Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Coins

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

So today I finally decided to pay for my lunch at the cafeteria using coins for once. Cuz I swear my wallet is threatening to burst at the seams any moment now what with all the coin changes I received every time I paid in banknotes.


Which is what I have been doing
(paying in notes I mean) ever since my first traumatic shopping experience here where I was told that the total cost was 8.30 and while I got the 8 bucks part right, I totally failed miserably when it came to the 30 cents part where I dug around frantically in my wallet trying to find the right amount of change only to have all these foreign looking coins staring back at me as I desperately work my brain trying to figure out what must I add to a quarter to make it into 30 cents only to repeatedly come up blank as my head was continually filled with images of a M'sian 20 and 10 cent coin (so not helping) while the line behind me got longer and the glares from the customers meaner till 2nd sis came in to help by telling me I needed to give the cashier an extra nickel and I had never felt so relieved ever in my life as I beamed thankfully back at her while diving back into my wallet for the much needed nickel only to come back up seconds later going: 'Um, so what is a nickel?'


But the cashier was extremely patient throughout the whole ordeal though, smiling encouragingly at me all the while as I try to sort out my money. Great. Now she probably thinks I have some sort of mental deficiency or something.


So as I was saying, ever since that day I've resorted to using notes as not to appear like an idiot anymore (once is enough thank you very much) but this only resulted in like a mountain pile of heavy coins back as change which I have to get rid of as I currently have a hard time getting the flaps of my wallet to close. Sigh, I should really take one day off to study all the coins and do various sums with it.


Anyway, total cost for my lunch came up to 3.38 and glancing at the long line of starving students behind me, I was sorely tempted to pay in notes but what do you know, I'd ran out of notes so coins it must be and so I opened my wallet to locate the correct amount of coins all the while chanting repeatedly in my head like some ritual chanting shamanistic monk that 'a quarter plus 1 dime makes 35 cents plus 3 pennies equals 38 cents' and finally handed her the cash while beaming inwardly to myself for getting it right. Only to be told that I am a nickel short.


BUT HOW CAN IT BE??? I've faithfully chanted the equation in my head the whole effing time and I'm still wrong??? So I asked to see the coins again and couldn't for the life of me figure how that was not 38 cents till she pointed out that what I thought was a dime was in fact a nickel.


Oh....Oh...


So there I was picking out every coin from my wallet and squinting at it like a half-blind old lady to see if its a dime or nickel, stupid people really, why do they make dimes smaller than nickels when the value of a dime is higher, the U.S. coin making dingbats, do they enjoy making outsiders squirm when paying for goods? The pressure of the ever growing line with impatient students glaring at me in annoyance did not help my predicament as each retrieved coin keeps turning out to be a bloody dime instead and so I tilted my wallet slightly to ease out a handful of coins onto my palm for easier searching only to have the whole lot of them gleefully spilling all over the counter and floor, happy to finally be free from their months long encasement.


My life is just awesome.


Was hurriedly shoving them back into my wallet when a guy asked if I needed help and in my head I was all 'yeah, like which is the bloody nickel?!' but instead went 'oh I'm fine' cuz I cannot very well tell him that I cannot discern a nickel from a dime can I not? Hello? Instant social suicide ok.


Finally found the offending nickel and handed it meekly to the cashier as I rushed out of the shop to escape all the angry glares..........


Only to bump into another student on my way out causing me to drop my wallet onto her foot which resulted in her yelping with pain what with the 918313143 pounds of coins in it.....


And so I had to apologize profusely....


Leaving me even less time to eat my lunch.....


And thus making me late for class oh the stupid coins and and and...


OH SIGH....


*chants* 'The size of a nickel is smaller than a quarter but bigger than a dime. The penny is brown. A quarter is 25 cents, a dime 10 and a nickel 5. A quarter plus a nickel equals to 3o cents. 2 quarters makes half a dollar. A quarter plus 2 dimes plus a nickel equals 45 cents.......'


Update: So one of you requested to see a picture of the coins in question:


It may look extremely distinguishable to you but that's because I have them all laid out nicely next to each other, just wait till you have like a pocketful of those with a million angry people staring you down then you'll understand what I mean by not being able to tell them apart.

And another reader pointed out that I got my sums wrong? See!!! Told you the stupid coins are confusing. hmph.

4 comments:

Akira 思胜 said...

Show us the coins, will ya? Hehe...

Jolyn said...

hahaha. ehh so funny. but i think i will be worse than u if i were to stay there. what's wrong with they inventing so many diff types of coins? haha

Ida D. said...

A quarter plus 2 dimes plus a nickel equals 45 cents?

Not 50 cents?

hana said...

@akira: done =)

@denise-joey: Actually they have less =x But who cares ok its still as confusing as ever.

@amy: LOL. Sorry about tht. Stupid coins totally fried my brain so I now fail at simple equations too XD