gold fish bubble

I was hoping things might improve with my local public housing office now that I was in a new place.
Silly me.
Ten weeks later I'm still waiting for them to install curtain rails.
Male passers by can see into my unit, even during the day, judging by the waves they give me.
At night I'm a sitting duck for anybody wanting to do a drive by shooting.
I know how a gold fish in a bowl must feel.
But all is not lost.
Someone I know came up with the bright suggestion of sticking bubble wrap on the windows.
It works!
And it will have to do until I can afford to pay to install curtain rails myself, it seems.
This was despite being told by the public housing office that it would do it for me before I moved in.
Something else I have had lumbered on me is the unwanted role of unofficial 'gatekeeper' of the pathway that runs beside my place.
The gate has been unlocked since I moved in and non-residents from the next street have been using it as a short-cut to the shopping centre.
One of the other residents complained to me about this and told me to keep the gate locked.
After I had aquiesed to her demand, a male neighbour and regular trespasser expressed his annoyance about his thoroughfare being blocked, and in defiance jumped the gate.
The next morning I found that the driver's side mirror of my car had been gouged out and thrown in the gutter.
The residents of the three other units who might need to pass through this gate are all disabled, leaving me holding the hot potato.
In public housing it is very hard to live your own life and keep to yourself because there are always encroachments by others that make this impossible.

FREE AT LAST

I'm in a new public housing property now, in a much nicer part of the world.
And best of all, I am the only one with the keys.
Not like at the retirement village where I was living before where there was ready access to the key to my front door.
By the general manager, his administrative offsiders, office and nursing staff and even the maintenance man.
Window cleaners were allowed to come into my unit when I was not there, despite my objections and wishes to be at home when they were.
Yet my Housing NSW lease said there were to be no unauthorised entries.
It was horrible living in a place where people I did not know or trust were able to enter my unit without my knowledge or permission.
I feel like I've been let out of gaol after serving a sentence of eight years.
I have my life back again.
Even though it took the threat of losing it to regain it.

STARSHIP ENTERPRISE STILL OUT THERE

At times I feel like Captain Kirk of the old TV series Star Trek fame trying to navigate Starship Enterprise through hails of asteroids.
This is how it seems when an apparent hacker hurls viruses at my computer. The latest is Bloodhound.MalPE and its source a0110062.dll.
Does anyone know how to track down these pesky varmints?
Just discovered in my Macquarie Dictionary that the word 'varmint' derives from 'vermin'.
Americans seem to like the word a lot.
Also when I turn on my computer, a security warning says my firewall is not installed when in fact it is.
Is a hacker doing this?
A microsoft technician I asked about it had not heard of it happening before.
I'm still waiting on the results of my skin scraping analysis.
An antibiotic cream given to me by a dermatologist has not had much effect.
An iridologist told me my body is so full of toxic chemicals that the kidney and liver cannot eliminate them.
That is why I have the acne outbreak on my right cheek.
Even the lymph system cannot get rid of it.
The most frightening thing I was told was that toxic chemicals in the body can mimic oestrogen which in large amounts causes cancer.

STATE TERRORISM

I haven't posted for several months for several reasons.
I've been virtually homeless since the middle of February when I was forced to sleep in my car after a toxic chemical substance that gave off fumes was placed in my public housing unit to drive me out.
After I discovered that the fumes were coming from a chemical substance placed on the carpet around my bed and tried to wash it off, a potentially lethal amount of hydrogen cyanide was placed in my unit.
I encountered this on the morning of 8 April 2010 when I went in there to collect my printer.
I've been feeling sick ever since.
Medical treatment is hard to find because it seems no one has had to deal with this condition before.
Whatsmore, most people find it very hard to believe what I am saying and think I am crazy.
Exactly what the perpetrators of the grotesque murder attempt want.
I've been very afraid.
I am continuing to pay rent to HousingNSW for this unit which I cannot live in because it is chemically contaminated and because my life is at risk there because my belongings are still in it.
Every time I go in there to pack, I feel sick and my face breaks out with redness and acne.
I think the perpetrators expected me to just go and die beside the road like a piece of roadkill, leaving all my belongings behind for them to throw out like the rubbish they think I am.

CHEMICAL WARFARE REVISITED

WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION
Chemical warfare agents
Fact Sheet 11: Blood Gas Hydrogen Cyanide
Description:
Hydrogen cyanide is usually included among the CW agents causing general poisoning. It has been reported that hydrogen cyanide was used in the Iran-Iraq war, against the Kurds during the 1980's. Hydrogen cyanide has high toxicity and in sufficient concentrations it rapidly leads to death. During the Second World War, a form of hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B) was used in the Nazi gas chambers. At room temperature, hydrogen cyanide is a colourless liquid which boils at 26 oC. Its high volatility probably makes hydrogen cyanide difficult to use in warfare since there are problems in achieving sufficiently high concentrations outdoors. On the other hand, the concentration of hydrogen cyanide may rapidly reach lethal levels if it is released in confined spaces.

