Yesterday, the whole day was spent at a conference on country competitiveness. It was quite interesting as there was interaction between various businesses and the presenter.

It was quite an experience paying the electricity bill today. The process itself was quite easy .The strange part is that there is no privacy at all and so when you make a payment the whole Post Office hears your place of residence as this is given to the cashier. At least I found out today that I could also pay my telephone bill at the same post office rather than going to the main Armentel office.

I also had a discussion with my �Varbed� today. I was trying to explain to him the concept of payment system. He installed the front door for me and was charging for labour, fair enough. The other part of the story is that the workers had to lay thick stones and cement around the edge of the door, so rather than giving me a quote for the latter job and ask me to shop around for prices, my �Varbed� simply tells me the amount of money I owed. I was rather frustrated but have to learn to deal with this system.

Apart from the discussion, I had a great day at AVC, had dinner at Middle Eastern Cuisine for falafel day (Fridays) and finally sat at a caf� near the Opera with friends.