Introducing....

Um, I actually don't know her name. This is a quick sketch of what she looks like. It is a lady that works at the post office near my work. Since I've started selling Muntedkowhai necklaces on Etsy, I've been dashing off to the post office during work (I love flexible science jobs!) and it is the most bizarre post office to date. It is a run down post office with a glass case smack in the middle, hand prints all over and inside are haphazardly placed booklets of collections stamps with a chicken scratch handwriting saying "NOW AVAILABLE". There is also, these two beautiful mustard meets satruce coloured arm chairs with wooden lion feet bottoms. One of the arm chair is in a very bad shape, the material has broken through at the front edge and it is sad looking. It is a pity that the lovely arm chairs are sitting there, in the depressing down trotten place. The wait is usually very long, un neccessarily so at times but hey, it's a government run place right? The lady I sketched, I get served by her most of the time and it never ceases to amaze me how much she does not care. I'm wanting to give her a nick name and all I can think of is Jugs because that she is a lot of. Jugs is probably 45-55 years old. She is an excessively plump lady and when she walks slowly away from her desk to put a parcel into a container, you can see parts of her body that sits on other parts of her body. What intrigues me to no end is her hair. It is grey and white, wiry. Jugs has evident bald patches which she does not care to cover up with her other hair, mainly because they're free standing, reaching up to the sky. They stand up in all directions, NE, NEE, SW,NWW. You name it, it's pointed there. Often while waiting in the line, I have the sudden urge to go up to the counter and use both of my hands to smooth out her static medusa hair from top to bottom. I do not.

Jugs is in her own time zone as well. One time, she was finished with a customer and there is still 7 people in the line. She does not call Next! but gingerly takes out a pad of pink sticky notes and with 6 year old intensive concentration, wrote something slowly onto the pink sticky pad. Her tongue is out and only retracts in after she has finished writing. All the while, everyone in the line was flabbergasted that she took so long to calligraphy a note to herself before helping us out. What tickles me the most besides her hair, are her questions. She has something to say about everything.

When I mailed my first sale out to Seattle, she looked at the address and said "Oh! Seattle." Steps back from the desk.

"I used to play the clarinet in Seattle."


Another time, just quite recently, I sent Anna's necklace to Dunedin, New Zealand where she lives. Dunedin is pronounced "DUN KNEE DUN", however most Americans are prone to pronouncing it " DUNE DUN". Jugs looks at the parcel and said, " Oh?! DUNE DUN! Oh! New Zealand! The warriors of DUNE DUN, Chapter 14!"

I am not LOTR fan and so I don't know any references but was sure that Dunedin was not mentioned in the LOTR series? I was not going to argue with Jugs either way but she still wanted to enlightened me as I was giving her cash.

"You know, it is so funny that the book was written about New Zealand and now the film is filmed in New Zealand. Yes."



Now, everytime I have a Jugs encounter, I will surely blog about it. It is one of those quirky things that makes your post office visits.