Inside Australia's Immigration Detention

Good morning.  I normally write an email to you in the evening.  But today, I am sending you this early edition because I am going back to bed.  I am falling apart.  I found bleeding from the inside of my right ear and have a swollen jaw caused by the worn out filling of one of my left side teeth.  My crankiness must have come from the physical ailment.  I have to add these items to the list of my battlegrounds against IHMS (the health service provider). Yesterday, I received a few letters from IHMS in relation to my long-standing war on glasses.  IHMS and I have been fighting since November last year.  In short, I want new glasses and theyr did not want to give them to me.   The first round of the fight was concerned with an appointment to be seen by the optometrist who visits Villawood only once a month.  I won the first round last month.  But then, IHMS informed me that it would take 6 to 8 weeks for the delivery of...

As you must have noticed, I was really cranky yesterday.  The culmination was at night when a guard came to tell me that she had put a new girl in my room.  Of course, I said 'No'.   The guard asked me whether I wanted to speak to a manager.  I thought I would get the one whom I always speak to first thing in the morning next day rather than speaking to an unfamiliar one at night.  But I changed my mind when I was filling in a complaint form.  So I grabbed the manager of the day.  I told him that I was unhappy and gave him an unhappy stare.  He was mumbling one thing or another but soon agreed to do something in the morning.  Since I am not unreasonable (even though I may not be reasonable), I agreed to put up with a roommate for a night.  But when I came back to my room, the roommate came with her friends and collected her belongings and left.  I could not understand why the supposedly new girl had friends here and a...

The Chinese girl who does not speak a word of English and whom I tried to communicate with by writing Chinese characters (and dismally failed) turned to be a chatterbox!  She is very talkative and speaks to everyone.  Everyone listened to her with big smile and nods!  It looks as if everyone understood what the girls said.  But they came to me after the girl had left and told me that they could not understand what she said at all.  Sooo-oh funny! I went to the induction to the Gym today.  Every year, they require users to sign a medical consent afresh.  There were two Asian older men in the session.  Both look to me Chinese but it seems that they came from different countries since they did not speak each other.  The medical consent form does not have a translation.  Those two men do not speak English at all.  So the trainer started trying to translate it into kind of a sign language (?!).  I should not have laughed but I ...

I heard a rumour.  A very, very disturbing rumour.  Serco's contract is terminated.  Well, that's not disturbing at all.  But the ABF is taking over the operation of Villawood!  It's so disturbing.  I even became feeling sick.  If it happens, then VIDC will be like 2006!  No way.  I gotta get out quick... I roughly finished my final submissions to the Court.  So I knocked off pending chores today.  I had my complaints here piling up so I wrote half a dozen of complaint forms in one go.  I had to push the lawyers in the Attorney-General's Department who have been making an excuse one after the other to postpone making a decision on my petition.  So I emailed them to let them know that I would file a judicial review application with the Federal Court seeking mandamus directed to the Attorney-General and withhold the service on him to see whether they would keep the promise to make a decision by the end of February....