Money

Last week myself and three girlfriends went to the Hilton for dinner. That’s right…we have a Hilton, although, I would have to say that it’s not up to Hilton standards at all (besides the fact that it’s extremely pricy). However, it’s air conditioned and they have regular hamburgers so it’s a special treat. This is only my second time to go there since I arrived in April, so I was pretty excited. We got there and had a lot of fun together. We’ve found that we can laugh at pretty much anything, which makes for a good self-entertaining evening. Our waiter brought us our bills when we were finished and we got everything together, then he came back to ‘check’ on us. He went around the table in order, so he started with my friend on the left of me. She had left an extra little bit for a tip which is perfectly acceptable. The waiter counted her money in front of her, handed her back the extra, a little confused as to why she’d given extra, but without giving her a chance to explain. We all picked up on the fact that he didn’t understand the tip, but my bill was actually underneath hers on the table, meaning that I didn’t get the chance to take mine back and pull out the tip. So he gets to mine and again hands the extra money back. The girl to my right was next, but she caught on quickly and took out the tip she had. The waiter counted her money and said ‘you really know our money well. How long have you been here?’ She said ‘8 months’. And He says (to her) ‘you really know your money well. (to us ‘tippers’) You don’t know our money. You should really learn our money. It’s not that hard’. The last girl handed him the correct amount but then handed him the extra and specified to him that it was a tip, for which he was most grateful. However, he NEVER picked up on the fact that we were all trying to tip. We just left it on the table and figured that maybe, at some point, he might realize that we didn’t just forget it but left it for him. Anyways, so apparently it takes 8 months to ‘learn’ the money here so I still have 3 months before I can be self sufficient…oh how sad! Too bad that the money is printed in Arabic on one side but in English on the other side, so, logically, it wouldn’t be hard for anyone to ‘understand’ the money. But that’s using logic and, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s a logic-free world out here.