This has been the first week that we’ve actually experienced much of what the Australians refer to as a normal winter. It’s been a little on the chilly side and it’s rained almost every day. Still though, we’ve only needed a raincoat, nothing heavier. I am glad that we have a heater in our house, such as it is… a wall unit in our main room. It is able to take the chill off, and that’s all that’s needed. It’s crazy to me how central heat and central air conditioning are not standard over here. One little wall unit to heat/cool a whole apartment!
Another interesting thing we’ve found, I think I’ve mentioned this before, is the lack of customer service that seems to be standard over here. In the US there seems to be so much more of a ‘keep the customer happy’ kind of attitude. Maybe it’s because there’s a higher expectation from the average customer in the US. I guess it may also be that we lived in a little town, so there were less people to keep happy. But I’m always surprised at how Australians don’t expect a quick response from a company if there’s a problem. A couple of months ago when our heater broke, it took almost three weeks for the heater company to send someone out to look at the unit and determine what was wrong. Then when they did finally send someone out and he found that one of the main parts of the unit was broken and needed to be replaced, we had to wait another 10 days for the part to arrive, and then another two weeks for the company to send someone out to install the part. In the US, a customer wouldn’t be left without heat for such a long time; there’s too much competition between companies.
This week our disaster was that our landlord, whose name our internet service is under, moved. He called the internet company to have them disconnect the internet service from his old house and install it in his new house. Unfortunately, the internet company turned off OUR internet instead of his In the US if this happened, we would call the internet company and tell them of the mistake and they would send someone out asap and turn the service back on. Over here, this is not the normal procedure. It took us three hours on the phone and talking to five different people and those five people talking also to our landlord in order for the company to determine that yes, they had made a mistake and they needed to fix it. I’m not exaggerating that it took three hours on the phone, it actually took longer because I didn’t count the first phone call we made earlier in the day, I only counted the three hours where we were angry with the internet company and our landlord was super angry with them. The result was that, even though the internet company turned off our service in error, we have to wait one full week for them to send someone out to turn our service back on. However, after much discussion, they will waive the reactivation fee! So, because the internet company mistakenly turned off our internet service, we have to live without it and go to the office in order to get internet for the next seven days, and take time off work on Thursday to stay home and wait for the internet guy to come restore our service (they won't call and tell you when they are coming, if you're not there, too bad for you, no restoration of service). But the good news is that, after three hours of negotiations, we don’t have to pay to have them reactivate our service that never should have been turned off in the first place. Crazy. Why they thought they would charge us a reactivation fee to restore the service they they turned off by mistake is beyond me. I can’t imagine how life in less free-enterprise countries must be, pretty bad would be my assumption. I guess we are just spoiled because we expect that service companies want to have a good reputation by providing good customer service. Even though Sydney is the fifth largest city in the world, there are exactly three telephone/internet companies to choose from, so it’s not like people can threaten to stop their service and switch companies; since there’s only three companies to choose from they all provide equally crummy customer service so there’s no use changing companies; poor customer service is just expected over here. This kind of experience makes you realize how the free-enterprise system works and offers the customer more options. That said, I’m still grateful I’m living in a first-world country for our missionary service. I’m too old and spoiled to live third world.
Last night we attended the baptism of Juliet (her English name), the Chinese girl Dave escorted down the aisle when she was married three months ago. It was fun to see Juliet and Andrew again. We’ve only seen them once since they got married. The missionaries that taught them are Chinese speaking, and the ward they will go to is Chinese speaking, so of course, the whole service was in Chinese. Thankfully, missionaries translated for us, so we could understand what was being said. All the Chinese missionaries speak English and so do the members, but Chinese is their first choice in language, so we were the odd ones out since the whole service was in Chinese.
