Facebook Glitch October 23, 2009
Posted by graciek in Life in General, WTF?.Tags: facebook glitch
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The weirdest thing ever just happened on Facebook. We have our friend Lisa visiting us and I’ve been letting her use my laptop to check emails and go on facebook, etc. I went onto facebook and it told me I had a friend request. Duly I clicked on the link – strange I don’t know this person and she has no friends in common with me. As standard – I clicked IGNORE. Went back to my homepage and it was a bit odd as the person at the top of my news feed wasn’t one of my friends. However everyone on the feeds below was and the photos stream were my friends’. Strange I thought this must be a glitch so I pressed on the home button again. Weird, now I have a news feed with no one I know on!! Also my thumbnail next to the status box is not me, it’s Lisa’s. The photos on the right are still my friends though and it definitely says my name in the top bar. Yikes – somehow I’ve mutated into a Lisa/Grace facebook entity. Sure that’s not supposed to happen. So pressed logout and it went straight into Lisa’s profile. It was like somehow Lisa was already logged in, then I managed to login ontop of that, facebook got confused and merged our news feeds. It was quite amusing and I only wish that I had taken a screen grab of it. Slightly worrying though, imagine if it had been a public computer!!
The Day Sydney Turned Orange September 23, 2009
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Yesterday evening was so humid then suddenly the wind changed and there was an almighty storm. Proper thunder, sheet lightning and torrential downpour. Finally – it’s been so muggy this last week and the garden was thankfully for it was parched. The winds blew all night and shortly before 6am this morning we woke up and were surprised to see a bright orange glow coming from around the curtain edges. At first I thought wow one of our neighbour’s houses must be on fire or something. Then we opened the curtain and blinds and saw the most amazing thing. The world was totally orange. It was like a mist had descended and it was bright orange! It was just like in the films where there’s been an apocalyptic event and the world has ended. There was just orangey red dust everywhere. Here’s a piccie I took from the back verandah – this is actually how it looked and I swear I haven’t altered the colour settings or anything.
View of Our Back Yard
Sadly hubby had to go to work (even though it was blowing a gale and you couldn’t see further than about 20m). Being asthmatic I hid indoors all day today. The eerie orange glow faded around 10am and by lunchtime the sun was out however there was dust everywhere. My lovely black car is now orange!
Bah SLC Again? August 11, 2009
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Further to my excessively long rant about the SLC we got a letter in the post from them this morning (dated 31/07 but arrived today). They’ve now worked out our new repayment amount and we need to make the first installment by 15/08 (yes we need to get it back to the UK in 4 days and have it clear into the account). Also I note how it is an auto-generated letter and that none of the questions we asked have been addressed at all! Rather infuriatingly they do not mention whether the direct debit has been set up (again for the 4th or 5th time now). Interestingly though there is now an option to pay by card online that there wasn’t in previous letters – hallelujah! Thank goodness for that option as it’s getting pretty ridiculous that every time you need to pay something off you have to send them a cheque (not so bad if you’re in the UK, but terrible if you’re overseas).
Inconsiderate Neighbours August 2, 2009
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Grrrr argh! A neighbour about 5 houses up the road on the road behind ours decided to have a party last night. It sounded like they were partying in their house and garden as the music was so loud and they had a very loud subwoofer going “boom boom boom”. The term to be used would be “bogans”. Party started at 8. Sure it’s a Saturday night so don’t really mind. Gets to 11 and we’re getting tired – music still blaring out just as loud. Then midnight it’s still going on. Around 1am hubby gets fed up. It’s so loud that the windows are rattling. We hear the music go down in volume and lots of shouting (oh dear I think our neighbour is having an altercation with them as I can hear his dog barking outside too). Sounds like they’ve gone into their house as you can hear the music but it’s at least muffled now. 15 mins later the “boom boom” starts again. Hubby calls Kogarah police but is told that all units are out dealing with a minibrawl in town (hmm, so tonight would be an opportune night for some crime elsewhere then?). Still can’t sleep with that racket going on – bah SBS hasn’t got the Ashes coverage on because of stupid Birmingham rain so there’s not even telly to watch! At 3am there’s some shouting and the music finally stops altogether (hurray guessing the police finally came). 3.30am the music starts up again but even louder (the loudest they could get it I reckon they’re doing it to piss off the neighbours on purpose now). This time we call Hurstville police who come out within minutes. This time lots more shouting (I notice that I can hear kids voices too) and sounds like cars speeding off or doing donuts in the road. Then no music at all for the rest of the night – hurrah. Since we’ve been here we’ve never had any problems with the neighbours and it’s always quiet at night. I suspect that someone’s parents went away for the evening leaving the teenagers and kids at home alone for a wild party! It’s not funny though at that time of night and I know that that house’s immediate neighbours are all elderly and my neighbour in that direction has a young baby. So we finally got to sleep at 4am. Strangely Evie slept through the entire night. 8am wake up with a start – damn burglar alarm has gone off (hubby goes to investigate and everything’s fine).
