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

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Sometimes, things work as intended

A small computer success story: I have a Synology NAS at home. For those who aren't familiar with them, they're small computers that are set up to make storing and sharing files easy. They keep your data across multiple hard drives so that if a hard drive fails, no data is lost. Or, at least, that's the theory. After we moved last year, I set up the NAS and ran all of the status checks. It reported that one drive was still working but starting to have problems. I bought another drive, plugged it in, and set it as a "hot spare" (basically, the system knew about it, but it wasn't being used). I also turned on monthly disk checks. Months passed with no more problems. ...until last Tuesday. On Tuesday night, the system automatically sent us mail to tell us that The troubled disk had finally failed. Since we had a hot spare, it would be used as a replacement disk and our data would be copied to it. When everything was finished, the system would let us k...
2 comments
Read more

Stinky cheese, man

I'm living in a place that's known for it's cheese. There are hundreds of kinds of cheese at my local grocery store. I try something different every time I go shopping, and I've still barely scratched the surface of what's available. There's one kind of cheese that deserves special mention: Raclette . Raclette is strange for a few different reasons. Most notably, it's almost always served cooked, and there's a bit of a ritual around cooking it. You will never be offered raw raclette. Why? Raw raclette is pungent stuff. It's hard to describe the smell, but I've heard it described as a cross between sweat socks, vomit, and curdled milk. To say that it stinks is a polite understatement. So, why on earth would anyone eat it? Because when you cook it, you somehow cook the stink out of it, and what's left is sublime. It's a sort of oily cheese, and you get something like the best pizza or nacho cheese you've ever had. I've hea...
3 comments
Read more