Conversions and Move Date

Conversions
My wife and I are starting to look for cars.  I was really excited about buying a nice little diesel powered four wheel drive adventure vehicle but reality is setting in.   They are just too expensive in South Africa.  A Ford Ranger should not sell for the equivalent of fifty thousand dollars and I'm not paying forty thousand for a used one.  We are starting to look at passenger vehicles and we are having trouble evaluating them.  By far the biggest obstacles are all the conversions.  First we have to convert the price of the car from Rand to Dollars.  We have come to the conclusion that cars in South Africa are severely overpriced.  Once we convert currency and determine if we may be able to afford a specific vehicle, we have to convert all the other metrics used to describe a car.  The fuel economy metric is a bit tricky.  First we have to mentally convert gallons to liters, miles to kilometers, and finally miles per gallon to liters per 100 kilometers.  Performance metrics like horsepower and foot pounds of torque need to be converted to kilowatts and newton meters.  In order to accomplish all of this I might write a series of formulas in Microsoft Excel.  For now I have a web browser open for each of those conversions.  My wife and I are starting to think about buying a used BMW 3 series, hopefully a 335i.

Move Dates

Flights
Oh, it looks like we finally have a move date.  The movers will be coming soon and we only have a few more weekends in the United States.  If everything goes well, we will be flying for two days with very limited layovers.  Our dogs should leave the same day we do but arrive a day after we do since they will be spending a day at the doggy hotel in Amsterdam.  This trip should be better than my three day ordeal, with a twelve hour layover at Heathrow, I suffered through when I went down for my interview.    

The Movers
 
When I talked with the American liaison for the moving company he was very surprised that the South African company didn't contact me about moving my motorcycle.  According to him he said that he brought it up with the South African company and they said they would take care of it. This is not reassuring. Unlike him, I am not surprised that nobody contacted me about this. I can't wait till one of my questions is adequately answered from any of the agencies I have to deal with for this move.  I'm really starting to doubt whether Helga (my motorcycle) will be shipped to Africa.