My little Adventure!
Today was the most stimulating day I've had in months!
My parents and I have not been on speaking terms for almost 2 weeks now.
So although I had decided to move some funds from foreign banknotes to a time deposit that will yield a not insignificant amount of interest every month, I hadn't the option of asking for a lift from either of them.
I had to take several thousand-dollar banknotes from a bank's vault to a suitable money changer to convert to local currency before depositing the latter.
The prospect scared me, to say the least: my country is well-known for petty snatch thieves and daylight robberies aplently.
But I was determined to carry out my plan despite the dangers.
So,at around 10 am, after politely refusing my mother's forced offer to give me a lift, I wandered out in search of a taxi.
After a wait lasting between twenty and thirty minutes, I managed to flag down a taxi driven by a decent looking Indian man.
When I reached my specified destination, I deposited several hundred dollars into my savings account, and then walked to another bank in whose vault my cash was stored. I inquired at two other banks along the way whether they purchased banknotes from individiuals.
After I discovered that,despite displaying buy and sell quotes for various banknotes of different countries,none of the banks actually bought any!(unlike in China).
So I was 'forced' to check out the most suitable moneychanger. Fortunately for me, there was one just across the road from the bank that stored my hard-earned banknotes.
It looked decent enough to me, with sufficient seclusion from passersby to give me the assurance of a safe transaction.
After enquiring about the rate and deciding it was good enough, I proceeded to the bank to fetch my banknotes.
The transaction at the moneychanger proved to be a little more nerve-wracking than I had bargained for: they hadn't enough local currency to satisfy my order, and the lady at the counter requested that I wait ten minutes.
Having no other alternative outlet, I handed over the crisp banknotes to be scanned, after which it was handed to an employee stationed at a desk in front of the counter,who was to deliver the foreign currency to another location and who was to collect the local currency to pass to the counter.
I was glad that the rate quoted was one hundreth of a unit higher than the displayed rate(probably due to the large size of the transaction), but nervous that the courier may get waylaid and result in huge complications!
The cool and calm manner in which the courier strode out and mounted his motorbike assured my nerves a little.
With a not insignificant amount of relief, he returned within seven minutes with the same cold demeanour, and I got 161 of the largest banknotes in local currency that was due to me.
After they were counted mechanically, I plopped the two piles of banknotes secured with rubber bands into the left pocket of my safari pants, sealed it, and proceeded to another bank to open a time deposit.
After being irritated by an ignorant staff there, I returned to the bank in whose vault I had stored the banknotes I had just changed, deciding that it was more convenient for future transactions.
The deposit and associated paperwork proceeded without a hitch and I returned to the vault to place my deposit receipt there.
The slip of paper looked so frail that I joked with the counter staff that it looked like toilet paper!
After completing the main task of the day, I then walked around the area a little, before proceeding to one of the most famous eateries in the city.
I ate more than my fill, taking my time to enjoy each bite, all this while consuming two iced drinks!
Relief that I had surmounted this apparently tricky challenge so uneventfully served to whet my appetite!
A Pakistani/Bangladeshi man whom I guessed could be in his late twenties to mid-thirties was trying to sell a rather noisy toy parrot to the patrons in several tables.
I told myself that I would give him a dollar gratis if he tried to sell me his items.
Fortunately, he decided that my rather rough attire probably meant that I wasn't a worthwhile prospect so I saved my dollar!
After about forty minutes of lingering over lunch, I walked out and thought about getting some exercise to unload the extra calories on.
On the way to the new bridge over the main river running through the city, I wandered through a quaint alley that had the typical shophouse architecture that must have dated from the 1940s or even earlier!
A restaurant at the end of this alley was packed to the brim with a lunch crowd, and I reminded myself to try this place out next time.
Having passed some empty goldsmiths on the taxi going into town, I passed them again on foot on the way back, feeling a little sorry for the business owners whom I predicted would probably not last for more than another year or two.
As I kept moving in the general direction of home, I stumbled upon a bus stop.
Having promised myself that I would ride one of those rickety buses plying the town one day, I sensed that I would try it out for the first time in my thirty odd years of living in this city.
I approached a bus driver asking if he would pass a location just a stone's throw away from home, but after he pointed to the vehicle directly in front, I climbed into that bus and confirmed that it was indeed headed in that direction.
The ride in that half-rusted vehicle was quite pedestrian, although the vehicle was actually less off-putting from the inside as it was from the outside!
After a fifteen minute ride while taking in the sights I was already so familiar with anyway(but also noticing details I had never really paid attention to before), I pressed the buzzer and was dropped off outside a Thai temple,and walked a familiar route back.
I had forgotten that the city council was hard at work felling a gargantuan tree abutting my parents' house and stumbled on their handiwork just metres from home.
Two massive branches had already been felled and the road was totally closed off by the sheaths of fallen greenery. I lingered to watch how two men on a perch secured a cable that dangled from a giraffe-altitude crane around the branch they were targetting before applying a chainsaw to the base of that branch.
The branch was then lifted to a safe, unoccupied part of the road and lowered to it, whereupon it was further cut up by another team with another pair of chainsaws.
When I had cleaned up from the morning's exercise and gone out with my video camera to take some snapshots of the dying moments of a 30-year-old tree, some of whose branches were tall enough to be trees in their own right, I returned to observe the stockmarket online.
To my delight, a stock that I had been stuck with for over two months was generating huge volume and rising steadily after morning weakness.
I spent the next two hours slowly disposing of the stake that I had purchased at a low price, while the rain descended outside.
The sounds of the chainsaws stopped shortly after 4 pm, and I revelled quietly in a most fruitful day!
