So, let me tell you about our weekend...

Friday night Mark and I prioritized what we needed to do today. Saturday morning we woke up and realized we were all wrong. We need a bed, washer, dryer, linens, but we forgot about a car. So, we decided to head to the car dealership (car yard as the locals say) and get a car. There's a string of car dealerships right next to one of the train stops, so that part would be easy.

When we arrived at the train station, Mark bypassed the ticket buying machine. This is a capital offense in my book. You have to get your tickets ASAP because there's nothing worse than having the train come and go while you're still fumbling to get your money out of your pocket. It's a 20 minute wait for the next train. As I was trying to get the money out of my purse Mark called me over to the tracks to show me the men working up ahead. Damn. Then, over the intercom we hear the announcement that the tracks are being worked on--go catch the bus. We look up and see the men in orange jackets beckoning to us to go to the bus stop.

We waited about 15 minutes for the bus. Apparently when the trains go down, the buses go from train station to train station, unfortunately, we only knew our stop based on a visual from the train. I decided that Mark was capable of sorting it out until after a few stops Mark pops out of his seat and runs up to the driver. Then the driver promptly pulls the bus over. Mark responded, "no worries" and beckons to me that "this is us." And he was right; we quickly reached the string of dealership.

Over the last several days we've discussed how we will acquire a car. We decided we'll either buy used or lease a new one depending on the terms. We were burned with Mark's last car; it was worth far less than what we owed. My Landcruiser retained its value much better than Mark's BMW M3. It was disheartening. Anyway, we agreed to just start at one end and go to the other end until we find something reasonable.

The first dealership was Lexus. They apparently have good hybrids and since gas (petrol) is so expensive here it was worth checking. As Mark was talking with the girl at the front desk, this older, bald guy walked up to us. With an extremely thick French accent he told us that he had an appointment in about 10 minutes. He asked what we were driving to which we answered, the bus. He said, "Oh no, there will be none of that. You will take my car for the weekend." I was certain I misunderstood him, either way, we kind of want our own car. He gave us a brief rundown of how much it would cost to lease a new hybrid--much more than we wanted to spend. With a bit lost in translation we agreed to wait for him until he was done with his client. We checked out the used cars on the lot and played in a little kid area they had set up. He told us it would be about 40 minutes. He checked on us a few times and in about 40 minutes he was done.

He told us that he would like for us to make an appointment with him for Monday so he can have time to properly discuss our options. He insisted we take his car for the weekend. So, we did. He and Mark went to go pick it up. Then Mark drove to the apartment to get the car seats for the kids. Though, Bernard suggested that we could buckle the kids in the back seat and just drive carefully, if we wanted. I'm not sure if he could see my eyes bug out of my head, but he promptly said, "well, maybe not."

So, we used Bernard's Lexus all weekend. It felt a bit funny, but boy what a relief. We used it to drive to Southland mall; and what a mall it is!! We went to one of the department stores to buy a printer. We do have a decent printer coming across the sea with the rest of our stuff, but we've found not having a scanner/printer to be quite a pain--from wiring money, to signing leases, to doing my immigration paperwork, we are severely debilitated without one. Waiting 6 weeks for the rest of our stuff just isn't an option. Anyway, we couldn't find anyone to help in printer department so we moved to the washer/dryer task. Talk about daunting. The cheapest washer/dryers were about $600 each and they looked extremely cheap. The salesman said they were. Don't expect them to last more than a couple of years. The best ones are made in Germany, and they cost about $2000 each!!! Homes aren't typically built with a venting system so you have a range of ways to deal with that. We decided to push that task off as well.

The same sales guy helped us look at TVs. He took 20% off of a floor model that was already on sale. When he went to sign us up for delivery, Mark said, "can you throw in a DVD player for free." He laughed. When he was done he gave us the receipt--on which was a free DVD player.

We left feeling quite good. We headed to another computer store, but the printer selection was dismal. While I was at the restroom Mark took the kids for ice cream--no wonder he's the favorite. We decided that the first store did have the best selection of printers; Mark should just head there while the kids finish their cones. 20 minutes later he was back with the best printer they had. It was $498. Mark initially said no and agreed on the next model down, but they didn't have any in stock. The sales guy again pleaded his case as to why the $498 machine was the best. Apparently, the printer cartridges last an extremely long time--something like 28,000 pages. Insane. He said it would pay for itself in no time. Mark agreed but asked if that was his best price--he knocked the price down to $409!! Mark came out of the store beaming at the deal he just scored.

Next we headed to look for mattresses. An hour or so later, Mark received a phone call from the printer sales guy. He told Mark that he screwed up, the printer actually comes with an additional $100 rebate AND if we buy another set of printer cartridges, we'll get an additional $100 rebate on top of that! It was too late to make it back to the store before they shut so we went back today and got our rebates!! Best of all, we won't need to buy anymore ink until the kids are in college!!

Pretty exciting stuff! Though, I'll never be able to buy big ticket items by myself because I just don't know how to bargain!

What a great weekend though! And tomorrow is a public holiday for the Queen's birthday, so it's not even over!! :) The dealership visit should be interesting as we are feeling pretty indebted to Bernard. I'm sure that was what he was counting on, but it really made our lives a lot easier!!