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HOLY SHIT!!! This is never ending. We decided this morning to sit down & finish setting up our internet banking with NAB, that sounds really easy, but it’s not!

With NAB you cannot transfer from one isaver to another isaver (sub account) without transferring the money to your main account & then out again …. WHY….? I cannot see how anyone would think that double handling is a good idea, not only is it a waste of my time, but it’s a waste of their computing resources too, obviously management there are a few bricks shy of a load.

You cannot set up Bpay from any of  your sub accounts either, it is a farce, so much for just chucking the money in there & letting it manage itself by setting up bill payments like we did with our other account, which is extremely useful when you are away and don’t have access to do banking. The only way around it is to setup another set of transaction accounts for each of the ones that we currently have setup, then setup regular transfers out from the higher savings accounts (isavers) to the actual accounts that you can transact from & transfer out from there, so now instead of having 11 accounts to manage, we will have 22 - what a farce!!!

Of course if the person that we spoke to when we opened the account had been honest with us at the time & told us that you couldn’t do any of those things, then we probably wouldn’t have bothered opening an account with them and perhaps tried somewhere else, so we are not terribly impressed that we were lied to.

What the hell? We got our new NAB debit credit cards in the mail today & guess what bloody colour card I got? HOT friggin PINK, the colour I love the most - NOT!!!! What the hell???? It wouldn’t have been so bad if Geoff had gotten a HOT PINK one too, but NO, because he is a MR he gets friggin Grey & I get the retarded friggin PINK card!! What gives someone the right to assume that just because I am female I should have a HOT PINK credit card, so annoyed - I really do HATE pink & now every time I open my wallet I am going to have to see my butt ugly credit card. On the bright side it might stop me from using it & we can save some money - lol. Seriously though, it’s so bloody embarrassing, I am going to have go to the bank & get a new one, this is seriously pissing me off (Yes, I hate the colour that much).

Well, Australia Day has arrived again for another year. I almost dread Australia day, it seems to be a good excuse for people to become racist ass holes for a day, under the guise of it being Australian. Every time I see people with flags hanging off their car or people draped in the flag, especially around this time of year, the first thing that comes to my mind & Geoff’s too, is “RACIST”. Australia has become a very racist society and the last government certainly did their bit to encourage the racist behaviour that we have over here.

I am not a born and bred Aussie, but because I am from a western society I don’t seem to be on the receiving end of some of the racism that is prevalent in Australia. I am not talking about the “racism” that other countries perceive as racism, which really is not (the KFC ad or the Hey Hey it’s Saturday - both which were not intended to be racist). I am talking about the persecution that can only be defined as racism that is dealt out to people who come over to this country who do not deserve it, and only receive it because their skin colour is different to that of ours. There seems to be a lot of unrest with people who are from Asian countries. The amount of times that I have had to sit in a waiting room and listen to someone spouting off about the Bloody Asians taking over their jobs and the country, is actually quite disturbing. I am an Australian Citizen, but I am certainly not proud to confess that fact to anyone, because I am ashamed of the racism that occurs here.

Well, after setting up our new bank account, I think that I am nearing the end of having to inform everyone I work for of my new details. At first I started asking for the agency specific paperwork to update my banking details, which was taking ages for me to receive, so in the end I decided to send out a “form letter” of sorts with my new banking details on it, which seems to have worked for most agencies, which is great, then we can get rid of Suncorp - wohoo!!!

Today I have a NABS job, last one for the month, I anticipate. I had a good run there for a while, this month (including today) I have had 6 NABS jobs, last year I had a total of 13 NABS jobs, so I have almost reached 1/2 my quota in a few weeks. I quite enjoy NABS jobs, it’s a different vibe to the jobs that I do for QLD Health in the public system, which is refreshing, there doesn’t seem to be as much in-equality happening. Perhaps the fact that NABS is government funded and the Dr’s surgery’s etc don’t have to pay for an interpreter to be there helps too. You are facilitating the communication without anyone involved needing to put forward any additional effort, other than organising the interpreter to come, which is pretty cool when you think about it.

