Some Aussies Can Be Real Dumb Asses

I know it's a mean thing to say but the keyword here are "some" and "can be", so there you go. Apologies to my Australian friends as well for ruining their reputation.

My first story goes like this. After I came back to Singapore from Melbourne, I realised that I needed a very important piece of document from my university. And just so you know, Australian universities have a reputation for having the worse administrative department. It's quite embarrassing for a university to have that kind of reputation because afterall it will lose its very much wanted credibility.

I emailed my international student advisor to request for my Statement of Completion and she reverted back to me a week later with a request form in PDF format and a fax number. I faxed the form the next day and from then on it was a waiting game. I waited and waited and waited. Three weeks passed and still no news. Finally, in the middle of the fourth week of waiting I got a letter in the mail from my University. I opened it excitedly and just when I thought my waiting game was over, I nearly strangled myself when I saw the enclosed Statement of Completion.

They spelled my name wrongly.

You see ah, how much text is on a Statement of Completion you tell me?

How much text is there for anything to go wrong?

The most crucial part is the name right?

And that they couldn't even do it.

Pftttttt.

****

The next story goes like this.

I lived for two years in this hostel/hotel apartment building and I had to deposit an AUD$800.00 security bond. I specifically reminded the building management that I would like my security bond to be mailed back to my Singapore address which I had verified with them at least twice. The bond was supposed to be returned to me three weeks from the date that I moved out of the building. I left Melbourne on 25 Jan and until now I've yet to receive anything from the management. I got my friend Angie to help me check things out and she has been painfully doing so since February but only today we got confirmation that a cheque was indeed sent out. But guess what?

They got the address wrong!

I just feel like crushing those lousy twits!

When sending out mail, the most basic thing would be to verify that the address is correct isn't it?

Oh my goodness. This people are just so unbelievably dumb.

I CANNOT STAND IT.

I'm so going back to Melbourne to whack their asses when I get the chance.

****

And I just have another story to make this whole post so much sweeter.

I got my driving license in Melbourne you see, and before you can learn to drive there, you need to apply for a learner's permit.

I went to apply for my learner's permit at VicRoads at Carlton which is near the city. This lady there didn't want to process my forms because she says that on my passport my name different from my Australian bankcard. I told her that I produced the same documents previously when I sat for my theory test. She told me that there was no way she could help me unless I could get the names in order. The problem was that my passport had my hanyu pinyin name first before my other name Sharon, but my bankcard just had Sharon and my surname. And so because of the sequence of my names in the passport, she insisted that since my hanyu pinyin name was first, it was my first name. I tried to explain to her that both are my names and it doesn't mean that it comes first it is my first name. Everyone I know calls me Sharon, well, except for some of my colleagues who have coined for me some other names, but that's not the point.

The point is that her attitude was so unhelpful and she didn't want to hear me out at all. All she wanted was for me to leave and bother somebody else. It was just plain awful ignorance. I refused to be discriminated by such people because people always ask me if I was ever discriminated during my stay in Australia, I would tell them, "No, unless you let them.".

Very determined, I marched up to the second level to talk to her supervisor.

This person was much nicer and she helped me process my forms.

But this isn't the end of my story.

This nicer lady didn't give me my license card after processing the form because she said I could use my Singapore driving learner's permit. I was new to Melbourne then and so I was very naive and actually believed that she would know her job better than me so I took her word for it.

On the day of my actual practical test, just moments before my test, the examiner told me I couldn't take the test because I needed a Victorian Learner's Permit.

Assholes!