23 Replies to “Bring Your Cheque Book”

  1. Just wait.
    Soon they are going to run out of paper and ink and you’ll get your dinner bill written out on a Banana leaf using a piece of charcoal!

  2. Hey,a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking some REAL food!

  3. Years ago in Erdut, Croatia (UNPROFOR Sector East), I bought three bottles of wine for 10 DM (about $18 at the time, I believe) and received 12,000,000,000 Yugoslav dinars in change.
    I gave one of my NCos a billion-dinar note, telling him to never forget I made him a billionaire (ha ha!).
    I still have the 10 billion note framed in my den.

  5. A little practical information for Mugabe. The largest integer that can be represented in most point of sale systems is 2,147,483,647. Same is true for the draft capture systems that interface the point of sale systems to payment systems providers – they will not handle larger values either.
    Consequently, when you try to ring up a bill exceeding the capacity of a four byte integer, a correctly programmed POS system will simply refuse to add more items, and an incorrectly programmed one will wrap inside the four byte number and produce negative numbers.
    When the POS systems break, every one gets to back to the pencil and paper method, or slate, or clay tablet. The supply chain similarly bogs down, as POS sytems are switched off. Retail commerce goes back to the 19th century technology and efficiency.
    Mugabe’s legacy may end up being that of the father of the first currency in the world to use scientific notation (or demonination markings representing the logarithm of the value).

  6. That would be a two-brick meal. Each brick being a one-inch thick wad of decrepit , horrible smelling currency. When you exchange foreign currency for local, you don’t even bother to count the bills, you simply estimate the thickness of the wad. Been there.

  7. And what would be the appropriate tip? What is the local etiquette?
    Perplexed in Zimbabwe

  8. I seem to recall the tip usually being added to the bill automatically. Ten percent I think, to be split amongst the 4 or 5 people hanging around your table. But I didn’t often dine in upscale establishments like the one depicted.

  9. i had it the other way round…sailing into romania and bulgaria in the 60’s (i was hoping to sail down the danube)i did some masterful black market moneychanging…my bankroll of american dollars received 40 or 50 times over the official rate(which was bogus anyway since they hadn’t seen a westerner in varna or constanta in many a year)….
    and then selling off my duty free stores ?…bigod i was richer than Midas….

  11. john: “i did some masterful black market moneychanging…”
    Ever spend time in a Romanian jail? Want to?

  12. Robert Mugabe, what a guy. He promised that all Zimbabweans would soon be able to spend like millionaires and he kept his word!
    All those zeros can be confusing. I was once saved by a German tourist from paying 17,000,000.00 Turkish Lira for a shave. “Nein ,nein the barber only wants 1,700,000.00.”

  14. a romanian jail ?….like a walk in the park comrade….like a choirboy’s picnic……like a kiss in the ear…heck, i once did a stretch in the Moorish prison in Gibraltar…did it ALL standing on my head…what memories of that joint……there they gave you a brick and a bucket in your cell…..can you guess what the brick and the bucket were for glasnost ?
    anyway glasnost…my memories are of having done things…NOT having read about people doing things….i’m a results orientated guy…

  15. john b,
    You’ve outdone me. My only memory of Gibraltar is pissing up against that big rock in front of two small apes. I am interested in the brick and bucket story though.

  16. JJM,
    The dollar was never, to my knowledge, $Can18.00 to DM10,00. It was the other way round a few years ago. While I was in Germany in the 1990s the DM did pass the dollar, but not at 1.8 to 1.
    My worst recollection of Gibraltar was getting my car trunk searched as one of the usual border harassment games. The fact that I had Canadian licence plates and was entitled to take a bottle or two out of Gib and into Spain didn’t concern the border guard. I avoided jail, but I did notice a lot of out-of-Spain licence plates in the compound. Having my dog in the car prevented the finding of the only bottle I had anyway…

  18. glasnost…i spent a lot of time up on the top of the rock attempting to befriend the apes..because they were notorious for snatching purses cameras and whatnot..then squirreling them away somewhere hidden…some hidden eldorado they would reveal to their trusted friend john the ‘milkman'(and therein hangs a tale) who brought them milk and bananas and spoke soothingly to them of better days to come…i remember complimenting them on their handsome babas and hopping scampering and capering about beating my chest showing my incisors and making ooga ooga eeeeek sounds to show my kinship and thereby gain their confidence …i fear they sensed i was false… a poltroon who only wanted access to their treasure…

  20. Well, I was out quite a bit: The DM was worth Cdn$1.29 in early 1993.
    Still, the point of the anecdote was not the value of the DM or the Canadian dollar. It was the value of the Yugoslav dinar (or rather, its lack of value).

  21. john b,
    I looked up the word poltroon, and I somehow sense it doesn’t apply to you. I’m still waiting for the brick and bucket story however.

  22. The HMCS Bonaventure (Canadian Aircraft carrier) in ~ 1965 visited the Mediterranean. Some of the crew had a hell of a good time spending “Canadian Tire money”. The RCN made good but some ladies may still hold a grudge.
    trivia

  23. I can guess about the bucket, but the brick has definitely got me intrigued.

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