Marlies goes China

Published March 16th, 2007 by Mliesie

Taxes, taxes…..

Whenever I walk into the teachers’ room in my college, I see piles of notebooks and other papers waiting to be corrected and returned. Whenever I dare go to the postoffice I see piles of letters, postcards, boxes and even bigger piles of paper (receipts). Whenever I go to the bank to deposit some money (I am able to save some, yes!), I see piles of banknotes and even bigger piles of paper (receipts). Whenever I dare look behind the counter in any shop around the campus, I see piles of many things and again even bigger piles of paper (receipts). Whenever I dare to think about it, it seems to me that China loves writing receipts and using paper and covering the country under a layer of what seems to me, useless paperwork. Today I realised that Holland can be worse!

Just 2 weeks ago I received a letter from the ‘Belasingdienst’, telling me my accountant would receive all my papers and all would be taken care of. Today, when I picked up the mail from my waiban’s office, I received a package containing 1 booklet of at least 30 pages to be filled out where necessary (as far as I could see, I only had to fill out about 3 pages) and another booklet of even more pages to be used as a guideline. Now, can somebody tell me what is going on here? 2 Complete opposite messages and 1 of which is a complete waste of paper. Oh, and by the way, could I make sure it will be returned before the 1st of April. Aaaaaaargh, mail takes almost 3 weeks to get from Yulin to Uithoorn and then it needs to be forwarded. What are they thinking????

So, this is just a short message to show you that even in our sophisticated little country, named Holland, things can be as bad as or can be even worse than they are China. But I am sure you already knew….

So long and take care!

| Post in Latest news |