Going Postal in Sri Lanka (or How to post a Parcel in Galle)

Since my last post, I’ve completed another semester of teaching at the college and another MA paper. To celebrate these feats I decided with K’s approval (ie bribes and promises of cool gifts from far away places) to go to Sri Lanka for an 8-day vacation with a *buddy who also teaches at the college.

The trip has been really good, Sri Lanka is a gorgeous country. Over the last week, I’ve been buying little gifts for K and my parents. I’d have liked to have bought more for other people but I only brought my small luggage this time, so I didn’t have space for a lot of things.

Anyways I finished up with the last of the souvenir shopping last night so this morning’s plan was to go to the post office and send everything back to Canada. In Korea and Qatar, the post office is great. You go there with your stuff, buy a box, pack it up, pay the fees and send it. The whole process takes about 10 minutes. Here’s what happens in Galle.

They direct you to a room upstairs.

You get two forms with the exact same info (sender/receiver) to be filled out in another room before they inspect your stuff.

You go back, they inspect, then you go downstairs.

Your stuff gets packed, but they don’t like the vanilla extract you got from the spice garden so they send you back upstairs to customs who don’t have a problem with it.

You go back downstairs to see they’ve already packed the damn box, you ask them to unpack it.

This turns into an argument. Finally seeing they relent after seeing how you’ve taped the bottle, wrapped it in a plastic bag and taped it again. The boxes get packed.

Write the addresses on the box (for the 3rd time)

Take the boxes to the ‘stamps line’. They write the weight on each box. Go back upstairs to customs.

Wait 15 minutes for the customs guy to calculate your shipping charges, he’ll be saying shit about you in Sinhalese the who whole time. Once he finally quotes the price, pay the man and leave.

A couple of tips…

1. Bring two litres of water, it hot hot hot and the’s no A/C. You’re going to sweat sweat sweat.

2. Buy some extra luggage, pack the stuff, go home and post it from there.

(Update: a few years… later… 2017)

My *buddy, it turns out was not really a friend.  During the trip, he whined about leaving tips whenever we went out. However, since I used to work in service, I knew first-hand how valuable that extra income was, so I’d just leave the tips discreetly while he was distracted.  While we got along during this trip, I did all the planning and booking.  The following year when our jobs were to be cut, my *buddy used me for job leads and help re-writing his resume and cover letter while he kept one of the best leads to himself. He also was present when I was working on the conclusion of my dissertation because he had offered his help with proofreading.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t too helpful.  He spent two solid hours talking non-stop to another friend.

When I look back on things, this really marked the end of our friendship, though I would still try to be a friend to him for another two years. We went on to work together in KZ twice, once as colleagues and once with me as his supervisor, a role he resented to no end.  I endured a fair bit of abuse from him on that job and gave him a pass on this behaviour because the job was high-stress and he had been depressed that year.  When we came back to Qatar in 2015 he asked me to make a deal with him, that we’d always have each other’s back professionally.

Up to that point in time, I had done so. I helped him with job leads and covered up his behaviour in KZ.  I found out a couple of weeks later he had been talking to a mutual friend and had been telling that friend that I had said some nasty stuff about them professionally.  This wasn’t true, and when my friend approached me it was straightened out fairly easily. I didn’t spend much time with this *buddy for the remainder of the year after that.  

The couple of times we did hang out were awkward.  One of those times was at his birthday, and I got alcohol poisoning from drinking too much Sangria. It was an awful scene, I was sick in the restaurant, in the taxi, and at home. I even had to get my classes covered the next day because I was too sick to teach. Of course, he took pictures of it, posted one of the photos on social media, and mentioned the incident to colleagues at work.  Not just mentioned it, everyone who told me the story also mentioned how excited and giddy he was in telling them about it.

We only hung out twice after that.  When he broke up with his girlfriend, he called me up and wanted someone to talk to, so I obliged because I felt like I owed him since he had gone out with me when K and I broke up.  It was an awkward conversation because his ex-girlfriend had also been to KZ and had also been a nightmare to work with.  The next time I saw him was at a friend’s wedding.  He had tried to get me going a couple of times, but I didn’t pay him any mind.  Then he starting saying sexual stuff about my girlfriend. He made a comment, then another, and another, and that was the end of it.  I told him to settle down and took my girlfriend and walked away.  I had to deal with him a little more over the next two days since the entire wedding party was at the same hotel, but the dealings were minimal.  I haven’t spoken to him since I left Thailand.

Looking back over this passage, the obvious question is why did I put up with that shit for so long?  I don’t really have an answer to that.  I realize looking back, that I made excuses for his behaviour.  When he decided to start going after someone I loved as a way to get to me, that was when I woke up.  It’s a lesson I am still processing because I had considered this *buddy to be a top-shelf friend, and as a result, I allowed myself to be used.