Today was quite a productive day at work today. I've learned a lot about land reform and agriculture of South Africa. Quite interesting and useful context as I continue to get to know with this country.
I ended up having breakfast AND lunch at
vovo telo. My breakfast was a flat pastry that looks like a pizza with potato, parma ham and rocket on it. It was delicious once I heated it up. I paired it with a green tea, but that wasn't anything too special, I should just drink my own to save some money. Lunch was a pastrami sandwich and it was also quite delicious. This time I got a grapetiser (To be honest, I can't tell the difference between the two drinks).
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| yummy breakfast - potato, parma ham and rocket |
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| lunch sandwich pastrami and grapetiser! |
Part of the learning of land reform and agriculture means that i got to know the agriculture guru in the office quite well. Hence, I consulted the expert with regards to my questions about eggs. He was very patient and explained that free-range chicken eats grass, hence the egg yolks are more yellow. Grain fed and canola fed means exactly what they said. There are also some that claims to have extra omega in them. The conclusion was these are likely marketing brands just to charge a premium. Hence just go for the basic ones (I totally didn't see the basic ones coz I got so distracted by all the special names. So I took an afternoon break and went to the Pick n pay just beside the building (across from 44 stanley) and bought eggs. If you look closely at the receipt, you'll notice that there is "rounding". Apparently it rounds to the closest 5 or 10 because of the lack of small change.
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| success! |
So this is how it relates to the post name today. I've been trying very hard to learn the coins here. The South African coins actually closely resembles those in HK. Apparently minting of 1c and 2c coins ceased in 2002 which is why things get rounded if it's a cash transaction (but most transactions are cash). (Dam, I think i had a shiny 1c coin when I was in Canada, and I might have misplaced it by now =\ oops, I totally should've kept it. So the coin that is the smallest denomination is the 5c coin, then there is R10c, R20c, R50c, R1, R2 and R5. The R5 being the highest denomination in a coin has the bi metallic thing like our toonies and HKD's 10 dollar coin.
The bills (notes, as they are called here), are very pretty. There are 5 of them at R10, R20, R50, R100 and R200. On the front of these bills, there are animals R10 - Rhino, R20 - Elephants, R50 - Lion, R100 - (??), R200 - leopard?.
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| South African Rand! |
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| when you line up the bills, you can see that they vary in length with the highest denomination being the longest & the coins - R5, R2, R1, R50c, R20c, R5c (from left to right) |
I've also taken a picture of the back of these bills =) I think i have learned here that having coins is a very convenient thing. It's useful to tip parking guards, pay at parking stations, tipping gas station operators, etc. I definitely need to learn how they look and then keep some around!
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| For you! |
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| haven't eaten this one yet, but these are so cool! |
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| Selling life insurance via SMS? I wonder what happens if I text "stop" back |
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| Addition to leftovers - Swiss chards |
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| hmm cooked leafy green! |
2 comments:
They also have the Omega-3 eggs here too, but it doesn't mean much.
And they ought to get rid of the pennies here in canada too. It costs more than 1 cent to make one.
I figured out that the R100 (which is the most used bill here) has the Water buffalo on it..
I'm sure I'll learn which animal is which soon enough!
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