Blog Challenge: Biggest Pet Peeve
My biggest pet peeve: government offices. Seriously. I hate dealing with government offices. If I could only avoid it, I would. But a lot of requirements needed come from government agencies. And trust me, I could go on and on and on and on about my complaints for each and every agency I’ve encountered.
My top reasons for this will be: red tape, their lack of respect for time, a lot of known loopholes in the process but no action is being done to fix it. I guess those are the top ones reasons I have. Given my impatience, I really hate it when they make you wait even if there are no other people that they are dealing with. I also hate the fact that you pay for something that is not required. So let me just give a run down on the offices that I’ve dealt with in the past.
Bureau of Immigration: 10 minutes before lunch break and they don’t work anymore. They will clear your papers for passport application after they had their lunch break. I experienced this way back when I was still applying for my passport. It was not as easy as 1-2-3 for me because of my scholarship. People pointed us to different directions before we finally got the next step.
However, we got there about 10-15 minutes before lunch break. It was enough time to sign and stamp papers. But no. They said that there is no approver to release the clearance because it is already lunch break. Given that I had no sleep that time (since I work the night shift) and it was too hot, this news irked me. I almost yelled at the person and made my demands. My Mom pulled me out of it and made me go home. She said she’ll wait for it. She got it, I think, about three hours after lunch. Geez!
NBI: another clearance issue related to my scholarship. I need an NBI clearance for travel but I need to clear my name from the blacklist first. I was blacklisted from three government agencies (Bureau of Immigration, NBI and FA) because I was a scholar of DOST. So I needed to get a clearance from the agency that gave my scholarship and submit it to NBI to get my name off the list. Again, it took me almost the whole day to get my clearance because they pointed me from one department to another without proper instructions and most of the departments they pointed me to are the incorrect ones. The process could have just taken me half a day had they fixed their processes.
LTO: Another agency that really needs improvement in terms of the process. The reason why I haven’t applied for my driver’s license for the longest time was because I hate waiting. And yet I already needed to get one. This, again, took me literally the whole day. I was there as early as 8am. I finished 5:30pm. Travel time back to my apartment took about an hour and a half. An hour nap then I had to prepare for work. So what happened that whole day? Waiting game.
Drug testing took about an hour before they started handling out urine sample containers. After that, they said that the systems are down and that it will take a while before they fix it. We waited for about three hours before operations started back up. The problem with LTO is that they don’t have a fixed queue of people. There are a lot of fixers that you can pay to get the processing expedited. Their exams are a joke, too. And nobody fails the exams because all the answers are posted on the walls.
Customs: OMG, don’t even get me started with them. Suffice it to say that they make you pay for something that has already been paid. Just thinking about what I experienced with customs makes my blood boil.
And you know what’s the worst news ever? I, as a working individual, pay my taxes to the government. Sometimes, my tax makes me cry. And then the news that the government has been spending the taxes to bogus NGOs just so they can pocket it makes me want to smash someone’s head. I mean, really??!??! We no longer complain about getting taxed on our hard earned money and the commodities that we buy. Government offices makes repairs to roads, create roads, build buildings for whatever projects they have and yet one can see that the materials are substandard. A strong typhoon or even just monsoon rains destroy these structures in one go. So whatever happened to the millions and billions being spent on these projects that are expected to be of high quality given the inflated budgets? Pocketed by those stupid and corrupt government officials.
I think I will stop here now. This topic for the day is now making my blood boil.
Photo Challenge: Favorite Photo
On to a lighter side of things. Of all the photos that I have of my baby – and trust me, I have over a thousand photos already and he’s just 10 weeks old. I wonder how many photos he’d have by the time he turns 1. 😛 Anyway, of all the photos of my son, there is are a few that are my favorites. And out of those favorites, there’s this one that I really, really, really love. My brother took this photo during our first photoshoot session.
Could be a print ad for a baby stuff or something. LOL! Any takers? 😛