Amanda Takes Off...

Now that everyone has (finally! Virginia!) received their 13 cards, I can write about what I did for the holidays.

I hate Christmas letters with a deep passion. But I know most of my family and friends don't read my website. Also, I have tons and tons of photos.

So I took two ideas from Photojojo and make a sort of year in review. I brainstormed what I did in each month and either found or took new photos to match the idea. I then learned to love Lightroom and GIMP as I figured out how to add text, do Gaussian blurs, shear, adjust horizons, work with layers, and so on and so forth.

I printed up thirteen photos for ten people each, using a Korean photo website, Zzixx. I decided I would send the photos in a random order excepting the very last one, just to keep people guessing a bit. There were two different versions of the last one, just for fun. It worked for a while, at least, as several people thought the first card was just an announcement about earning my black belt.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

November

December

Last Card Version I

Last Card Version II

The real fun of the project though, came at the post office.

In December I got stuck at the post office for an hour, only to leave laughing.

I needed 130 stamps for 580 won each. First, the woman asked me three times if it was really 130. Yes. Then I said twice "I am only sending 8 today."

"OK," she said.

Then her computer froze.

After trying to do something to fix it, and 25 mins of waiting, the first clerk put me with another woman.

She then printed 130 of those stick-on metered stamped. She said, "You have to mail them all today."

"할수없어요," impossible I said.

"You must, you must.."

I finally said "안 돼요." I don't have permission. But it can also be used to mean, roughly, "nope, can't do it."

So then they had to refund 122 stamps of money. And they had to find real stamps to equal up to 122 stamps of 580 won each.

At this point I had two clerks trying to help me. Their boss then joined in. The Flighty First Woman kept telling the man it was 570 won. They had 18 different types of stamps spread all over the place, trying to do all the math.

After 15 mins of this, the man realizes the woman said 570 not 580.

"You said 570!" he yelled at her.

"No! No, I said 580!"

She was wrong, she very clearly said 570 four times.

So they were throwing stamps around, trying to add up sum up how many stamps it would take to get 122 envelopes done at 580 won each. They were yelling at each other.

Some Korean woman walked up to me, asked if I needed help in English. I said no, they were fine, it was just complicated and thanked her.

Finally I said, "OK, 오늘 이것 주세요. 그리고 다음 이나 다음 다음주 저는 다시 올거예요." Today I will buy these. And next week or next next week, I will come back.

They apologized, but I said it was OK. It wasn't their fault. They just didn't have that many stamps. No problem.

I didn't get all of the cards out before Christmas, and the post office was closed a few days over the new year. So I returned in early January. This time my postage price had suddenly gone up. Ah, but see, it really hadn't, I was just confused because I was doing too many things at once.

So I ended up paying more money than I needed for postage. But then I got home and discovered that the woman gave me too many stamps. In the end, I ended up paying exactly what I needed to, plus/minus 2% perhaps.

Or something like that.

The feedback from this little project was great, everybody seemed to love it.