About the car
Jan. 22nd, 2004 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jdmkleinAs with everything (nearly) else in this country, if one's car needs work one must decide what, exactly is wrong with it before taking it into the shop. The reason for that is, shops are specialized. *
There is the car electrical shop, who also works on air conditioning units. Now, this time of year, the a/c isn't so important, but come April, driving would quickly become very uncomfortable. If you want to have the oil changed, you go to the oil changing shop, this shop also does transmission fluid changing, if the transmission fluid changer is there.
Then there is the brake shop. But if you need new pads or anything else, you must bring them. If the brake man finds something else wrong, say a rotor is broken, he will wait for you to come to pick up your car, fully expecting it to be completed and tell you it isn't because the rotor needs to be replaced. It doesn't matter if you have given him your phone numbers and you ask him to call if there is anything else wrong, and he says he will. He won't. It just isn't done.
Then there is the front end aligning shop. This is a good deal, because generally front end aligning shops also sell tires. Funny thing about tires. They generally need to be balanced before being put on the car. A Kuwaiti driving a porsche cabrera will spend the equivalent of $200 per tire, for four new ones, but says 1 dinar (about $3.00 US) is too much to spend to have them balanced. Go figure. And it seems Americans and some Europeans are the only groups of people who believe in keeping a spare tire in the trunk of the car. Let me qualify that even more, an air-filled spare tire. It is not an uncommon sight on any road in Kuwait to see a car, anything from a Benz to a Toyota to be sitting along side the road on a scissor jack on three wheels because both the tire on the car and the one in the trunk, if indeed there is one in the trunk, are both flat.
Then there is Jahra. Jahra is an area in Kuwait, very nearly the last bastion of civilization before the desert. There is no shopping in Jahra, except for the cooperative which has a market and a pharmacy and a couple other small shops. The big draw for me in Jahra is the scrap yard. It is the greatest thing since DX gasoline. i know of no other car junk yard in the world that has wrecked car boutiques. If you own a Ford, you go to the Jahra scrap yard and drive down the desert roads looking for the Ford boutique. You go in and haggle with the man for the part you want and then you walk through the rows of stacks of cars looking for the right year and model and hoping that when you find it, the part you want was not part of the wreckage. If you have a Volvo, however, you will be laughed right out of the yard, if you walk into a Chevy boutique and ask for a Volvo part. And, a neat thing about the scrap yard????? Once when Master and i were there, the man who haggled with Master about the part said he was Al-Qaida. We had to go back out there again, shortly after 9/11 and the man was gone. Gotta wonder if he really was Al-Qaida.
i love the scrap yard. When we go to the scrap yard, Master always takes me out to lunch. Jahra is about a 90 minute drive from us, so it is not a trip made lightly. Just to make it worth the trip, i always try to break something on my car so we have at least two things to get there. And then Master takes me to the little bucalla (store) that has an Iranian bread bakery. He buys me some bread, and the Kuwaiti equivalent of a jug of wine, water, and once in awhile an apple and that is lunch. The bread is killer, hot from the oven, chewy, and delicious. And cheap. The whole thing, for both of us, way less than 1 dinar. i am so easily satisfied.
Oh, and the car paint place. And the engine working on shop.
The car painting place Master uses, and He is on a first name basis with the man, i think, is run by a lesbianese (Lebanese) man with red hair. He is quite good, and very conscientious. The engine working on shop is a sore spot with Master. He found a good mechanic, and began to recommend the man to friends. The mechanic hired other people to help with all the new business, and, true to the mindset in this part of the world, went for cheap. If the man knew which end of the screwdriver screwed, he was hired. Master took His car in for a tune up, and brought it back needing a new battery, new wiper blades, and two new engine mounts. Not only were the people the original mechanic hired not mechanics, it seems they were thieves to boot. Now Master has a new mechanic, and He worries that since He won't tell anybody about the new guy, the new guy may not make enough money to keep his shop open. And Master will have to break in a new new mechanic. And he really isn't a mechanic. By that i mean, he hasn't got any kind of education for mechanics. Not even an apprenticeship type of thing. He is a tinkerer, who gets lucky an inordinate number of times.
You may ask "Aren't there dealerships with service centers?" Of course silly rabbit. And they charge American prices. By that i mean, if some part is marked $10.50 US, the dealership will charge 10 dinars 500 fils. Nearly a 300% markup. If we drove Benz' or Beemers or Mazzirattis or Porsches, that would mean we were wealthy enough to not care if the company gets those kinds of prices. Unfortunately we aren't and we do. So, if either car needs something, we go to the car boutiques in Jahra, or buy knock off parts that have been repackaged in used auto parts boxes.
