lol.

I get a student allowance. And I'm extremely grateful for it. However the other day I received a phone call to tell me that my allowance had been cancelled as I had not attended an appointment. I called and was told that this was a mistake as I was a) not required to attend an appointment and b) my allowance had been reinstated. Then yesterday another phone call to say that my allowance had been cancelled. The person on the other end of the phone said "I don't know why the computer keeps making appointments for you but I think you'd better just attend it". I was cross. Really cross. The appointment was with an employment agency and as I am a full-time student, I am not required to attend an employment agency.  It would be utterly pointless. Plus it's a whole day journey to attend the agency as it's miles away and as I'm sure everyone knows, I can't drive. I was then directed to call another number to have my allowance reinstated but after 3 hours (yes 3 hours) on hold I finally spoke to someone who informed me that I had "called to late" and "the person who can help you went home 10 minutes ago". 

So I had to work really hard yesterday to keep myself "letting go and letting HP" because, being on hold and waiting around unemployment offices and having my money cut off makes me cross. So I had to fight the ridiculous sulky teenager voice in my head that kept angrily planning what I would say and what they would say and whether or not I was going to express my deep crossness with the whole situation. And meanwhile I did no study and my entire day amounted to nothing. Earlier in the week I had to clean the house and yard top to bottom for a real-estate inspection, and all I wanted to do was study and blah blah grumble grumble "THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE" grrrr why is the universe trying to stop me from studying and so on ad infinitum until I was sick of my own grumpiness. I TRIED to let go and let HP but I didn't do a terribly good job of it.

So today I made the trek to the employment agency, waved my enrolment record at the nice lady and she agreed that there was no reason for me to be there. She said it would be easier if I just attended anyway and I very indignantly told her that I do not have time to go gallivanting across the country-side every 2 weeks just to go to an office and show them the same enrolment papers they now have on file especially since I can't drive and have a child in school and blah blah. And she looked amused, she really did and she said "Not a problem, I'll just take you off the system......although it's a shame because if you were to stay registered with us you might find us very helpful...

"I can't see how" I say quite fed up with the whole nonsensical situation at this stage and she says "OK. It's a shame because if you WERE registered with us I could take on your case personally and you could come in once a month and take advantage of some of our services, for example if you brought in the receipts for your school-books we could reimburse you for them". 

Now if I was a dog, my ears would have been standing straight up and swivelling around lol.

And THEN she says "and when people are registered with us and they don't have a drivers license we can pay for them to have lessons until they do" 

and I said "well perhaps I'm all turned around on the subject,  can I still make an appointment?" and she handed me the sheet she had already printed out for me with my next appointment and registration details, LOL. She also said she can help me find some part-time work that is relevant to my industry and fits in with my study and parenting commitments. I had thought that the purpose of these agencies was simply to stuff people into the most unpleasant jobs they could find but apparently they can do other things too.

And then while I was waiting for the bus I put $20 into the pokies. Now I used to have an awful gambling problem so I generally avoid gambling venues at all costs but every 6 months or so I put in $20, just once, and walk out, it's kind of a ritual of mine to prove to myself that it no longer has a hold over me. Well I won $200, put it in my pocket and got out of there before it leapt out of my pocket and into another machine, bought myself a nice cup of coffee and sat in a cafe reading a book until my bus came.

So there you go. My huge waste of time day that came about due to an inexplicable repeated computer-error netted me quite a bit and I smiled all the way home. I'm sure HP found all of this very amusing