Stories, thoughts, observations, rants and dribble. Just another of my attempts to keep the interested people informed ...

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Goodbye Göreme

As happens every single time, the space-time continuum seems to have been accelerated proportionate to the number of days I have left somewhere.
 
I spent so long here doing nothing, and then all the things to do caught up on me (although there are always more things to do when you are moving on, organising travel, buying presents and saying goodbyes.
 
Consequently I haven't been keeping my readers informed.  I am truly sorry and have all the best intentions of doing some serious writing once I am reunited with my laptop in London (yes, the mystery destination). 
 
I have so many things that I need to catch up on, as well as attempting to describe the entirely mixed feelings I have about leaving Turkey and this little town.
 
I am on a bus in a few short hours though, so will have to push this aside, hopefully just one more time!

Friday, June 09, 2006

Goodbye to the heaviest wallets in the world

New Zealand is changing its small change to even smaller change this year.
 
 
Far from being a silly idea, it will reduce strain on money handlers, the taxpayer and the general public's pocket capacity.  The materials used will be lighter and they are also reintroducing the 10c coin as a copper coloured coin, which we haven't seen since they phased out the 1 and 2 cent coins.  5 cent coins are being removed altogether, as they are essentially worthless in New Zealand's current EFTPOS-reliant retail economy.
 
Something I have known for a long time, New Zealand's coinage is some of the largest and heaviest in the world.  To quote the above website, "The 50 cent coin, at 31.75mm in diameter and weighing 13.61gm, is one of the largest circulating coins in the world. It is, for example, 75% heavier than the Euro 50 cent coin."
 
Besides the comparable Australian 50 cent coin, the only coin I have ever seen larger and heavier is the rare and mysterious British 5 pound coin.  Of course with it being worth approximately 30 times more than NZD0.50 , I think this is fair.
 
The only unfortunate thing, asides from vending machine retailers having to recalibrate or replace their machinery, is that the poor kid that I met in Cambodia that was trying to swap NZD1.50 for some useful money will now never be able to do so. 
 
She may have to carry that damn heavy 50 cent coin around forever.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

It's 11pm, can you guess what that means?

"It's cleaning time!"
 
Yes, that's what the manager said tonight when he came back to the restaurant. 
 
We had had virtually no customers all day (and yesterday), and this is when he decides to do an entire spring clean, all the floors, all the cushions, all the carpets, under all the carpets, all the tables, tablecloths, salt and pepper shakers, napkin holders, toothpick cups and ashtrays.  As well as the glasses and the cutlery and all the other things I usually have to do at the end of the night anyway.
 
We didn't finish until 1.30am.  And they wondered why I was grumpy.

Friday, June 02, 2006

New Visuals

To keep you all entertained, I've just uploaded (very slowly) photos from my recent trip to the west middle east (near eastern Turkey), and also some from just pottering around Göreme. 
 
For Göreme, click here:
 
And for Mt Nemrut, Şanlıurfa, Harran, Gaziantep etc, click here:
 
For future reference, the links are on my sidebar as usual.
 
I per-oh-miss to write something of substance soon.  Promise.