Right...so continuing where I left off. Saturday dawned nice, bright and sunny....while we did crash out the previous night, it wasn't a very great sleep - owing to the lack of pillows and a mattress!! But nevertheless we did try to grab some shut eye. Got a call from a Kim Hoang from San Leandro Honda, stating that they had a special going on for the end of the month, and that she was really desperate to sell a car.
A quick tip - the trick to buying a car in the US is to pit different dealers against each other to get the best possible rate / deal. Then again, within the dealership too, once can get two different rates for the same car - one from the retail salesman and a different one from the internet salesman. While the retail guy makes his commissions on how much the car is sold for, the internet person makes his commission based on how many cars he sells in the month. So the trick is to talk to the internet guy for the best possible rate as he/she would like to move the car off the lot - irrespective of the price, and then talk to the retail guy to see if he would go any lower than the said price.
Since we do not have any credit history in this country, all interest rates on loans were very high - upwards of 10.5%, which is a ridiculous sum of money. Anyhow, since it was a special (it's all in the timing - end of the month & end of the quarter), we managed to secure a 4.9% which is really good.
We ended up buying the Honda Civic EX with Navigation with the automatic transmission. The color is Beige. Will upload some photographs soon. From start to finish - the entire process took less than two hours - including the financing etc. The actual sale took just about half an hour!!!
While we received delivery of the vehicle, we couldn't take it off the lot, as we didn't have insurance. We finally managed to get insurance on Monday and so drove it back from the showroom on Monday. It was the first time that I drove on the Freeway, and believe me, I was gripping the steering wheel like a dead man clutching straws!!! If at all I am able to drive in this country - it's all thanks to Anil. He has been a tremendous help here.
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Well, to continue further, we have now purchased what is known as an AeroBed here. It's this beautiful electric blue inflatable mattress (2-layered), with an inbuilt pump. As part of our home furnishing exercise, we picked this up from Costco (a large wholesale warehouse store). 
The bed takes about 60 seconds to inflate to an optimum level, and the best part is that it comes with a built-in safety valve, which prevents overfilling!!
