Day 12: The Art Market

 It was cloudy Sunday morning. I woke up early to go for a jog - yes, I was getting fat. :| Got so engrossed in the rare workout session , that I missed breakfast! :(

Headed out to the 'Art Market' at 11 am to check out African handicrafts. They had some really interesting stuff but their sales strategy is very 'in your face'. As soon as we got into the market, we were just surrounded by men trying to sell their items. They're just too pushy in making you buy their item - which backfired mostly coz half the group could not endure more than 15 mins of it & left the market. Since, I acted like an equally poor person from India - I guess I didn't get haggled as much. Found some really interesting stuff - in the meanwhile, a one of the sellers got too friendly & started introducing me to the rest as his new lover & wanted my email id!!! It's just a Ghanaian thing I guess, but this overly fake friendliness is slightly beginning to getting to me. :|

  The ATM Incident:

After an exhausting morning - coz it was really hot and humid outside and multiple trials to get some cashout, I finally located the ATM that was accept my debit card. Hopeful that I can finally get some cash, I put my card in only for it to get sucked in and there 'no response'! I just stared at the machin willing it to do something and hoping not to panic (that card was my only source of cash for the rest of the trip). After 2 mins of waiting, I walk up to the lone security guy standing descretely at the corner to find out what my options were. And he said in the most casual of tones 'Well, you wait 10 minutes'. I tried not to look flabbergasted at his careless response - so I tried again to find out if there's a plan B if the card didn't come out in 10 mins, but the security seemed convinced that after 10 mins it would just magically come out.

I waited impatiently for the next 15 mins & wow! the screen moved to step 2. In my hope that it's finally working - I tried to enter pin and there! It got stuck again. It finally struck me that that each step of the cash withdrawal process took 10 freakin' minutes to process!!! It was the quite stressful - and then you just learn to let go and expect so much less. For eg, having your bed made by the cleaners is a delight in the flat vs an expectation. You learn to appreciate the small things in life.. like the way I was overjoyed when I could finally got my debit card out of the machine!!...and in a strange way - I like it! :)

The rest of the evening - I worked on getting my blog up. Enjoy!