iHate Bloody Government Forms and Bureaucracy

Frankly, I find it hard to believe I haven't written more angry posts about government forms, but looking back over recent entries I see it is about 15 months since my last whinge on the matter. Which isn't too long when you think about how inactive my blog has been in the last year.

However, I can think of at least one other incident in that time frame, which didn't make it into the blog world.

This was the vexation caused by the crazy decision to place the application for the Baby Bonus and a child's Medicare card on the same form, despite the fact that they are dealt with by different offices. I had no end of trouble with this. To start with, the very first question on the form told me that if I didn't already claim family assistance I must not proceed before either calling the Office of Family Assistance, or filling in a form online. The name of the form was not given and a direct link was not given either so I chose to call instead.

Well, this was back in February/March, just after the Victorian Bush Fire Tragedy and the lines were jammed with people who needed assistance, so after days and days of trying I put some effort into finding the form online. Then, I discovered that I needed to register for Online Services, only the part of the site where you register was down and, it turns out, I needed a Customer Reference Number, which I didn't have because I wasn't born here. So two problems there.

Days later, after having the phone on constant redial, I finally got through to the office only to have some woman try to fob me off by telling me to fill in the form I was trying to complete in the first place. Then she tried to get me to do it online and I told her the website was broken. She wouldn't have it and told me I just needed to get a CRN and to be honest I can't really remember the details but I insisted she help me and she spent 45 minutes getting my details three times. Apparently the system kept booting her out. Then she said that my details would have to be linked to Toby's details but he was in a different location and had to be transferred over and this was as much as she could do to help me today. What?

So, I asked her to send the form that I'd been trying to get online and when it arrived it asked the same bloody question as the first form, and again, told me to phone or get online. Grrr..... I gave up. So Phoebe had no Medicare card and we couldn't claim any of her medical expenses. But that was all sorted out for me when we went to get her jabs and couldn't without a Medicare card. The doctor's receptionist sent me to the Medicare office and the lovely lady there helped me with everything.

This got me my CRN but I'm pretty sure I then had to spend about a day online completing a form to see if we were eligible for some tax benefit thing (we weren't), answering questions about everywhere I've been in the last 3 years (because that's relevant).

And now, I'm going through it all again.

The latest issue is the Child Care Rebate. The lady at daycare told me to fill this form in before my payment was due on Christmas Eve so that I could find out how much I had to pay.

Well, I tried. I spent days doing it again. I had all manner of problems, including the website going down. I had to answer the same crazy questions about all the holidays I'd been on in the last 3 years, and then I had to answer the same for Phoebe and Toby. And this is the bit that really gets me. They asked me which document I travelled on so I gave my British passport because I'd travelled more times with that than with my Aussie one. On the next page it asked me what sort of visa I had, despite the fact I had already answered a question indicating I was an Australian citizen. I assumed this was because I'd given them a foreign passport number so went back and changed it to my Australian passport number. It still asked me the same question. Don't they realise that you don't need a visa if you're a citizen? Anyway, I told them what my last visa had been (it was a mandatory question) but missed out the number (which wasn't mandatory).

When I finally finished, I was told that my claim couldn't be processed before I took proof of my citizenship and my visa into the office. I don't really see how I can show them proof of something I don't have but I'm assuming that I'll be able to explain myself and point out the stupidity of the system to the no-doubt intelligent humanoid behind the counter.

This morning I received a text message saying,

"You made a Family Assistance Online Claim on 22/12/09. Please return the requested documents ASAP if you have not already done so. Do not reply by SMS."

A bit brusque, don't you think? Some might even say rude. And very impatient. Especially given there have been two working days since 22nd and we were only 2 minutes into the third one. Nevertheless, I strolled on down to the office today, thinking that if I went to Medicare instead of Centrelink, perhaps the lovely lady could help me again and maybe explain why Medicare made out my rebate cheques, for bills I'd paid in full, to the doctors, rather than me. Yet another example of federal government department nonsense. As if I haven't paid those rather expensive doctors enough (nearly $300 in one case).

Guess what? Medicare was shut. I hopped on my bike and rode down to Centrelink, which is apparently my local Family Assistance Office. Guess what?! Shut!

So there they are, sending me demanding text messages making ridiculous requests for documents that don't exist and then they aren't even bloody there to receive the damn things. So now I have to go back again. Do you know what? I'm bloody pissed off with the whole damn thing. I suppose I am asking for money but wouldn't it just be typical if they decide we're not eligible for a rebate. I tell you what, if that happens again, I'll be a tad annoyed.

iGoogle

(Yes, I did recently purchase an iPhone and as such all posts from now on will have a good old Apple iIdiom as its title. It works particularly well when the suffix is a verb.)

