Banking Maldivian style

Having lived in quite a view countries and dealt with different banking systems so u can call me kind of bank savvy at least that was what I thought till I had to deal with the main bank here in the Maldives… Now that was a paradigm shift. Honestly I think the Maldives has a unique banking system. I can give it a seal of Uniquely different annoying but definitely different.

So here it is what makes banking here unique:

1. U can only redraw money over the counter at any of the bank branches before 1.30 pm after that forget it. Not that the bank is closed in contrary the bank opens again at 4 pm but they are only accepting money???

2. Between anywhere around 1am you can not use your bank card as they are closing the system for a while, for the night audit I guess.

3. At times all the ATM’s here in Male’ (all 8 of them) are all out of order not that they are broken just they run out of money that sucks if this happens after 1.30 pm see point 1.

4. Did u ever go to a bank and had to take a token, well normal practise in many countries, well the same here but I bed you do not have 50 numbers or more in front of you…

Now there is more:

5. As having a visa debit card, you can use it abroad as often if you want as long if you have money on your account, logic no! Well not really, this bank has restricted the amount of money you can take from your card per day ……. and the limit is US$200.00 a day WTF honestly WTF, can I just run some numbers here:

i. A hotel night aprox US$100 (in Colombo)

ii. A lunch avrg US$30 incl drinks

iii. A Light shopping spree US$50

iv. Taxi and misc US$20

v. Dinner sorry can not because my bank is acting like a bloody Nanny.

6. Talking about US dollars there is a shortage of Dollars here in the Maldives, this is interesting. Do you know if you have a US Dollar account here at the bank and let’s say you have a balance US$10,000.00 and you want to go on Holiday and you need to take some of cash with you (see point 5 for the reason). So u want to take US$5000.00 well easy just go to the bank and get your money as this is your money no…. LOL remember the bank acts here like your Nanny, when there is a bad shortage of Dollars (this is always the case) they give you only half, or nothing or only after a couple of days. If you are very lucky you get your Dollars, but than in small notes. Honestly a friend of mine got US$100.00 in notes of 1, 5 and 10 dollars notes.

Okay, so after the moaning are there some good points yes there are, hummmm let me see:

Check books are made while you are waiting. You get a Check book within 5 minutes now that is a good thing, back home it takes at least a week and the staff are quite friendly at least I never had any bad experience.

Once you know how the locale bank system works it is quite plain sailing, well in theory it is but you always have to be ready for surprises and trust me there are plenty of them here

Have a great day and enjoy banking and yes to my friend and family, honestly banks you have there are quite okay :P

Vday

Ok people who know me well know that I love to talk, I can not keep silent I simply have to express my thoughts can not do this alone in my head, I guess it is my way to make sense of it all… So now my thoughts will be on Memo’s world….

O yes thoughts now I have many of them. As it is to day Valentines day I should mention that in my opinion this is the most useless and pointless day I know and yes invented by a company called Hallmark and some other entrepreneurs to earn some extra bugs, well let me rephrase this a lot of extra bugs and good for them I would say a lot of companies can use some extra revenue with selling overpriced roses, stupid white bears with I love you on them, heart shaped things and yes those cards -sigh. But some companies are taking the biscuit a hotel in the Gulf, The Emirates Palace, which bills itself as a seven-star hotel, has the priciest Valentine offer - a seven-day stay for a cool million bucks ok this includes a private yacht and plane but still give me a break seriously… I do not see the point but than again it could be me.

So what is than the essence of Valentines day, think, think and more thinking well sorry to say there is NONE (except the get money out of our pockets) Okay some of you might say “it is to express your love to your loved one or the lucky person to be your future loved one”. Okay wait you honestly think that one day in the year does the trick well in my opinion not really.

If you love someone then you should love the way you would make every day a special day for them…not just for one day and not to show off you love them so much only on valentines day…

Well these are my thoughts on Valentines day… probably many people disagree with me on this and that is perfectly okay. But please please stop pestering me with happy Valentines notes on Facebook, Twitter, sms, etc as I am not really interested and do not get the point thank you……