Unless your life is particularly empty, food shopping probably isn't the highlight of your week, but having your goods delivered is a mighty exciting ride in the United States, if the new car-tastic Walmart advert is to be believed.
The "grocery pick-up" commercial, as the Americans would have it, opens with a shot of the Batmobile racing through the streets and closes, 90 seconds later, with Bumblebee from Transformers, having shifted from Volkswagen Beetle form to walking robot mode, striding across a Walmart car park. What a time to be alive.
Between those two big-screen icons, there are appearances from a whole host of well-known television and movie cars, from the Cadillac Miller-Meteor ambulance limo that transported the wisecracking, phantom-fighting crew in Ghostbusters to Kitt from Knight Rider and the bizarre dog-car-van from Dumb & Dumber.
Some of the cameos are subtle, such as the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, in sickly metallic pea, that limped along in National Lampoon's Vacation. See if you can spot them all.
Nerd note: later-comers to the Transformers party might be interested to learn that Bumblebee was initially depicted as a Beetle, before the product-placement-heavy, 21st-century Transfomers live-action franchise turned him into a Chevrolet Camaro muscle car. The former guise is revisited in origin-story movie Bumblebee, which is in cinemas across the UAE now.
VW's original Beetle was never commercially available as a diesel model, incidentally, which means that Bumblebee was mercifully unaffected by its recent emissions scandal.
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Read more:
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Latest from The National's Motoring section
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Specs
Price, base: Dhs850,000
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: Seven-speed automatic
Power: 591bhp @ 7,500rpm
Torque: 760Nm @ 3,000rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 11.3L / 100km
Nayanthara: Beyond The Fairy Tale
Starring: Nayanthara, Vignesh Shivan, Radhika Sarathkumar, Nagarjuna Akkineni
Director: Amith Krishnan
Rating: 3.5/5
From Zero
Artist: Linkin Park
Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
Wicked
Director: Jon M Chu
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey
SPECS
Toyota land Cruiser 2020 5.7L VXR
Engine: 5.7-litre V8
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 362hp
Torque: 530Nm
Price: Dh329,000 (base model 4.0L EXR Dh215,900)
How to get exposure to gold
Although you can buy gold easily on the Dubai markets, the problem with buying physical bars, coins or jewellery is that you then have storage, security and insurance issues.
A far easier option is to invest in a low-cost exchange traded fund (ETF) that invests in the precious metal instead, for example, ETFS Physical Gold (PHAU) and iShares Physical Gold (SGLN) both track physical gold. The VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF invests directly in mining companies.
Alternatively, BlackRock Gold & General seeks to achieve long-term capital growth primarily through an actively managed portfolio of gold mining, commodity and precious-metal related shares. Its largest portfolio holdings include gold miners Newcrest Mining, Barrick Gold Corp, Agnico Eagle Mines and the NewMont Goldcorp.
Brave investors could take on the added risk of buying individual gold mining stocks, many of which have performed wonderfully well lately.
London-listed Centamin is up more than 70 per cent in just three months, although in a sign of its volatility, it is down 5 per cent on two years ago. Trans-Siberian Gold, listed on London's alternative investment market (AIM) for small stocks, has seen its share price almost quadruple from 34p to 124p over the same period, but do not assume this kind of runaway growth can continue for long
However, buying individual equities like these is highly risky, as their share prices can crash just as quickly, which isn't what what you want from a supposedly safe haven.
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Brief scoreline:
Tottenham 1
Son 78'
Manchester City 0
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
If you go
The flights
Emirates (www.emirates.com) and Etihad (www.etihad.com) both fly direct to Bengaluru, with return fares from Dh 1240. From Bengaluru airport, Coorg is a five-hour drive by car.
The hotels
The Tamara (www.thetamara.com) is located inside a working coffee plantation and offers individual villas with sprawling views of the hills (tariff from Dh1,300, including taxes and breakfast).
When to go
Coorg is an all-year destination, with the peak season for travel extending from the cooler months between October and March.
