When I went to bed last night at 9.30 pm, I already knew what I was going to write about today. (If you didn’t already notice, Wednesdays here on the blog are usually Denmark-related.) I was planning to do another post about my frustration with the Danish postal service. You can read my previous post about them here.
You see, I had ordered some StillerStrongheadbands back in December. The lovely Ben Stiller (yeehaw, gives me the chance to slip in “Blades of Glory“) and Save the Children have a campaign to provide education in Haiti. He’s been tweeting about it on http://www.twitter.com/ (if you want to follow him his name is @RedHourBen).
I went online and bought the headbands…hey, I wanted to do the Blue Steel look from Zoolander too! 😉 That was on 4 December 2009. You get a pack of three for $30. You can do the same by going to http://www.stillerstrong.org/
DD7 and I were excited when we collected the package on Monday afternoon (11 January). She bagged the pink headband immediately and I had to physically remove it at bedtime 😉 Here she is, eating her breakfast yesterday morning…
It was a bittersweet experience for me. I paid $30 for 3 (very nice) headbands. And then a whopping $40 in customs (£25 or Dkr.199) to the Danish authorities. A small part of it was the actual import duties and most of it a standard charge for being kind enough to open my parcel. Truth to tell, it was actually an envelope. Gah!! So much for my money going to a good cause. If I had known that was going to happen, I would have just donated double the money, and told them to enjoying wearing the headbands themselves, with love from Denmark! 🙂
Anyway. That was the post I was going to write. Frustration with the Danish postal service. And the fact that DD7’s headband has already gone AWOL over at school… 😉
But then I woke up this morning and the first tweet I see is the news about the earthquake in Haiti. And hear more about it on the news when I’m taking my shower at 6.30am. And it puts everything into perspective. And suddenly those crazy Danes and their crazy Danish customs duties really don’t matter that much anymore.
So I’m counting my blessings today. And encourage you all to do the same.
Have a wonderful Wednesday! 🙂