm and as expected, the Ryanair guys had closed the counter. The next flight was tomorrow same time but we would have to pay £50 pounds each for four of us. We were tempted to take the tickets but that would mean staying at a hotel nearby. The cheapest rates for a hotel nearby was £185 for a family room without breakfast. That was it. We finally decided to go back home.

I never got the chance to fly Ryanair and as for La Rochelle, maybe later one day.

It was tiring and sad but I am glad that we came back home alive. I am also really lucky to have such a great landlord. Thanks for everything Sajad.

Online shopping wiki

Wikis rank as one of the most important innovations on the web. These are sites that allow anyone to contribute or modify content. Of course the most famous example is Wikipedia. However, I am sure that not many people have heard about ShopWiki. ShopWiki is a revolutionary online shopping search engine combined with a wiki contributed by consumers.

Normally if I was looking for a product, I would do a search on Google, read reviews on various sites and then compare prices offered on various e-commerce sites.

Traditional comparison sites usually lists sites that have paid to be listed on the site or carry a limited number of brands. Thus, I might have to go to several sites to get the best deal. In comparison ShopWiki does not sell any products themselves and doesn’t charge retailers to include their products in the search results. You can literally find anything and everything for sale on this site and the best deals. Apparently ShopWiki actively crawls more than 180,000 online store.

Guide to Sculptures at the University of Warwick

Among the first things you will notice when you walk around the University of Warwick campus are the sculptures scattered at different locations across the campus. It's quite interesting and we often play games guessing what they are meant to represent.

Here are a few samples:


Let's Not Be Stupid by Richard Deacon

This is the most visible. In front of the Rootes Building and near the bus stands. Looks like giant handcuffs.


Flayed Stone III by Peter Randall

Near car park 7. Bad model of a giant's brain.


Grown in the Field by Avtarjeet Dhanjal

Social Studies Building. Screws coming out of the grass.


White Koan by Liliane Lijn

In front of the Warwick Art's Centre. Yes, It's an inverted white cone.


Behind the Social Studies Building, Warwick Business School

Ahem?

There are a few more but I didn't get the chance to take pictures. Maybe later.

Also visit the University of Warwick's "Sculptures page" for more information on each piece of art.

Lighting can transform your house

A few days back, a family friend dropped by our house and we ultimately got down to talking about the house rentals and how they are going up in Coventry and I guess all over the UK for that matter even though house prices have dropped.

We then got down to talking about the condition of the houses we live in. They have just moved in to a newly refurbished house and how happy they were with the condition of the new house. The only thing they didn't like were the home lighting. Their landlord just left it up to them to fix their own. They were admiring our light fittings which we had bought from Ikea and they were surprised how cheap they were.

Talking about lighting, do check out Farreys.com, an international wholesale hardware company which is based in Florida. I was amazed at the choice of indoor and outdoor light fixtures on their site which are available in a wide range of styles. These products come from some of the top manufacturers specialised in lighting but at really low prices.

Lighting fixtures can completely transform the look and feel of each room in your house. For example, If you have a big rooms, you might consider having chandeliers fitted. Somehow, the right chandeliers of your choice ranging from contemporary to modern can give a distinct look to a room. Unfortunately, the rooms in our house are too small to pull off such a look sucessfully.