One peso coin being used to cheat parking meters in Abu Dhabi

We’re old enough to remember using public pay phones in Manila when it cost PHP.40 to make a single, no time limit call. And we’re street-smart enough to have learned how to make calls with only two PHP.10 coins: by dropping them together as fast as you can, you could trick the phone into thinking that you fed it four coins. Fast-forward 30 years later and we’re happy to report that our local coins are still being used to cheat the system. A reader of the weekly tabloid XPRESS Abu Dhabi sent us this report about motorists there using one peso coins, which is almost the same size and weight as the one dirham coin, to cheat parking meters and saving a lot of money in the process. One dirham costs PHP12; parking in Abu Dhabi costs between DH2 and DH3 an hour.