Hiccup the Fourth: Wedding Favours Redux

So, let's backtrack to September. I had received a set of crap-quality items that I would in no way want to give to guests as wedding favours and I lost the Paypal dispute that took place afterwards. In a rare moment of clarity, I realised that I could have much better quality items for a lower price if I went to the source - China! - and had my mum ship them across to me.

I was super excited about this idea because not only am I getting good stuff that's been received and vetted by my mother (who has a discerning eye for quality in general), they were also going to cost just over half of what the other disastrous order did, including shipping!

Typically, EMS International has been supremely reliable. I've never had to wait more than a month for my stuff to get here. My mum sent the package around the end of September.

We are now approaching the end of November, and I've yet to receive them. They were sent with limited tracking, so my calls to Australia Post could only confirm that they left China in early October and have not yet arrived in Australia. Our option is to launch an investigation into what happened, but ultimately it's not looking promising for my stuff to be in my hands before I actually need them.

I haven't exactly had a meltdown over this (yet); it'd be more accurately described as a slow, slow burn that's been hovering in the pit of my stomach since the end of October. My usual technique to calm myself - as long as we marry each other the day will be a success - has been working, but its effects have reached the point of diminishing marginal utility.

(That's mostly my way of acting like I still remember anything from my finance degree.)

Fortunately, I've been able to scribble down a number of backup plans and ideas. Problem-solving the problem has been pretty relaxing and calming for me, but this is the second time I've had to solve the same goddamn problem. Plus, if the original package my mum sent DOES eventually arrive, I have no idea what I'm going to do with all these extra somethings. eBay, I suppose.

Anyway, here's hoping that everything works out. It'd be ideal if the original package just got here, but at least I've got a couple of backup plans just in case.

Hiccup the Third: The Dorothy Shoes

I really have to thank one of my coworkers for coining the term "Dorothy shoes". If you know nothing about them at all, that's an excellent clue, even though I totally reference them in an earlier blog post.

I ordered my wedding shoes from Shoes of Prey, who let you customise the style of your shoe within certain parameters. This was mainly to ensure that I had a style and color that I liked. I placed the order back in August (after spending 2 weeks agonising over how high the heels should be) and they arrived in late September. Within 4 weeks, as advertised.

I slipped into them and right away I loved how they looked and felt. I was worried they wouldn't fit but I could totally get my feet into them, hooray! But then, as my heartbeat returned to its normal rate, I realised with a great sadness that the more I wore them, the more I was beginning to notice a problem.

I didn't spot it at first, but effectively the shoes are a full size too big. Sticking my foot right back into the heel where it should be left a good amount of space between the toe of the shoe and my own toes. Not a good look nor a comfortable fit on an important day, I guess.

The thing that makes me laugh these days is that I actually considered just running with it. Grab some bubble wrap and squish it into the heel area, surely that'll do the trick and no one will be the wiser. The shoes will be hidden by the dress anyway, who cares if they don't look perfect? So I might roll my ankle on my wedding day, I do that all the time, would it really ruin the day?!

A thought - a realisation - crept in not long after I'd actually grabbed some paper and tried to squish it into the heel cup to see if that would work. I spent dollars on these shoes. Good dollars. And for such good dollars, I should be getting shoes that fit.

Shoes of Prey comes with a 365-day return/remake policy, which I imagine is part of the price they charge for the shoes. So why didn't I jump on that right away?

Because my dress fitting was in three weeks! (Two weeks as of the writing of this post.) That meant I needed to have shoes on-hand on the day so that the hem could be measured and trimmed. Even if they began to remake them THAT DAY, they're unlikely to arrive in time for the fitting (they claim a 4-week turnaround) and surely they're going to wait to receive my rejects before they even start on new ones!

I addressed my worries by doing something I rarely do anymore in this age of E-mails and online messaging systems - I picked up the phone and called someone.

The solution I managed to negotiate was that they'd get started on the new shoes straight away and try to get them to be before the fitting. Meanwhile, they'll let me keep the current ones to use for the fitting just in case they don't make it. I'm pretty psyched about this option and I think they agreed to it because I sent them photos of how they just didn't fit and they know I'm not full of crap.

Now, I'd written most of this post a couple of weeks ago, when the shoes first arrived. As of the time of this post's publication on the blog, my shoes are due to arrive this Thursday, in plenty of time before the fitting. Hooray! So, provided the shoes actually come in then and are the right size, I'm definitely giving Shoes of Prey an A+ for customer service.

The Fedex Emotional Rollercoaster

Singling Fedex out in this instance is perhaps a bit unfair, because they're far from the only company offering tracking information when a parcel is sent. But they are involved on this particular parcel, plus it keeps the title of the post shorter.

My wedding ring is being mailed to me via Fedex. It took several weeks of searching and calling around and trying things on and whatnot, but in the end it came down to two candidates: a ring in Townsville (QLD) to be made by my good mate Kalina's father versus a ring to be made in the USA where I actually got to choose each individual diamond (more stressful than exciting, as it turns out).

In the end, as I referenced in another post, what made the decision was palladium. I really did want a ring made in palladium and between the two options, that left me with the USA one.

After some to-ing and fro-ing about certain diamonds not being available and getting suitable alternatives and whatnot, I received a shipping notification and tracking information from Fedex late last week.

I have checked the Fedex tracking information at least thrice a day since then, following this tiny shiny thing across the US, through to Singapore, and as of the writing of this post it's currently in Belmont, WA. Guys, I drove through Belmont today, which is rare because I very seldom drive to work.

I PROBABLY DROVE RIGHT PAST MY RING AND DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT.

