Tales of Currency Conversion.

Enjoying my dinner at a restaurant in Rocky Point, Mexico.

Each travel teaches us something new. When I live long enough in a country, I get used to the environment and life style, and start to feel the pattern. A travel to a foreign country makes us question our own assumptions. Till last year, I was not aware that currency conversion can be complicated. Interestingly, I learned that during my trip back to my home country. When I queried how much would they give me for 1 Euro, the guy at the reception of Prasanna Money Exchange in Wellawatte mentioned 157 Rupees. I said, "ok, I have 400 Euro". He said that is fine. When I showed him 20, 20 Euro notes, he changed his word "No, I can only give 155 Rupees". I could not understand. He said, 157 Euro for 100 and 50 Euro notes. For the notes below (such as 20 and 10 Euro notes), he can only give 155 Rupees per 1 Euro". I did not understand. He did not like my questioning, and stopped serving me. So I decided to go to the nearest money exchange, "Royal Money Exchangers". 

They also said, "157 Rupees for 1 Euro". I asked, "Is it the same for 20 Euro notes?" The cashier mentioned, "No, it would be a bit lesser". I asked how much that would be. He checked and told me "156.50 Rupees". I accepted that offer. So I recommend, Royal Money Exchangers. They give more value, and more polite, compared to Prasanna.

Another interesting observation. While I was waiting in the queue, a western couple jumped the queue, with their local host. I told to my mom (in English), "When westerners come to our country, they also learn to jump the queues". Embarrassed to hear what I said, the gentleman from the western country looked back and said "oops, sorry. I did not notice you were here", and he moved backwards to follow the queue. We, humans, are the best adaptive systems in the world.

When I told my Serbian friend how I was charged more at Mexico when paid in USD, she reminded me, "You should just have paid using your bank card. Usually the card machines charge in the local currency". It just did not come to my mind. All I was thinking - it was unnecessary to convert some USD to Mexican Peso.


Update on 18/08/2017: After ending up with around 300 Romanian Lei after my visit to Romania, I have this essential question. How effectively convert money to the local currency, and how to spend them all! Using debit/credit card may not work for multiple reasons. First, the bank does not give you the best coversion rate. It is more economic to convert in local converters. Second, not all the places accept the card. So you still need the cash. I used to convert the remaining currency back to Euro at the airport. However, I ended up losing more money as buying and selling rates are different, and airports and Travelex give the worst of the coversion rate. For example, we got 4.45 RON for a Euro in Romania (Timisoara city center), where Travelex gave only around 3.9 RON for a Euro, even after we booked online! They all claim 0 commission, despite this joke of a conversion. I keep the remaining change with me in the hope of returning to the country in a latter day. It worked for countries that I visit frequently, such as USA and Sweden. But not sure whether it will work for Romania, as it is not a country that I am going to visit multiple times. Let's see. We do not know what might bring me back to Romania.

Changing your Address in Portugal's Portal das Finanças

This took me some time to find how to change the address using the online portal for the Portal das Finanças (Finance Portal) of Portugal. Writing them below for future references.

Finanças Index Page

To change address:

https://www.portaldasfinancas.gov.pt/alterarMoradaSingularesForm1.action

You will receive the confirmation code by post to the new address in 5 days. Once you have received the code by post, to confirm the change address, visit the index page:

https://www.portaldasfinancas.gov.pt/pt/menu.action?pai=154

If you have any specific questions or require assistance, I recommend you contact them online using their support system, known as e-Balcao.

e-Balcão - Finanças

They are quite helpful, although they may take as long as a month to reply based on the time of the year. They get quite busy during the tax filing season. It helps if you ask your question in Portuguese though - even with the help of Google Translate, if you could not find someone who can speak Portuguese to help you. 

 

 

Update as of 2021 January: From a comment below, I learn that the new link is, https://sitfiscal.portaldasfinancas.gov.pt/pessoal/morada/alterarMoradaSingularesForm1 Please use this link if the above links do not work anymore. I do not live in Portugal currently. As such, I am unfortunately not up to date with these latest changes.

Time/Money Duality

This post can be considered the part-II of one of my previous posts - LATE. The movie "In Time" was the major motivation behind this post.

Time spent and perceived.

