We got mail

The entire news desk was roaring with laughter last Tuesday when Eden’s postcard from Korea arrived, more than a week after she herself arrived from her study tour. STAR deskman and STARweek contributing writer Eden Estopace left for Korea last Aug. 21 for a fellowship at the Seoul National University. Together with seven other international journalists, she spent two weeks on campus and, before leaving Seoul for their tour around Korea, Eden mailed the postcard to those of us slaving away back here at home. She was kind enough to ask what pasalubongs we wanted, and for us to let her know through her Yahoo email. For the next two weeks she wondered why no one from home was emailing her.

She came home last Sept. 16. Last Tuesday, Sept. 27, her postcard arrived.

Speculation was rife–and hilarious–on why it took so long for the postcard to get here. "Nobody sends postcards by mail anymore," said one. "There’s only one postman in Korea," said another, "so paikot-ikot pa siya collecting what little mail there is." Amy’s advise: "You buy the postcard, you bring it home with you, and you show it to us when you get here!"

Later that afternoon, I received a most interesting invitation–from Fernando Zobel de Ayala, Co-Vice Chairman of the Ayala Corporation, to a reception celebrating the exhibits of a collection of saints and a collection of 18th century Philippine costumes at the Ayala Museum. I would have loved to attend, but the event happened a week ago...on Sept. 19. The invitation was post marked Sept. 6, from the Ayala Makati post office.

"Snail mail!" everyone yelled. But that may not be very fair to the snail, because if the snail had left Makati on Sept. 6 and diligently crawled along, it would probably have reached Port Area in less than the 21 days it took the invitation to get here. "We would already have eaten the escargot!" our resident glutton shreiked.

In fairness to our postal system, it doesn’t always take that long for mail to get delivered. I don’t usually take note of postmarks, but I’d say the average would probably be a week–which is a long time in this age of instant emails and text messages, although both do get delayed as well, the latter sometimes for as long as a few hours.

Delays notwithstanding, I still say there is something special about mailing and receiving a letter, stamps and all. This may not be anywhere near as romantic or nostalgic as the Kevin Costner movie "Message in a Bottle", but let’s hear it for letters and postcards, post offices and postmen–just for old times’ sake.