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I was buying a snack from the vending machine at work just now (I know, I know, I need to get my ass to the store and pick up some more healthy trail mix soon) when I noticed that one of the "nickles" in my pocket was suspiciously thin and dull. With a glance, I took in the pompadour on the portrait and the word "sentimos" and immediately thought to myself What banana republic is so hopeless that they can't even spell Spanish correctly on their money? A moment later it occurred to me that it probably wasn't Spanish at all but Pilipino. Sure enough, the full phrase is "Dalawampu't limang sentimos". Somewhere, sometime yesterday, I got slipped a twenty-five cent piece from the Philippines. (Current value in US money: about 0.6¢.)
Incidentally, this reminds me that one of my souvenirs from China is the most worthless paper bill I've ever received as change[*]. The face value is one jiao, that is, one tenth of a yuan or just over US 1¢. Strangely, the Chinese seem even more coin-averse than the Americans. Sure, they have a one yuan coin in circulation, but that's their largest and it still has an exchange value of only 13¢. (The €2 coin, for comparison, approaches $3 at our current sucky rates of exchange.) Even so, we rarely got our hands on them; everyone seemed to prefer bills for amounts of half a yuan and up. (We tried to get rid of all our wu jiao bills, but I think we still got stuck with a few.)
Some cashiers took interesting steps in order to avoid having the cash drawer overflow with singles. A common solution at more informal venues was to origami-fold stacks of five one-yuan notes into triangles (rather like the paper footballs we used for tabletop games in study hall back in high school). I first came across this at a spring-roll booth on a "snack street" near the Wangfujing Bookstore; unfortunately, someone had assembled them a bit too hastily and worked a five into the triangle they handed me, meaning that I got more back in change from that exchange than the cost of my food.
[*] I do have a bill denominated in PLZ, the Polish currency in use before the 1995 redenomination which knocked off four zeroes, but this was simply handed to me by a Czech clerk because I found it amusing.
Incidentally, this reminds me that one of my souvenirs from China is the most worthless paper bill I've ever received as change[*]. The face value is one jiao, that is, one tenth of a yuan or just over US 1¢. Strangely, the Chinese seem even more coin-averse than the Americans. Sure, they have a one yuan coin in circulation, but that's their largest and it still has an exchange value of only 13¢. (The €2 coin, for comparison, approaches $3 at our current sucky rates of exchange.) Even so, we rarely got our hands on them; everyone seemed to prefer bills for amounts of half a yuan and up. (We tried to get rid of all our wu jiao bills, but I think we still got stuck with a few.)
Some cashiers took interesting steps in order to avoid having the cash drawer overflow with singles. A common solution at more informal venues was to origami-fold stacks of five one-yuan notes into triangles (rather like the paper footballs we used for tabletop games in study hall back in high school). I first came across this at a spring-roll booth on a "snack street" near the Wangfujing Bookstore; unfortunately, someone had assembled them a bit too hastily and worked a five into the triangle they handed me, meaning that I got more back in change from that exchange than the cost of my food.
[*] I do have a bill denominated in PLZ, the Polish currency in use before the 1995 redenomination which knocked off four zeroes, but this was simply handed to me by a Czech clerk because I found it amusing.