[ExI] from the other side

[Amara Graps]

giovanni santost santostasigio at yahoo.com :
>It is horrible that people in a state agency like Poste Italiane 
>stole your stuff.

One more brown envelope received today. The edge again was ripped open,
and this one is completely enclosed in a plastic bag, with the words
printed on the brown envelope:
"Received in Damaged Condition at NY ISC, 11430 NY"
But the contents were intact. Thank you, United States Postal Service.

So out of 22 envelopes (2 kg each), 7 were torn open, of which one's
contents are gone, and two (those are papers to help me with dust
charging calculations) are still missing. A 41% damage/theft/loss rate.

>This why whenever I travel I carry my notebooks and laptop with me.

I remind you that I was exhausted, making an international move, near
the holiday time, in the winter, desperately broke, carrying an extra
bag of xeroxes of every piece of identification that I had from my
wallet-purse theft 2.5 weeks before. I was hand carrying two laptops
(one old one, whose memory chip failed in the week after I arrived, and a
new-used one to replace it). Christmas presents and winter clothes and
my bicycle and all of its equipment and other valuables (jewelry) in
addition to cooking ware and items to start my new life were among the
luggage sitting on the ground by the Lufthansa/Rome Fiumicino baggage
handlers. I'm only one person, and I could only carry so many things. My
notes and research projects were 43 kg extra of materials that I was in
the middle of using for two deadlines (now late) that I trusted wrongly
to Poste Italiane. It doesn't help me to cry about it, even though I
already have.


Amara
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Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Research Scientist, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado