Granted, I bitched about my packages taking three hours to ship and how they arrived in pieces (literally) but you could not imagine how hard it was to send a letter here.
Yesterday I needed to send two letters to the United States: A birthday card to my father and a letter to Wes containing all the information about the boxes that are smashed so he can start a claim.
I needed to buy an envelope to mail the paperwork and stamps for each letter. Basically, it went like this: Press a button, take a ticket, wait in line. Repeat over and over again.
The same line that sells stamps does not sell envelopes. The same line that postmarks your letter does not sell stamps or envelopes. You get the idea.
Once I pay $40 US to mail TWO letters (!!!), get the stamps on, get the addresses correct and get them postmarked, I head downstairs (because mailing letters is not in the same place you do all that other stuff). Once I get downstairs I get lost in a sea of P.O. Boxes. I cannot find a mailbox.
Eventually I find two red boxes side-by-side that sort of look like mailboxes, but I was still unsure. They are not marked with anything to indicate that they are, in fact, mailboxes.
Me: Man, these seem too small to be mailboxes. Excuse me! Do I mail letters here?
Some guy: I don't know.
Me: Yea, I don' know either.
Me: Excuse me, do letters go in here? Mailbox?
Some other guy: Oh, yes!
There is an important thing I've learned here when hearing the reply, "Oh, yes!" ... it does not mean what you think it does all of the time. An "oh, yes!" is often misused by those who do not speak very good English.
EXAMPLE: Getting into a taxi I request, "Please take me to a mall that is NOT Marina Mall. NO MARINA MALL." His reply? "Oh, yes!" Where do we end up? Marina Mall.
I am convinced that an "oh, yes!" response is often to get English speakers like myself to shut up. There is also the "no problem!" that does the same.
It will be interesting to see how my gamble with the "oh, yes!" pans out this time. As one of my co-workers said at lunch, "You probably ended up putting them in the trash."
Let me know when/if those letters arrive!
2 comments:
The process of sending a letter sounds straight out of the film Brazil. There is a scene where a woman is trying to recover her husband from a mistaken abduction by the government. She stands in line holding the pink form and when she gets to the front, it turns out she needs a blue form... but the blue form isn't available at that desk. So she stands in line to get the blue form but it turns out she needs a completed green form in order to get the blue form and so on. Needless to say that her husband was executed long before the proper paperwork was filed.
Hopefully no one gets executed (::ahem:: Wes...) over my letter mailing. I think I'm going to try FedEx and DHL next time though.
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