01/05 | FAREWELL MARIAH !!!!!! (the end of an era)
A sad event has occurred. One of my favourite people has just left Australia and gone back to Sweden. I talk of the little blonde dynamite girl Mariah Andersson - the girl with the moves, the girl who was always dancing and ALWAYS smiling - except that one time Sweden lost to another soccer team - but we don't talk about that. :-)
Everyone who knew Mariah and got to see her
wicked dance moves is going to miss her. None more than her man Nadim me thinks. Maybe one day we'll visit her. We got lots of chance to say goodbye at a picnic at new farm, dancing at southbank and then a barbeques at Ana's house.... wait did I say house - I meant MANSION ! Ana rocks as a hostess, and plays a mean game of Taboo. I think Mariah was probably sick of saying goodbye at the end, but hey - this is ONE last shout out: We'll miss you Mariah!!! Okay, no more attention to Mariah, she'll miss us, but she's a tough little cookie so she can make it.
01/05 | Me So Frustration with UQ Policies
I'm frustrated people. I tell you...... frustrated! Yesterday I felt like I spent an ENTIRE day making phone calls and sending e-mails. And why? Well they were a variety of e-mail/calls I needed to write/make, but things which should have been easy to resolve. EASY I tells you! :-)
One thing I've noticed about UQ is there are lots of people who work here who are great..... really nice people who genuinely want to help out, but quickly discover that they can't. Their hands are tied by the people who make the rules.
Three months ago I found a UQ election willing to give our club uqdance power on market day so we could play amplified music, and said it would be no problem. He was wrong. His intentions were good, but we were denied power from above.
Two months ago I made a website for Debbie's non-profit club called SWIM (supporting women in medicine)... and I thought it would be simple to find someone who could make me an account to upload the site as a uqunion site to the uq website. I was wrong. I've sent several e-mails trying to find out how other clubs got their own free sites, but no one is sure.
One month ago I found a security guy who said he would be able to help look over our bags because we were having them stolen during uqdance social dancing. He was wrong. He'd like to help, but by watching he'd be liable, so we have to take care of ourselves (what admittedly does make sense - dang liability rules).
One week ago I realized that the $500 our club was promised for putting on two performances on "bridge fun day" on February 25 still has not been paid to us! I thought receiving the promised money would be easy. I was wrong. Instead I'm told one of us might have to get an ABN, just to transfer it across!
Arrghhh!
Now don't get me wrong, I've met some of nice people, they want to help, but for whatever reason, there is a roadblock. Nothing is ever simple. I met the hea_d of security - and
he's a really lovely guy, but it sounds like they have a LOT of bags stolen every week, and big problems with liability and potentially getting sued they have to worry about.
So hey, I know it sounds like I'm complaining, but I do understand now that nothing is simple in a big uni.... things just don't happen quickly. These are just the
things which have happened this year, but there have been many other occasions which made me miss JCU. JCU in Cairns was a small uni, and if I wanted to host a website I know I could have just called my man Phillip Musumeci, or one of the other IT lecturers and he would have asked how many GB and what server side language I wanted. I'd have a ftp login and password in no time. To be fair though, I guess knowing most of the lecturers made a big difference! :-)
At UQ I have to wait forever to get e-mail replies that say "I'm new here" or "I'd like to help, but ". Once again, I reiterate, most of these people have good intentions, but even my housemate, who now works at UQ, agrees that the way everything is setup is complicated and chasing things down is hard and time-consuming. When he started work he was thrown into the deep end with no training, little-to-no documentation, and literally two days to learn everything he needed to know from the person who was quitting that position before she left for overseas. That's just not right..... an old, established university like UQ should be well oiled machine!
So that's MY bitch for today.
I hope you enjoyed it. I think the bottom line is ALWAYS expect these little things to take longer than you expect!
