Banknotes & what I spent with my dividends

Had an interesting discussion on banknotes today. Went to raffles place today to change some money, some for myself and some for a family member.

In Europe, the 2 major currencies ( Euro + Pound) only issue relatively high value banknotes (i.e. starting from EUR5/GBP5) whereas in America, Brazil, China, Singapore, HK, Malaysia etc issue low denomination banknotes (e.g. US$1, RMB5, S$2, HK$10, RM1). It's pretty weird, for you'd probably end up with alot of change and loose coins when one visits Europe.

Some currencies are really weird however, like the US dollar. case in point:

Every denomination is of the same dimension and color. I wonder how their blind people know which is which. Imagine if you get mistaken and want to tip someone US$1, and end up tipping him US$100 because you thought it was US$1 :P

As for the pound, this is it...4 banknote denomination in circulation. the £50 note is huge... around the same size as our S$1000 note.

Some of my old/interesting Singapore notes. I wonder why Singapore doesn't introduce a bona fide S$20 note.

Some Chinese notes I have. The "yi jiao" is RMB 0.10. Sing dollar 0.2 cents.

Egyptian pound


I also received MIT + First REIT dividends. Used part of the dividends to buy a nice silk tie on offer :D

usual price $53, bought for $19 from G2000 :)

Banknotes: How they represent a country's focus...

I'm going up to Malaysia with a bunch of Army friends tomorrow and changed RM400 at The Arcade at Raffles Place a few days ago. The money changer passed me 8x new RM50 notes.

Interestingly enough, I'm currently on this book called Malaysian Maverick by Barry Wain:

We look at the posterior side of the old RM50 note:

And the new RM50 note:

The posterior side of the old RM50 note showed heavy industry whilst the new RM50 notes show plam tree and agriculture.

In the book by Barry Wain, he mentioned that Mahathir was obsessed about having a heavy industry sector in Malaysia and pushed ahead, resulting in somewhat disastrous results as the Japanese (Mitsubishi Motors, Sumitomo Heavy Industry etc. ) exploited the cheap labor and costs without much technological transfer.

In the 1980s, he also declared agriculture and commodity as dead sectors.

However, this reversed under Abdullah Badawi and subsequently Najib Razak.

Interesting how a symbolic change of banknotes has so much history behind it!