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August 19, 2003
"Do you want anything from the States?"
(Please note: close personal friends are somewhat exempt from all this, but only just.)
Oh, and just to say to people in general, if you have "friends" who live overseas, esp in the states who you want to bring stuff back for you? - don't be an idiot. Shopping for things, even online, isn't the most fun of things, esp when you have to be considerate about things you don't want to be.
The excuse that "things are cheaper there" is not a good one. If you can get it where you are, I'll charge you courier fees for bringing it back. "Shipping is so expensive" - not as expensive as my time for stuff I don't really want to do. If you want a keychain I can buy from somewhere I go to everyday (ie nowhere) then fine - things that require me to think while packing my suitcase create enormous amounts of animosity (think MP3-CD players).
Oh, and if I wasn't unemployed, I wouldn't be home all day to wait for UPS deliveries - which means I might have to end up going to the delivery depots to pick up stuff. I'm bringing back heatsinks from here because I really don't want to have to deal with shitty brand ones in Singapore which I know nothing about. And cases are just too big.
The US is insular and myopic - shipping overseas is not something it does easily; for goodness sake, they don't even bother to make alot of their stuff autosensing, so the fact that the rest of the world uses different voltages (but do offer autosensing stuff) doesn't seem to bother them. NTSC is not the only video format available to the world. Deal with it. Rock and Roll.
Oh, and 2 words: Region Encoding. Thank god for Lite-On and the pirate realm that is Asia (and the smurfing interweb).
And on a personal note, I really don't go very many places when I'm here, I spend most of my time at home. Going out is an event, and an event that I want to keep genial and happy, not frustrated and tetchy.
(and oh) For the sake of momentum I've allowed my fears to grow larger than life.
Posted by subtitles at August 19, 2003 2:12 PM | Personal