Your money's no good here

Friday 8th

I have put in all the refinements to the down hole calculations and everything seems to be running properly. Unfortunately this has only highlighted some problems with the data collection. hat is a different issue for someone else to sort out but it does illustrate the GIGO principal.

I realised I was running low on cash and with the weekend coming up I decided I'd cash some Aussie dollars I'd bought with me. I was in Thailand just a few weeks ago, where you can hardly walk 50 m without tripping over a foreign exchange booth and I know you can change foreign currency into $A at any bank in Australia, so I didn't expect this to be a problem. I asked some of the girls where I go go to a bank and one of them offered to call up the Nearest Chase bank and check if I could do it. The short answer was No, if you don't have an account.

I headed out anyway and saw another bank on the way. Same story but it took 15 minutes for them to find out they couldn't do it. I could hardly believe it. While I was waiting for one woman to check this out, I was showing the teller the $50 notes I was planning to exchange. She was fascinated, so I showed her a $20 and some Hong Kong money as well. She asked if the aboriginal portrayed on the back of the $50 was a president and why you couldn't just spend US$ in Hong Kong. We all know Americans are famed for their Insularity and ignorance of anything outside the US (and a lot of what happens inside as well) but this is a bank teller asking those questions.



I then tried the Amex office nearby who at least were quick to tell me the only place I could do it was at the airport. Fortunately My Visa card worked without any problems at the drive in ATM (who wants to have to get out of their car just to get money!).

I wrote up all the stuff I'd done on the calculations and sent the report off to various people who would be interested in it, highlighting problems and potential areas of improvement.

I left around 5 tonight, and I was still nearly the last to go. Their are a lots of POETS there apparently.
Last night I had a call from Ebi and he called again today. He has organised a game at Sweetwater, a private club in Sugarland (yes that is a real place!). It where Schlumberger has one of it's offices and Richard was saying it was about 60 minutes away.

I spent the evening working on some software for my golf club. I had done a bit last weekend and some more this morning since I was up early. I was asked to do something so that scores could be displayed as they come in. The club has an overhead projector that you can hook a laptop into, so I have worked on a small program to record scores, display them on a separate screen and scroll through the results slowly.

I didn't go out for dinner and have just had an ice cream tonight. I have been putting on weight steadily since I got here. It was not unexpected, it happened last time as well.

The photos were the ones I took last night.