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Blogs by Vena McGrath
Monday 4 May 2009 - 11.26 am 5/3/2009 5:16:52 PM
Autumn in Sydney - a wonderful time of year. How great to no longer be so hot that the fluid drips out of the body, especially the hair, running down the forehead into the eyes, stinging them. How wonderful to put your makeup on and not have it running back off during the process. To be warm in bed and not tossing and turning all night ending up with a bed that looks like a shipwreck in the morning. Putting on extra clothes becomes something that brings a smile with the warmth and spending time out in the sun makes the body feel rejuvenated.
No prizes for working out that I'm not a summer person and even spring in Sydney can be awfully hot. It seems some years that there isn't much respite from the heat and dryness but this year Autumn is really like I remember Autumn used to be. Early nightfall, late sunrise, lots of fog and dew. I guess all the rain we had over the last months has helped to bring on cooler weather and more dampness. The sun can still burn if exposed to it for too long, but you can feel it doing you good every time you wander out and take in some of it.
I will miss my wood burner fire this year but change is life. When I take Shaye out for a walk I can smell the smoke of the few fires in houses in my area and it brings back happy memories. However wood is expensive to burn and it was becoming more difficult for me to stack after delivery and then carry in each night. The fireplace was messy and constantly needed cleaning and the walls suffered too and the curtains. Working in air conditioning has made me not like it much at all except in those awful hot months when being confined to office space that is air conditioned is a blessing. I don't like the dry heat of air conditioning and much prefer the fire and a door or two open or some windows so you get the best of both.
It's nice and green around the suburbs now and the trees are all looking healthy with new growth that they will of course lose a lot of over the winter months. If we have a winter of frosts then the lawns will die off and plants that aren't native or frost hardy will die too. At the moment though, everything looks happy and hardy.
We have had some thick fogs early of a morning and driving to work at 7.00 am means driving with headlights on and with care because visibility is limited to the end of the bonnet of the car. I'm amazed at how many people don't drive with their headlights on and don't drive with care when there is heavy fog. But they drive that way when it's pouring rain too. It's as if they think they are immortal and to hell with the rest of the drivers on the road.
I went out shopping yesterday and bought a new car, well an all wheel drive vehicle. It's shorter in length than my car is and a tad narrower but has more head room inside. I ended up staying with Hyundai because I've had 8 years of happy motoring with my 2001 Sonata Classique. I began to worry about the age of the car even though it has only travelled 93K and that voice inside my head told me to go and buy a new car because I may be facing the costly exercise of repairs to my car. What I bought is a V6 Tucson all wheel drive and I was pleased with it after going for a test drive. The prices of cars haven't come down much really considering the state of the economy but I did get $2K off the usual price in an end of financial year sale and $4K (ripoff) trade-in on my car which is worth more than that.
The new vehicle ended up costing me $25,596 drive away so that's not a bad deal when taking into consideration the tax involved and registration costs and dealer costs that are added to the price of the cars. I chose an Aqua Silver metallic colour paint instead of plain silver, which is what I wanted (same as my present car). I went around the caryard and felt all the exteriors of the different coloured cars and the only two cars that felt cool in the heat of yesterday's sun were the white ones and silver ones. You could have fried eggs on the others. The Aqua Silver is a very pleasant colour, just a hint of blue in the silver. The only addition to the car that I wanted was extra tinting on the windows and that's at a cost of $275. The metallic paint costs $300 more. Sinclair Hyundai at Penrith are giving me a set of floor mats and aren't charging me for the black and white number plates that usually cost $70. I really dislike those horrible yellow and black plates on today's cars.
I pick the car up on Friday which is a quick turnaround. Had I stuck to the silver it would have been 5 weeks because the ship hasn't arrived yet and there are no silver V6 Tucsons available. The vehicle arrived in Australia in March 2009 so it's not a runout of an old model which is great for the price.
I actually went to test drive a Sportique (Kia) but the only one they had at the yard was a 4 cyclinder. I wasn't happy with the test drive because I love that bit of extra meat under the accelerator. The vehicle itself was nice. So I decided then to go to Hyundai and see if they had a V6 Tucson to test drive and they did. Amazingly it's almost a twin for the Sportique. Well not so amazingly as I found out that Kia and Hyundai are relatives.
My life is so exciting that's all the news I have :)
