Going Postal

Ever since going to Hong Kong, I have been trying hard to round up Christmas gifts to send home. So I got to the point where I went to Petaling Street, the discount mall/flea market equivalent here, and picked up my stuff. So I finally get everything organized and ready to send off. I check Fed Ex and DHL and they cost way too much. I’m told the only affordable way will be POS Malaysia, the national postal service; cool. The post office closes at 6 pm, so I have to find a way to get off early just to get to a post office before they’re closed. But I get there, upon talking to the gentleman I find that they have no packing supplies to use. No Styrofoam, no bubble wrap, only one box choice. Now, the man uses the word “sold out” so I’m thinking they’re just slack on re-upping their inventory. But whatever, it’s too late for me to make it back by 6pm. So go to Tesco (Britain’s poor excuse for Wal-Mart) and I buy some Styrofoam and bubble tape and take a supply box that is just sitting on the floor. So I make everything fit fine and am determined to get it done the next day. So the next day after lunch, I have by boss drop me at the post office near work so I can handle this “real quick” and come back to work. Little did I know. SMH. I take a number, sit down for a sec, then look up at the number board. They’re serving customer number 2244, my card says 2272, I’m the 29th person in line. Are you serious? I get mad if I'm the 10th person in line back home. I suck it up, determined to get this done. So about 45 minutes later, I finally get called to the counter, the lady is cooperative finding a rate for me, giving me the proper label and everything. Then she looks at my box and says, “Oh sir, we can’t send it like that.” I look at my regular cardboard box sitting open with everything securely surrounded by bubble wrap and foam. I’m thinking “What do you mean, we can tape this bad boy up and get this done. She says "it has to be fully wrapped like that" and points to a box wrapped in brown paper and taped up securely. They got specific standards to follow, ok whatever, let's get it done. So I ask "so where and how much is ur brown paper and tape?" to which she replies "Oh we don't have those things here. You have to go to the bookstore downstairs for that stuff." Yet again a post office, the expertise center of packing and shipping items, has no appropriate packing supplies despite specific standards of how they want things packed. How does that work? But anyway, I go searching for this bookstore she mentioned. I don't see, it's a big business complex though, so I continue walking around with my open box looking for it. 15 minutes to no avail. So I ask the security guards, who after clarifying that they understand the words "book store" tell me that there is no bookstore in the complex. The long wait bored me more than annoying me, but this news starts to heat me up a little bit. Is the post office chick playing mind games? Trying to run me around in circles or something? What's going on? Eventually, I'm finally directed to a little grocery store that has some Christmas style wrapping paper. I figure "that's just gonna have to work." So I have pay for the paper and get them to wrap it and head back up to the post office. Now, obviously the line has moves on far past my number. I guess technically I was supposed to grab a number again and hop back in line; wasn't going to happen though. I walked right up to the lady who had been handing me before and wait until she's finished with her current customer. So everything is finally ready, the total price by air is RM 210 or so (about $70 US) which actually wasn't bad. By sea, it's only RM 54 (about $18) but it would take about 3 months rather than 1-2 weeks by air. It's worth the extra to me. Especially since it's still only about half of what it would cost with DHL or FedEx. After hours and lots of impatience and aggravation, the package is headed stateside finally. I'm not in a rush to deal with a post office here again, POS Malaysia is noone's friend. But as I was told about the long wait getting many things - access card, new SIM card, wi-fi in the house, etc - this is the Malaysian way. Lucky me. Selamat malam...