Nothing much going on

Towards the end of last week, I saw an agency here getting their pay. I haven't seen that much cash in years, even if it was dinar. An entire armored truck being unloaded, one sack at a time. Large sacks, mind you, like 50-pound feedsacks with stacks of dinar filling them completely up.

Things that make you go hmmm...

If that truck were to go missing, that money would be gone. Unrecoverable. There's a cost involved in risk, and cash-only economies pay more transaction costs than modern economies. It's not a very noticable cost per transaction, that is, one guy giving another guy some money doesn't notice it. But over time and many transactions, having to pay cash, with its attendant costs of transportation (a large truck, gas, driver, guards etc.) and the risk involved (might be stolen) cost money. The first bit of that cost (salaries, equipment etc.) is mostly cycled back into the economy, but the cost of the risk is lost. It's an inefficiency, unrecoverable. This is the opportunity cost- if they didn't have to do it this way, what else could they do with it that might be better?

The gas might be better spent on an ambulance, or even on a vacation. The guards and drivers might work somewhere else.

In other cash-related news, they're screwing us on how much cash we can get. There's no ATM. Well, actually, there is one in the palace, it's just not hooked up to anything. And has no money in it, presumably. The finance department in the palace will only let us cash one $200 check per calendar month and the PX has just started doing the same. You can only get $20 cash from a debit card transaction at the PX. Sucks if you want to buy carpets, which is about the only thing they make here worth taking home. Actually, they don't even make them here, they just import tham cheaper than we can get them at home.

Biffed it on my bike yesterday. Drinking and biking don't mix, even if it's only a bottle of water. It wasn't too bad tho- just a couple little bruises and an inch or so of minor road rash. I managed to hit a speed bump already out of control from some broken pavement, and ran into a T-wall. Felt ridiculous more than anything else. Grown-ass man crashing a bicycle.

More seriously, one of my co-workers' kids got hurt pretty badly riding his bike at home in the states- his 7-year-old broke his jaw pretty badly, with stitches, a surgery already, and more to come, with probably metal plaes in his jaw for the rest of his life. Poor kid- in pain, discomofrt, and eating through a straw for the foreseeable future, with more pain and discomfort to come. Best wishes.