Packing and Shipping ‘Soy Sauce, Sugar, Mirin’.

Parents will understand this.

Having a baby is a nice idea. And before the baby is born, you thought getting pregnant was hard. And then you thought oh the first trimester was hard, the morning sickness was hard. And then you thought the labour process, the heavy metal screaming, that has got to be the worse part, right?

No dude, hell only starts when the baby is finally out.

Signing and numbering the books was a nice idea, up until the 50th copy. And then it’s just a long night of being self-conscious of my handwriting. Initially, I had one pen for the numbers, another for signature but even my daughter knew that was a stupid idea. At one point I realised putting the cap on and off between each book probably cost me an hour.

After signing the books, I now have to print the labels, match the order numbers, add tea towels if needed, into the padded envelopes.

And get this, it’s been 2 days and I’ve only processed 86 copies.

Why not do everything in one go Harvard? Why so slow? You ask.

For starters, it’s always good to do a test run. If I screw up 300 labels and envelopes it’s going to take me a long time to restart the process.

Also, there’s a voice in my head. That voice, that stupid genius voice starts saying: hey, people spent real money on you, the least you can do is to write them a personal message.

So now I’m reopening to the same page I autographed, and making sure I know how to spell people’s name properly. Wait, what if the book is not for the person who bought it? Shut up, says the voice.

Oh hey, remember your special secret scented perfume?
Did you remember to spray it into each book?
Remember you bought bags of little soy sauce bottles you’re going to give to people who missed out on the towels? Did you put them into the envelopes?

I don’t know man, what if the soy sauce explodes in the pack?
Shut up, says the voice.

At this stage, I’m essentially moving the books from one box to another. From one packaging to another.
This really reminds me of physics lessons in high school - a constant transfer of energy, and a gigantic waste of time.

I honestly thought most of my purchase would be picked up locally. I should increase the shipping fee.

Printing the labels was supposed to be straight-forward.
But because I’m a tree lover I decided to fit 4 labels in an A4 sheet.
Sendle doesn’t generate labels like that. So I had to manually fit 4 PDFs into 1 in Indesign then print them out.

Sendle also doesn’t just pick up all parcels in one go. There’s a separate pick up for international and domestic parcels. And within the domestic pick up there’s Couriers Please (not bad) and Fastway (not good).
So I’m stuck at home today waiting for 3 deliveries between the time frame of 8am - 6pm.

Auspost is just around the corner from me. I should’ve just used them instead. I probably qualify for their highest VIP business discount.
But my Squarespace site which is connected to my Shipstation account, does not work with Auspost.
So if you ever wonder why people use Shopify, WooCommerce, Ebay, those ugly website etc, this is why.

I have a couple of orders that are directed to PO Box and Parcel Collection points, so I’ll have to sort that out myself anyway. I also have orders with eight, four and three books which I need to source different box/packaging.

My 200 padded envelopes are running out, gotta order more.

Chika offered to carry the books down, tried lifting a box, and said ‘Nah you’re on your own’.

The only consolation I have is to imagine the pioneers of e-commerce 10 years ago when they had to do all this manually - handwriting, excel files, bubble wrapping, standing in line at the post office with 100 parcels.

Jokes on you, I am now standing on all your shoulders.

The other consolation, as I was zombie-ing through signing and writing thank you notes, as I read through the different labels heading to different cities - New York, Philadelphia, California, Dallas, Lansing, London, Montreal, Singapore, is that I get to do some mental travel. Imagining the readers eating chicken rice, in-and-out burger, looking out to the Manhattan bridge as they receive the books.

Is this, how prison feels like?

But honestly, how did all this happen?

Because we decided to write some recipes online, bro, said that voice.

Remember during the lockdown you wished for something to do?
You got your wish, bro.