Also, Liberia 35 – Brama Nyé is head of the Revenue Office in the town of Smell-no-Taste. Looked up the origin of the odd name: http://www.cicr-columbia.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Smell-No-Taste.pdf (see p10)

In WWII, American military & contractors building the airport led to a wave of domestic migrants seeking construction jobs. But most didn’t find work, and went hungry while camped outside compounds housing ex-pats and military families, who ate food imported from home. The migrants could smell the food being cooked, but never getting to taste it. Hence the town – Smell-no-Taste.

Witherspoon!  Get me two Olgas and a Slava!

It’s India, so of course the postcards were in a closed cabinet, along with all the sale copies of the museum’s publications (the Indian sun has no mercy on anything fancy-printed), and since the sales clerk wasn’t in, the janitor walked us to the museum’s central office to bring out one of the curators, and we got a glimpse right back to the mid 20th century. That office was 100% paper based. Accountants writing in ledger books as they moved receipts from an inbox to an outbox. One dude with an all mechanical typewriter banging away at it. Another clerk filing reports in manila folders. Rubber stamps galore. A rotary mimeographer by the door. I’d have lingered just to take it all in..

The guy who came out to open the sales cabinet was a scholar by the look of what he left behind. He was miffed at leaving his desk, but his mood improved lot when we pointed at things besides the postcards. And the publications themselves were also a throwback, clearly printed on rotary presses. 

Anyway, the scene made sense. If the people in that office could do their jobs with a little space heater on each desk, they were better off doing it that way in the OMGWTFBBQ heat of the thermal equator. ANd besides, everything they had was just an earlier form of information technology: the mimeographer, the clipboards, fillout forms, ledgers, rubber stamps, et cetera. And thinking back to my childhood and encountering those scenes back then, I can point out that a bureaucrat today is so much scarier than back then. “What was your name again? *clickety click*”