Our Mission President has made a big push for all the Sydney North missionaries to become fluent in English. He’s doing this because the ability to speak English fluently is such an advantage to anyone anywhere in the world when it comes to getting a job. We have so many missionaries who come here from the Polynesian islands and from countries like China, Taiwan, and South Korea, who learn English to come here on a mission, but because they proselyte much of the time to people who speak their own native language, they don’t always become proficient in English. They learn enough English to get by, but are not really proficient and President Howes has decided that all his missionaries will become proficient in English. BYU has created a program, a pretty intense program actually, I’ve looked at it, to teach English proficiency above the basics the missionaries are taught in the MTC and the 'survival' English they use just to get by each day. The missionaries spend their language study time each day working with their companions to become proficient. Most all the companionships have a native English speaker paired with a non-English speaker. The program has three levels, the first level they learn in the MTC, but the next two levels are done in the mission. By the time they finish the program they will be able to pass the IELTS or TOFEL tests. These are the international English proficiency tests for English used by businesses, universities, and even countries as part of the visa process. What a blessing for these missionaries to be able to speak English on a level they can use in business or for university study in an English speaking country.
One of the Sister missionaries has taken this English speaking push to the next level. Her companion from Taiwan has such a heavy accent that she is hard to understand. One of the big problems is that Chinese doesn’t have some of the sounds that English has, so they substitute sounds they have in Chinese for the English sound. The lack of the /r/ sound in Chinese makes their English hard to understand if they substitute another sound for the /r/. The English-speaking Sister missionary was talking to me about how frustrating it was trying to help her companion speak understandable English. Who would have thought my background as a speech pathologist would ever come in handy when working with missionaries, but surprisingly, that’s what has happened. We decided to begin with the /r/ sound, since it occurs so often in everyday speech. We are using basic articulation remediation practices to teach this Sister missionary how to say /r/ correctly in English. Pretty funny. I resurrected my old speech pathology stuff and we are working to improve the intelligibility of this missionary. No more ‘flied lice’ instead of ‘fried rice’ for her! We’ll see how it goes. So far, so good though!
Grandkids:
I took pictures of the cockatoos that were hanging around in one of the parks downtown. It’s funny because in the US, cockatoos are expensive birds people buy to keep as pets. In Australia, cockatoos are as common as sparrows are in the US. They are everywhere! They are really loud and, since they like to fly in groups, they make a lot of noise! I missed getting a video of a big group of them flying down one of the main streets in downtown Sydney. There were about 20 of them flying in a big group right above the cars and trucks on the street. They made all kinds of noise! The birds in my picture were just taking a little break and eating weeds out of the grass in the park.
While we were downtown Saturday we went to a Police museum. It was very interesting to see. There were lots of pictures of old convicts and you could go through the jails and see how the police took care of the bad guys and the crime in Sydney long ago. I thought you might be interested in seeing how the police made people be quiet if they were yelling or making a racket. They handcuffed the bad guys and then put this wooden thing in their mouth and cinched it up tight so then the people couldn’t make a racket. They also used it if they didn’t want people to talk to each other.
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| Do you think your parents should buy some of these to use when they want everyone to be quiet??!! |
We walked up the stairs on one of the pylons of the Harbor Bridge.
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| The stairs are on the inside, when you get to the top of the stairs you can go outside and walk all around. |
It was a long walk up, but once we got to the top we could see all over the city. It was a little windy, but other than that, it was a beautiful day. You can’t beat Sydney in winter!
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| In the background you can see the Sydney Opera House. It's one of Sydney's most famous buildings. We haven't been there yet, but we are going to see The King and I in September, so we will get to go inside then. |
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| The area on either side of the freeway is The Rocks, the part of town I wrote about last week. |
I thought you might like to see the hymn book. The title is in both Chinese and English, but the words are all in Chinese. Do you think you would like to learn how to read Chinese?? Each character is a word. Grandpa and I sang in English because we knew the words by heart, everyone else sang in Chinese.
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| These are two of our newest missionaries. I took their picture because they are a good example of how varied in size Chinese people can be. The tall one is 6'6" and the small one is 5'4". They were companions in the MTC in Provo. The tall one is from China and the small one is from Taiwan. Even though they were companions in the MTC, they each have an English-speaking companion over here. They both speak pretty good English even though they are just learning it. |
I hope you all have a great week. Happy birthday to Owen and Aunt Whitney this week:)
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