Tuesday 23 December 2008

You think our currency is in trouble?

Just as a complete aside, remember the Zimbabwean economy, and its crazy inflation? A colleague at work has friends out there, and they dropped him a note detailing, amongst other things, their bill for one month's broadband connection to their home in Harare. This is for December, quoted in old (pre-August 2008's "redenomination" of the currency by a factor of 10,000,000,000!) Zimbabwe Dollars:

$1,512,484,799,972,590,080.00 !!

I reckon you might want that in words:
1 quintrillion
512 quadrillion
484 trillion
799 billion
972 million
590 thousand and
80 dollars (zero cents).

Can you imagine writing a cheque for that amount?!
For reference, the most that you can take out of a bank today is $500,000, about enough for a loaf of bread. In terms of the old rate of the above monthly bill, $500,000 current dollars is $500,000 * 10,000,000,000 = $5,000,000,000,000,000 or 5 quadrillion dollars.

I think I worked out what his monthly bill was using an online currency exchange site.. if you fancy having a go, put your guess in a comment on this post, I'll post my estimate later.

Monday 22 December 2008

Unclean!


Yep, we're all ill here with this flu thingy that's "the worst outbreak for 10 years". Even Javier Mascherano has it, but you need to be a fan of Liverpool FC to worry about his health.
All four of us were on the sofa watching TV yesterday afternoon, Mishka has sympathetic flu, or perhaps something he ate upset him.
I like to be positive about everything, so it's a good thing we've had it for the past few days, so with any luck we'll all be over it by the time we head up to Radcliffe to Grandma & Grandad's on Thursday :-)
Lara's dealing very well with it, perhaps because she's had it for weeks, but also considering she's got her top front teeth coming through now too. Hopefully she'll be able to properly bite her turkey on Thursday afternoon (before falling asleep after watching Her Maj the Queen like the rest of us). Famous Last Words but Lara slept through the last two nights, waking only to cough, and we had to wake her this morning at 7.40 to get up for nursery! Fingers crossed for three nights in a row.