Skip to main content

C is for Customs

I was going to send a few gift boxes with local food from Switzerland to people in the US. I knew that Chocolate didn't ship well (mail packages are likely to freeze, which causes the chocolate to bloom and turn white), but I found a few other things that might survive. I talked to someone at the post office, and she warned me that food shipments to the US are very complicated and out of the control of Swiss Post.
She. Was. Not. Exaggerating.
To ship food: First, I need to register as an international shipper with the FDA. Of course, they want a ton of information, and they can't pull it from any of the dozens of other government systems where my name, address, SSN, passport number, TSA ID, fingerprints, iris scan, tongue prints, etc. are already on file. Then, for every package, I need to go to their website and list VERY detailed contents (including ingredients) for each package. Those will be reviewed and, if acceptable, I will receive a 12-digit confirmation number for each package. Then, I have to list the contents AGAIN along with the confirmation number on each package's US customs form. I also have to fill out a Swiss Post release form for each package declaring that I've followed all of the crazy US policies and I won't blame Swiss Post if the US just decides to confiscate or destroy my package anyway. Oh, and as an individual, the FDA won't allow the fastest shipping speed because my stuff is automatically suspect and is pretty much guaranteed to go through the X-ray and rubber glove treatment. (That's right, we subject incoming cookies to the same indignities to which we subject incoming people.) So, whatever I'm shipping had better not go bad quickly.
So, short version: I'm eating all of your Christmas cookies. I'll ship the non-food stuff after Christmas (I need to buy different boxes and use a packing material other than candy), and I'll bring food along with me the next time I fly across the ocean.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Virus By the Numbers

I'm writing this because there's some really insane stuff that's being said by people who should really know better, and I'm sick of discussing it one post or email at a time. So, this is my One Big Post that I'll point people toward rather than bringing it up again and again. In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of a pandemic. Just so that we're all using the same terminology:  The virus is Severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 . It's usually abbreviated SARS-CoV-2. It's a brand new kind of Coronavirus, so for a while, before it had this awkward name, people were calling it "novel coronavirus". (For the non-English speakers and D students, "novel" is another word for "new".) The disease that the virus causes is called Coronavirus Disease 2019 , and it's usually abbreviated COVID-19. It's called that because it was discovered in 2019. This came out of nowhere in China in late
Post a Comment
Read more

Audio upgrade: Schiit Fulla 2

I recently purchased a Schiit Fulla 2 . I was on the fence about it for a long time, but it's held up well, and I'm pretty happy with it. So, here's a small product review. I should probably mention that I'm generally skeptical about "audiophile" anything. I've known too many people who spend way too much money on voodoo like "oxygen-free speaker cables". This makes me reluctant to trust reviews or spend money on anything that I can't test for myself.  I've heard good audio. I go to concerts. I know what music is  supposed to  sound like, and it wasn't what I was getting from any of my computers, even with decent headphones, lossless audio codecs, etc. On the other hand, we have some  Sonos speakers , and with those speakers and a good audio source, music can sound really good. Since I wasn't getting that level of quality at the computer, it meant that there was something between the computer and my ears that was part of
Post a Comment
Read more

The Chromecast conceptual model

Google makes a device called Chromecast . It's a relatively inexpensive way to turn any TV into a "Smart" TV capable of playing movies or music. It's a clever bit of engineering, but I've run into a few people who have trouble understanding how they work. The key thing to understand is that the Chromecast is the device that's actually receiving and playing the movie (or whatever), and your phone is just the remote. Here's how the process works at a high level: You start watching a video on Youtube 30 seconds in, you decide that you'd like to watch the rest on your TV, so you press the "Cast" button. Your phone stops playing and tells the Chromecast "Get this video directly from Youtube and start playing at the 0:30 mark"  When your phone initially asks the Chromecast to start playing, it also specifies a "default thing" to do when the Chromecast is finished. If the Chromecast is playing a Youtube video, it might
Post a Comment
Read more