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Day’s Verse:
For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy.
Psalm 63:3
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Why don’t grocery stores open before 8:30?
Why don’t busses and bus stops have maps of their route on them?
Why are £1 coins smaller than 50p coins? And why aren’t there £1 notes?
Why did the Post Office charge me £3 to cash my traveler’s checks that were in pounds?
Why do they drive on the opposite side of the road? (I notice they also walk on the opposite side, so I have to constantly think about walking with the flow of traffic, not with what’s natural for me.)
Why do people say “cheers” and “no worries” to each other so frequently? And what is the right context for such a comment?
You know, my team spent a lot of time trying to figure out the appropriate context for “cheers”. It’s sort of means “nice!/cool/neat”. That may not be totally true but that was the best way we could think of it. And “no worries” is sort of a “its ok/that’s fine” type of a phrase.
I know that the side we drive on has something to do with the design of horse-drawn wagons from hundreds of years ago–something about where the brake is or something–and that it changed in the US at some point.
I remember loving the pound coins. A warning though — they’re easier to spend than a dollar bill, even though they’re worth more! Somehow a coin just slips off the fingers more easily.
The real question is, why are there still dollar bills in the US? Canada doesn’t have them anymore either. I’ve heard the mighty paper-manufacturers’ lobby is behind it, but who knows.
“Cheers” is a great word. It can mean either goodbye or thanks, and a few other things besides.
I’ve heard that driving on the left dates back to Medieval times. If you were riding a horse, and were right handed (as most of us are), you’d want to be on the left side of the road so your sword arm would be closer to an enemy coming toward you (ie. you wouldn’t have to reach across your horse). All Europe was that way at one time. I’m unsure why the continent switched over.
A paper pound sterling!? They’ll stab you, spouting those ideas.
Every time I asked somebody about the left side of the road, I got a different answer. Some of my favorites include “To be different from the US”, and “In Europe, horse-drawn carts always took the left side, to allow people to walk on the right of them, so cars followed afterward”
Cheers is filmed before a live studio audience.
I believe they drive on the left side of the road because when jousting in carriages or something, since the general population was right handed, by driving toward one another on the left side of the street, it enabled their right hands to be able to stab the opponent directly.
Joust!, for your Atari 2600 Home Computer System.