It was a pleasant couple of weeks to not be on the crazy highways, and surprisingly, not a nightmare when I got back on them yesterday. I have to laugh at the way they repair potholes here. The two, combined, that were the size of the Atlantic Ocean have been repaired again. What a joy. The usual drop off of a pile of asphalt was replaced with a load of concrete! Who knows how this is going to weather the climate here. But it can't be worse than washed out asphalt they have been using. I recall an offramp to the shopping centre when I first arrived. It was like driving through Serengeti forging your own trail. Some genius had repaired the road with concrete and then allowed everyone to drive on it before it set. It was ruts, lumps, and caverns of concrete shards that could slash your tires. Now, three years later, it has all eroded, and you just drive on the somewhat flattened surface that is left. I am not sure how a highway will fare with concrete. But I dont care. I will hopefully be long gone from here when it becomes an issue to avoid.
As for the exit from the country, I think it could be a smoother sailing if this company I work for knew what they were doing. The tasks change hour by hour, the doers of the tasks change as often. Most recently we now must trust some local with our passports for a week. OMG - not something I care to allow. It was fine a week ago - we were going to go to immigration ourselves and get the visas cancelled. Now some goof wants to be the big guy who takes all passports and does it himself. EEEK, I dont like that one. But there are laughs. One new colleague asked when she was going to get her tax refund from last year. I had to catch my breath from laughing before I told her that we had to wait for 9 months for that refund, and that was only because we signed authority for the company to negotiate this on our behalf. In this country there are no refunds. If you try to get them you are wasting your energy. Some never did get their refund, and another got a cheque in the mail that was stale dated, and had to start all over again. Then there is the issue of the rental deposits. Most of the landlords are living month to month. So, does one really believe that the RM3000 cash we handed over is still around? And in my case, the guy is dead, so family who took over probably used the money - if he did not already - for his funeral. Yes, then there are the numerous e-mails all sent through the work server that have no continuity. I have given up. These people are not teachable. Latest message - be sure to take all the paperwork (some name I cannot type properly) expects you to have at the tax office. I could not find any message that stated this. I finally admitted defeat and asked the question. Answer? it was in 'one of my e-mails'. I dug through all his e-mails. Nothing. How do these people function on a daily basis? Turns out it was in a message with the subject line 'sim cards' - which never spoke of sim cards in the message at all, and then buried in an attached memo to all of us that was titled mentors August 8th (sent during vacation). Yes, I can see how easy it was for me to find. Silly how I had so much difficulty trying to find the
list of paperwork I was to bring to the tax office; when there right in front of me was the line in that buried letter - bring the SWIFT CODE of your foreign bank account. How do these people function on a daily basis? BTW, they are also foreigners - so no excuse for cultural differences. When you read this stupidity, does this come to mind?
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