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Trip to the RBA

Written at Friday, September 19, 2008 | back to top

Just last night I decided to go to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to learn about monetary policies and how RBA operates ( I know it sounds boring). I was skeptical about the excavation because I had a feeling that it would be boring. So after confirming the time and place with Candy, I just went for the sake of learning.

Being too punctual (most of the time), I reached Martin place at around 10.00 a.m. and we were supposed to meet the other people at 10.30. So as you've figured, I reached a bit too early and had nothing to do. Luckily we spotted Lindt's chocolate "headquarters" (I call it headquarters cos I don't know what else to call it) beside RBA and decided to step inside.

For those of you who are not familiar with Lindt (I wasn't familiar with it until I came to Australia), it's a really nice (and expensive) brand of chocolates that can be found in your local supermarket like Coles or Woolies for a price of AUD 3.50 (?) if it's not on offer. Well, the price is not expensive compared to the "headquarters". They have a wide range of chocolate products there from the normal block chocolates that you find in supermarkets to their very own cake selection and ice cream! Those of you who are currently in Sydney and are chocolate fans, you should step into the shop just to get a glimpse of the chocolates they sell there. Really nice and pretty and expensive! haha.

Chocolates!!!

So, i found this section selling (nearly expired) block chocolates for half price. So i bought 4 for around 10 dollars? I bought it cos I wouldn't be able to find it at the supermarket. It's somewhat exclusively sold in the "headquarters" only.

Ok, after the buying the chocolates, we finally went to the reserve bank and heard a talk about monetary policies and the stock market and all those economics stuff and it wasn't as boring as I imagined. The speaker was really interesting and he's some kind of a senior analyst for RBA (impressive eh?). Then off to the museum where they show lots of money and tell us about the rich history of Australian currency.

Something funny and interesting that I found in the Reserve Bank of AUSTRALIA is that one of our MALAYSIAN currency is printed here. And I've never actually seen it circulating in Malaysia. And after a bit of research in Wikipedia, I actually found out that it does exist in Malaysia (yes, I actually thought that RBA was showing fake notes). And this is how it looks like...

How many Malaysians actually knew that these existed?
Or am I just the oblivious one? To learn more, go here.

Really interesting huh? Well, RBA only showed the yellow one and it was made from the same materials as Australian Dollars. The pictures were taken from wikipedia and I hope I didn't breach any copyrights (I am acknowledging the person who took the picture, don't sue me ok?).