Repair (Part One)

I was able to get the paperwork for the insurance policy with no problem. Driving to the vehicle registration place and parking a ways away from the building was a snap. Within ten minutes, the woman behind the counter had approved another year of registration and given me the sticker to put on the license plate. Fortunately, the Jeep passed the inspection a couple of hours before getting into an accident so I was good to go. It's too bad that getting a car repaired here isn't that smooth.

Just after leaving the vehicle registration place, I headed straight of the insurance company to have the Jeep assessed. As mentioned before, the company only does assessments from 10:00 to 11:00 am during Ramadan. I arrived at 9:40 to be safe and couldn't find any parking. Now that parking in that area is paid parking, the city has even drawn lines in the middle of the road for cars to park. Even with that, there was no parking available so I double parked along with a few other cars and buses. I ran up to hand in the paperwork and the man behind the desk warned me that the police have been fining people recently so I should move my car. After driving around for about 10 minutes, I proudly found a place about two blocks away.

When 10:00 came, the assessor led a parade of people around to various cars and took pictures of the damage. Most of the cars and buses were the ones that I had seen double parked previously. Everyone was shouting for him to "assess" their car next. When I finally got the assessor to look at my car, he walked halfway to it, yelled at me for parking so far away and told me to double-park my car with the rest of them. At least by then I could stay by my car and wait for the guy. After he "assessed" the damage (i.e. took a few pictures of it) he told me to bring my car back at about 2:00 tomorrow so someone could drive it across town to a mechanic, have it repaired, and bring it back. What a convenience! I don't see how this plan could possibly go wrong.