*(Some or all or none of this may be true. It is up to you to decide. i am the story teller, and it is my perogative to add an embellishment here and there to make the story better. But the Al-Qaida guy is the honest to Allah truth.)
and just to make it interesting,yet another Kar Krash in Kuwait
http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/masterjamesslut/detail?.dir=/ljalbum&.dnm=wrong+side+of+the+road+and+light+pole.jpg
There is the car electrical shop, who also works on air conditioning units. Now, this time of year, the a/c isn't so important, but come April, driving would quickly become very uncomfortable. If you want to have the oil changed, you go to the oil changing shop, this shop also does transmission fluid changing, if the transmission fluid changer is there.
Then there is the brake shop. But if you need new pads or anything else, you must bring them. If the brake man finds something else wrong, say a rotor is broken, he will wait for you to come to pick up your car, fully expecting it to be completed and tell you it isn't because the rotor needs to be replaced. It doesn't matter if you have given him your phone numbers and you ask him to call if there is anything else wrong, and he says he will. He won't. It just isn't done.
Then there is the front end aligning shop. This is a good deal, because generally front end aligning shops also sell tires. Funny thing about tires. They generally need to be balanced before being put on the car. A Kuwaiti driving a porsche cabrera will spend the equivalent of $200 per tire, for four new ones, but says 1 dinar (about $3.00 US) is too much to spend to have them balanced. Go figure. And it seems Americans and some Europeans are the only groups of people who believe in keeping a spare tire in the trunk of the car. Let me qualify that even more, an air-filled spare tire. It is not an uncommon sight on any road in Kuwait to see a car, anything from a Benz to a Toyota to be sitting along side the road on a scissor jack on three wheels because both the tire on the car and the one in the trunk, if indeed there is one in the trunk, are both flat.
Then there is Jahra. Jahra is an area in Kuwait, very nearly the last bastion of civilization before the desert. There is no shopping in Jahra, except for the cooperative which has a market and a pharmacy and a couple other small shops. The big draw for me in Jahra is the scrap yard. It is the greatest thing since DX gasoline. i know of no other car junk yard in the world that has wrecked car boutiques. If you own a Ford, you go to the Jahra scrap yard and drive down the desert roads looking for the Ford boutique. You go in and haggle with the man for the part you want and then you walk through the rows of stacks of cars looking for the right year and model and hoping that when you find it, the part you want was not part of the wreckage. If you have a Volvo, however, you will be laughed right out of the yard, if you walk into a Chevy boutique and ask for a Volvo part. And, a neat thing about the scrap yard????? Once when Master and i were there, the man who haggled with Master about the part said he was Al-Qaida. We had to go back out there again, shortly after 9/11 and the man was gone. Gotta wonder if he really was Al-Qaida.
i love the scrap yard. When we go to the scrap yard, Master always takes me out to lunch. Jahra is about a 90 minute drive from us, so it is not a trip made lightly. Just to make it worth the trip, i always try to break something on my car so we have at least two things to get there. And then Master takes me to the little bucalla (store) that has an Iranian bread bakery. He buys me some bread, and the Kuwaiti equivalent of a jug of wine, water, and once in awhile an apple and that is lunch. The bread is killer, hot from the oven, chewy, and delicious. And cheap. The whole thing, for both of us, way less than 1 dinar. i am so easily satisfied.
Oh, and the car paint place. And the engine working on shop.
The car painting place Master uses, and He is on a first name basis with the man, i think, is run by a lesbianese (Lebanese) man with red hair. He is quite good, and very conscientious. The engine working on shop is a sore spot with Master. He found a good mechanic, and began to recommend the man to friends. The mechanic hired other people to help with all the new business, and, true to the mindset in this part of the world, went for cheap. If the man knew which end of the screwdriver screwed, he was hired. Master took His car in for a tune up, and brought it back needing a new battery, new wiper blades, and two new engine mounts. Not only were the people the original mechanic hired not mechanics, it seems they were thieves to boot. Now Master has a new mechanic, and He worries that since He won't tell anybody about the new guy, the new guy may not make enough money to keep his shop open. And Master will have to break in a new new mechanic. And he really isn't a mechanic. By that i mean, he hasn't got any kind of education for mechanics. Not even an apprenticeship type of thing. He is a tinkerer, who gets lucky an inordinate number of times.
You may ask "Aren't there dealerships with service centers?" Of course silly rabbit. And they charge American prices. By that i mean, if some part is marked $10.50 US, the dealership will charge 10 dinars 500 fils. Nearly a 300% markup. If we drove Benz' or Beemers or Mazzirattis or Porsches, that would mean we were wealthy enough to not care if the company gets those kinds of prices. Unfortunately we aren't and we do. So, if either car needs something, we go to the car boutiques in Jahra, or buy knock off parts that have been repackaged in used auto parts boxes.
*(Some or all or none of this may be true. It is up to you to decide. i am the story teller, and it is my perogative to add an embellishment here and there to make the story better. But the Al-Qaida guy is the honest to Allah truth.)
and just to make it interesting,yet another Kar Krash in Kuwait
http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/masterjamesslut/detail?.dir=/ljalbum&.dnm=wrong+side+of+the+road+and+light+pole.jpg