The status is listed as "In Transit" but it also says "Clearance in Progress". That was at 01:33 this morning and there have been no updates since then. So is it in a truck now and the website just didn't update? DOES THAT MEAN IT'S ON ITS WAY NOW? COULD THERE BE A PROBLEM WITH THE CLEARANCE? WHAT DOES CLEARANCE EVEN MEAN? WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG? WHAT DID I DO WRONG?!

Tracking information is one of those curse-as-blessing things that looks amazing and useful but, for me at least, actually causes an undue amount of stress and over-excitement. What this means is that if I don't get my ring within the next 24 hours, oh my gosh I'm going to be SO UPSET, probably more upset than I would have been had I not known that it's somewhere in Perth right this minute!

A Magical Place Called Taobao

Growing up, my English was pretty terrible; I was actually in an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) class up until the age of 9 or 10 in Hong Kong. My parents made me watch Sesame Street on TV at home to improve my English.

As we began moving around every few years to a new city and country, I got more use out of the English side of things. In many aspects it's an achievement of which I am proud, not least because I know I well outpace many native speakers in vocabulary and the rules of grammar. But sometimes, dependent on context, it's also a deep-seated and secret shame, because it came at great cost to my Chinese.

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SIDEBAR: I would totally just watch a bunch of Cantonese cartoons until I heard the elevator clanging up and the lock turning, then quickly switch to Sesame Street and act like I'd been watching it all along. I'm pretty sure my parents knew.

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When we lived in the Philippines, we had a Mandarin tutor come around once a week. I hated it, but my parents made me stick with it. When we moved to Beijing after 5 years in the Philippines, well, let me put it this way: I still haven't apologised to my mum and dad. I went on to use Mandarin regularly in Beijing and years later in Shanghai when I started working.

Then, I moved to Perth. Needless to say, I have not used much Chinese - Cantonese or Mandarin - at all except in very specific situations. It's a weird feeling, knowing that an important skill that makes me a huge part of who I am is slipping away, bit by bit. It got to the point where I became flustered when trying to read Chinese, because I was starting to see words I have known in the past, but can't seem to pronounce anymore.

Now that's a lot of context to set up what is really just an amusing anecdote. I have been trying to find a variety of items for the wedding and was looking on eBay and Etsy for cheap but quality items. I'd found a few that matched most of my criteria, but nothing that ticked all the boxes. A few days after beginning this search, it hit me: I was thinking too small. I was constraining myself to English search engines.

There's this place - I don't know if you've guessed what it's called yet - known as "Taobao" (rhymes with "bow" as in "lowering your upper torso"). It is essentially China's version of eBay and Amazon all smashed together, and it connects you with the same suppliers that sell all the stuff you buy everywhere else that's Made in China. And let me put it this way: there is so much stuff on Taobao. You can find almost anything for any price, including, as I recently found out, virtual girlfriends.

In one specific example, I found an item listed for about AUD1.50 on eBay. I found the exact same item (same photos, same zoom-in photos, same specs, same city of origin) on Taobao for AUD0.50 each!

The downside, of course, is that you have to be able to read Chinese. The former of which, much to my delight, has been coming back to me over the past few days. I did struggle at first, but then you get used to seeing the text and something about being immersed in it just brings everything else out, too. It's almost like warming up before a workout. I started out reading a word here and there to get the gist to suddenly realising that I'd been reading everything on the page for the past hour and hadn't even noticed!

Something interesting I've noticed is that the product reviews on Taobao are hilarious. Chinese reviewers will never, ever give something "5 stars" or say it's "perfect" or "awesome" unless it really, genuinely is. More often than not, the good stuff gets reviewed as "satisfactory", "not bad", and "adequate". It's all done with as much brevity as possible, too - rarely will you find any review longer than two sentences of text, even if the product is horrible in quality. Plus, they write like they talk, and then I hear it in my brain, and then I smile a bit.

So, basically, being Chinese is pretty awesome. Not only am I going to get stuff for the wedding sourced at a fraction of the cost from English-only websites, I also get to flex my atrophied Chinese muscles. I get to feel at least a little bit in touch with where I came from, even if it's the most superficial way possible. And, on an emotional note, I really cannot express how valuable that feeling is through this whole process.

Red Wedding... Shoes

Ever since finding the wedding dress, I've been on the lookout for red shoes to wear with it. They have to be red for a number of reasons, not least being that it'd be fun to have a splash of color with my outfit.

One of the advantages of shopping for red shoes is that it's a pretty fast process, both online and off. Color filters speed things up a fair bit, and it's pretty easy to spot red shoes in a store and go straight to them to check them out! Of course, the downside is that the selection was really, really limited. The other problem was that I had a very specific shade of red in mind, and it was proving difficult to find in a style that would suit a wedding.

Time was also a factor. The shoes will also be matching other aspects of the look that we can't start on until after we get them.

In the end, the solution was clear: Shoes of Prey. I'd first heard about the website from a colleague who was also getting married and was having blue shoes made for her wedding. I didn't really want to go this route because it's hard to know what the colors look like in person versus on-screen, but then they send you 5 samples for $15. And once I saw the fabric, I knew we had to go for it.

Given that they are pretty customisable and will be made to suit my feet (from individual sizing for each foot in both length and width), the price is totally reasonable - under A$200! Including shipping! In 4 weeks! Shoot, that's pretty damn competitive if you're talking about shoe-shopping here in Australia.

That's not saying they'll be perfect in every way, but it'll be close. And if it's too far from perfect, they seem to have a well-reviewed returns policy!