DID KAFKA LIVE IN PUBLIC HOUSING?

I think I had better start reading The Trial by Franz Kafka.
It may prove very relevant for my future.
The Wikipedia summary of this book sounds all too familiar.
At least I am not alone.
Anyone who lived in Stalinist Russia would know all about it too.

CHEMICAL WARFARE?

For the last six weeks I've been experiencing chemical fumes in my unit.
A similar happened around this time last year.
The chemical substance left a burning sensation on my skin, forcing me to leave my unit and sleep in my car.
Coincidentally it happened during the week before a decision was handed down by the Consumer Trader & Tenancy Tribunal that I as a public housing tenant living in a retirement village was not covered by the Retirement Villages Act.
It was only the fee paying residents who had this privilege.
To be protected against discrimination and harassment by management and other residents.
It had taken seven stressful months for the CTTT to make this ruling, and both sides were during that time understandably getting a bit toey.
I'd been firing off some angry emails at the other side.
They retaliated by placing a chemical substance in my unit which burnt my facial skin and made it hard for me to breath.
Suspecting foul play, I went to the police.
Once the decision that went against me was out in the open, the chemical warfare suddenly stopped.
This year the fumes have been coming mainly at night, and the early hours of the morning.
Now they are happening during the day too.
Wonder what they are and where they are coming from?
Bridget Jones Message to Self: Don't get paranoid about this.
There may be a totally innocent causation, an alternative explanation.

ALL WAS EXPOSED

Well, the sky didn't fall in after all at the mysterious meeting held at the retirement village last Monday week.
It was a very interesting meeting nonetheless.
A male public housing tenant, our self-styled leader, took the floor claiming he had asked the general manager to call the meeting.
But what about the email I had sent him telling him I wanted to call one to which he did not respond?
He seemed to have been chosen by management to go into bat for PHTs whenever a problem arose as someone who sounded credible but who was not prepared to rock the boat too much.
The local newspaper had been invited to attend the meeting, but he insisted the journalist leave.
Nonetheless, our fearless leader was very upset about public housing tenants officially being made 'second class citizens' by changes to the Retirement Villages Act.
In particular the removal of the 'joint venture' clause which on paper gave public housing tenants living in retirement villages where Housing NSW is involved in a 'joint venture' with other parties the same legal protection as the self-funded residents living there too.
Now the only legal protection we have is the same as public housing tenants who live in houses or blocks of units.
Housing NSW acting head lawyer, Chris Valacos, said he had the legislation changed to 'clarify' the situation.
Now we were the same as all other public housing tenants.
We were saying we wanted to be treated as equals with the self-funded residents and he was saying we were now equals with all other PHTs.
He suggested we were up ourselves if we dared to argue with that.
Well, our living situation is entirely different for a start.
We also pay a fortnightly levy for 'services provided' by the management of the retirement village which other PHTs don't have to fork out of their pensions.
Our fearless leader asked why an act of parliament had been changed just because one PHT had tried to take legal action against the retirement village. He may well ask ...
For a while I thought changing the law to deny someone their legal rights was called perverting the course of justice, but I looked this up and found out this is not the case.
I did find a couple of emails from the abovementioned lawyer in my Housing NSW file urging the Office of Fair Trading to remove the 'joint venture' clause in response to my legal action in the Consumer Trader & Tenancy Tribunal under the Retirement Villages Act.
The CTTT determination went against me on somewhat spurious grounds.
The HNSW lawyer said that although this ruling was in his favour, he was not content with it because it had only been made in a lower court, not in the Supreme Court.
I had said in my email to OFL that I wanted to call a meeting of PHTs to discuss the ramifications of the changes to the Retirement Villages Act, and to hopefully establish a public housing tenants forum.
OFL shouted my latter suggestion down, saying it would create an 'us and them' situation with the self-funded residents.
But wasn't that what he had been complaining about earlier?
About how the change to the act had now made this official?
I could see it was a 'no win' situation.

GRAND SOCIAL EXPERIMENT IN PUBLIC HOUSING FAILS

Post removed voluntarily because information contained in it was not correct.

NSW Housing's revolving door

A forthright middle-aged woman managed to grab centre stage and precious media minutes on ABC-TV's Q&A last Monday night to question Federal Housing Minister, Tanya Plibesek, about public housing tenants being evicted by Housing NSW and made homeless as a result. The Minister said she could not address the subject because it was a specific case she knew nothing about. Has this very serious matter ever been investigated by the media, including the ABC?