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.

Busted!

Remember that Etsy supplier I had an issue with regarding the wedding favours I wanted? Did some idle research today and realised she's just reselling wholesale stuff from another website that I'm pretty sure is not hers! This is not okay by Etsy's standards last I checked.

I'm not going to get my money back but I totally reported this to Etsy. I don't think the supplier even knew she was breaking any rules, but too bad.

I think that this might be karma, owner of Blissful Party Favors, aka reseller of stuff from Event Blossom. 

Does this make me petty? A bit. Do I care? Nope. Shoot, I'm a hair's breadth away from inviting other people to report the shop, just in case Etsy decides to ignore me or thinks my report is too soft. 

Thing is, if they'd just given me my money back I would have had no cause to do any research and, on finding some dirt, decide to then mess with their livelihood. Tough shit.

Hiccup the First: Wedding Favours

I've said this before in a recent post - having a short engagement means that things have to move relatively quickly, but it also means that if things go wrong, I just have to accept them and keep going. This philosophy lasted me just over 2 months.

Neurotic perfectionist that I am, even I know to expect a hiccup or two. My first one popped up two weeks ago, involving our wedding favours (aka "bonbonnieres" but I can't say it without giggling because apparently I'm 6).

A box came for me at work, and the energy was building the second I was informed that it'd been delivered. This was the first thing to arrive in the mail that would actually be a part of our wedding! I somehow managed to wait until I had a free moment before I tore into it with much glee, ready to be overwhelmed with giddy excitement.

So, physics! The higher up you are, the harder you hit the ground when you fall.

Without going into too much detail, what arrived was not what I had been expecting. And while I'd been prepared for it not to be 100% up to my expectations, I was also painfully aware that these were meant to go out to our guests as gifts. Which meant that I was determined for these, at least, to be of an acceptable enough quality that we can happily give them away.

Nope. Not a chance.

The disappointment that kicked in wasn't debilitating so much as it was, in hindsight, melodramatically motivating. There were no tears, but instead a very rapid series of messages sent to the supplier, noting in point form my initial issues with the items in question. I examined them further after that and found even more issues, which resulted in more messages being sent to the supplier. Somehow in the midst of this, the rational part of my brain managed to get me to fire off a text to Blake to inform him of the problem.

As much as I like to think myself an assertive person, I am absolutely awful at being the wronged customer. Rather than dig in my heels and demand this or that, I'm one of those people who slowly folds in on themselves, wondering if I deserved this because they only cost this much or maybe I shouldn't be so picky or if I missed something in the transaction or item description that had previously indicated that there would be a problem. I absolutely hate making a fuss unless it's about something far more important in the grand scheme of things - like, you know, marriage equality. After all, as a pragmatically self-deprecating part of my brain says from behind its newspaper, it's only money, and aren't I lucky that I can afford to spend it on things like wedding favours in the first place?

I want to say that if this wasn't going to be something that my guests will be taking home with them, I would have been happy to let it go and run with it. But, like I said, this is meant to be a gift - a thank you for sharing our day with us. It needs to be done right if we're doing it at all.

So when a fuss needs to be (rightfully) made, Blake usually gets called in to assist. Sometimes he takes the phone off me to handle the situation, and sometimes he'll just coach me on what my rights are. Over the years, he's gotten really good at knowing when to offer himself up as my megaphone and when to give me some space and let me get on with it. In this case, he ran me through my options after calming me down and I was able to deal with it myself.

Which I have - I took it up with Paypal. The decision did not go in my favour and I am now upset because the seller escalated the dispute and I was never given the opportunity to explain my side of the story. I have complained to Paypal just to have my say, though the outcome is unlikely to change. Oh well.

As hiccups go, this one was relatively small and minor. Mostly, I'm glad I have enough time to roll out a Plan B. And for those reading, a cautionary tale - if you've lodged a dispute on Paypal, make sure you're the one who escalates it because it looks like they'll side with you!

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.