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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Monday 31 January 2005 (Day View)

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31.01.2005 – Monday 31 January – Banking, Centrelink, Uni & Maz’s Madness

• I needed to sort out a few things, and do some grocery shopping. Grocery shopping didn’t sound too exciting, so I phoned Skytrans to request the tax receipt I forgot to get, and then caught a train into the city where I dropped in at the Commonwealth bank. I explained to them how I was always right, so they must be wrong. They agreed, and politely disabled the card I didn’t get, which they insist they did send, as it must have been “lost or stolen”, and promised they’d send a new one. In the meantime, as I had no money and my current card expires tomorrow, I could walk out to the ATM to withdraw some cash, put my card in, look at it in a bemused fashion while the machine eats it, reports it “lost or stolen”, and contemplate killing all the staff in an American style shootout. This seemed like a good idea, but I realised I wasn’t carrying a gun (one of the disadvantages of living in Australia, I suppose), so caught the bus out to uni instead.
  They appear to be renovating everything at uni. It is good to know they have tons of money to throw around I guess. There are large holes all over the place, and every second walkway is fenced off. I booked an appointment with an academic advisor, paid for Clint’s dialup account, requested a graduation check (which may take up to three weeks, somehow), and checked in at the refectory to see if they were selling any edible food, which they weren’t. I then caught a bus to Toowong, and went to Centrelink.
  Centrelink closes at half past four, and I arrived just after four – only minutes before everyone else arrived. I thought the staff were doing a good job – they had one woman walking down the queue trying to help people, and the people at the computers did whatever it is they did, presumably as fast as they could. Not everyone had this opinion though – at least one irate woman jumped the queue and demanded to be seen immediately, demanding to see the manager when she was refused, eventually leaving after the Centrelink man agreed wholly with her but wouldn’t help her, confusing her somewhat. I have a feeling I am perhaps the only person who has fun standing in a queue at Centrelink, but I did – it’s an interesting place to watch people. They really need to upgrade their software though – everything they do causes me obscure problems, so they let me watch them doing it all now, and they’re using the most inefficient and confusing interface possible. To celebrate the apparently successful completion of my visit to Centrelink, I bought a felafel roll and walked up to Maz’s house of madness, which I survived, although why anyone would make a hill in such a way that you have walk up it, then down it, just to get to someone’s place is beyond me.

Night

• I got home just in time to get a message from Joe that Bronwen had just phoned and that I should phone her back immediately and apologise for everything he had said, which I did, and we had a chat for a couple of hours. It’s nice to be able to phone without the phone bill tending rapidly towards the national debt.

Comment by Maz – Wednesday 2 February 2005, 2:02 AM

  You were lucky you caught the place at such a sane time. It was decievingly quiet last night. Lucky you weren't here tonight.