What is Wrong with the SLC – rant!! July 20, 2009
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Grr raaaa grrr. What is the major malfunction at the Student Loans Company (SLC)? OK, this is really a rant on behalf of hubby as I have no problems with my loan (which will thankfully be paid off next April). Before leaving the UK in December to live in Australia I contacted them and filled in the Overseas Income Assessment (OIA) form so that hubby’s payments could continue. Now I told them we weren’t moving to Australia until Christmas, so they rather helpfully wrote their reply on 10th December and sent it straight to Oz address!! Now due to Christmas we didn’t get this letter until the New Year. The letter says that we haven’t provided payment details (even though I completed the direct debit form when I sent off the OIA – how come they received the OIA but not the DD when they are actually on the same piece of paper?) and that we have to send them a cheque by 15th December. Yes – that’s right, they send you something and expect it to arrive in the post in Australia and somehow get a cheque to them and clear it within 5 days (I’d estimate that even if there was no lag time this would take 2.5 weeks). So hubby wrote a letter explaining that we’d only just received the letter and it would not be possible to send them a cheque 20 days in the past and again gave them the DD details. Thankfully this was processed correctly and the payments started coming out. 2 payments in and the SLC suddenly stop taking payments. We noticed in May that the payments had stopped and contacted them again – they have no idea why the payments have stopped and ask us if we have stopped them (WTF!! blaming us??? we did NOT stop any DD from them) and hubby asks them to reinstate the payment schedule again. They say no because our details from the OIA form have inexplicably dissappeared and we have to fill in the form again and send it to them. In the meantime to not fall behind with payments they agree to set up voluntary payments of the amount required until they have received and processed our 2nd OIA form. Hubby fills in the form AGAIN and faxes it to them. Beginning of May we get a letter from them confirming that we have set up the voluntary payments via DD and the amounts. Funny no payments taken in May. End of May we get another letter saying that they’ve increased our payments by the amount of the original payment and that the first payment would be taken 10 days in the past???, which of course it wasn’t). So still no payments, even though we have provided them with everything they need to get their money. This week we get a letter in the post that is so perplexing – it has a very accusatory tone and they’ve suddenly decided that they don’t know whether we are in the UK or not and that if we have left the UK they are going to fine us with maximum repayments if we do not fill in an OIA form for them. WTF again? This is now the third time we’ve filled in that bloody OIA form and the 4th time we’ve provided them with the details for payment. I am getting thoroughly cheesed off with this. It’s not like we’re some scumbags who are trying to skip the country without paying off the loan. We’re desperately trying to get them to take the money but they are being so useless. It’s even worse that each time we provide them with the info, they confirm in writing that it’s all sorted out and then nothing happens, a couple of months later they then send a letter accusing us of essentially trying to avoid paying. What IS wrong with them?
I have come to the conclusion that the SLC are either incompetent or they have some strange Dr Who wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey thing going on where they keep going back in time, claiming payments coming back to the present, going back in time, changing something which then changes the present time and the information previously provided dissappears because we are in a parallel universe!!!
Completion Day … NOT May 1, 2009
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I am so pissed off! We were supposed to be completing our house purchase today. Their solicitors are completely inept! All was fine and going ahead until 4.30pm yesterday at which point my solicitor called me to tell me that they were stalling because of the vendor’s bank not being ready. Hubby rang up and gave them a piece of his mind – he was livid and shouting that he was going to sue someone (really, he was that irate)!! Now they’ve all known for 5 weeks that settlement was for today – yet they’ve left it till less than a week to go to get various bits of paperwork in place and even worse waited till the day before to tell us it’s not happening. Thankfully we are staying at my brother’s house so a couple of days extra is fine, but could you imagine what we’d have done if we were in a chain and our house being sold completed today and our purchase didn’t- yes we’d be homeless. And in the NSW contract there are only penalties if the settlement is delayed by the purchaser, so the vendor’s side could stall all over the place and not be liable for inconvenience and extra costs incurred. I even asked my solicitor to put something in during our cooling off period that would have something in our favour if they should delay settlement and was told that it was not the done thing so now there’s nothing to fall back on. We’re supposed to be having our furniture delivered tomorrow morning too 
If it doesn’t happen next week then we’ll be paying storage charges and redelivery charges – and who knows about the flipping utilities which are all being changed into our names today! Got another phone call this morning, now their solicitors aren’t telling my solicitors where the cheques are supposed to be going – so if they don’t get that information by 3pm today then Monday’s settlement is off too. I asked my solicitor what happens after that, and whether they can just keep stalling away and there seems to be no recourse for up to 14 days – what a joke. The system here just SUCKS!!
