Wheels and Deals

It has been an arduous Day 2. Much running around but it was all good as Manoaj and I got a fair bit under way.

Let's start with the second closest thing to a man's heart (The first would be foo... I mean my wife). Anyways, I had signed up to carsales.com.au while I was still in Sg. I shortlisted a few cars and planned to view some of them upon arrival in Darwin. When I arrived yesterday, I received an offer on a car that I had shortlisted. It was an unbelievable offer. So off we went this morning, a day after receiving the offer, to the car dealer. It took a grand total of 3 min (everything in Darwin is really close by).

Once there, our car of choice had already been warmed up and waiting for a test drive. I had wanted a manual and this was an auto so I was a tad bit reluctant to settle for this. The sales agent, Hayden and his manager, Leo were friendly and did a fair bit of explaining.

Leo mentioned that buying cars were always good closer to the end of the month as employees would try to meet sales targets. They  were two cars short of their target and only had 2 more days. Now the crazy price drop made sense to me. I did test drive another Mazda which was a manual but that was priced higher due to its low k's (mileage). Eventually, after some negotiating, we settled for the initial Mazda we saw and paid a grand total of $7,500. This included 6 months of rego (kinda like Singapore's road tax).  The insurance had to be bought separately and was about $650 for an annual comprehensive premium. That was all it took and I was now a proud car owner. We were advised to come back in an hour to collect the car while they did a battery change.

With the car settled, we headed down to Harvey Norman to check out home appliances. It was about 12 min away and was a one-stop-shop to get our apartment up and running. Having had some experience with appliance shopping when we moved into our Punggol home 5 years ago, I made my choices quickly and plonked out $2700 for a fridge, TV, washing machine, coffee maker and a couple of surge protectors which apparently were very important due to a high frequency of electrical storms in Darwin.

The delivery was scheduled for  Monday and Brod advised us that we would have to set up the appliances on our own. There would also be a delivery fee of $70. Getting that out of the way, we headed back to NT Automotive Group to collect our now-ready car. 

Bunnings

Our next stop was a furnishings store called Le Corneu.  It was pretty massive with Ikea-like snaking pathways and arrows.  We found an affordable TV console unit for $199. After paying for it, we headed to Bunnings to check out some hardware as I wanted to install bidets beside our toilet bowls (water is way cleaner than toilet paper). Unfortunately, we couldn't decide on  what to get.  I should have taken a picture to show the sales rep at Bunnings. We would have to head down there again at a later date to get it done.

Shopping at Woolies

The final stop for the day was Woolworths or Woolies as it's affectionately known.  There we bought many home necessities and finally plonked our asses back at the apartment. That was pretty much the end of the day. We did head out later in the evening to check out the nightlife in the city and it was pretty vibrant with pubs and bars in full swing. Police were patrolling Mitchell street while party-goers were everywhere.

So that was it for Day 2 of settling into Darwin. Tomorrow would be a relatively relaxing day for us... or so I hope. Most shops are open till noon anyway. Let's see what happens tomorrow. See ya!