Closing time

Grrr. As if my heat frustration were not enough, the summer closing hours have me boiling up in desperation! Yesterday I was emailed to collect a cheque from one of the universities I work for. There's no such thing as direct deposits or Internet transactions here, so it's all about the cheque.

(Let me add that this cheque took a month to be processed from the day that I signed the invoice. Not only did I sign it and personally have to hand it in with a 100LL stamp pasted onto it - a denomination no longer worth anything - but I had to go all the way to the university to hand it in because there's no such thing as receiving emailed copies of invoices. And, the reader should note that this was already three weeks after my stories were published.)

So I arrived at the university cashier's office at 2:30pm yesterday, only to be informed that it's summer ('It's summer, walaw.'), as if that's the most natural explanation for an administrative office closing at 1:30pm. So today I made sure to arrive before closing time, and then went for lunch before heading to the bank at 2:30pm to cash in the bucks (which will need another five days to clear). Walking up the stairs to the bank, I passed a cafe on the mezzanine. The owner stopped me from continuing up to the next floor. 'It's summer, walaw. They close at 2pm.'