January 26th

 I awoke early today- which is to say Jan 30th- I am now 4 days behind in my journaling. At some point I need to catch up because it is so easy to fall behind. At first I was a day behind, now am 4 days behind. Tomorrow is the last day of the month. I need to try to catch up by then but it is unlikely given my work load. I have a lot to accomplish. The first half of the day I need to play hooky form work. I need to dispose my 10 year old vehicle, by going for a cash sale at Dubizzle. For this I need to drive the car all the way to Al Qusais- at the Sharjah border, first thing in the morning. They will prepare a contract and start to transfer the money. Hopefully the money will show up in a few days in my account because they will have my car. Somehow I am not very comfortable with this process- whenever there is a used car and a salesman involved yp on what you expect some trickery, some form of betrayal lurking in the shadows. We shall see. Thereafter, if all is sorted, I will need to take a taxi to Festival City Intercontinental Hotel. Right next to it is the BYD showroom. I will try to complete the paperwork for my new leased vehicle and even grab the new vehicle for delivery. If all goes well, I will drive the new vehicle all the ways to work. A lot of accomplish already. But when I get to work, I have lots of meetings and I need to prepare slides for a presentation tomorrow-and also try to give my boss a heads up tomorrow of what I will be sharing. He may ore may not agree with my interpretation of reality. If he doesn't, I have another thing coming tomorrow in the actual session with him, which also includes some of his henchmen. It is a heck day, and I will report later on how it went.  As usual I have niggle in my throat this morning and overall don't feel too good. This has become a permanent condition almost, so have to just run with it. 

Meanwhile, this was a really beastly morning. I drove up for what seemed like a lifetime to the Tasjeel Vehicle inspection center in Al Qusais. They showed up late, and me early so I walked around the general area and found a place that offered idli/vada. Al Qusais is like the Gulf city of yore. Bahrain, Dubai, Doha, Kuwait of the 1980s. Buildings flanked by sand. Parking lots of sand, pavements of sand, shops opening up to sand- just a sand filled arena with a few civic objects like building, shops and cars thrown in. Such a far cry from the swank of Downtown Dubai or the green expanses of the Emirates Hills area. The only folks I know that live there are those that work in Sharjah ( which is just a few blocks away). These folks could simply choose to live in Sharjah and save further rent. After a cursory inspection, contrary to what I was expecting, I was asked to return. Confused, I headed towards Festival City, where I had to also drop the security cheque for the BYD Otto3 which I just purchased. Enroute, I experienced boatloads of traffic on Beirut St, for reason I know not. It did not seem to me to be such an important thoroughfare mid-morning, but I guess it must have been. While in the car I got a call from the Dubizzle agent that had set me up with the Al qusais appointment in the first place. He told me that the inspection came out not so good and the buyer backed out so there was no deal. I was like, why not just tell me that directly instead of being vague and asking me to leave. Stupid people. Anyway, I was furious and told him that he had simply wasted my time with so many inspections and asking me drive all over the city as if I had nothing better to do.  Fuming, I dropped off the cheque and drove off to work. It was not an uneventful long drive, there was yet another traffic bottleneck near the convention center, which was because Gulfoods was on- which is quite a significant event for the FMCG food industry globally. As usual, loads of pedestrians in suits at or around the convention center entrance meant there was an insane amount of traffic and a gridlock. And only if that was all. When I finally made it to Sheikh Zayed Road and was cruising towards Jebel Ali, I saw the car right in front of me collide head on with a van ahead of it.  The van braked and slowed down, the car didn't as he was probably dreaming or rather texting and he rammed into the van. I saw this transpire before me and myself was not on red alert, given the kind of day I'd had thus far. I managed to swerve in time out of the way but as I passed the car in question, it was a sorry sight. The car had been reduced to half its length and if for any reason the airbags didn't come on, it was surely curtains for the driver. I realized it was not a minor collision.

The rest of the day passed by and in the evening I found myself at a sellanycar.com kiosk at Ibn Batuta mall.  After going through the motions, another inspection and multiple phone calls later, I decided to agree to sale price on offer- far far lower than anything I had expected. I was just tired and wanted to get it over with. Always a bad idea, but the I told myself that the money I would lose would not in and of itself change my life. I handed over the car, but the following day there would yet another inspection and if all was well I would be asked go to Al Barsha Center to transfer the title. The money would reach me a few days after that. I was past caring. I was exhausted. I returned home and went to bed.