{"id":4653,"date":"2009-08-06T18:51:08","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T10:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=4653"},"modified":"2010-04-05T08:15:56","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T00:15:56","slug":"package-delivery-for-you-sir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/08\/06\/package-delivery-for-you-sir\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Package delivery for you sir&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the nicest things about being in a technology-enabled generation is that your purchasing options opens up a lot. I remember my first online purchase was in 1996, back during the days when Secure payment modes were still a reasonably new thing and many sites were still sending credit card payment details in the clear. *shudder*<\/p>\n<p>Either way, things have improved a lot. There&#8217;s a crazy amount of stuff you can buy from online retailers, and have them shipped into Singapore. They&#8217;re not always cheaper after you include in delivery and possible disbursement \/ GST charges, but they can be &#8211; as long as you look for the right retailers, take advantage of discount periods, and also the occasional period when the US dollar or British pound weakens against the SGD.<\/p>\n<p>I recently ordered a new lens from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bhphotovideo.com\/\">B&amp;H Photo-Video<\/a>, one of three online retailers I order a lot of stuff from (the other two is Amazon, and Amazon.uk LOL) these days.\u00a0 It&#8217;s an amateur travel lens for cropped sensor bodies\u00a0 &#8211; the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sigmaphoto.com\/lenses\/lenses_all_details.asp?id=3358&amp;navigator=6\">Sigma 18-250mm<\/a>. The lens isn&#8217;t widely popular, but it&#8217;s considered very good value for its asking price, and is reasonably sharp and devoid of complex optical distortions that&#8217;d require too much Photoshopping to correct later.<\/p>\n<p>Now, what I found interesting though is the delivery path from the point of origin to its final destination in Singapore. Call me a details geek, but I enjoy looking at tables like these:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: inline; border: 0px;\" title=\"blog-delivery\" src=\"https:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/blogdelivery.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\"blog-delivery\" width=\"789\" height=\"710\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t at home when the lens arrived on this afternoon, so it was accepted and signed for by Ling after paying the disbursement and GST charge (amounted to SGD68).<\/p>\n<p>More photos to come, hopefully &#8211; but assuming if I can get out of the house and hit Punggol Park for an hour over the weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the nicest things about being in a technology-enabled generation is that your purchasing options opens up a lot. I remember my first online purchase was in 1996, back during the days when Secure payment modes were still a<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/08\/06\/package-delivery-for-you-sir\/\">Read More<span class=\"cleanwp-sr-only\">  &#8220;Package delivery for you sir&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16],"tags":[137,363],"class_list":["post-4653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography-cameras","category-toys-technology","tag-d300","tag-sigma-18-250mm","wpcat-13-id","wpcat-16-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}