A different New Year experience

Week 12, 29 December 2011 – 4 January 2012

Because I was home bound, I could not go shopping on my own and therefore I ordered online an electric shaver from Sydney as my husband’s Christmas present.  It was ordered more than a week before Christmas and I paid extra for a speedier delivery, making sure it would arrive in time. The shaver did not come until 29 December.

I find Australian Post not very reliable. I once found a registered mail simply dropped into our letter box (here many households like ours do not lock their letter boxes). It was treated just like an ordinary mail, no signature required. Another registered mail incident: I did not receive a registered mail I was expecting and therefore called up the sender who said it was posted a while ago. I called the post office and they said it was delivered and their record showed a delivery time and date (when my husband and I were both at work) with a signature obviously not mine. The post office refused to admit responsibility. One more registered mail fiasco. My husband applied for a visa to China. The Chinese embassy in Melbourne sent his passport in the pre-paid registered mail envelope I provided. The envelope was addressed to his office address (I stress, a proper street address) (I don’t trust our letter box for reason I mentioned before) and the post office dropped it to his office’s post box instead. It was just before Christmas and his office was properly too busy checking the post box. As we had to fly out to China on Christmas day, we spent days before Christmas desperately calling the embassy and various local post office branches to locate where the passport had gone to.

More about the post service here. I received a letter addressed to the same street name as ours with a different street number but the postcode is in New South Wales. I received a post office notice asking me to go to the post office for a parcel.  I went there only to find out that they gave the parcel to another Chinese with a last name Choi (and mine is Chiu) who happened to visit the post office on the same day. I received letters addressed to my neighbours. I had a few missed credit card statements. You name it, we have it.

I once shared my registered mail experiences with a retired Hong Kong Post Master General. He said for a lost registered mail, the sender can claim for compensation. He said there had been cases of people using this to make money when they found inefficiencies in their local post service. As I am out of job these days, this could be a revenue generating exercise.

The students invited us to their place for dinner on New Year’s Eve to thank us for taking them to the East Coast.  What is better than spending New Year's Eve in somebody's place? Just sit down, enjoy dinner and the company. No preparation, no washing up.  

We learned from the students that there was a New Year fireworks display at the casino, just a few minutes’ drive from our place. The first time we watched fireworks in Tasmania.  A nice note to end 2011 and welcome 2012.