Are you for Rial?

It should have been a simple transaction.

How much are your mlhfa?
18.

Really? That's a phenomenal bargain, we think. 18 dhirams a mlhfa is great.

So 72 for four?

No, 16.

What?

16 each.

Ok, so 64?

Yes.

We hand the man 100 dhirams and he laughs at us.

No, no. This will buy one.

But you said they were 18 each?

Yes.

So how much?

360 dhirams.

SELAH

Of course. You omitted to add the word 'hundred' after you said '18' and naturally you are working in a no-longer-used currency, the rial, meaning that your '18' needed to be multiplied by 100, (because your 18 meant 1800) have a zero removed from the end and then divided by two. Silly me. So when you say 18, you mean 90.

Good day to you sir.



Ok then! So
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Culture stress

Not culture shock, I'm past shock but stress I can still do.

It's no different from any other day really but right now I have low tolerance to...well, idiots.

In the last two days I've had guys calling out to me in the street in four different languages, I was directed somewhere that I 'couldn't miss' because it was next to a sign in Arabic. (Unlike all the other signs in Polish?) I've had to refuse to buy a packet of cartridges because some of them had no ink in them. (What else did I expect?) My usual fruit man asked why I'd not been recently, was it because I was visiting Belgium? (Sure, why not?) we caught a taxi and translated everything we said in Arabic and shouted it back to us in French. (Yes, we know what we said, you don't need to explain back to us our own words)

I'm going home and not coming out to play again today.

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