The last few weeks have been a bit rough.
Australia has done a marvelous number on my mental health. Admittedly, a lot of is due to the current local Delta surges happening across major cities. Ben and I have experienced lockdowns in Brisbane and in Melbourne, as well as doing a second round of 14-day quarantine as required by the Victorian government for people coming in from Brisbane.
But that’s not what’s bothering me. I can take a lockdown. I can quarantine. 2020 had proven, more to my husband than to myself, that I’m one of the few people who can thrive at home and be absolutely fine with restrictions in place.
No, what’s been bogging me down is having to be repeatedly disappointed, left hanging, and left to chase the myriad of government and non-government establishments just from trying to settle and establish myself here as a recent immigrant.
Let’s look at it one by one:
Applied for my tax file number (TFN)
I did this online. It was straightforward. However, when my TFN came in the mail, my name was wrong! And not because my second name or middle name was omitted. No, they got my last name wrong. (They dropped ‘Jackson’ and my surname was instead ‘Dee’, even though it was very clear on the confirmation page that my surname was ‘Jackson’). Phoned the ATO for this. They instructed me to print out a change of individual details form to post to their main office in Sydney. I did that. Two weeks later, when I needed to fill in my TFN declaration for work, I phone ATO again to check if my details have been corrected. Nope. Person on the phone corrected it on the spot. So, if I hadn’t called, when was it ever going to be corrected?
On top of that, I cannot link it to my myGov account because I’m ‘ineligible’. Person on the phone advised me to call ATO again after a few days to sort this out, because he could not for some reason.
Medicare
Although I’m eligible for Medicare, they currently have a huge backlog and cannot fulfil their 28-day processing time. Without my Medicare account, my husband cannot add me to his health insurance plan. I cannot get a private health insurance.
Phoned Medicare 37 days later. Person confirmed they can see my application, but advised me to redo my form because I digitally signed it with typewritten letters, not a ‘hand signature’. Told me he doesn’t know when my Medicare will ever arrive. Fair enough, I don’t expect him to know. I’ll probably be out of Medicare for a month or two more. ‘But what if she needs medical attention?’ Ben asked. Any expense will have to be paid out of pocket, but the person reassuringly said no doctor should turn me away. I was advised to phone them again next week just to make sure my ‘new’ application form is linked to the application I did last month.
Banking
I couldn’t self-service on my NAB app, even though I have a NAB ID I’ve had since 2019. Apparently it has something to do with my alien status. Went to the branch twice to sort it out. Some sassy dude not only butchered my name on their system, but also refused to change my residential address to my Australian one, because I’m ‘not a permanent resident’.
Ben explained that I’m a provisional resident under a spousal visa, and that I effectively emigrated here. And the person clapped back—and you can’t make this up:
‘Yes, but what if you break up?’
I was so insulted I felt my face flush from anger. But we let it go.
I phone NAB because I still could not create a bank account from the app or from the web. A kind woman from the branch had told me previously that someone could do it for me on the phone—they just need a human to manually verify me. So, I phone NAB and, long story short, the helpful person on the other end could not create an account for me because I’m not listed as an Australian resident for tax purposes, even though I live and will be working here now.
How to fix it? Go to a branch to update your residency for tax purposes. We’re currently quarantining and Melbourne is in the middle of a two-week lockdown. I had to nominate an account for my workplace to pay me. For now, Ben just created another account in his name, and labelled it ‘Jean salary’. He felt a bit dirty that his wife had to nominate her husband’s account—not her own—for her own salary.
Contact tracing
When Ben and I booked a flight to Melbourne, Brisbane was an ‘orange zone’, according to Victoria’s travel permit system. Shortly after, the Indooroopilly cluster came to light. Brisbane went into lockdown. Victoria then bumped it into a red zone. This means that Ben and I had to redo our travel permits from orange zone to red zone. No drama. What this meant, however, that instead of being obliged to quarantine for only 72 hours, we had to quarantine for 14 days. We did not want to oblige Nikki and Chris to quarantine with us, so I dropped 1.5k AUD on an Airbnb.
Then Melbourne went into lockdown. That’s life. No drama. We checked all guidelines and restrictions, and we were still clear to fly out and quarantine at our Airbnb.
What’s dramatic is that the contact tracing mixed up Ben’s information and used information on his orange zone permit instead of his red zone permit. ADF showed up at Nikki’s looking for Ben. We’ve had to make multiple calls to Victoria’s contact tracing hotline to make sure they’re tracking us correctly.