What GPS says, we blindly follow!! January 31, 2009
Posted by graciek in Going Out, Life in General, Sydney, WTF?.add a comment
Oh dear. Another GPS rant! Tonight we were meeting up with some relatives in Haberfield, Sydney at a lovely Italian restaurant called Il Nolte. The address of which is 94 Ramsey St (yes, Ramsey St as in Neighbours, no there is no such place as Erinsborough)!! So duly we left Woronora 1 hr before dinner to get to Haberfield. Programmed the GPS – great it’s found the place so off we go. 55 mins later my brother calls and he’s already there – we’ve got another 3km to go. 5 mins later we’ve reached the destination and finally find some parking in a side street. Standing outside number 84 and it’s the end of the road – there are no higher numbered buildings! Strange – I ring my brother who has gone in a separate car with my parents and they’re already there. I’m there saying I’m at a T junction and all the shops I can see, odd it doesn’t marry up with what they can see out of the restaurant window. Grr – stupid GPS! My brother says it’s on the corner of Dalhousie St. Grr – stupid GPS has taken us to Ramsey Rd in a suburb about 10 blocks away from Haberfield (Five Docks). GPS is telling us that the road is called Ramsey St, the roadsign says Ramsey Rd. So where TF is Ramsey St. Using the GPS just as a map I locate it, Ramsey Rd turns into Ramsey St. Where it joins the numbers start from 1. That was good town planning and NOT at all confusing (note the sarcasm). 30 mins late for our dinner date we arrive at the restaurant. Particularly stressed and sweaty from all the running around trying to park and pulling out Evie’s stroller.
Medicare Jobsworths January 6, 2009
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We finally managed to enrol with Medicare today – only our 4 visit to Medicare since we got to Australia. Wow it’s not as easy as it seems. Here’s the story:
Visit 1: 29/12/08 Get to Medicare desk in Sutherland, wait for 10 mins whilst the lady at the desk finishes arranging her weekend party on the telephone, Get given form to fill in, Go fill in form and come back to desk, Lady not there, Wait another 5 mins before she reappears, She says “oops I forgot that the systems are down today and I should have told you just now”. WTF, we were only standing about 3m away filling in the forms – she could have just told us instead of making us stand there filling in forms with the baby crying away.
Visit 2: 31/12/08 Get to Medicare in the City (Town Hall Arcade), Take a machine generated ticket, Wait 45 mins till our number comes up, Go to desk allocated, Lady 1 there looks at our passports and does something on her system, After 5 mins then makes us move to the desk/booth to the right with another colleague, Lady 2 takes our passports and does something on her system, Gets up and goes somewhere, Comes back 5 mins later and says that because it has been over 12 months since our visa grant we need to fill in return resident forms which need similar, but critically different set of documentary evidence as well as a statutory declaration that she can’t witness! Hmm, slink away feeling crap after having waited so long.
Visit 3: 06/01/09 Medicare in Sutherland again as we’re in the vicinity. Go to desk, noone there. A lady finally appears and we start palming off all the evidence and extra documents we’ve filled in. Have brought along email from citibank prooving that the account is open, house sale doc from UK and hubby’s employment contract. Nope – not accepted. The email is not sufficient and we need a letter, but citibank did not send a letter as it’s all done online. Hmmmm. Still need to prove residency – wait a mo’ we have our NSW drivers’ license now. Nope that’s on the list for proving residency for the Medicare enrolment, but not for the returning resident list. Grrr.
Visit 4: 06/01/09 Medicare in Sutherland (1hr after visit 3). Same lady is at the desk. Go straight up to the desk and dump 2 A4 files worth of documents on there. We have citibank cards attached to letters (that arrived in the post between visits), house sale doc, employment contract, P45s from UK, docs from the removalists, statutory declarations (explaining why we had validated instead of moving straight to Oz and witnessed by a dentist), birth certificates for all of us, marriage certificate, Uni degree certs, UK bank closing statements, Random grad ball photo that somehow got into the folder, Dog import docs. I just said – here take your pick. She took some of it and went off to photocopy it. After that it was so straight forward. She did a little bit of data entry and we had our medicare numbers printed out within 5 mins.
