One day ago

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 12 October 2006 14:15:11

I pondered anew the difficulty of crossing cultures.

I was in the post office buying a stamp and overheard the guy in front of me in the queue. He was asking for change of a pound. More specifically, he asked for three thirties and a ten. His request was one of those sentences that goes into your brain, gets parsed and accepted as correct, and then gets passed on to the next stage for interpretation and only someway down the line does your brain register a problem. And the person serving him clearly processed things in the same order because just at the point where I was thinking I might have misheard she asked him to repeat himself. And he did. Three thirties and a ten. And although I was killing myself laughing (very quietly to avoid embarrassing him or myself) I really felt for the poor guy. What on earth is wrong in wanting a thirty pence coin? Why shouldn't there be such a thing? I mean some bizarre countries have 20 pence coins, some have 25, why not 30? And some countries were even more attached to numbers like 12 and 60 than Britain was, so why not 30? And yet, what a silly request! And the point is, of course, that I've been in that situation so many times. Making a perfectly reasonable request that turns out to be perfectly silly in the country you happen to find yourself in. It's not fun, but I guess it is funny.