Inside Australia's Immigration Detention

Last night, I had a headache and could not sleep.  So I went to the guards' station and asked for paracetamol.  The guard telephoned a nurse who was on a break and would not return for another five minutes.  So I waited.  The guard called the nurse again but this time, the nurse was on the phone with someone.   According to the guard, one nurse is receiving all calls from all detention centres in this country so that it could take long for her to get a permission to give me paracetamol.  The guard put the phone on hold and waited for five minutes.  No signs of the nurse picking up the guard's call.  So I decided to fill in a complaint form.   I wrote the first complaint form without using my glasses.  I could not see anything well but usually, my writing is still legible.  But since it was very uncomfortable to write anything without actually seeing it, I took the case of my reading glasses out of my bag, opened the c...

I am getting more and more tired every day.  I had a headache and sore neck this afternoon probably because of too much computer.  I went to the medical centre and asked for paracetamol.  A nurse gave me dissolvable one in a water-filled cup.  It tastes awful, made me sick. I will go to bed early...

It was rainy this morning.  When I went out in my poncho, I met a guard who had walked into a column on Day 64.  He was wearing a hat with its brim extended by a handmade cardboard brim covered by a plastic bag!  I laughed.   He explained to me that it was not only convenient to avoid rain, it also prevents him from walking into a pole as the brim will act as a stopper!!  This guy is seriously funny. After the chat, I went to a brekkie and the hairdresser, and then came back to the compound.  That guard came wearing no hat.  I said to him, 'No hat?'  He replied, ''Cuz it's not raining anymore.'  So I said, 'It's a shame.'  He burst out laughing and said, 'You always have a word!'.  What did he mean?!  I just engaged in an ordinary meaningless conversation. I heard that two guys were sent to Christmas Island.  One building (next to Lima) was completely vacated last week.  Obviously, the centre is preparin...

This morning was not so hot as yesterday so I went to Charity Walk.  By participating in it in order to donate to a charity, I got paid.  One day, I will figure out why.... or maybe it's a forever mystery....  The money will be used to buy postage stamps sold at the shop.  A one-dollar stamp costs me 91 cents.  I have not found out why... but my guessing is that there is no GST taxed to the shop as it is not business.  My friend said to me that it was the ten percent return and hence was a good investment.  Well,,, investment sounds as if I used my capital to get the profit.  That's not quite what happened.  I paid nothing. This evening, I went to the Medical Centre to see whether my anti-depressant had arrived.  It arrived, surprisingly.  Not only that, a nurse gave me a webster pack (a medication pack for a week).  I don't know why.  It's convenient for me to have the pack but IHMS did not allow me to ...

Today, I went to the medical centre to see whether my prescribed anti-depressant which I use as anti-anxiety had arrived.  My medication is Prozac, a typical SSRI.  But somehow, it is not commonly used in Villawood.  So it has to be specially ordered for me.  It has not arrived yet.  I went the medical centre with my friend who is supposed to take a similar anti-depressant, Zoloft (sertraline).  He has never taken any anti-depressant before he got a prescription of Zoloft only about a fortnight ago.  When a nurse gave him a tablet, he said, 'That's not mine.'  Then the nurse told him that it was the medication he had been taking for the last fortnight.  Then she showed him a package.  It was a box of Seroquel!!!  I jumped up.   Seroquel is a psychotropic used for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  It can be used as augmentation for severe depression.  But it is not the first choice drug for a mild depr...