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In Dubai, all cars are encouraged to be taken for service at every 5000KM, and if you fail to do so, your warranty is void. My car was just at Service before purchased, but as I found the AC not cooling enough, I took it to Nissan for a checkup.

Infiniti being the high end Nissan much like Lexus for Toyota, has a different treatment at the Service center. I was serviced first, and a waiter showed up with a selection of cold drinks to make the wait more confortable. They also assured me that I wont have to get in line with the other Nissans for long, as they are making a separate service aisle for the Infinities, so the owners can feel a more exclusive treatment. To be honest, I had no problem being with the other “plain” Nissans, in fact the service was superb for them also. Its a very typical Dubai thing, if you can afford to pay more, you expect to be treated as a VIP. Me being a simple Hungarian kid, I couldnt care less for the exclusive treatment, although the cold drink did feel pretty good in the heat

Once I get in line, they put a cone shaped object on top of the car with a number printed on it, which will be your service tag number. Then a technician came who was wearing an Infiniti shirt differentiating himself from all the other Nissan shirted guys. He took my complaint down on a piece of paper, checked the car around for body damage in case I would claim them for doing some damage to my car while at service, and then took the keys and drove it off.

As we are in the peak period of the summer, the service took 2 days to get my car fixed. They drained the AC coolant from the car (poor mother nature, I wonder what they did with the dangerous gas they drained), flushed the system with high pressure water, refilled it and adjusted the compressor. On top, they replaced a so called Micro Filter, which blocks all dirt entering the passenger cabin through the AC system. This all costed me 150 USD, as AC servicing is not included in the warranty. Should the compressor fail, they will replace it for free, but just refilling the system is on my account. Nicely enough they gave me a day-pass to the Dubai Ski as part of their promotion, and cleaned the car inside out.

The AC is good as new, and throws ice cubes at me while driving. This particular Infiniti comes with a dual AC system, which means the Left side and the Right side can be adjusted independently. It is also Digital and automatic, like all modern cars are.

This is a picture at the service center, while waiting for the Infiniti technician to assist me.

The service tag I got looked like this. It was hanging on the key-ring when I got the car back. This is actually a fine example of how mobile numbers are important here. They even use my mobile number instead of my name on the tag. In the Driving school they also identified me by the phone number, at fuel stations they identify you when paying for your road toll, etc etc. Its an interesting concept in Dubai, but seems to work very well. Your number is your identity.

Cheers, more on the car later

Dubai summer is at times unbearable hot, and since I need to park my car outside on the street, I wanted to get some protection against the heat and car interior damage.

Most cars in Dubai have tinted windows, which helps the case, and I decided to do some research and go for some quality tint while remaining within the legal boundaries.

In the “Wheels” magazine I found a couple of ads, and the best companies seem to offer heat resistant tinting as opposed to only darkening the windows. Tints range from AED 50 (approx 15 USD) to AED 3500 (approx 1000 USD), which is quite a large window of selection. The top players are LLumar, V-kool, 3M and Solar Gard. They all seem to be efficient in fighting heat, so I decided to get the one that has the best promotion currently. LLumar was offering a full (Side and rear) 30% (Dubai legal limit) tint job with a fully transparent (0% darkened) windshield foil making it an all around foiling for AED 1200 (Approx 300USD). I booked a slot for Saturday 11AM, and drove the car there. We took a taxi and went for shopping and lunch to Wafi Mall, and came back at 1:30PM to find the Infiniti almost ready with the full tint. The guys seemed to be professional, and the tint so far works like a dream. Of course it cannot keep all the heat out, but it helps reducing it by 50%, and the UV and IR rays at 99%. UV rays damage the interior, causing ripped leather seats and faded dashboards. With this, I should be good to go leaving the car outside all day.

Here is a picture of the car at the tint-shop, getting the driver side foil sized and cut out.

For more pictures press the Read more…..

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One of our major concerns was to get Momo, our dog to Dubai, and to find a place suitable for her to stay at.

Things worked out pretty well, we have located a very good company for the relocation services, and Momo arrived to Dubai without any major hassle. She was beaten up for a day or two, but got acclimatized quickly.

Greens in Dubai is a very good place to have a dog, specially a small one like ours. The neighborhood is very much acceptable towards dogs, and walking them is comfortable around the buildings.

We now have another dog from a friend of ours, we look after him until the owners take their annual leave in Japan. Look at the pictures, they speak for themselves. We are walking the dogs in lush greenery, you would think this is a place with plenty of rain and a Mediterranean climate, which in fact it isnt.

More later on the dogs and transport procedures.

