For some reason, we've been receiving rather lots of "mixed-up" mail recently at home. And the mix-ups are usually due to the incompetence/laziness of certain third parties.

For starters, the previous owners of our home never set-up mail forwarding. The United States Postal Service has wonderful services for that. The Change of Address service they provide will forward all first-class mail to a new address provided that the name on the envelope matches a certain criterion. For example, when my family moved last summer, we told the USPS that our entire family is moving, and anything addressed to the Wong family should be forwarded to our new address. And that's what they did: forwarded all Wong family mail to our new address, albeit often with a three-to-five-day delay. Another service I really like from the USPS is the option to Hold Delivery. In the apartment I lived during highschool, the mail is delivered through a slot on the door, so we never worried much about mail piling up--that is, until the summer of my junior year. I went to camp that summer, and my mom and sisters went back to Taiwan. Sometime by the end of July, a couple friends and I took a train to visit my home (and for me to pick up a few things). I tried coming in the front door, but the door wouldn't budge, so I had to go around the back. There was a mountain of mail piled at the front door, mostly advertisements (like Shop-Rite coupons) and a few issues of the local news paper. Oh boy was that fun to sort through.

And then there are the mail for my sisters. Well, mail for my sisters in itself is not surprising, but mail for my sisters calling them to jury duty certainly is. But the funny thing is, the first one came in early July, it was addressed to our old-old address, and was forwarded to our new-old address, where we picked it up 7 days after it was sent from the Essex county courts. And it was a Friday. It requested us to respond within 10 days or be fined/jailed for Contempt of the Court. Okay, so first, it is the USPS's fault that we didn't get this mail until 7 days after it was sent, and second, we don't live in Essex County anymore. I made damn sure that when we moved to our current home in Mercer County that we all changed our address with the DMV on our drivers' licenses. I mean, at the very least, they should have sent the summons to our new-old address, and not the one we moved out of one year ago. And just yesterday, I got another summon for jury duty, this time, for my other sister, and, surprise surprise, sent again by the Essex county courts.

The last collection of mail that peeved me are from New York University. I applied there for graduate school. I was accepted. I declined their offer. I would think that would be the end of it. But strangely, I've been getting mail from student organization and administrative offices alike at NYU. There were dorm-furnishing agencies, news-paper delivery agencies, laundry agencies, textbook agencies, etc. There were also mail from the NYU Athletic Department and NYU Health Services. So I wrote an e-mail to NYU Graduate School Admissions Office, because I want to make sure I did in fact decline their offer to enroll. And sure enough, they wrote back telling me that according to their records, I have officially declined the offer, and that there must be a mix up somewhere such that I am still getting all these mail, but do not worry and that if I want I could just disregard and discard those mail.