an entry somewhere else

Well, classes don’t actually start until the 14th, so I’m busy settling back in to the groove here in Makassar. As part of my savvy returnee posture, I decided I would open a local bank account to stop the ATM and exchange fees my bank levies for each transaction. Getting the account set-up took about a half hour. The customer service representative who did this would click her mouse a few times and follow it by filling out forms by hand for several minutes. I also had to sign papers no less than seven times. All this took about 45 minutes and I left with a passbook and an ATM card. It took a while but was painless.

Today, I went off to try and exchange some cold, hard American dollars. I knew from various memos in windows of places that dealt with international travelers there were certain series of dollars that would not be accepted. Not paying attention is where I went wrong. Out of 30 bills, 28 were rejected outright by the bank I went to for exchanges. The two bills that were not rejected for serial number reasons were rejected because they had excessive wear. The typical American wallet is a bi-fold and the image of Ben Franklin gets a little worn out. These two were marginally worn out. Of course, they would have been accepted fine in the USA. I knew they were picky here because of counterfeiting, but I did not think 30 out of 30 bills would be turned away. There was a woman next to me and she asked what price I was asking (through the teller I was speaking to). The woman wanted to buy my US dollars as she was traveling there soon. I demurred and decided to go my way. The teller finally added that even though her bank would not accept the bills I had, any moneychanger in town would. Shylock, here I come.