I haven't googled myself for a while, and after reading someone's Facebook status warning that Facebook allows your public profile to be indexed by search engines (many social networking sites do by default), it prompted me to wonder what the latest search engine results for "Lindsey Buckle" are.

I was strangely satisfied (and a tad concerned but not really that surprised) to find that the majority of results on the first page were actually me. After all I am the centre of the universe. But then there probably aren't many (if any) other Lindsey Buckles in Australia and Google probably knows where I am and assumes I'd be more interested in local results.

Obviously you can perform the search yourself but just for the purposes of fleshing out this post a bit and helping those of you too lazy to be arsed but nice enough to spend the time reading this, here is a summary.

Firstly, I'd like to complain that Google asked me if I meant "Lindsay Buckle". Jeez Google, not you as well. I do know how to spell my own name you know, even if the rest of the world doesn't.

In the top spot is this blog... but not for the reason you might first think, i.e. that this is Lindsey Buckle's blog (that's the second item), but because once upon a time, quite a while ago, I blogged about there being another Lindsey Buckle in the world. I discovered this the last time I decided to Google myself for fun. You might be relieved to know this isn't a frequent pastime of mine; the previous post was written 2 ½ years ago.

This time I discovered a third and fourth Lindsey Buckle in the world (and I seem to remember a fifth one contacting me on Facebook at some point but I'm sure she was a Lindsay so not the same really). I don't think there are any other Lindsey Buckle Clewetts though.

The third listing is my Facebook public profile, which displays my photograph, lists some friends and rather embarrassingly announces that I'm a "fan of Gi Fernando", a friend who had some silly competition with his colleagues to see who could get the most fans. I'm not sure I really want that piece of information presented to the world. I find my friend list rather random too. It isn't in alphabetical order; it isn't a list of the friends I interact with most often; it doesn't even seem to be in any sort of chronological order. It's just purely and simply random and probably isn't a good representation of my real friendship group. Oh well.

Next is some random from Arizona's Facebook page. She's blonde and is a fan of Michael Phelps. I wonder if her friend list is as random as mine.

Next we have the fourth Lindsey Buckle's Linked In profile, followed by the article in the Sunshine Coast Daily about our wedding webcast, then my Linked In public profile, which doesn't say much about me at all really. Then some PDF about the fourth Lindsey Buckle. You're hogging my Google page, dude! S/he sounds really boring; s/he's a "Senior Actuarial Analyst", whatever one of those is. People looking for me will be extremely disappointed if they find those pages instead.

Next up is a foreign Facebook page and finally a post on Mark Lynas' website discussing whether I should fly home to my family in the UK. It was interesting reading this again as I initially thought not much has changed but ended up noting some stark differences between my life then and now. The sentiment and dilemma persists though but this is a point for discussion in another post at another time.

The Surfer Sutra movie starring Toby is the first item on the second page. I hadn't watched that for years but it brought back some memories, such as the fact that I wasn't allowed a speaking part due to my out of place accent, and the party scene, where the "beach babes" and "disciples" were kicked out of our actual New Year's Eve party during filming so we consoled ourselves on the driveway with a bottle of gin, bad singing and a camera. Thus were born the Angry Pirates and Blue Steel photos, which have plagued every gathering since. I also regained the memory of what my husband looks like without facial hair and how his bald head looks a bit like an egg.

I lost interest after that.

We Wish You A Merry Chocmas

Or should that be Merry Chocmassive Children with Big Fat Bellies, No Life and a Penchant for Chocolate that will haunt them until they die?

My beef? I want an advent calendar for Phoebe. I don't want it to have chocolate in it.

She's not even 10 months old. She's never tasted chocolate and I want it to stay that way for a fair few months yet. Besides which, I just don't like the idea of chocolate advent calendars, at least until she's a few years older. Eating chocolate every day is not a habit I wish to instill in my child and I want her to appreciate the magic of Christmas, not to expect some kind of gift every day.

The wonder of an advent calendar is the mystery of what is behind the door, not the knowledge that it'll be a piece of chocolate but you don't know what shape it is. Who cares what shape it is? Just give me the goddam chocolate. And then once the chocolate is gone you're left with an ugly bit of moulded plastic which obscures the picture behind it.

