{"id":46,"date":"2006-09-28T04:46:16","date_gmt":"2006-09-28T11:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/?p=46"},"modified":"2006-09-28T04:46:16","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T11:46:16","slug":"small-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/2006\/09\/28\/small-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Small money&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Mafiish fakka&#8221; = &#8220;I have no change&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Nobody here has change.<\/p>\n<p>Giving anything as &#8220;large&#8221; as a 20 pound note (for, say, an LE8 purchase) brings the question, &#8220;fiih fakka&#8221;. (Do you have change?)<\/p>\n<p>When answered in the negative, there is much sighing and eye-rollling.<\/p>\n<p>Today I wanted to buy a small bottle of water. LE1.25. All I had was a 10LE note. The cashier asked if I had change. I did not. Much sighing. At the table next to him was a guy who obviously collects the cash and stocks the cash register. He had piles of bills. I pointed at him and said, &#8220;go get change&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He went over and there was much gesticulating and talking and (seemingly) arguing. The cashier came back.<\/p>\n<p>He gave me LE8.75 change. All in 50piaster notes (1\/2 pound). I could SEE the 1 pound notes sitting on the table. But nooooo&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>The other oddity (to me) is that there are <strong>NO <\/strong>coins. None.<\/p>\n<p>The pound is divided into piastres. I have seen:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>50 piaster notes<\/li>\n<li>25 piaster notes<\/li>\n<li>10 piaster notes (which are very colorful and cheaply made. I swear they look like play money).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All the cash registers will ring up the &#8220;actual&#8221; purchase price. Say, LE8.78. If you give the cashier LE10, if you are <em>lucky, <\/em>you&#8217;ll get LE1.25 back. More likely you will get LE1.20, and more likely still, LE1.<\/p>\n<p>It is the first (non-US) country I have been in that doesn&#8217;t have coins for the &#8220;change&#8221;, let alone coins for the small denominations (LE1, LE5 etc).<\/p>\n<p>And there does not appear to be any official &#8220;retiring&#8221; of money. It keeps getting circulated until it falls apart. You will often get bills taped together, sometimes with multiple pieces of tape.<\/p>\n<p>Some merchants will refuse to take money that is &#8220;too&#8221; torn. The idea is to keep the &#8220;good&#8221; notes and give out the torn ones.<\/p>\n<p>What a country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Mafiish fakka&#8221; = &#8220;I have no change&#8221; Nobody here has change. Giving anything as &#8220;large&#8221; as a 20 pound note (for, say, an LE8 purchase) brings the question, &#8220;fiih fakka&#8221;. (Do you have change?) When answered in the negative, there is much sighing and eye-rollling. Today I wanted to buy a small bottle of water. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}