Grad School Business

From what I have read around about other blogs, noone has really ventured into the world of shipping items to the US. In my case I cannot face the idea of spending two years without my stereo, some of my books, music and other items that would prove too expensive to replace. Obviously, 2000 records is a bit excessive on the shipping so some moderation is required. Moderation that may or may not serve to help on this form.

If I understand it right, as a non-US citizen you only have to list household goods rather than personal effects. This makes a huge difference if I have it right. The difference between itemising huge amounts of clothes, CDs, records, books, miniature figurine Pete Fowler things, and a whole host of other things as opposed to just five items. Let’s just hope I have got it right.

Shipping will take about six weeks, and is not only quite expensive (though exhibits extraordinary economies of scale), but also shows an incredible variance in quoted prices (some carriers come in at half the price of others). So, if you do choose to ship items, check around. Oh, and 30 cubic feet sounds like an awful lot, but is actually less than one cubic meter. Which is obviously why they don’t use metric in a hope of preying on people with poor skills on volume. GMAC could do everyone a favour and include volume in the maths section. Carriers seem OK that you can change the address to ship to, which helps if you don’t actually know where you will be living quite yet.

In other matters, the Tour de France is looking like it will be the best in many years - going through the Alps early has kept the race wide open. The only disappointment is the peleton’s new found affection of chasing down breakaways in the last few kilometres, leaving viewers quite disappointed when acts of heroism like Bradley Wiggins’ on Friday burn out, and end up in a sprint. Tom Boonen won the stage, which was some consolation following his two year spell of somehow failing to win a sprint. Rasmussen has the yellow and polka dot jersey over the rest day following a phenomenal bit of climbing. We may not have a rider like Marco Pantani any more, but there are still some men who can manage the incredible in the mountain stages.

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