To Mr Cheng

Naturally this book caught my attention last week. Was over at the Papercut Store in Stockholm, (nice people by the way), picked up some magazines and had to get this one too. A project by Eric Ericson (ee-projects), very fascinating. I remember seeing something few years ago, about how you can basically send anything as long as you slab enough stamps on the item.

Check out the interview over at Wired . A snippet:

“Wired.com: You seem almost obsessed with the postal system.
Ericson: Yes almost, or at least very interested. I’m very excited about logistics, about the fact that most of the stuff actually arrives. That it works. That you can pay 5.50 [Swedish] kronor [about 70 cents], put it in a mailbox, and the next day the letter arrives in Kiruna [the northernmost city in Sweden].

Just as with the postal system, I find it fascinating how the whole society works, that people go to work, pay their bills and go on vacation when they should. We’re like ants in a large anthill and we carry out our tasks, even when we don’t want to. We think we’re free, but we’re not. You can’t escape society.”

Comparatively however, in Italy, almost nothing arrives, no matter how much money you have to pay! Even with paid express priority post, sometimes unless you do some serious investigation, things will be lost. I’ve been sent a box of aftershave – never arrived, except a note with a number to which the post office claims that it’s an error. I purchased a new lens from the US, had it sent to my office, it was sent with priority express, however, the name was rubbed off, so apparently the postman arrived at the office everyday for two weeks, but as if it was experiencing some kind of computer malfunction, could not drop the delivery because the name was rubbed off. And of course, they never bother to call the number included with the delivery. Fortunately enough, I got a ride with a colleague, on the scooter, 10km out of the city in search of their office to find our package. Lucky for me, the company had a sense of humour and left a candy bar in the box!

Had an issue one year where I had to have my credit cards sent to me via DHL, however in Italy, the doorman stops working after 12, which is fine for regular posts as they usually try to finish by then. However, DHL seems to be deliberately out of sync with our doorman, hence I never received notice that my card has arrived.

Only after some detective work and calling to various branches of banks and DHL offices, I found that the package was sitting at an DHL drop office, 200m from my residence, about to return to Australia having to have given up trying to find me. Welcome to the reality of Italian post.