waiting for godots
throughout my entire 29 years of living, I only did.. five international online shopping.
1. my purchase of our wedding rings from Etsy, which was safely shipped from Israel via their Israel post office, that's right Israel, weeks before the wedding date.. though the rings were oversized, and later had to be resized and mistakenly cleaned by the resizer dude simply because he thought it looks rugged, which was the idea.. the Etsy seller was Artisan Impact, they make gorgeous hand made jewels, awesome works.
2. my purchase of an ergonomic bike saddle, the research based E3 Form saddles, which price is the same with the USPS delivery rate, unfortunately, but well bought as it saved my ass more than it should. and this saddle arrived safely on my hand in just a week, which was amazing..
but these, I suspect, have something to do with me working for the Jakarta Post, which was the delivery address.. old Indonesian thieves, it seems, still have the apprehension of dealing with members of the press, which was a good thing, if I still work there..
3. I made two orders from the US before this one, but this should be mentioned first due to a reasons I will tell you later. This particular order is made from Ebay, years later after I quit the post, delivered from China to my home address via the Chinese equivalent of national airmail, which has its own tracking program in the Indonesian post after a deal. It arrived safely after almost three weeks of not knowing its whereabouts.. it's a five string bridge who was shipped in a condition where the screws taped directly on the surface, scrapping its paint and damaging the saddle adjustment for the A string.. safely arrived nonetheless..
and the other two might as well be my last orders from international sellers nonetheless..
5. A set of five flatwound strings from webstring, which despite it's statement not shipping to Indonesia, accept my order, which was great at that time by the way. I paid US$34.13 for the sets plus delivery.both items have not arrived and probably never will
when I contacted the Kahler vendor, he said not too worry because the time it spent at the custom is probably the reason why the item took 'forever' to reach me.
and when I contacted webstring, Wayne the owner, decided to be blunt.
"Audy, we did ship your order just a few days after the order was made. We decided some years ago not to ship to Indonesia because virtually everything that we ship there ends up in someone other than the customers' hands. Let's give it till next week and if it hasn't arrived we'll figure out how to proceed - Wayne Preis"
these purchases were made on March 2, and this post, unfortunately, is made on March 29.
I know how crooked Indonesians can be, similar to all other people in the world. What's different is that the system here is.. well.. made to accommodate smooth misconduct, victimizing honest little dude with a dream bass to build who thought 'hey why not get some parts from Ebay..'
"now what good is a Kahler bridge for anyone not planning to build any bass, or a flatwound strings for that matter, it's not like they're taxable.." duh, that's the stupid innocent spoiled brat within me talking
I have to stress here that the mistake, shared with.. well.. some hundreds of honest people among these Indonesian like-minded twenty million citizens, is really ours and ours alone who think that hey, the world is actually a better place, and people are worthy of trust, whoever they are..
once again faith in people does take me on the wrong direction
the wait is endless, and my experience do said that these things should arrive when I stop thinking about them.. wishful thinking.
----------------------
update:
on a lazy friday afternoon, a non-asuming guy came at the door delivering a letter from the post office who was wrongly sent to him, notifying that an item sent from the US has arrived.
I picked up the item at the post office on the following day, saturday March 30 and it was item 4.
I had to pay additional US$5 for tax, which was reasonable, but the thing that bothered me most was the fact that the address with which the item is sent to was WRONG!! which was stupid. I checked my ebay booking details and the address was right, which means that this guy was sending this item to the wrong address!! while all they've got to do is simply copy and paste the damn thing, I mean who are these guys thinking they know where I live more than me and decided to make out an address!!
stupidity at its peak, I presume..
anyways the bridge was installed and one of the bridge screws is taller than the rest, which will need to be cut later on.. logically, but afraid of damaging it, I chose to find a replacement saddle instead. though things can go much smoother if I just put shim on my neck, but I'm a bit reluctant with opening the neck screws.. yada yada yada..
that's it for item four, while the strings from webstrings is yet to arrive..
I guess it's safe to say that for future references, buying strings would mean going to the country which sell it and buy it ourselves, which is a major hassle for US$40 item.
