Patrick Martin's Blog

About this Blog

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m wandering around banks and money exchange companies in the Haymarket area of Sydney, Australia, buying U.S. dollars in small denominations, five, ten and twenty dollar notes here and fifties there, they all have plenty of one hundred dollar notes but have you ever caught a cab, anywhere in the States, at six in the morning and given the driver a hundred or tried buying a cup of coffee with a “C” note at Kennedy Airport. As usual I have left it to the last minute, why do I always do that? I’ve known about my trip, to New York, for months. I’ve even been following the fluctuations of the exchange rate, it has only varied between one and two cents, my head kept telling me something wonderful or bazaar would happen and suddenly the Australian dollar would be worth ninety something U.S. cents but it stayed stable, at around seventy three cents right up to the day before I’m due to depart, so here I am left, frantically, running around trying to get small