Also kudos to the bloke who called Ben and said it’s ‘concerning’ that I was not listed in the address we’re quarantining in. He added that ‘your wife may need to redo her quarantine because she’s not in the system’. Subsequent calls to Victoria’s contact tracers confirmed that 1) I’m in the system 2) mine and Ben’s details are correct and 3) I don’t need to worry that I have received zero compliance check calls while Ben has had at least four. It’s not a systematic thing and is a bit random. Meanwhile, I’ve been crying because I’m scared that I haven’t been tracked correctly and that it might somehow become my fault, and I’d get in trouble.
Police checks
My workplace has linked me a third-party service that will do the police / background / due diligence check on me. They required a complicated amount of documentation but I did my best to comply. A few days later, they send me an email asking to provide more documentation. Apparently as an immigrant I should be able to provide things like an Australian passport, Australian birth certificate, Australian driver’s licence, Australian clearance, the list goes on… I did my best to make sense of their odd requirements rubric but for my peace of mind, Ben told me I should probably call them…
Delivery blues
Our Airbnb is amazing and delivered what it promised according to the photos on the app… except that no one has bothered to check the state of the intercom—its speakers are broken, meaning Ben and I cannot know when someone’s at the building’s front door with a parcel for us, unless we happen to be staring at the intercom in the ten seconds or so that the courier is standing there. Which means we make it a point to indicate in any delivery to please contact us by phone.
This did not prevent a few deliveries from not delivering. My work laptop was supposed to arrive today, but Australia Post apparently did not read the notes I and my workplace left to please call my mobile phone so I don’t miss the delivery. Workplace kindly asked if I have someone who can pick up my laptop from the Australia Post branch to drop off to me. With the fact that I’m quarantining and Melbourne’s in lockdown meant… well, it would have been nice if I just got a call.
Oh, and Woolworths, lol. They had a three-hour outage last Monday that affected both mine and Ben’s orders. Our orders disappeared from the app, deliveries never having arrived. All the while Woolworths blithely posted online about everything being back to normal and all orders being sent out. It was not true. Ben and I each had to phone Woolworths to realise 1) our orders are still sitting at the branch and 2) the support person had to coordinate / reschedule the deliveries manually, only after we called. So imagine hundreds of people being told their orders are ‘fine’, only for their orders to be suspended and lost in the system, waiting to be manually found when they decide to phone in.
All the anxiety and uncertainty just kept wearing me down until I burst into angry tears, repeatedly. Ben often said the Philippines was hard. I find Australia hard. I find it exhausting to wait several weeks for my government documents to even be seen by anyone, and just the sheer amount of phone follow-ups I’m expected to do. And because labour isn’t cheap here, expect to be on hold for 30—40 minutes for anything.
I know it’s all a case of bad timing. I’m sure it wouldn’t be this hard if there were no Delta strain putting health workers on alert and contact tracers chasing thousands of new individuals to track every day. It wouldn’t be this hard if our Airbnb didn’t happen to have a broken intercom speaker and we didn’t have to isolate, quarantine, or be in lockdown.
Oh, by the way—
Fellow Filipinos who emigrated, did you just drop your middle name?
My name just keeps getting butchered here. Following Filipino naming convention and what is literally and explicitly stated on my passport, my first / given names are Jean Christine. In the Philippines, your middle name isn’t some cute unused name given to you at birth that’s usually your grandparent’s / aunt’s / uncle’s / Christian name. Your middle name is your maiden name or your mother’s maiden name. Similar to the use of the word née. We follow the Spanish naming convention, which in my opinion is feminist, because the mother’s lineage is preserved somewhat.
People here seem to ignore my name as I state it. They either drop my middle name, pretend my last name doesn’t exist, or hyphenate my first names. When I opened my profile to the police check portal I mentioned above, someone or the system decided it knew better, removed my middle name from the middle name field, and ticked ‘I don’t have a middle name’ instead. Like, WTF.
Ben even caught someone dropping my name mid-phone call.
‘My name is Jean Christine Dee Jackson.’
‘Okay, so that’s Jean Christine Jackson’.
Ben went out of his way to correct that, but to be honest I wonder if I should just drop my middle name all together. It’s exhausting.
This was all a little to bear, and I can’t believe it’s only been a month since we were out of hotel quarantine in Queensland. I have only been ‘living’ here a month. All things considered I should be grateful to have a job to be starting next week. I should take these little things as growing pains, especially the pains of starting out in a new country—Ben reminded me a few times that my behaviour was becoming toxic and at the end of the day, my problems are just little nuisances that are easily solveable. We’re both in good health. We’re both not dealing with any ‘real’ problem of consequence.
I just can’t wait for us to be able to ‘walk free’, for Melbourne to come out of lockdown, and for us to really, truly stop living in transit and finally settle down.
Photo above is during one of my lockdown walks in Brisbane.