Saying Thank You Isn’t Easy

I am currently engrossed in an endeavor to launch a crowd funding initiative in Japan – to raise funds to acquire a small ambulance for donation to a struggling NGO in the health sector. While everything is being readied by a generous friend in Japan, my responsibility at this end is to craft a suitably worded THANK YOU note – to be presented to individual donors for their generosity.

Thank You Note printed on Desho paper for presentation to donors

Mindful that people are going to be donating hundreds of thousands of Ngugies destined for a cause in a country most do not even know where it is located, I am trying to make the Thank You note a worthy one. The only way I can think of doing so is by printing the note on our elegant Desho – traditional handmade Bhutanese paper - made from the bark of wild Daphne trees. I mean, gold-rimmed, diamond-studded Thank You notes are beyond my means.

But boy!!! I did not realize how difficult the endeavor would prove to be – of translating the idea into a presentable product!

The entire gamut of desktop publishing services in town declined to print my Thank You note! Their reason: the rough surface of the Desho would damage the print heads of their InkJet printers. What a ridiculous reason!!! This shows how uneducated the service providers are about their profession and what they do.

For the life of me, I could not convince them that they are wrong – that the InkJet printers are, what are called, None-Impact Printers. This means that the printers print without the need for contact between the print head and the paper surface on which the images are printed. In fact, the InkJet printers DO NOT HAVE print heads – they use a series of fine nozzles to spray microscopic droplets of ink onto the paper to form the images – THE NOZZLES DO NOT TOUCH THE SURFACE OF THE PAPER AT ALL!!!

No Go!

So, in frustration, I ended up buying a brand new Epson InkJet printer to do the job – what a drag!