Friday, March 7, 2008

gondolatokba pénteken

(I might totally be messing up the grammar in Hungarian when I wrote the title)

My mind constantly jumps from one thought to another, so today I give you my...

(assortment of) thoughts on Friday:

I forgot to mention yesterday that our roof was finally fixed!!! That was a very good thing, which leads me to the next thought...

We lost power several times while they were fixing the roof. They kept on blowing the circuit. I finally put it together after it happened the third time. We couldn't have the computer, phone, and power saw on at the same time. Our flat is old, and thus the ability to handle many electrical power sources at once doesn't happen well. I can't blow dry my hair or turn on the microwave if the space heater is on. One mom at school said she can't run her dishwasher and dryer at the same time, which leads me to the next thought...

I don't have either of those appliances. Nope, no dishwasher and no dryer. I honestly haven't thought twice about a dishwasher. I just do the dishes every time we use something. It keeps the dishes always clean, my counter uncluttered, and saves the energy that would have been used to run that appliance for so long. I do, however, miss the dryer. Our cotton clothes are SUPER stiff. Many dryers here take forever to use (a 2 hour cycle might not get the clothes fully dry), again costing a lot of energy and money to run, which leads me to the next thought...

Everyone complains about gas prices. I have no idea what they are in the US right now, but here, gas costs about $6.50 a gallon. I highly doubt it's that high there yet. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know why it's so much more expensive here, which leads me to the next thought...

I was looking something up on Amazon UK to see the price, and the items I was looking up were more than twice the amount. Why does the same puzzle cost $3.94 in the US and $9.04 in the UK (based on the current exchange rate)? I know importing stuff costs money, but does it really cost more than twice the amount? Perhaps, but all of that leads me to the next thought...

In order to buy something from the US and have it shipped here, you have to pay import taxes. Someone once bought a coat from a company and had it shipped here. The taxes on the coat when it got to customs was more than the person had paid for the coat. Are you kidding me?! The person never claimed the coat from customs because they weren't about to pay again to go get it. They did lose out on the money they spent for the coat. What a ripoff! So what do you do? You have it shipped to someone in the US, have them open it up, take off any tags and anything that would show it to be a new garment, put it in another box, and ship it over here. No import tax that way!

Oh the things you learn...

4 comments:

Stefanie Schocke said...

I hope gas prices don't get that high.

Audrey said...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on a Friday! The difference in price from the U.S. to the UK might be in part because England has the Value Added tax included with everything. Does Hungary tax purchases before or after they are priced?

Kristen said...

Good thinking, Audrey! I never thought of that. Hungary has the tax included in the price already like England. Can't wait for that last 5% for you to come join us!

Anonymous said...

OK now that I'm obsessed with Google Reader, I get really excited when I get home from work, bc I think "Maybe Kristin posted" and I have disappointed as of late. :) Hope you are doing well!