Cars at the top of the Euro NCAP table

Small cars can be incredibly safe – as proved by the new Mazda 2 which recently scored five out of five stars for adult protection. Other five star superminis include the BMW Mini, Vauxhall Corsa, Peugeot 207, Fiat Grande Punto and Renault Clio.

Hatchbacks with five stars include the Ford Focus, Volkswagen Golf, Kia Cee’d, Vauxhall Astra, Nissan Qashqai, BMW 1 series and Citroen C4.

Family cars with five stars include the BMW 3-Series, Ford Mondeo (2007-), Peugeot 407, Citroen C5, Renault Laguna, Volkswagen Passat, Mercedes C-Class, Lexus IS and Volvo S40 and V70.

Five star MPVs include the Volkswagen Touran, Skoda Roomster, Toyota Verso, Renault Scenic, Vauxhall Zafira, Mazda 5 and Citroen C4 Picasso.

How to buy used Vauxhall Zafira cars

Still not sure if you have made a right decision to choose used Vauxhall Zafira as your next car? Are you reluctant to buya used car? Here are few buying guidelines that you should consider while buying used Vauxhall Zafira.

What to look for?

Firstly, get yourself familiar with Zafira cars. Test drive the car to check its looks, practicality, performance and safety.

1.   Looks:
Looking like an inflated Astra estate, the Zafira is a stylish way to move the family. The pointy corporate front end looks as though it will cut its way through the traffic, and a rakish rear features a low sill allowing loads to be placed in the boot with ease.

2.    Practicality:
The trump card of any MPV is the way it utilises its space, and this Vauxhall car is no exception. Its perfect for large families.

3.    Performance:
The Vauxhall Zafira will dash to 60mph from standstill in 10.8 seconds, and on to a top speed of 122mph.

4.   Safety:
The Zafira scored a maximum five stars in the EuroNCAP crash tests, and comes with anti-lock brakes with cornering brake control (which helps avoid skidding under hard cornering) and electronic brake force distribution on all models.

5. Accessories:
A dash mounted screen inside the Zafira is the focal point, which provided a home for the radio controls and trip computer. Other car accessories include the air-con, 16 inch alloys, tinted glass, body coloured roof rails and the height adjustable drivers seat

Where to buy?

Buying from a dealer is low hassle but prices are higher. Go to an auction instead and you’ll more likely bag a bargain. Buying privately is generally cheapest, but beware of over-optimistic pricing from greedy sellers. They won’t give the same back up as a dealer.

What documents to check?

Make sure to check the registration document or the V5C of the used Zafira. This tells you the basics about the car’s history such as how many owners it has had and who it is currently registered to.

The MOT – With the system now fully computerised, everything is logged centrally and can be looked up instantly. If the used car doesn’t have the MOT test certificate it can’t be taxed or insured.

Finally, have a look at the car’s service history. Ideally the used Zafira will have been maintained by the supplying dealer from new, but it is good to check the proof of regular servicing.

Do a price comparison

When I did a search on Zafira cars on Auto Trader, I found around 4,912 used Vauxhall Zafira cars for sale. You can compare all the available Zafira models against their prices and specfications to determine the optimum car as per your needs.  For more used Vauxhall models, check the Vauxhall cars hub.

Read the Vauxhall Zafira Review

Some Quick Fire Updates

CAR: The woman who hit my car lied about all the information she gave—-her name, her address, her phone, her insurance. There appears to be no trace of the real here. Obviously I keep my eyes peeled for the white Chevy Blazer she hit me with but given her criminal leanings (apparently it’s a crime here to leave the scene before the police is more than $1000 damage is done—-she did over $13000 damage to my car), everyone seems to expect she’s quite the expert at this kind of thing. I wrote up everything and sent it to the police. Everyone told me not to bother, that they wouldn’t do anything. It appears they might be right; I didn’t even get a courtesy “thanks for contacting us” acknowledgment. Very depressing. To me and I’m sure to the woman she’s posing as. Guess the police have more important things to be doing…like arresting university students for public urination. However, my insurance did give me a fair price for my car (which is now at the salvage yard) and within three weeks I found a new one to buy. It’s a 2008, low mileage, good nick. It’s not as good of a quality as the one she totaled but I feel okay about it and glad that’s it over. I do feel slightly cautious while driving (I get quite nervous if I’m stopped and see someone approaching from behind) but hopefully that will lessen with time.

