I've been in U.S. for 5 months now and the most frequent question I'm asked by friends in Singapore must be "So how are you adjusting?". A quick trip to the grocery store today showed me that I still have a few things to get used to. At the checkout counter, it always seems to take me twice as long to identify the U.S. bills I need. Years of handling colour-coded Singapore notes has spoiled me.
Look at the colours of these notes. The monochromatic sameness of the U.S. bills definitely loses out in the aesthetic department!
U.S. Coins (L-R) : penny (1-cent), nickel (5-cents), dime (10-cents), quarter (25-cents), the rest seem to be limited in circulation
I'm not much better with the coins. When something costs US$5.30, for example, I would usually hand over $5.15.
If you look at the U.S. coins and compare them with the Singapore coins, you can see why I keep making this mistake. It's counter-intuitive to me for the dime(10 cents) to be physically smaller than the nickel(5 cents). The Singapore 10-cent coin and the nickel are almost identical in terms of size.
I have no problems with quarters(25 cents) though. They make so much sense (pun completely intended)! In fact, it would not surprise me if I find myself fumbling for that 25-cent coin when paying for something that costs, say $10.75, when I'm back visiting Singapore in April.
5 comments:
Your entry reminds me of the time I was in Turkey when everything was in 'millions'. The notes and the coins just about drove me nuts! I ended up giving the job of sorting it out to Tagore when I wanted to buy stuff in Istanbul.
(C&Pd from FB comments)
Here in the UAE everything is rounded up or down to the nearest 25 or 50 fils (cents to the rest of the world). Do, if something costs 8.90 and you hand over 9 Dirhams, you don't get any change back
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AHAHAH! me too!!! this is why i seldom give coins and i had a thousand and one one cent coins -_-''
(C&Pd from Shoutmix)
Ernie: Yup, when everyone else in the country is a millionaire, it becomes a problem doesn't it? I was in Turkey in 2002, so I can totally relate.
Lionel: Wow, Lionel. I did not know that. If given the choice, I would rather have my change back even if it means having to deal with those confusing coin
here in malaysia, we get paid so little, all that is irrelevent to us. haha!
(C&Pd from FB comments)
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