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Somewhere along the spice road...
Saturday, May 19th, 2007 12:29 amAs you know, the exchange value of the US Dollar against Sterling is slightly worse than that for the Ruritanian Yeb, meaning that purchases in that currency are rather good value at the moment.
Suffice it to say that I used this purchasing power to obtain a hat off eBay. A very nice hat it is, too. Certainly from the photograph; I haven't taken delivery of it just yet. I am confident that sometime before I retire, its journey to me will be complete and the hat will have a tale to tell (if only garments could speak, what would they say - "Use fabric softener next time, Jerk"?). The supplier is one of those to be lodged in Canada, but his stock appears to be in Hong Kong. Hmmm. Anyway, it's taken me a while to find out which shipper he has chosen to bring my purchase half way around the world.
M43 Field Cap
Imagine my surprise to find, with all those hundreds of choices out there, he picked our very own Parcel Farce. It seems they picked the package up on 15 May and a little later that day it left Hong Kong. Since then, nothing. Now I know that the dollar rate is advantageous and all that and purchases are cheap, but I have a feeling that to cut costs my hat is being worn by a little Chinee postman who is walking it from Shanghai to somewhere on China's north west frontier. That must be close on 2,500 miles. It will then be worn by a yak herder across the steppes of Russian Western Siberia before hitting a reliable train service somewhere around somewhere with an invitingly unpronounceable name like Novospotybysrsk.
Then delivery will take place within weeks. But first it has to walk across China.
Suffice it to say that I used this purchasing power to obtain a hat off eBay. A very nice hat it is, too. Certainly from the photograph; I haven't taken delivery of it just yet. I am confident that sometime before I retire, its journey to me will be complete and the hat will have a tale to tell (if only garments could speak, what would they say - "Use fabric softener next time, Jerk"?). The supplier is one of those to be lodged in Canada, but his stock appears to be in Hong Kong. Hmmm. Anyway, it's taken me a while to find out which shipper he has chosen to bring my purchase half way around the world.
M43 Field Cap
Imagine my surprise to find, with all those hundreds of choices out there, he picked our very own Parcel Farce. It seems they picked the package up on 15 May and a little later that day it left Hong Kong. Since then, nothing. Now I know that the dollar rate is advantageous and all that and purchases are cheap, but I have a feeling that to cut costs my hat is being worn by a little Chinee postman who is walking it from Shanghai to somewhere on China's north west frontier. That must be close on 2,500 miles. It will then be worn by a yak herder across the steppes of Russian Western Siberia before hitting a reliable train service somewhere around somewhere with an invitingly unpronounceable name like Novospotybysrsk.
Then delivery will take place within weeks. But first it has to walk across China.