CATS: My two new cats are settled in. They don’t hide anymore and sleep on the bed with me. I like having company but I do not love them. I am not their mommy and they are not my babies. I miss that feeling. The girl cat seems to throw up a lot—-she only lets me brush her for a minute before moving away. I don’t know if it’s hairballs or still stress from the change. I’m not sure when I should take her in, but I am getting tired of having to wash my duvet cover everyday.

WORK: Work is alright. I am good at this job but I don’t enjoy it. I don’t like doing three jobs at once, but I do like the money, though I have no idea for what I am saving up. But it’s good to save up. I take some pleasure in that. I will be glad when this semester is over—my spring schedule is slightly more under control (though I may teach one class at my other university. $5000 for one class—it’s hard to pass up that money). Students are driving me crazy with their unwillingness to take any responsibility. I have also been taking a course on being an online teacher. I suppose it’s the wave of the future, and it’s good to have on my cv, but I’m not convinced I’d be great at it. I like my office mate.

HEALTH: I am still compiling my list of things to ask the doctor about. I’ve purchased some extra insurance ($5000 booby prize if I get cancer) but it doesn’t go into effect until January 1 so I’m going to hold off on my doctor’s appointment til then (last year’s cancer scare was only resolved with “I don’t know exactly what it is but it’s not bad enough to warrant anything else right now; come back in a year” so I might as well wait. Mr Long Term was diagnosed with a skin cancer. This was very scary. He had some surgery and should be fine now. But it’s always weird when it comes close to home. My newest complaint is that occasionally a place on my foot gets hot like it’s burning (at first I kept thinking my computer was overheating at work and that’s what I was feeling through my shoe). Apparently there is a syndrome called “Burning Feet” but that seems to be more consistently hot. One day they’ll name a disease after me which has seemingly unrelated, minor symptoms which most people would excuse as hypochondria and/or the result of stress. In the future, when people get my symptoms, it’ll all seem so obvious and they’ll think back to the poor woman it was name after and feel amazed that the world was so ignorant to not have recognized their meaning.

HOUSE: Four roses have bloomed in the last week. Odd as we’ve already had below 0C/32F weather. I am glad to come back to my house at night but it doesn’t feel like home.

HEAD AND HEART: No quick ones possible here.

SOMETHING FOR FUN: You can make word art out of any text or webpage by goingto          www.wordle.net. It takes the most frequently used words and builds a picture—you can choose colours, fonts, etc. Here’s one for this page: hmmm….wonder what my issues are?

Exotica Motorsports

Exotica Motorsports sells parts exclusively for the high-end car market.  They also offer complete car packages consisting of parts from one tuner company or multiple companies to make an exclusive vehicle to suit your needs.  Exotica Motorsports is your concierge between you and the manufacturer.  They act on your behalf to make sure the car is built to high quality standards and in a timely manner.

Check out more info on their website at www.exotica-motorsports.com

Call Jason Godsil at 360.607.0709 to start your process on upgrading your vehicle and tell him you found him on The OPS Review.

 

Updates 2: New Car & New Job

31/10/09

After awaiting for weeks, my car finally arrived on Saturday. Yes as the date indicates it was Halloween. Perfect timing right? Connie calls me at 10am and lets me know that I can come pick up my car but I didn’t want a repeat of the other day so I asked her to come deliver the car to me. It arrived at my doorstep at 11.30am in all it’s black, shiny and tinted glory. I should be excited, I should be crazy in love but instead I felt nothing much for it. Must be one of those withdrawal syndromes I guess. Anyway, Connie went through all the details I needed to know about the car, I gave my John Hancock on several documents and the car became my property. Gosh, I have my own property at 23 and would only start my real job on Monday, but nevertheless the car is under my name and I’m responsible for it. Feeling like a grown up already. =) I didn’t do much with the car on Saturday as I was still feeling unattached to it so it sat at home and so did I.