We finally found a bank that suits us. We have been banking with Suncorp for a while, but were pretty over the attitude of most of the staff that we have had to deal with & finally after we made a telegraphic transfer to Canada the other month, whilst the dollar was so good (+ we needed to put something through our account over there to keep it open and not loose what we had sitting in the account already) & Suncorp was less than helpful, infact they did everything they could to make it as painful a process as they could, we decided enough was enough. Before the events of last month, they had screwed us with our home and contents insurance, refusing to pay (although we got them to in the end, but it was a big battle), + they starting charging heaps of fee’s & we were getting no benefit.

We now have an account with NAB, who have recently decided not to charge any customers a monthly account keeping fee, you don’t even have to have a minimum balance to ensure that no fee’s are paid, it’s all free as such. If you bank wisely & don’t use any non NAB/ Rediteller ATM’s then you don’t have to pay anything at all. That suits us much more than Suncorp, who have been continually screwing us, so now we get to screw them & take our money elsewhere.

My Great Uncle & Aunt arrived today. What makes someone your great uncle or aunt, they have to be a brother or sister (or brother or sister inlaw) of your grandfather or grandmother. In this case, Keith is my grandfathers brother.

I heard from Keith in December, he called us from the UK to say that he would be over in Australia by the end of December (leaving the UK on Boxing day) & going back at the end of January. Keith has a cousin, Tina, who lives in Sydney with her husband, Richard, & they had a feeling that they weren’t doing very well healthwise, but they couldn’t get much out of them over the phone etc, so they thought that the best thing would be to come over & see for themselves how they are going & whilst they were over here, they thought that they might rent a car & drive up to QLD, no further than Bundaberg, popping into see us on the way.

How exciting, it wasn’t until a week or so ago, that I found out when Keith & Glenda would be coming. They hoped to arrive on either today, Thursday, or Friday at the latest. They of course arrived today, at 1.45. I was at home all day, as I didn’t have any work on, which was good. We chatted for ages, I think that I was somewhat mesmerised, I had relatives that came to visit US, they actually came out of their way to see US, this was a first for me, ok we have had Geoff’s parents come over & his brother too, but this was MY FAMILY, how cool.

When Geoff arrived home we chatted for a short time, before going across the road for dinner at the Japanese place “Cheers”, it was the first time that Glenda & Keith had, had Japanese & they seemed to enjoy it. I had a great Sushi cake (my favourite, although they had to make it 3 times, because they stuffed it up the first 2 and put stuff in it that I was allergic to, but at least they worked that out before I ate it). After dinner we wandered down to the beach to have a look, then off to bed. I wish that I wasn’t working tomorrow, but you get that, gotta earn some cash.

I guess that it’s kinda like a list of resolutions for the year, and this is more of a post as a reminder for myself, but here are a few goals for the year.

1/ NO injuries - see how long that lasts, but hopefully not a year like last year, where I had numerous allergic reactions the last one at the end of Oct where I came the closest I ever have to dying, when I went blue and my airways closed

2/ Do a new thing everyday (and keep track of it)

3/ Both Geoff and I have decided to do a spring clean, but on a smaller scale, getting rid of 5 items each day. When you sit down for a day and sort out stuff, it just seems to drag, so we are trying to SIMPLIFY a bit more - that means 70 items a week, HOLY SHIT!!!

4/ Do some more of the stuff that I enjoy - more creative stuff and making more time for it

5/ Spending more time with friends, we tend to become hermit crabs and just stick to doing our own thing, so to all our friends reading this, start hounding us and reminding us about this

6/ More travel, be it in Australia or Oversea’s - it feels like we are in a rut, so time to have some fun

I think that alot of this has come about after my allergic reaction and receiving 2nd degree burns, but I have also been to a few funerals & that reminds you of your mortality, so time to do something about it I reckon.

What did I do today that was new…

Tried Devon, which was ok, nice to tick that one off the list & watched Avatar 3D, the first true movie I have seen in 3D, especially with the new technology, not the 2 different colours of plastic in the glasses, we felt pretty sick after watching it, but it was worth it.