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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Zimbabwe Quantum Math By Antonio C. Abaya Written June 04, 2006 For the Standard Today, June 06 issue This was forwarded to me by Offie Mananquil and serves to remind Filipinos that we are not at the bottom of the pit, and that there are people much worse off than we are. The article is called The Zimbabwe Theory of Quantum Mathematics. The email did not say who the author was of this little gem, but it deserves a wider circulation. So, here goes nothing. The day is very hot and you are passing the Keg and Sable in Borrowdale (obviously a favorite watering hole for Anglo-Saxons in Harare), so naturally you go in for a nice cold beer. The barman informs you that: One beer now costs 150,000 Zimbabwe dollars You can pay with three crisp $50,000 notes, still damp from the printing press. Or, if you are feeling a bit bloody-minded, and if you can still source the coins (remember those things, they were still quite common a few years ago), you can sit back and enjoy a beer while the barman counts out 15,000,000 Zimbabwe one-cent coins But hold it! We have a problem: Each Zim one-cent coin weighs three grams. So this little lot weighs in at: 45,000,000 grams or 45,000 kilograms or 45 tonnes After dumping 45 tonnes of coins into the pub, you are going to need a helluva lot more than one beer to cool down. But don�t panic � we have a plan. Like all brilliant ideas, this one relies entirely on its simplicity. Plan B: We sell the metal and drink the proceeds. There is a small legal question about smelting coins of the realm and exporting the resulting brass ingots. However, we�ll let the buyer worry about that one. There doesn�t seem to be an international price for brass. But its main ingredient, copper, has recently been selling for an all-time high of US $5,200 a tonne, on the London Metal Exchange, but we won�t be greedy. For a quick sale, let�s discount it to: US$ 2,600 a tonne So our 45 tonnes of coins now make us proud owners of US$ 117,000 But we still can�t buy that beer as the Keg is only allowed to accept Zimbabwe currency. We must resist the temptation to change our money on the lucrative but illegal black market. (Only the Governor of the Reserve Bank and Cabinet Ministers are allowed to do that.) So we change our US dollars at the prevailing inter-bank mid rate, which is US$ 1 : Zim $99,201.58 Our heap of US greenbacks now miraculously becomes a mountain of: Zim $11,606,584,560 For the uninitiated, the billions start at the tenth figure, counting from the right. So if the price of beer has not increased while we were doing this calculation, you can now walk back to the Keg and order: 77,377 bottles of beer. Happy Drinking!!! (But make it San Mig Pale Pilsen. ACA).***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles since 2001 in www.tapatt.org. Current articles also in tonyabaya.multiply.com and at [email protected] OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Zimbabwe Quantum Math� I do not see the point in your piece �Zimbabwe Quantum Math.�. When you're in deep shit, being waist-deep compared to being chest-deep does not make it any more palatable. Wake up! You're still wallowing in shit! Alfredo Paredes, [email protected] Canada, June 06, 2006 MY REPLY. People who have no sense of humor are usually full of shit. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Thanks for sharing. No wonder that Nick Price never plays golf in Zimbabwe. I once gathered that inflation in Peru was so fierce in the �70s that when you go to a restaurant you better pay in advance, because when you�re done the price would have been higher. Maybe not really that bad, but traders, who may have dollar bank accounts, would immediately deposit their earnings before the bank closed daily. Inflation is not new. This is why Japan started off with 360 yen to the dollar after the war. After the Yom Kippur War the Israelis had automatic monthly pay increases but resilience quickly restored stability. We (during World war II, with Japanese pesos) had the same experience as Germany (after World War II, new DM) when you had to bring sacks of money, which kept getting smaller in value. The Marshall Plan helped the Europeans. US occupation, plus the Korean War helped the industrious Japanese, whose empire was under a benevolent dictator who �ruled� but introduced parliamentary democracy the way such should develop and guided Japan�s postwar economic boom with its investment and mass market (Maybe our problem was we did not have �unconditional� subservience as the Japanese had in 1945). Carlos L. Agustin, [email protected] President, National Defense College of the Philippines June 07, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dang! That's a lotta beer! Reminds me of a story about a person who fell into a vat of beer. He surfaced twice with a big smile on his face before he finally drowned happily! Sayang, we don't have San Mig in this Home of Coors Beer and a bazillion mini-breweries! I once asked SMC if I could be their representative here because I wanted this State of drunken drivers to taste real beer, but it turned chicken and answered me ---after seven months!--- that they already have a distributor in California! What kind of lame answer is that! Meanwhile, strong Mexican beers like El Sol, Dos Equis and Corona are enjoying their share of the market. Even some Americans don't drink American beer. They call it "canoe" because "it's next to water." If I may quote the late Nipsey Russell, who wrote: "To those who live a life of booze, I have no sympathy at all; My sympathy lies with the sober guys . . . Us drunks are having a ball!" Mag-beer muna tayo! Rome Farol, [email protected] Highlands Ranch, Colorado June 07, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Comparing one's misery with other people's is not a virtue. It is both insulting to oneself and to the other person who is supposed to be more miserable. Even for Christians, the teaching is not to feel good because there are other people who are in a worse situation than we are. This is the common tendency and belief, which perpetuates and glorifies the feeling of despair. The correct teaching is that, we have a God who can all lift us all from misery, which is anchored on the spirit of hope and faith. Arnel Serrano, [email protected] California, June 08, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Tony : At the rate our senators and congressmen of the legislative branch of government are rapaciously digging into the country's already meager revenues for their ever-increasing Country-side Development Fund (or whatever new euphemism they choose -pork is pork is pork, whether it is bacon or pork barrel), and with the leadership of the Executive branch of government ever so willing to accommodate with compromises merely to get the former's support, the hilarious but frightening scenario you depict in this article is not too far-fetched a possibility for our kawawang bayan. Hay, naku! Tony Elica�o, [email protected] June 08, 2006 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |