The Silent Room

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Small Talk:
I’ve been kinda busy handling some other stuff, so pictures from Phuket are gonna have to wait. Don’t worry, most of what I did in Phuket were nowhere nearly as incriminating as what I did in Vietnam, so I’ll get to it as soon as I can. As a filler post, let’s talk about what happened over the week.

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Desktop of the Month: Saber will grace my days of November.

Financial management hasn’t really been one of my strengths, but one thing I’m kinda proud of is no matter how much I indulge, I can always set aside a decent sum just before I get my next pay [or sympathy] check. One of the habits I have when I get home is that I would take everything out of my pocket (handphone/wallet ending up in the washing machine, anyone?) before taking off my pants.

Keys, phone, wallet and watch would go on my workdesk, coins into a coin jar and all other crap in the garbage bag. I do these things almost out of reflex, and so I rarely ever notice the amount of coins I’d gather. I’d check the coin jar once or twice a year but it wasn’t such a big deal.

Until two days ago.

That jar was then heavy with coins filled up since god knows when. I think the last time I emptied that jar was at least 7 months ago, I can’t really remember. I’m not exactly sure what that jar weighed when I took it to the bank but for me, it was a rather amusing day.

I gave the jar of coins over the counter and the bank clerk took it in her hands with an ‘ooph’ and a wide-eyed look on her face. If you have deposited large sums of coins before you might notice that banks have this coin-sorting machine that feeds coins through multiple tubes according to their sizes. If there is a mismatch, the machine would jam and you’d have to open the main tube and release the unmatched coin.

When she took the jar, the Ms Wide-Eyed told me that 1 sen and 5 sen coins jam up. I thought hey, all I did was drop in the coins. it’s your job to sort and count since you’re in the business of sorting and counting money. So I had to wait for a while before I could actually get my money. After about 15 minutes, I was called up and I was thoroughly pleased to see that the pile was worth about RM200, excluding some RM3 worth of 1 and 5 sen coins.

What struck me as funny was, the bank didn’t want the stack of 1 and 5 sen coins. I mean, sure it only amount to a single-digit ringgit but it’s still money and I don’t wanna be lugging coins around. Banks sure have strange habits sometimes.

With that new sum in hand, I figured I’d go jalan-jalan around town. One mistake led to another, and I ended up with just as much money as I had before entering the bank. I went to Borders. Just to show you where my money has gone off to, here’s a picture that would hopefully explain things easier.

I should really keep myself away from bookstores for at least another month or so…