Since it was Halloween they were showing a line-up of horror movies and reruns of all the Halloween episodes of Simpsons (the dysfunctional yet lovable family). I plunked myself down in front of the idiot box and slowly roasted my brain for a few hours. Later that night I spoke to Him on the phone and really wanted to see him. Guess I was missing him already. He was bored as well but he was with his friends and they were roaming from one place to another trying to find something to do to cure their boredom. I was waiting at home for him to come over, calling him every half hour to get a status report. I needed to sleep early and wake up early the next day because I had to take the car to the temple to be blessed. Finally at 1.45am he says he’s on the way. I was happy. He came and we sat outside my house just talking and cuddling a lot. I t felt really nice. He was goofing off with me and I with him. I gave him his birthday present and he burst out laughing once he saw it was underwear. He looked at me, gritted his teeth and playfully said “I need this huh?” and grabbed my face and kissed me. I was laughing my ass off at his reaction. I’ll probably get him a real gift some other time. Besides, he owes me 2 birthday gifts! After awhile of more goofing, cuddling, kissing, talking and reveling in the silence, he left because I needed to sleep. I had fun with him. =) The next morning, my parents and I took the car to the temple to be blessed. All went well. When we got home, my dad and I took the car out for a spin and also to familiarize myself on how to get to my work place. The whole of Sunday I was terribly nervous about driving alone for the first time as well as my first day at work till I couldn’t really eat at all.

2/11/09

It was my first day of work at Salina & Associates PR and my first time driving alone. I managed to drive safely and not kill anybody. Thankfully. I ended up reaching work at 8.05am when work only starts at 9am. I waited outside the office as it was still locked for over an hour before the first employee came. She introduced herself as Nadia and she looked very pretty. She showed me my temporary seat as I found out that another employee Fauziah (Gie) will be leaving next week because she got another job offer. My table was the only one without a PC so Nadia told me to use Gie’s PC first and go through thr Client folders to familiarize myself with the clients. She listed out the 15 main clients that we are currently working on. After that people slowly started arriving around 9.45am. There is (Zarifah) Epa, Leonardo (Leo) and Carole. Nadia later came to me and told me that I was to assist her on the Sepang International Circuit (SIC) account and she wanted me to organize the newspaper clipping according to event and cut and paste them onto A4 sheets for the clients perusal. Basically that was all I did the whole day. I was also instructed to check out the Juvanex folder as I will be assisting her with that as well.

Gie informed me that the Boss would like me to attend the Theobroma-PRIDE (T-P) meeting on Tuesday and Carole told me to follow along for the Mattel Barbie photoshoot. I was excited to hear about those two. I couldn’t wait for Tuesday. I ended up leaving work on my first day at 7pm. The next day Carole got into an accident on the way to the Barbie photoshoot that I had to follow Gie and supervise the shoot on her behalf. We only reached the hotel half an hour late but thankfully the model was still having her make-up done. I was reveling in the beauty of Nikko Hotel’s Royal Suite. Things were not falling into place properly because after BH came and did the interview, MM was suppose to arrive at 2pm but they only arrived at 3.15pm and our meeting with T-P was scheduled for 3pm. The boss evidently was angry but she was already the conducting the meeting and told us to come quickly. We ended up going for the meeting 1 hour late. We were terribly hungry and thank god Theobroma is a chocolate lounge, I ordered Ms.Coco and it was dark chocolate heaven in a cup that satiated my hunger immediately! Thankfully boss didn’t screw us up, she was quite understanding. After the meeting we reached the office at 5.30pm. The minute I stepped in, I had many emails one of which was from the boss asking me to get the names and emails of Singapore biz desk dailies, an email from Nadia asking me to find 5 chinese talents, and Leo asked me to draft a press release for Denim. Left the office at 8pm.

Wednesday I pretty much did the same tasks from Tuesday that I hadn’t completed and Thursday I was given the task to forward Denim invites to celebrities, ammend the chinese talents search and call up 43 magazine editors to do a press release follow-up. I have an acute fear of talking to people of authority on the phone. I stutter, mumble and panic. I tried my level best to push that task to today in hopes I’ll have more guts to accomplish it. *fingers crossed* The boss called me into her office and asked me what I’m working on. I listed everything out to her and she said it’s good that I kept busy. I told her I definitely am but it is getting a little overwhelming because I’m getting things from all directions and I’m trying to figure out what to prioritize and complete. She was very nice when she told me that if I do feel overwhelmed I cam come speak with her and she can help sort out what I need to do because after all it is only my 4th day and she doesn’t expect me to know everything so quickly. She then called Carole in and scheduled a meeting for today at 11am with me to discuss on the CIMB Prime Plan and another meeting right after with Gie to discuss on T-P. Later that evening around 7pm, Nadia asked me to help her figure out a catchy invite for the Lux Masquerade Ball and Carole asked me to help her think of how to make things more natural for Garnier naturals event and then Leo tells me the people at Denim wants the press release to be amended and to include their new fragrances Heat & Chill. I helped with the first two but the last I told him I’ll do today because it was already 8pm. Nadia then told me that I don’t have to stay back till so late since I come to work at 9 I can leave at 6. They stay back because they come to work late so I don’t need to feel pressured into staying. Thank god she said that because I plan to leave early today. Hopefully!