I have heard the phrases "Don't waste money!" and "Don't waste time" more often than any other suggestions asking not to waste something. "Don't waste electricity", "Don't waste water", and other similar suggestions are indeed the derivatives of "Don't waste money", or are driven by some sentiments such as "Don't waste food - give it to the poor instead!" We can simply conclude that "Money" and "Time" are considered two equivalent and most valuable assets. We spend money to save time, and also spend time to save or earn some money. I see this duality as the reason behind the routine of the humans. Everyone makes the world a better  ('better' is a relative term. so someone's better may be another's worse though) place to live, at least by a tiny bit, through their job and otherwise, by investing their time.

Being a complex quantity, Time has its own real and imaginary counterparts. Each of us has 24 hours. But the effective time differs from person to person. I feel, in terms of physics, we can't define Time as a vector or a scalar rigidly. May be, we should research further on the nature of the multi-dimensional time!

If we consider time as a complex number, what we measure will be the time's projection on the x-axis, the real counterpart of the complex quantity. When we are waiting for something or someone even a few minutes go like an hour - we can explain this using the above "Complex-time" concept. 

"Busy" is a relative term. I can be busy for task-1 or person-1, but may be available for task-2 or person-2.

The time and the money spent and the duality

"Can you spend five minutes with me regarding this project?"

"Sorry, I am afraid. I have to catch the train in 5 minutes to my home."

"Oh, it is fine. I am also on the same route. Let's discuss on the train"

Now, I am not busy for the discussion, since the talk is not going to consume my time.

Currently, it is impossible for us to travel by time, or purchase it. So either we spend much time or less of it - we can earn time relatively, but not absolutely. In natural terms, we can't earn time, but just spend it effectively. Time does have a monetary value. The In Time  movie attempts to make Time as money, focusing on the time-money duality. It discusses the sharing of time, and transfer of time between different individuals. The rich have more time, and lesser the poorer.

Since Time is used as the money, the rich have more money, making them living forever, almost, where the poor keep running searching for time, awaiting their end, everyday. For them, "tomorrow is a luxury they (you) can't afford" and even idling becomes costly (of course, idling costs in the real world too, in the time scale, as of the above image).

Wish if we can buy some time, utilizing this time/money duality in the future.

LATE

Getting late is inevitable in many times, though it sounds pessimistic to announce so. The impact can be a mere delay in attending an event or even failure to attend the event altogether. 

Digital - Analogue Analogy 

Digital-Late and Analog-Late

Some of the delays are often lead to an on-off scenario, which resembles a digital system. If you come late, you are fail (0). If you are on time, you are in (1). There is nothing in between. So one minute delay is as harmful as a delay of an hour or more in these cases. An ideal example would be being late to a flight. If you are late to a flight, you miss the flight. Let it be a minute or an hour. But some of the delays are analogue type. If you are delayed by a minute harm is less, where getting delayed by an hour will probably harm a lot. Attending a lecture can be a common example. Unless regulations restrict you enter the class late, getting late by a minute or two won't harm much, where a delay by an hour will make you lose the chance of grabbing the lecture for the day.

In Academia

Counter/Office closed - Digital-Late

Late submission in school assignments often results in a reduced score (often a 5% - 10% penalty per the day. Even a 5 mins delay is considered a day, and hence the penalty). During our undergraduate times, the online uploads are often come with a deadline at 11.55 p.m. In some of the cases, the upload button will be disabled at the exact time. That means, a second is delayed - no chance to upload, which often leads to a zero score. In school, coming late is often considered a half-day, which is marked as 0-1 (full day is marked as 1-1). So often, in the last minutes, we used to run to the classrooms to ensure that we enter the classrooms before the class teacher.

Mitigation

A proper timing usually help to mitigate the risks of getting late. Prioritizing based on the cost of getting late would help too. Seeking a less risky alternative may be a good alternative. For eg, missing a train might be too risky in Sri Lanka than missing a bus, as here long distance trains are not so frequent. In that case, if you feel that you won't make it on time for the train, better to pick the bus route instead.

Not too early though
However, the fear of getting late might induce proceeding on something too early, which may not be appropriate. Doing stuff too early is as bad as doing it late. Proceeding on something too early often would result in misunderstanding the requirements/expectations, environment, and the stake-holders involved. This often result in wastage of time, sub-optimal results, embarrassment, and even failure.

In case of a digital-like timing, it is better to be there an hour early, than being late. In analog-like cases, late is better than never.. ;)