bingobob777

the spare isn't a full size tyre and isn't suitable for belting up and down the pacific highway at 100km/hr, therefore is of no help

but thanks for your contribution

bingobob777

do you think i'd have the same problem in the UK?

I didn't really attack australia, I merely used the incident as a example of what I perceive to be one of the negatives about Australia. It is what it is, no need to attack it.

mikeandrach

depends where you live in the uk. im from the south originally where you can get anything. i live in yorks now where at midnight last night it became 1974.

go to hull and you can get anything but it will be nicked, go to york and you can get anything and it will be expensive, go to malton or bridlington and as i pull up in my peugeot 407 they think i am in a car from the future and gawp in amazement. so it depends on your locality i guess rather than the country.

bingobob777

I agree, but brisbane is the capital of QLD and the 3rd largest Australian city.

brissybee

In the last week...

Went to buy $500-ish of curtains. Shop didn't have stock in and I was told it needed permission from head office to have the curtains transferred from other stores. Also, suggested it would cost as much as the curtains to have them transported. Um, no I said... it doesn't cost hundreds of dollars to transport a set of curtains. They're supposedly getting back to me.

Went to buy $900-ish oven. Oven not in stock. Dept manager can't give me specifications and says can't ring manufacturer to find out until after new year. He will ring us back. I have already managed to ring the manufacturer now but salesman selling oven is too busy to come to the phone so we can arrange for him to order it in.

Ordered thai take-away for New Year. Ordered ahead and was told it would be ready at 7.45. Arrived at 7.45 and had to wait for 45 minutes for order to be ready.

Took kids out for take-away lunch. Part of order missing. Twice.

FFS. Why is it so hard for some people to get things right?

slapphead_otool

For some time now we have measured economic purchasing power parity via the "big mac index", using the price of a common goods to test of the extent to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in different countries.

Personally I have long advocated the "Slapphead Hooker Index" or SHI as a better indicator of economic parity in a true free market situation. For some reason the UN and IMF seem strangely reluctant to adopt the measure, although they do a lot of informal research in the area.

But this new measure from BingoBob opens up an whole new world of research.

How quickly could you get a tyre repaired in the lower reaches of the swamplands of Umboto Gorge?

Does the tyre actually have to fit?
Can it have hand carved tread?
Can it have been nicked off another car?
What it its actually another wheel off your own car? Does that count?

Does speed of repair actually indicate lower standard of living?

I could for instance order a set of four crossplys, a Big Mac and a Hooker in Semarang and they would be delivered within 20 minutes to my door, by some underfed and somewhat desperate group of tyre fitters, pimps and Maccas counter staff. And that could be after midnight on a Sunday......

I suspect there is my long dreamed of PhD in here somewhere. "The relationship between speed of tyre fitting on Christmas Eve and standards of living as measured in 20 first world countries and Scotland"

Im onto it guys

RedDragon2008

... and then you will fix the tyre and get a maccas meal

slapphead_otool

+1001.

Serious note here Bob. Unless you know the ME don't go there if you find QLD frustrating.

Seriously. You have to live there to know frustration.

Im not joking Bob. Look past the tax free pay. They have to offer that to get people to work there.

bingobob777

Going in with my eyes open, there's a Middle East board I can have a rant on if I need to

Swerv-o

Just don't upset the pro-middle east evangelists like you have managed to do here


S

Kim67

Yep, be careful over there, they're all a bit crazy - get yourself a id on expatwoman (pretend to be a girl), much more helpful in terms of information, but they're crazy in a more "caught my maid in my bath, in my bathers, drinking my Moet with my son" kind of way.

slapphead_otool

My guess is your rants about the ME will involve a bit more than the inability to get a tyre fitted on NYE.

Kim67

There probably wouldn't be a problem getting it fitted on NYE, and it wouldn't cost too much. You'd have seventy five unqualified people working on it and it would have off again by New Years Day.

slapphead_otool

The tyre wont be an issue.

Laws and the police might.

Attitude of the locals will be.

DingoBob, take note. It isn't the UK, and it isn't Australia. Things happen there that you don't expect to have happen anywhere. The ME thread on BE is full of whinging expats who are happy to take the money but don't seem to understand the trade off for things like lifestyle and OH&S.

Never forget that trade off....

Gibbo

Even on hogmanay?? Not in the Scotland I remember. No work after lunchtime, even before in some places and pretty much incapacitated by knocking off time.