To my surprise they all said no!

To my surprise they all said 'no'.

The current marriage equality survey has huge swathes of the country thinking about 'yes' or 'no'. I'm firmly in the 'yes' camp for fairly obvious reasons and to my relief most people I know appear to be of like mind. That is to be expected, I suppose.

So who surprised me by saying 'no'? Well, it was nothing to with marriage equality. I'm about to depart for a holiday in South Africa and neighbouring countries. In preparation for the trip I visited my usual foreign exchange outlet to purchase some South African Rand. I wasn't expecting any problem. After all, the Eastern suburbs of Sydney has a very large South African expat community.

To my surprise the outlet said it doesn't sell the Rand. I tried a nearby outlet and they were the same. 'No' we don't sell Rand. A third and fourth outlet were the same. It took the fifth outlet to find one who could sell me some Rand. Even they do not usually sell Rand, the cashier told me, but a customer had ordered some Rand from them but then cancelled the order. Basically they were keen to offload their holding on me. 'Would I take it all?' the cashier enquired. She offered various inducements but I simply did not need that amount.

So, it is a bit like marriage equality. In the currency world, love is love but there is nothing so unloved as the unloved.