You've Got Mail... kinda
Before I launch into my journey to get my package in the mail I would just like to give props to Brandon, Valley, Noodles, and Valicoff for making the Tour de FRAt possible last night. Basically, last night I was carried around on his laptop from room to room and I got to talk to various people from the frat through Skype. We both had video cameras so it was official. 
I pretty much felt like one of those celebrity-heads-in-a-jar you see on Futurma. He just carted me around from room to room, it was technology at it's finest. Ok, to the journey. I was very enterprising this morning, and although I had just 6 hours of sleep I pulled myself out of bed at 8 a.m. to go to the International Mail Center in Buenos Aires because the Harvard kid told me that the whole process takes a long time and it's best to arrive early(He had already done it because his Mom had sent him 3 boxes of his favorite cereal Cinnamon Toast Crunch, totally serious). Bread with dulce de leche, 3 cups of mate, a quick teeth cleaning and I was ready to go. 10 minutes walking, 30 minutes by subway, 10 minutes walking and I arrived half an hour early. There was already a line of about 25 people. I patiently waited as more and more came, and I patiently waited as the doors opened as my number was called, and I also patiently waited, when I finally arrived to the front of the line an hour later, as the man told me that I needed to go to Belgrano, not Retiro with my ticket. Great. 10 minutes walking, 30 minutes by subway, 10 minutes walking and I was at the Belgrano branch. Within 2 minutes of me arriving they closed the door so that they could finish up with the current customers and take a lunch. If I had arrived just a little later I would have been screwed. Things seemed to be looking up. Just 20 minutes of waiting this time and I was up at the counter with my notice, my passport, and a smile. Again, I patiently waited as the man disappeared in the back for 5 minutes or so and at last emerged with my.... other piece of paper? He stamped the paper, I signed, he signed, and I waited for more. There was no more. I was told to take my new shiny paper back to Retiro to get my package. I left my apartment at 9 a.m. in search of a package from home and now at 12:00 all I had to show was my shiny piece of paper. I laughed as I started walking back to Retiro at the absurdity of the whole buerocracy. Why couldn't this paper have been in Retiro? or why couldn't the package have been in Belgrano? Why wouldn't you make these two objects that clearly need to be together in the same place? Why did I need this new shiny piece of paper as opposed to my other piece of paper that informed my of my package arriving IN RETIRO. 10 minutes walking, 30 minutes by subway, 10 minutes walking and I was back to patiently waiting in Retiro where my morning had began, but now there were WAY more people. I had to pull my number from the dispenser and slowly watch the red numbers change from 75 to 125. This took about 70 minutes, I got to the front and my shiny piece of paper was torn into a smaller shiny piece of paper and given a stamp. Now I had to wait in a much larger room where periodically there were numbers shumbled (shout/mumbled) over an archaic PA system. Every number was 6 digits long and read in different ways. Let me explain because I realize that description is not clear. My number was 891528, so this could be broken up into two 3 digit numbers (891 and 528), three 2 digit number (89, 15, 28), six one digit numbers, (8, 9, 1, 5, 2, 8), or any combination of the above numbers (89, 1, 52, 8). What I am trying to get at, is that my number could have been read many differnet ways, and it was nearly impossible to understand the PA to begin with. It was a cluster fuck (Chaos. Anything that is occuring in a haphazardly. The situation is not even thinking about dreaming about having a sense of order. A clustering of items (usually people) in a fucked up way.When people are trying to get off an airplane and retrieve their baggage from the overhead bins... that is a cluster fuck.) The system prevented doing anything but stressfully listening for your number. I couldn't read, listen to music, or ponder the scientific inaccuracies of the movie The Day After Tomorrow... nothing but sit and listen and hope that I heard my number. After about an hour, I definately heard "28" but I wasn't sure what they said before that. "Whatever, I'm risking it." I went through two doors that I had seen people disappear behind for the last hour. I was suddenly confronted with an agry Argentine postal working telling people if they hadn't been called they need to leave. I handed him my ticket which was sketchy because he only had the packages of called numbers, and being the barren of this fucked postal kingdom, he could have used his postal powers to make me wait several more hours if I angered him. I'm a bad ass, I know. Luckily, the postal god's were smiling upon me in this dingy postal warehouse and my package was there, severely battered, but nonetheless there and I was spared the post-master's wrath. "What's inside?" he asked me. "Clothes." I said. He nodded and I took this opportunity to leave. Pretty airtight security system though, just asking people what's inside their package and having them tell you. Simple and fast, but they should probably consider using some sort of a multi-location paper based system for their security in the future. Anyway, I got the hell out of there. 10 minutes walking, 30 minutes by subway, 10 minutes walking and I was back at my apartment with my package. The time was 3:00. So just 6 hours was the count, pretty good I think. I'd say Argentina leans more on the tortoise of the "tortoise and the hare" arguement: slow and steady. The package was sent on September 11th, (well that might have been a bad omen to begin with), and I got it on September 26th. Anyway, the contents of the package made it worth the hassle. Thanks fam. Here's a picture of the package when it arrived, pretty beaten to hell:
Other things to think about:
a) The first bomb the allies dropped on Berlin killed the only elephant in the Berlin zoo.
b) The Guiness Book of World Records has the record for being the book most robbed from US public libraries in history.
c) For every memomorial statue with a person on a horse, if the horse has two legs in the air, then that person died in battle. One leg means they died of battle wounds.
d) No words rhyme with silver, purple, orange, or month. I know what you're thinking, and no "nurple" is not a word. Also, "door hinge" is two words so that's out as well.