My parents and I have not been on speaking terms for almost 2 weeks now.
So although I had decided to move some funds from foreign banknotes to a time deposit that will yield a not insignificant amount of interest every month, I hadn't the option of asking for a lift from either of them.
I had to take several thousand-dollar banknotes from a bank's vault to a suitable money changer to convert to local currency before depositing the latter.
The prospect scared me, to say the least: my country is well-known for petty snatch thieves and daylight robberies aplently.
But I was determined to carry out my plan despite the dangers.
So,at around 10 am, after politely refusing my mother's forced offer to give me a lift, I wandered out in search of a taxi.
After a wait lasting between twenty and thirty minutes, I managed to flag down a taxi driven by a decent looking Indian man.
When I reached my specified destination, I deposited several hundred dollars into my savings account, and then walked to another bank in whose vault my cash was stored. I inquired at two other banks along the way whether they purchased banknotes from individiuals.
After I discovered that,despite displaying buy and sell quotes for various banknotes of different countries,none of the banks actually bought any!(unlike in China).
So I was 'forced' to check out the most suitable moneychanger. Fortunately for me, there was one just across the road from the bank that stored my hard-earned banknotes.
It looked decent enough to me, with sufficient seclusion from passersby to give me the assurance of a safe transaction.
After enquiring about the rate and deciding it was good enough, I proceeded to the bank to fetch my banknotes.
The transaction at the moneychanger proved to be a little more nerve-wracking than I had bargained for: they hadn't enough local currency to satisfy my order, and the lady at the counter requested that I wait ten minutes.
Having no other alternative outlet, I handed over the crisp banknotes to be scanned, after which it was handed to an employee stationed at a desk in front of the counter,who was to deliver the foreign currency to another location and who was to collect the local currency to pass to the counter.
I was glad that the rate quoted was one hundreth of a unit higher than the displayed rate(probably due to the large size of the transaction), but nervous that the courier may get waylaid and result in huge complications!
The cool and calm manner in which the courier strode out and mounted his motorbike assured my nerves a little.
With a not insignificant amount of relief, he returned within seven minutes with the same cold demeanour, and I got 161 of the largest banknotes in local currency that was due to me.
After they were counted mechanically, I plopped the two piles of banknotes secured with rubber bands into the left pocket of my safari pants, sealed it, and proceeded to another bank to open a time deposit.
After being irritated by an ignorant staff there, I returned to the bank in whose vault I had stored the banknotes I had just changed, deciding that it was more convenient for future transactions.
The deposit and associated paperwork proceeded without a hitch and I returned to the vault to place my deposit receipt there.
The slip of paper looked so frail that I joked with the counter staff that it looked like toilet paper!
After completing the main task of the day, I then walked around the area a little, before proceeding to one of the most famous eateries in the city.
I ate more than my fill, taking my time to enjoy each bite, all this while consuming two iced drinks!
Relief that I had surmounted this apparently tricky challenge so uneventfully served to whet my appetite!
A Pakistani/Bangladeshi man whom I guessed could be in his late twenties to mid-thirties was trying to sell a rather noisy toy parrot to the patrons in several tables.
I told myself that I would give him a dollar gratis if he tried to sell me his items.
Fortunately, he decided that my rather rough attire probably meant that I wasn't a worthwhile prospect so I saved my dollar!
After about forty minutes of lingering over lunch, I walked out and thought about getting some exercise to unload the extra calories on.
On the way to the new bridge over the main river running through the city, I wandered through a quaint alley that had the typical shophouse architecture that must have dated from the 1940s or even earlier!
A restaurant at the end of this alley was packed to the brim with a lunch crowd, and I reminded myself to try this place out next time.
Having passed some empty goldsmiths on the taxi going into town, I passed them again on foot on the way back, feeling a little sorry for the business owners whom I predicted would probably not last for more than another year or two.
As I kept moving in the general direction of home, I stumbled upon a bus stop.
Having promised myself that I would ride one of those rickety buses plying the town one day, I sensed that I would try it out for the first time in my thirty odd years of living in this city.
I approached a bus driver asking if he would pass a location just a stone's throw away from home, but after he pointed to the vehicle directly in front, I climbed into that bus and confirmed that it was indeed headed in that direction.
The ride in that half-rusted vehicle was quite pedestrian, although the vehicle was actually less off-putting from the inside as it was from the outside!
After a fifteen minute ride while taking in the sights I was already so familiar with anyway(but also noticing details I had never really paid attention to before), I pressed the buzzer and was dropped off outside a Thai temple,and walked a familiar route back.
I had forgotten that the city council was hard at work felling a gargantuan tree abutting my parents' house and stumbled on their handiwork just metres from home.
Two massive branches had already been felled and the road was totally closed off by the sheaths of fallen greenery. I lingered to watch how two men on a perch secured a cable that dangled from a giraffe-altitude crane around the branch they were targetting before applying a chainsaw to the base of that branch.
The branch was then lifted to a safe, unoccupied part of the road and lowered to it, whereupon it was further cut up by another team with another pair of chainsaws.
When I had cleaned up from the morning's exercise and gone out with my video camera to take some snapshots of the dying moments of a 30-year-old tree, some of whose branches were tall enough to be trees in their own right, I returned to observe the stockmarket online.
To my delight, a stock that I had been stuck with for over two months was generating huge volume and rising steadily after morning weakness.
I spent the next two hours slowly disposing of the stake that I had purchased at a low price, while the rain descended outside.
The sounds of the chainsaws stopped shortly after 4 pm, and I revelled quietly in a most fruitful day!
posted by DP at
7:40 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home