This is a complaint post and I’m gonna bitch about my anger here so get lost now kindly ignore me if you don’t want to read my frustrations.

We (brother and I) have opened a joint saving account at ANZ main branch early August (18th to be exact). I’ve asked the lady who opened our account when we will get our ATM cards; she said “should arrive to you post box after two days”. I knew when they say two days that means two weeks with added “Fiji Time” but I wasn’t worry about it as long as I get the cards after two weeks.

We usually check our post box three or four times a week and there wouldn’t be a week we forget to check it. I was anticipating the cards should arrive after two weeks but no sign of them, not even a note to collect from their branch after four weeks. So, on 17th Sept, I looked for some contact details on the ANZ Fiji website and used the general enquiry form to email regarding the lateness of our cards.

They responded my email after 25min, requesting the account number as they were having some problem with the system and could not search by name, which was surprisingly fast and I was happy about their prompt service. After I sent the account number, the “Electronic Business – Fiji (ebusfj)” forwarded our cards numbers to “EBS HelpDesk HUB” asking for the cards’ despatch date as “ebusfj” couldn’t retrieve the action date due to the difficulties on beam (whatever the beam is).

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Saw this on Marc My Words and thought it’s cute so sharing.

I prefer to intimate with #4 and #6 and less intimate with #7, #3, #2 and #5. Haven’t had a chance with #9.

Yesterday, we received this note from ANZ regarding the Credit card usage overseas. Correct me if I understood it wrongly, but does that mean we cannot use credit card for anything except travel related like buying flight ticket? So how can we pay for other online purchases like:

• online shopping (general, hosting, domain, etc),
• online membership/subscriptions fees (World of Warcraft subscriptions, etc),
• online visa application fees (not necessarily a travel visa),
• online education fees (MS Certs/Distance education)
• and many other expenses

And why do we have to send the bank statements and stuffs – “for our confirmation that card has been used in line with the new guidelines”. What a bother!

I don’t understand what’s going on with Fiji economy and foreign exchange policies. I don’t study economics, I don’t care about it; what I don’t care, I don’t want to know. But what I do know is that I want to use my own money in any way I like and I want no restrictions placed upon it.

The main reason I got myself a Credit card was to use it overseas related expenses and online payments. I don’t need a Credit card for any of the local transactions. I’m really unhappy about this new rules; first they rob us of 20% of our wealth (via devaluation) then they want to say I can’t buy stuffs with my own money. Ridiculous!

Dear Customer

Use of Personal and Business Credit Cards Overseas

We advise that the Reserve Bank of Fiji (RBF) has recently reviewed its exchange control guidelines in respect to the operations of Credit Cards when used overseas and has made the following changes with immediate effect:

• The Credit cards are to be used only for travel related expenditures which include reasonable expense for shopping etc, and to pay for small amounts of miscellaneous imports;
• A cash drawing/cash advance limit while overseas has been set at FJD1,500 per month;
• Credit card payments via Internet or Phone banking are limited to only $5,000 per month. You are required to forward a copy of the Bank statement to Customer Relations, 7th Floor, ANZ House for our confirmation that card has been used in line with the new guidelines;
• Business Credit Cards – are exempted from restriction on usage, however, RBF’s prior approval is required for any payment in excess of $5,000 for a purpose other than ‘travel’ related;

The monthly repayment limit delegated to commercial banks remains at $5,000 per month for overseas transactions for personal credit cards and a new limit has been set at $20,000 per card holder for Business Credit cards. Any payment above these limits must be referred to RBF for approval. To this end, customers are required to submit the original bank statement fo the cards account to RBF and seek their approval before payment can be effected by the commercial bank. Please note you would have to get this approval as RBF may seek clarification on overseas transactions.

In the event you breach any of these new guidelines, you would be reported to RBF. This could possibly lead to the cancellation of your credit card facility. Please call Contact Centre on phone 132411 should you require any clarification in respect to these advices.

Yours faithfully
Haroon Ali
Head of Retail Banking

I went to Nadi, (TPAF, Namaka), to train the trainers for this project we did for this customer yesterday last week Friday. It was the second session to train them on a very simple first phase (out of three) of this project. The first time they funded the return flight ticket; unfortunately, this time they cut down their budget and provided a four wheel drive pickup for me.

As planned, I woke up at 4:30am, got myself ready and revised my training manual while I was waiting for the pickup. They (an Indian driver and a Fijian gal) got to my place at 5:15am and stopped at service station for coffee and hot bread before we left Suva around 5:30am.

It was a cold and drizzling morning with a pitch black sky and not a single soul on the road until we pass Lami. We had a small chat on the road and found out that the driver is very fluent in Fijian. He conversed with the girl in Fijian nonstop to keep himself awake or just being his talkative nature.

They laughed their heads off several times in their conversations and checked back at me a few times to see how I was doing. Myself being a quiet nature, I didn’t/couldn’t join in their conversation and just dozed off at the back.

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It’s been a while since I last posted 7ven music; I know some of you miss it. You see, the amazing ME has been busy and lacking inspiration to sing; age is catching up. Truth be told, the main reason for lack of music post on mayvelous is cos’ our dear O’ Icy went back to Yangon for a few month. She just came back last week and must have brought back quite a few Karaoke CDs. She was telling me about the latest hits from home the other day and sent me these three songs that she tried out. As her most faithful fan, I have the honour of listening her songs first and am given the freedom of praise or criticize about them ruthlessly. ha`ha`

The three songs she sent are: (more…)

My brother, Aung a.k.a Zatlite, has started blogging yesterday after a few years of persuasion from me. He started off with twittering ,which was also the result of my persistent persuasion, and has been a good regular twitterer to date. Yesterday, he suddenly made himself a blog and now he’s crazy about it.

His very first blog, “The private life of a badminton maniac“, talks about all his passion on racquet sports, especially badminton and racquet breaking hobbies. I’ve posted some of his actions on the past Badminton games in this post and; photos and videos of his squash tournament here. (more…)

Just spreading this wonderful opportunity to all those travel bloggers who like to visit Indonesia and participate in this event. Early this year, I went to Bali for similar event; I had a great time there, met lots of people and learn new things. I wish I could go again, but I doubt it since I’m not really a travel blogger. Anyhow…the following is an abstract from the GV email I got, read on for detail info as well:

Indonesian Bloggers are having the 2nd national gathering next month on the November 22nd, last year we managed to get 500 bloggers from all over Indonesia to come.

This year hopefully we can get up to 1000 bloggers to attend the whole day event. The theme for this year is blogging for society.

Leading to that, as a part of the program to promote Indonesia tourism, supported by Indonesian Ministry of Cultural and Tourism, we would like to invite several international bloggers from any country to come and have a trip to three cities (Bali, Jogjakarta, Jakarta) in Indonesia leading to the event.

We are looking for bloggers (travel bloggers) that can post their experience, photos, people they meet, basically blogging about Indonesia and Indonesian people, and join the event.

The period for this trip is between Nov 17 – Nov 22 2009 and this is the itinerary:

1. Denpasar, Bali (Mon, Nov 17 – Tue, Nov 18)
2. Jogjakarta (Wed, Nov 19 – Thu, Nov 20)
3. Jakarta (Fri, Nov 21 – Sat, Nov 22)

All expense will be covered, including flight ticket from your country to Indonesia and back.

And read more about the event in detail below. Their site is fully in Indonesian language but this is from email attachment and it’s in English, so dumping it directly here.

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