That's all I've got. Later.
I pretty much felt like one of those celebrity-heads-in-a-jar you see on Futurma. He just carted me around from room to room, it was technology at it's finest. Ok, to the journey. I was very enterprising this morning, and although I had just 6 hours of sleep I pulled myself out of bed at 8 a.m. to go to the International Mail Center in Buenos Aires because the Harvard kid told me that the whole process takes a long time and it's best to arrive early(He had already done it because his Mom had sent him 3 boxes of his favorite cereal Cinnamon Toast Crunch, totally serious). Bread with dulce de leche, 3 cups of mate, a quick teeth cleaning and I was ready to go. 10 minutes walking, 30 minutes by subway, 10 minutes walking and I arrived half an hour early. There was already a line of about 25 people. I patiently waited as more and more came, and I patiently waited as the doors opened as my number was called, and I also patiently waited, when I finally arrived to the front of the line an hour later, as the man told me that I needed to go to Belgrano, not Retiro with my ticket. Great. 10 minutes walking, 30 minutes by subway, 10 minutes walking and I was at the Belgrano branch. Within 2 minutes of me arriving they closed the door so that they could finish up with the current customers and take a lunch. If I had arrived just a little later I would have been screwed. Things seemed to be looking up. Just 20 minutes of waiting this time and I was up at the counter with my notice, my passport, and a smile. Again, I patiently waited as the man disappeared in the back for 5 minutes or so and at last emerged with my.... other piece of paper? He stamped the paper, I signed, he signed, and I waited for more. There was no more. I was told to take my new shiny paper back to Retiro to get my package. I left my apartment at 9 a.m. in search of a package from home and now at 12:00 all I had to show was my shiny piece of paper. I laughed as I started walking back to Retiro at the absurdity of the whole buerocracy. Why couldn't this paper have been in Retiro? or why couldn't the package have been in Belgrano? Why wouldn't you make these two objects that clearly need to be together in the same place? Why did I need this new shiny piece of paper as opposed to my other piece of paper that informed my of my package arriving IN RETIRO. 10 minutes walking, 30 minutes by subway, 10 minutes walking and I was back to patiently waiting in Retiro where my morning had began, but now there were WAY more people. I had to pull my number from the dispenser and slowly watch the red numbers change from 75 to 125. This took about 70 minutes, I got to the front and my shiny piece of paper was torn into a smaller shiny piece of paper and given a stamp. Now I had to wait in a much larger room where periodically there were numbers shumbled (shout/mumbled) over an archaic PA system. Every number was 6 digits long and read in different ways. Let me explain because I realize that description is not clear. My number was 891528, so this could be broken up into two 3 digit numbers (891 and 528), three 2 digit number (89, 15, 28), six one digit numbers, (8, 9, 1, 5, 2, 8), or any combination of the above numbers (89, 1, 52, 8). What I am trying to get at, is that my number could have been read many differnet ways, and it was nearly impossible to understand the PA to begin with. It was a cluster fuck (Chaos. Anything that is occuring in a haphazardly. The situation is not even thinking about dreaming about having a sense of order. A clustering of items (usually people) in a fucked up way.When people are trying to get off an airplane and retrieve their baggage from the overhead bins... that is a cluster fuck.) The system prevented doing anything but stressfully listening for your number. I couldn't read, listen to music, or ponder the scientific inaccuracies of the movie The Day After Tomorrow... nothing but sit and listen and hope that I heard my number. After about an hour, I definately heard "28" but I wasn't sure what they said before that. "Whatever, I'm risking it." I went through two doors that I had seen people disappear behind for the last hour. I was suddenly confronted with an agry Argentine postal working telling people if they hadn't been called they need to leave. I handed him my ticket which was sketchy because he only had the packages of called numbers, and being the barren of this fucked postal kingdom, he could have used his postal powers to make me wait several more hours if I angered him. I'm a bad ass, I know. Luckily, the postal god's were smiling upon me in this dingy postal warehouse and my package was there, severely battered, but nonetheless there and I was spared the post-master's wrath. "What's inside?" he asked me. "Clothes." I said. He nodded and I took this opportunity to leave. Pretty airtight security system though, just asking people what's inside their package and having them tell you. Simple and fast, but they should probably consider using some sort of a multi-location paper based system for their security in the future. Anyway, I got the hell out of there. 10 minutes walking, 30 minutes by subway, 10 minutes walking and I was back at my apartment with my package. The time was 3:00. So just 6 hours was the count, pretty good I think. I'd say Argentina leans more on the tortoise of the "tortoise and the hare" arguement: slow and steady. The package was sent on September 11th, (well that might have been a bad omen to begin with), and I got it on September 26th. Anyway, the contents of the package made it worth the hassle. Thanks fam. Here's a picture of the package when it arrived, pretty beaten to hell:
Other things to think about:
a) The first bomb the allies dropped on Berlin killed the only elephant in the Berlin zoo.
b) The Guiness Book of World Records has the record for being the book most robbed from US public libraries in history.
c) For every memomorial statue with a person on a horse, if the horse has two legs in the air, then that person died in battle. One leg means they died of battle wounds.
d) No words rhyme with silver, purple, orange, or month. I know what you're thinking, and no "nurple" is not a word. Also, "door hinge" is two words so that's out as well.
That's all I've got. Later.
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