ajft

Now how is this for serendipity, up until today I had never heard this magnificent new verb(?), then all of a sudden it appeared in a mailing list that I read... and was promptly shot down by the grammar police. Incentivise.. now what the heck is that meant to mean and who on the planet made it up?

Half an hour later and I find that the BBC has compiled a list of the top 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate and there it is at number four! I expect to see the list in The Age in about a week and the Herald Sun a week or so after that, but I could have the order wrong.

From Bruce Schneir's Schneier on Security, possibly one of the best articles I've ever read on the increasing harassment of anyone who dares to wield a camera in a public place:

... The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren't being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn't known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography. ...

Thank you Bruce.

Everyone loves a baby... including the government so it would seem. The government in all its myriad forms; Federal, State and Local, they all want in on the act, they're all here to help...

An inundation of glossy brochures and photocopied fact sheets, two DVDs, registering with local health care, state records, national medical insurance.

This morning the regional maternal health nurse came to visit, to record, to instruct and book us in for further visits at our "local" maternal health centre. Except it isn't our local centre, the local one is easy to get to and about four minutes walk — we've been allocated to one that's three times as far away, and on the far side of a six-lane main road. At least we managed to get reallocated, then had to sit and listen to about half an hour of an interesting mix of useful advice, the bleeding obvious, and what I think are personal opinions, all mixed in as one. She handed over a great sheaf of photocopies of local guvment advice, then carefully took her pen and crossed some bits out and made her own annotations. I guess that like all free advice, its worth what we pay for it.

Paperwork step one, register the baby with the Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. You have two months, and if you do not all sorts of dire things will happen. Hating to be caught with an unlicensed baby, we leap at the chance to placate the government.

This one's not so bad, just four pages of questions that must be filled in, then signatures from both parents, both witnessed. One of the nurses from the hospital had told us we're allowed to witness each other's signatures, so we did. On the back of the form we then found a footnote saying that we're not allowed to witness each other's signatures. Oh well, we'll send it off and see what happens. Now on to the next one...

Half-way through filling out the four pager paper form to register the new baby with Medicare we find that you get to a certain point and then have to do part of it either online or via the phone, then transcribe some receipt number onto the paper form in order to continue. Typically convoluted. I started by going to the website, http://familyassist.gov.au/, but of course there is absolutely no indication of what you have to do! Fumbling around found a page that looked promising, but surprise surprise, you can't go any further without "registering" and creating yet another bloody account on yet another bloody website. I started filling this out, meanwhile Jo simply picked up the phone and started to call. She'd was in touch with a person and starting the process before I'd even got the rest of the way through creating the account on the website.

Hey, dearest government, if the only websites you can make are this bloody convoluted and hard to use, PLEASE DITCH THE WEBSITES and stop pretending you have an online presence!

Second surprise; despite us having sent any number of Medicare claims in to them in the past nine months, indeed quite a few over the past three years, they claim that there's no record of us at this address! This is despite them somehow managing to send us refunds TO THIS ADDRESS for the past three years!

Anyway, after giving out a whole lot of details over the phone, we are now in possession of a magic registering number which we can enter on the paper form, together with re-entering half the details already given out over the phone! We can then send off the form where all the details will be transcribed from paper back into someone's database — hopefully without too many transcription errors.

OK, we now think the paperwork has been dealt with. What's the next surprise in store?

Tada! A card appears in the mailbox, "Your water meter has been exchanged". Well how about that, amazing!

Now let me see, I first rang South East Water on May 10, they didn't seem to do anything until six months later when I got the "Call re. your recent enquiry" letter on Oct 10, then when I rang to make the booking for a meter replacement had the — "When will they come?" "Dunno, but the plumber will ring first", "Ok, when will they ring?", "Dunno" — phone conversation.

I guess I should be happy that at least they finally did replace the broken meter, and they did it without me having to make yet another phone call to the disinterested "dunno" woman.

Why do organisations make it so hard to change my address?

The Winesociety: I couldn't login to their website for some reason. After calling them, it turns out that my email address had been chopped off at 28 characters. That was updated, then when I successfully logged in I found that I must provide them with my date of birth as proof that I'm over 18. The fact that they have already given me a membership seems to be irrelevant!

St George Bank: Everyone hates banks by definition. After spending 15 minutes on hold last night I gave up in disgust and called again this morning. The address change I put through a month ago, together with the phone-access number, appears to have vanished. This morning I managed to get my address changed (again). I guess I just wait another month to see whether it worked this time.

Jo telephoned to query how long it is likely to take to process our application and we got told the following:

• The landlord wasn't expecting applications so soon as he didn't expect the premises to be repainted so quickly.
• Since we've asked to move in on the 8th of September, which is "a fair delay", the application must be referred to the landlord.
• The landlord is interstate and the application can't be processed until he returns.

Now to me it looks like some of them are mutually exclusive, but I'm no real-estate agent, so I guess we have to wait. Surely if they weren't expecting the premises to be ready until September, the fact that we want to move in then should be acceptable?