The cargo smuggling chapter continues

In latest local news, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority uncovered 3,360 cartons of cigarettes at the Woodlands checkpoint. The contraband was found in a Malaysia-registered lorry transporting ladies shoes and pharmaceutical items. Upon closer inspection, 56 unlabelled shoe boxes contained the loot.

I can’t help but wonder if smugglers today had a collective brainwave to hide their goods amid products relating to women, the biggest consumer market around. I don’t know about you, but cocaine in flowers and now contraband cigarettes in shoe boxes? Perhaps it is time to be extra vigilant, especially if your shipments involve feminine products.


What should shipping managers (of all cargoes) do to prevent their goods from being tampered with?

The offensive airline manual

Have you heard? Air New Zealand has apologised to the Tongan community for profiling them in the cabin crew manual as passengers who tend to overindulge in alcohol on long-haul flights. Quoting Times Online, the manual wrote that South Pacific islanders had the tendency to “drink the bar dry”.

Written in 2008, the manual also contained profiles of other nationalities. Chinese customers were said to be “extremely demanding”, while Japanese passengers expected water and reading material during mealtimes. Koreans were perceived to expect good manners and patience from cabin crew, and Samoans “greatly appreciated rugs”.

Needless to say, this manual sparked some anger amongst Tongans. Tevita Finau, a Tongan community leader based in Wellington, was offended by the implication and found it untrue. The airline promptly apologised to the Tongan community, assuring that an updated training manual currently in use did not mention “cultural components”.

Whether we want to admit it or not, profiling is common and I believe it helps give the cabin crew a rough gauge of certain nationalities so as to manage their expectations. Of course, putting such cultural idiosyncrasies in an airline manual can be pretty sensitive. Unless you intend to circulate the manual internally (and apparently not for Air New Zealand, because how did we find out?), perhaps we should all think twice before we put it down on paper, lest we offend.

As real as it gets

It seems like drug smugglers are gradually becoming more creative. Just days ago, cocaine was found hidden inside a bunch of fake pineapples, and those fruit were again brilliantly buried amid real pineapples shipped into Netherlands.

The police had uncovered US$34 million worth of cocaine in plastic pineapples, says AP. Fruit packers who were unloading a consignment of pineapples found the loot, and while the Dutch police are pretty lenient with soft drug use, they don’t tolerate hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. Still, there were no immediate arrests, and the country from which the pineapples came wasn’t revealed either.

Another act that reeks of creativity happened last month, where custom officials intercepted four kilograms of cocaine smuggled among 20,000 roses around Valentine’s Day.

Well, creativity is one thing. Being able to pull it off without getting caught is still really the whole point. And shipping managers out there, you may want to keep an eye on your goods and make sure that everything is as real (and good) as it gets.

FedEx lives to deliver... your handphone

 The next time you leave something important behind, think FedEx.

When American heiress Paris Hilton went to France for a short getaway with her boyfriend, she informed her followers on Twitter that she had left her Blackberry behind in a hurry. And the solution was simple – she FedExed the phone over to herself in France.

The solution may be simple, but it is also costly. According to the shipping details on the FedEx website, it costs about US$150 to have a handphone shipped from LA to France.

Personally, I would choose to live without my precious smartphone, and find some way to deal with the temporal loss. But if I were Hilton, then FedEx would be my immediate choice. After all, they live to deliver.