Don't get me wrong, when I was a kid I loved chocolate advent calendars, especially (English) Cadbury's. My sister and I would usually share one and we'd take it in turns to eat the chocolate. I seem to remember that I was even days (because my birthday is on 2nd) and she was odd days. But I hated the look of the calendar once the chocolate was gone. It seemed so used up and desolate and yes, ugly. We usually had a card one too and that was always much prettier. Auntie Betty always gave me an advent calendar for my birthday. A non-chocolate one. But we didn't have chocolate advent calendars until we were around 8 or 10 years old. They probably didn't do them before then.

So why am I whinging about this? Why not just go and get Phoebe a non-chocolate advent calendar and be done with it? Well, I tried and you would not believe how difficult, if not impossible that is, at least where I live. I know we're a little way into December but I've asked around a bit and I get the impression that the lack of such calendars is not a result of them having sold out. One shopkeeper told me that the years that he gets them in no one wants to buy them so he didn't bother this year and another assistant told me that he'd never even seen one.

What is the world coming to? Hallmark, what are you playing at?

Why do we complain about childhood obesity and then let Christmas become just one big eat-fest? For a month!! Bring back the magic of Christmas, I say. Be gone, materialism; be gone buying expensive, useless presents for the sake of it; be gone the expectation of a chocolate every day in December. Bring back the wonder of choosing the perfect gift, no matter how small or inexpensive; of wrapping it up and making it look beautiful; of placing it under the tree and admiring it in the weeks leading up to Christmas; of watching the excitement, surprise and appreciation on the face of the recipient on Christmas day; of opening the advent calendar to see what lies behind today's door and to watch it morph from one big picture into a mosaic of tiny little ones.

UK friends and family take note; if non-chocolate advent calendars still exist over there (and I sincerely hope they do or there is no promise for the future of our fat society), please send one over for us next year. Many thanks... oh and happy December!

iZumba

Finally I get to update my original blog. I have been somewhat quiet of late due to my recent change in status to that of mother. It takes a fair bit of my time and I decided way back when that I didn't really want to harp on about all things baby on this blog. So I set up a new one, dedicated solely to the creation of my family and development of my children, at linsinproduction if you're interested.

So last week I got to do something non-baby related for a change. I zumbared (or whatever the past-tense verb of Zumba is, if indeed there is one). I left hubbie in charge of the tea-time household duties (i.e. putting the baby to bed), although I was a dutiful wife and had dinner cooking in the slow cooker (man, I'm good!), and I headed into town and met me bezzie (who also left her hubbie at home in charge of the baby) and we tried out the latest fitness craze to sweep the world.

If you search google for "latest fitness craze" you'll get all sorts of things, like hula-hooping, can-can dancing, skipping and even inflatable gym equipment. But they're all wrong. The latest fitness craze for anyone in Australia who watches daytime telly is quite clearly Zumba.

So, what is it? Well, without looking up the official definition, my take on it is that it is salsa dancing on speed, with a bit of street dancing or hip-hop thrown in, done to crazy South American dance music in a darkened room with disco lights. Unlike aerobics there is less pressure to conform and you're encouraged to ad lib a bit. Even the instructors ad lib, which is very confusing to a beginner.

"What's that wiggle she threw in there? I missed that. I'll do it this time instead. Oh... she didn't wiggle this time. Now I feel like a fool."

It was SO MUCH FUN!!! Which is exactly the intention. The idea is that you get fit whilst dancing and having fun. Having done, and enjoyed, both latin dancing and belly dancing, this seems to be much better for fitness. I suppose for Lucie and me the novelty of being out at night without our husbands and babies added to the pleasure.

Unfortunately, for a lactating mother still in her first year after giving birth, and with the softened ligaments that come with the territory, it is kind of hard core and a bit hip-wiggly. I spent so much time thinking about the different moves I was "supposed" to be doing that I didn't really pay enough attention to my core muscles and I put my back out. It's easing up now (a week and a visit to the physio later) but I am back to the basics of doing my hip flexor stretches every day just like when I first started physio for a similar injury about two years ago. So this week I'm resting but you can bet I'll be back zumbaring again next week. And if anyone's interested, I'd love the DVDs for Christmas so I can get really good at it.

Here are some Zumba-related links if you'd like to find out more:

Australian Zumba site

About Zumba

Zumba on Wikipedia

Zumba on YouTube

Why I love living where I live... (part 2)

...because I can go swimming in a 50 metre open-air pool on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Autumn, with a wide lane all to myself (and no one in the lane next to me) and watch birds flitting over the water catching insects as I breast-stroke my way along. Absolute bliss!

See Why I love living where I live... (part 1).