Anyway that’s all of the updates till present day. *phew* Now I got to get back to work!

P.S. Photos will be put up at a later date.

Lucky Day

Anne and I play dumb games with each other all the time.   Take little bets, try to predict things, or guess things in advance just to entertain ourselves.  Since coming here we’ve taken to guessing what causes traffic jams, that we get stuck in pretty much whenever we go out.  Goes like this:  after about ten minutes sitting there sucking exhaust, one of us will say why we think this traffic jam started, we make official predictions, then wait to see who’s right.  No prize, no glory, just a silly way to pass the time.  What we’ve found here is  that we’re usually both (or all three since Megan is with us a lot of the time) wrong.  We’ve seen so many ridiculous traffic situations that we never could have imagined in advance because things like this just don’t happen at home.  More often than not we’re surprised by some amusing, or totally random thing as the  cause of an hour or two backup. 

Here’s some examples: huge truck stopped in the middle of the road (pretty common), police check, police directing traffic (usually against the traffic light and seeming to make things even worse (apparently some police take bribes from hawkers to slow traffic so they can sell more junk)),  human drawn cart in the middle of the freeway, new random speed bumps in the FREEWAY,   unbelievably deep potholes that have appeared overnight, flipped matatu or bus (with huge crowd of gawkers),  dead cows all over the road, dead guy in the road, freeway collapsed with a bus standing on end nose down in the hole, crazy road construction with no flagers or warnings about road changes or big machinery, big pile of lumber, cars driving the wrong direction down our side of the road to avoid something on their side of the road, or nothing…no identifiable cause. 

Yesterday we saw the funniest one yet, we wished we had the camera. 

There is a really famous beer here by the name of Tusker Beer  http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/822/2563.  There are huge billboards proclaiming, “Get back to your roots!  Try a Tusker”.

Anyhow, this was the cause of the traffic jam.  First we saw the huge police flatbed truck with about a dozen police arriving on scene….no overturned truck in sight.  But then we saw people walking off with huge bags of bottles….and then we saw them. 

Overjoyed Kenyan men drinking ”recovered” Tusker beer in the middle of the day.

You would have thought it was Christmas.  One man had the most ridiculously happy smile on his face, waving to traffic with one hand, while gripping his Tusker in the other.  Another man must have arrived early on the scene because his goofy grin and sideways walk indicated that he was already sufficiently drunk.  Others walking off with half broken, half-filled bottles of beer, but beer non-the-less!

People were RUNNING down the side of the freeway hoping to get a bottle of Tusker…some kilometers away and sadly too late to grab their bottle.  Others were running the other direction as fast as they could with their booty….I’m sure in hopes of making off with it to the local market to sell, or to call their friends for an impromptu party.

It’s not every day most of these people get to enjoy a Tusker.  And now that I think about it, the police weren’t really doing anything in the back of that covered truck.  Perhaps they too were enjoying a Tusker.

Drawing on happy golf memories

Golf caricature

It seems, not only is golf a very popular sport, but it is also a very popular theme for a caricature.

I have a back catalogue of previous golf themed caricatures, teeing off, helicopter landing, putting, driving, with favourite car and even with pet bird,  that it seems I can tap into a lot of expertise and research when creating the latest golf themed commission. Luckily I keep a cupboard full of magazines, of all sports, for reference and even use sketches I have made when out on my field trips. The internet is useful too for material. But what a really great caricature always comes down to is the quality of photo I get for the faces. With the couple (right) I was given a link to their wedding photo album, so I had a lot of choice of pictures to work from. But very often I am not so lucky; recently I was asked to do a football themed caricature and was sent some very out of focus and grainy images of the subject. As I didn’t want to inconvenience the client, I went ahead and had to engage some real artistic license for that one, but luckily I pulled it off and the client liked the finished picture.

Sport is always a good theme for caricatures as it brings the picture to life adding action, movement and dynamism and by creating the caricatures in photoshop allows me to give some very polished finishes to the picture.