June 29, 2008
I just recieved an RCA cable (a special tv part I needed) that sold for $6.47 on ebay (including shipping) and it was shipped from Hong Kong!
Why is that cool? Well, for one it's a hella long way to ship something so cheaply. Reflecting upon ancient roman roads which spanned an awe-inspiring 53,819 miles in 450 bc with the laws of Twelve Tables regulating road length and message telegrams, this is amazing. I remember tracking my sweet iPhone as it was shipped from Hong Kong (where it's manufactured) to Alaska and finally to California. Then I got another package from a neighbor on Van Nuys, roughly 20 miles away from me! The Hong Kong package traveled roughly 7,254 miles. The other package traveled about 20 miles. Both were less than $5 shipping fees. I mention this because 1)shipping is truly astonishing and 2)it has current relevance in literature.
The Hong Kong package even had a customs certificate!
Additionally, I'm in the midst of reading Jules Verne's epic "Around the World in 80 Days, and around Chapter 20 Fogg, Auoda (the Indian babe Fogg heroically rescued) and Passepartout, the wiry little frenchman arrive in the very same city of Hong Kong after voyaging from Calcutta, India on the "Rangoon", only to discover that they've missed the "Carnatic" ship and hire a small-time boater to make it to Yokohama in time. So this has some of that "world as a story" flavor to it. Reading about Hong Kong in a fictional classic and then coincidentally receiving a package from the same city (and the fact that cost less than $5 shipping) and the book is free just kind of sets the stage for a nice, little literary-relevance-making-the-world-smaller-but-more-magical ambiance to this serendipity. Just the fact the part was so cheap and the distance it traveled was so great has congruence with Phillias Fogg's character, and Verne's book is free on project Gutenberg, it's just kind of some everyday magic that arises for very cheap, without massive expenses, or with zero expenses.
Call me "easy to please" but these little serendipitous gems of reading a classic novel that travels the world and then receiving a package that has nearly traveled the same route as the characters in that novel?!! Well, that's just cool bizarro country 2000.
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