Cheers,

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So after having the Driver’s license completed, the next task was obvious. Getting a car that is. I had my eyes on this G35 Coupe for a while, I even drove one back a month ago, but I was still thinking on other models as well. The 350Z and the Porsche Boxster. The Porsche is obviously more expensive, so I could have only bought a 2002-2003 model, which isn’t very promising here in Dubai, specially now that the government is thinking about banning cars aged over 10 years. After all I decided next to the Infiniti for the following reasons:

Very fast and powerful yet comfortable to sit in

Has 4 seats over 2 like that other candidates had, this of course is more of a wife-like concern

There aren’t many G35 Coupes on the road, which makes it more unique

Once I narrowed down the selection, I was off to buy the car, and here is the outcome. Read on for more info.

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Hi
So here we are in Dubai, with no public transportation what so ever, and our life has started on a fast lane with no time to spare. I feel like back in Los Angeles, where you could hardly do anything without a car. Getting a car of course is easy provided you have money or are eligible for a loan, but can you drive it? Well if you happen to be unfortunate enough for being a Hungarian, you cannot unless you go through Driving school all over again. Read on for the adventure of getting a driver’s license in Dubai….

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Hi

Long time no updates, I am really sorry for that. Life has turned upside down since the recent move. It has been a month now, so we are in the calming stage already, and hopefully I will have more time to maintain the blog.

But just to give you an update, I have already started building my newest and first to Dubai project, a HTPC aka Home Theatre PC.

We purchased a Sharp Aquos 32″ LCD TV, which is small, but perfectly fits in size to our anyways small apartment. But since a TV by itself is just plain boring, I went looking for options. And of course added the fact that I am an Apple geek, I had to go down the proper, Apple road.

After having read extensive amount of articles about options, I have decided to go with a Mac Mini as the head unit, and it will be wired to the LCD TV via HDMI to DVI cable for best quality. I will have internet, emails, iTunes music and videos, and of course DVD and “other” video playback. This will become our entertainment centre, and to have the best control over all this, I purchased a Belkin MediaPilot keyboard, which is wireless, has a mouse built in with an intelligent Remote Controller on board. So one device will drive it all.

This was just a teaser, stand by for the outcome. I ordered via Amazon to a US address to eliminate the horrific UAE and in general non US Apple prices. There is a company called Aramex who provides a US shipping address, I ship everything there, and they forward it to the UAE, to our doorstep.

More later cheers, I am off picking up my wife from her lunch gathering…

Ben

Hi

Just a quick post that we safely arrived to Dubai. I am unable to write much, as our life seems to have fallen apart by the overwhelming amount of things we need to take care of. So far, I thought there is no more bureaucratic country than Hungary, but with our luck, we managed to find one.

An example just to wet your appetite, I got my SIM card 6 days ago with the promise that “It will be active in 2 hours sir!!!”, and yet, I am still without a phone. Go figure, that is Dubai for you.

Having said that, we are still enjoying it a lot, and we appreciate all the things we are presented with in Dubai. The weather is a bit too hot, feels much like having a hair dryer blowing directly to your face constantly when you are on the street, but its still somewhat pleasant.

We just have found a place to live at, in the Greens, which is an area very close to my office, and we will move in next week, once we bought all the necessary furniture.

This is what the flat complex looks like where we have the rental place:

Its a relatively nice place with lot of Green areas, which is why its called the Greens. Momo, our dog will join us on the 10th of June, she is coming with a Lufthansa flight booked as cargo, which is what Dubai requires. So from the 11th of June, we are back to normal with all the crew onboard

What’s left still is buying cars, opening bank accounts, and discovering Dubai Stay tuned, there is more to come….

Hi,

So you’ve heard the news already right? No surprise to you? Well, believe me it was hard enough to keep it confidential, but since it had to be kept, it was kept. So we are finally allowed to say it, we are moving to Dubai next week on Wednesday hopefully, depending on my successor’s training speed.

We were thinking about this move from Late December 2007, and it was only decided finally in April, 2008. Yuka and I are going there next week, and Momo, our dog will join us in mid June, by which we are hoping to have a rental flat readily available for Momo’s receipt.

I will post here more info as soon as I get them.

Cheers

Hi

Having just returned from Istanbul a few days ago, I thought I would share this typical Turkish moment with you. I was standing on this large square in Eminonu, and all of a sudden the Mosque started to call out to the people for praying time. It was an amazing experience, watch the Youtube video. More on Istanbul in the coming days…

Hi

So finally the day has come, the Macbook Air arrived to Hungary. My mother in law brought it over from Tokyo. So that the bag wouldn’t get scratched, I also ordered a Fabrix case from Singapore, which I earlier mentioned, and she was bringing the two together.

As I don’t have much time now, need to catch an early flight tomorrow, I just thought of tossing out a few pictures, for teasers.

Enjoy, a full review will come shortly,

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