Random

Ansastaia taught me how ot make sushi from scratch 

Planes Trains and Automobiles II

Anastasia, whom I came to visit in Lugansk, and I were about to leave my apartment the other day and I couldn't find my wallet.

Drama 3:  My wallet is gone.

Yup... if it were a movie, at this point you'd be saying "whatever... it's too much to be believable."  But it's true.  No trace of my wallet.  I think the folks at AT&T have field workers who stole it because they've made quite a killing as I tried to contact my credit card companies and cancel the cards.

And for those of you playing the home game "Don's Travels", be sure to note that not only do credit card companies disallow canceling cards from within your online account, but they give you a 1-800 number with which to call in the event that your card is stolen or missing.

Handy, except that 800 numbers do not work when calling internationally.  

So I poked around and finally found non-800 numbers to which I could call collect and cancel my cards.  However, as you know, any such process involves automated voice options and several transfers before you find the correct person.  This too, I believe was orchestrated by AT&T so that I would use more international roaming minutes at $3 a pop.  And if you have any experience reaching the correct person while navigating The Matrix (starring Keanu Reeves), and I know you do, you know that each call took about 30 minutes.  So I'm guessing that it cost me about $200 to cancel my credit cards.

In hindsight, it might have been less expensive to allow the new Ukrainian "Don Powers" card holder to have a spending spree.  $200 is a lot of mayonnaise!

And speaking of dollars... I was now left with the cash that I had tucked away in various other locations and my passport.  So first order of business was to take cash to a bank and exchange it for Ukrainian Hryvnia currency.  

So, with the help of Anastasia, I handed the teller 2 $100 bills.  After much Ukrainian blah blah, the teller handed them back and explained that they do not take bills with "marks."  Someone along the life of my useless bills had decided it was a good idea to stamp them with a very small ink stamp... like a date or something.  This of course intuitively makes the money no longer have value!

Seriously?  My return flight was canceled.  I was arrested in customs.  I lost my wallet.  And now your mayonnaise eatin' teller won't take my cash?

She smiled... the gold on her front teeth had the initials A, T, T.

I handed her my remaining two hundred dollar bills.  One was handed back.  "Too old."  She said.  I looked at the bill... yes, 2003 was a LONG time ago.

So many things are opposite here.  The coffee isle at the grocery store is 90 percent instant coffee.  People don't smile at each other or even speak on the streets or in the buses.   Cutting raw chicken is not treated here similarly to handling nuclear waste (as it is in the USA with our samonella-tainted chicken), and mayonnaise is king.

In the USA, people are suspicious of crisp new money (is it counterfeit?) but here, if the money has ever been used before, it is useless.

This would really make a good movie.  I think Keanu should play the bumbling clueless American who seems to be living-up to every low-brow eastern stereotype of an American.

Cue fancy movie voice...

"This summer... Keanu Reeves IS Don Powers"