THE PALE blue banknote that says 1,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars really means 10,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Yes, that's 10 quintillion, taking into account the 13 zeros Zimbabwe's central bank has lopped off in the past couple of years to make the country's currency somewhat more manageable.
Every time the zeros get out of hand, Zimbabwe's reserve bank scythes them away. The largest note, Z$100,000,000,000, released in July and useless within weeks, looked so bizarre with all the zeros squeezed in that it became an instant collector's item. Regardless, inflation is soaring so fast in Zimbabwe that it is hard to figure out what a Z$1 million note is actually worth on a given day.
Somewhere between July's Z$100 billion note and the more recent zero-reduced Z$1 million note, it is easy to get mixed up.
Even more confusing are the wildly different exchange rates that depend on how you pay for purchases. Zimbabweans chuckle when they see a foreigner bumbling with their currency. They launch into long, looping explanations that leave you more confused than when you started.
It is difficult to resist just holding up the Z$1,000,000 note and asking a reliable local: "What's this worth?" But they can get confused themselves. To my surprise, when I tried it recently, my maths-savvy friend no longer had the calculation in his head. So he pulled up his mobile phone calculator and tapped away.
"Ech! My mobile can't cope with all these zeros," he grumbled, while I stared at the bustling crowd on Robert Mugabe Street, wondering where they could be going, in an economy where nothing works.
Finally he had an answer: "That's worth about 50 [US] cents, a bit less than 50 cents."
So I used the blue notes for tips. Fifty cents might not sound like much but, in early November, Z$1,000,000 was more than a week's pay for a police inspector.
After tipping car guards, parking men and waiters for several days, I checked the value again. It turned out my friend had been mistaken; the note had been worth about $4, not 50 cents.
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation rate, the highest known, is officially more than 230 million per cent, but some economists place it in the quadrillions. It seems just a matter of time before Zimbabweans will be grappling with octillions, nonillions, decillions, duodecillions and more.
Just trying to explain the complications in the money system is, well, complicated.
Imagine this: you go from the crowded, dusty streets of the capital, Harare, into a dimly lit black market moneychanger's shop that masquerades as a video shop. Ask the dealer the rate for a US dollar and he says, "27". Twenty-seven what is not clear.
Ask him the rate for a South African rand (worth about 10 US cents), and he still says, "27". But this time the decimal point is in a different place. You walk out with a handful of pale blue notes and little idea of what they're worth.
If that sounds complicated, try this: you're in a supermarket, and for the first time in months there's food there (though it's too expensive for most Zimbabweans). You calculate the cost of about two pounds of meat.
If you have a Zimbabwean bank account and pay with a debit card, it will cost about US$10. If you exchange American cash for enough Zimbabwean notes to buy the meat, you'll be out US$1,000 because of a huge difference in the official exchange rate, which applies to electronic payments and the rate on the black market.
It would seem easy to just pay by debit card, but nothing is easy here. In many supermarkets, debit cards do not work, either because there is no power or the electronic transfer systems in banks are overloaded.
For the masses squashed together in queues outside banks, buying staples is a struggle. They wait for hours to withdraw the maximum weekly limit of $Z100 million, about US$10 on the black market these days, but not even enough for a loaf of bread.
The withdrawal limit was just increased to Z$10 billion a week to enable people to buy food for Christmas. The government also released a new Z$10 billion note.
Meanwhile, Ben (28), a used-car salesman, explains the complicated art of "burning" money. In a nutshell, by shuffling money between the exchange rates - one for cash and the other for bank transfers - you can multiply a sum of US dollars by tenfold or more.
The government had banned bank transfers to try to eliminate "burning", but reintroduced them this month with stricter limits. - ( Los Angeles Timesservice)