Good Morning guys,

#BacktoClass
A new academic year has started and as such I’m back here at my old writing spot at Starbucks Monash Sunway, it’s been at least 4 months since i last blogged from here. Today i am accompanied by Latte, 2 normals shots topped off by a decaf shot. Good to see that many of the faces from the last semester are still around behind the espresso machine.

Birthday Present!
Now, maybe you’ve noticed a new addition to the pic above and maybe you haven’t, for my recent 23rd birthday my A-Team got me a Logitech bluetooth enable keyboard for my iPad and today is the first time i’m really using it and i have to say, it’s pretty damn nice. Thanks guys. Not that i didn’t like typing on the iPad itself, it’s just that now i won’t lose touch with typing on my macbook, which was happening last year. the iPad on-screen keyboard is way more compact than the physical keyboards and i started having some trouble typing on a physical keyboard a few months after getting my iPad, so now that will not be happening, feels very close to typing on my MacBook Pro. Oh, and now that there is no keyboard on-screen, the entire Retina Display is dedicated to my writing, that’s probably my favourite thing.

Today’s Point
The current issue on mind was kicked off by the Sunway Monash Residence office and their communication failure 2 weeks ago.

I was at the SMR office to apply for the the Non-Resident SMR parking, and was told that they don’t do pre-bookings and that i would have to apply next month. I figured that to mean come on March 1st. i actually thought about applying there and then for February, and i pay for the current month, which would essentially be burning the 50 bucks for Feb, but since I was told that there was no pre-booking i figured that if i come early on the 1st there wouldn’t be any problems applying. However i would not be able to go on the first so i got help from my mum and a friend but that came to nothing as i was told a few days before the 1st, while i was in perth, that not only was the SMR Non-Resident parking lot full but that the waiting list was closed.

Now imagine my confusion,

how can there be a wait-list if there is no pre-booking the week before the beginning of the next month. I was confused and not pleased, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying my great perth holiday; which i will talk about at a later date. So, on the first day of this semester i went over to the SMR office to talk to them but that came to nothing, there was nothing they could do to help me out, even though it was one of them who misinformed and mislead me. All i kept hearing was, “the waiting list is closed” and found out that they were taking-in applications on the 25th of feb….

Wait a sec… let me see if my math and concept of space and time is right…

A week is 7 days, thus 7 days before the 1st of march is = 23rd of February… but wait, that can’t be right because i was told there was pre-booking and that no applications are taken in during the last week of a month,

so…

is the SMR Office using a different calendar system (in which the should be public about it) or is my basic concept of the calendar system at fault?

Dear SMR Office,i think you guys need to get your act together and be very clear on your Non-Resident Parking Application Policies & Procedures, something like the incredibly detailed set rules and regulations for the parking lot that’s on the application form, but for the Application Process. Hopefully this happens sometime soon, hey maybe i’ll go over and suggest it, so that students like myself aren’t let down in such a confusing & bitter manner.

Oh, and in the event that you do actually have formal procedures & policies for applying, why was i not provided with that information when i came to inquire 2 weeks ago, or better yet last year when i got the lot.

So what i learnt from all this and my couple visits to the SMR office is the customer service isn’t all that and that there are people there that just don’t know how to communicate and that you can’t trust what one person communicates entirely as it may not even be right.

Ok, so i didn’t get my nice parking spot, i’ll just revert to the normal parking right?

But wait,

Unfortunately the Monash University Student Car Park (SCP) fills up by 9am, on most days, and the median, mean and mode of my classes is 12pm. So this posed a problem on Tuesday when I arrived at Monash at 10am… which was solved by parking by the side of the road that also leads to the SMR Main Entrance, somewhere in the region of a 10 minute walk from campus, somewhere on the road next to the South Quay Lake.

And I wasn’t the only one who had to park there, there were at least another 40 cars there.

Yes i was irritated and angry that I was misinformed and that in order to get a space at the SCP i would need to be there by 8:45am but I will (and have) adjust(ed). My little parking problem alone isn’t a big deal but i’m not alone in this, there are many students who face problems with parking everyday and some to an extent where they are late for class (even though they came plenty early) or miss class, Monash University Sunway Campus needs to do something, maybe buy some land next to the SMR or near the South Quay lake and build a multi level car park with a proper weather proof student walkway to campus.

Unsustainable Growth

How can you keep enrolling more students when you do not adjust the parking capacity to support the growth? Once upon a time, from a year ago, it was possible to get parking between the hours of 9 & 10am, but by 9 it’s not at capacity but over-capacity and spilling out all over the place.

Just let me be clear,

I’m not whining about this. yes I was on a rant for some parts of this post (at the least haha) but like i said, i’ll adjust and deal with this current problem, i’ve had much bigger problems to deal with over the last year than that of this.

Silver Lining?

Well,

It will give me a bigger push to wake up bring & early to get my morning rituals done and be at the monash parking by 8:30am, it’s going to encourage me to plan for the week and stick with it and i’m going to save a little more money.

Parking a week will cost me now RM8, which is RM32 a month which is Rm18 saved. hahaha.

However,

I would really encourage Monash to help ease this major parking problem as it is their concern, it is a direct problem for their biggest stakeholders, the students! and i also hope that SMR will get their act together, their customer service could be much better and so could their communication & transparency.

Straight From The Heart