Mail

Mail is a funny thing here. You need a mail box to get mail, and it is actually the most consistent form of physical address you can maintain. Your house address is next to useless in pointing to your location, and you end up having to use landmarks and hastily drawn maps to try to show where you live, but that is another story.  Mail boxes can usually be shared with your employer, that is, you can use their mailbox to get all your mail routed through which can save you a penny and also mean you don't have to periodically cruise by a mailbox centre to find nothing there. Well the most likely thing to be there is a bill from somewhere that was due two weeks before it turned...
Still it is nice to receive mail, especially things from overseas. 
I had been searching for a DVD that for the past few years had eluded me. Eventually I tracked a copy down to a video store in Florida! Nobody else in the world offered it. I ordered and paid online. Never turned up. I complained but never heard from them. I periodically got emails about new releases and specials but strangely the body of the emails always showed in Chinese script. I emailed and told them to stop sending me rubbish and just send me the DVD. No response. Well, you know every so often you get a bad deal on the internet so I let it slide. I was only one DVD and not all that expensive.
Low and behold at the beginning of this week a parcel turned up (24th May). Delivered to my desk by the mail clerk. A DVD from the States. Sent First Class Airmail on 9/9/09. It has only been 8 months in the air! But who am I to complain, it turned up didn't it?

Now I'd better acknowledge the legitimacy of the Video store, while they send emails in Chinese, they do actually send the DVD's too. Maybe the DVD went via China?  BTW, I found out why they were the only store in the world that seemed to sell it. It has clearly been dubbed off a dodgy VHS tape...

 :-)