So finally 14 days after entering the country and 4 attempts we have been enrolled. Now I can register at a GP and make sure that Baby Evie is checked over and enrolled for whatever it is they do for Kids in Australia. And I suppose most importantly ensure that I can get access to the medicine I need (thankfully I’ve got 6 months’ supply with me).
Well, at least they’re quite stringent in making sure those getting medicare are entitled to it but it was pretty ridiculous that each time we went it was like the bloody Krypton Factor of hurdles.
Now just waiting for our bank account numbers and TFNs before we can do the next round of form filling thinggies!!
THE “Twang” December 27, 2008
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Oh dear. We appear to be adopting “the twang” already. It’s been less than a week and our accents are going skewiff! I expected mine to go quite quickly as I always seem to change easily but I thought hubby would keep his northern english accent for quite some time. Today I caught him saying “sevenny” with a rising inflection. “WTF” I exclaimed. It took him at least 5 minutes to realise what he had said before he said it again and shocked himself. It was a like a child saying their first word and looking surprised at themselves that such a noise should come out of their mouth! Ha ha. Now we feel more Aussie.
Now must remember when we get our broadband sorted out that we don’t ask for a router in the wrong way (apparently u can’t pronounce it roo-ter as thats buggering).
Double Bah Humbug This Week November 29, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General, WTF?.Tags: burglars
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I was lying in bed this morning at around 3.30am tossing and turning thinking about all the stuff I haven’t done for the emigration. Then around 4 ish I heard this tapping noise. Looked out the front cos I thought someone was trying to break into the car. Nope nothing, security light not on. Made a quick toilet break and I heard the tapping noise again. So I lifted the bathroom blind and opened the window to survey the garden. WHAT???? 2 dark hooded figures are doing something to the shed door. I shouted Hey – Get away and they scarpered quickly. Shouted at hubby that someone was breaking into his sheds. He got up super quick and looked out the window and said there was noone there. I said, there WAS! Front security light then went on. Switched on all the house and garden lights and lo and behold wooden shed door wide open, brick shed door 1/2 crowbarred. Hubby panicked as he’d only just that evening put a load of stuff into the wooden shed.
Called police as hubby went outside – first time I’ve ever called 999. How exciting. Mostly I was just scared as our back garden is totally enclosed I thought the burglars might be hiding in a dark spot of the garden waiting to pounce. The police, full credit to them arrived just as I put the phone down with the operator. They got in their car to cruise the area for random people wandering about at 4.30am. About a min after they drove out of sight a young lad in a dark hoodie walked out from somewhere in our cul de sac and stopped at the bottom of the drive before bending down behind our car and picking a baseball cap up. Hubby opened the front door, v scary and told the guy that the police would want that. Odd the guy didn’t run off, he actually came up to the front door and gave hubby the cap. Very odd as it’s definitely not someone from the cul de sac, he looked a little spaced out TBH. Then the police with dogs arrived to track/see if anyone was hiding nearby. Apparently they hid behind a caravan a few houses away before leaving the estate. So we emptied the shed contents into our lounge and went back to bed (I couldn’t sleep a wink). Policeman came totake details at midday today. Apparently a shed 4 houses down was broken into as well, so it would appear they were just opportunistic burglars. The copper told us they wouldn’t be able to get any evidence from the sheds and that hubby could fix/secure them he also took the cap back for forensics. 2 hrs later shed doors are fixed and then police ring up again to arrange some fingerprinting. Do wish different bits of the police would talk to each other.
Funny they broke the wooden shed containing all hubby’s toy soldiers and science gadgets which were ready and packed in crates, but they decided to leave them and attack the brick shed door, which does have a hasp on the outside but also a heavy duty internal mortice lock too. They totally buckled the hasp but couldn’t snap it and then realised it had a bigger lock. At which point they then started to split one of the wooden slats (hence the tapping noise). After all their hard work they would have been sorely disappointed had they got in as we’re moving in 2 weeks and all the contents have already been sold/cleared out.
So.. yay me! I managed to scare off some burglars by shouting at them…. or perhaps it was the sight of me with be hair at 4am in the morning that did it. Either way I’m relieved that nothing was taken and more importantly none of us hurt. I’m a bit spooked and paranoid now. Thank God for looking after us. His angels have protected us 2x this week already. We so need to get outta this country.
