American date or: Marital crisis

First of all, it's important to note the following: I live in Australia, and in Australia, like in most of the world, the date format is day - month - year.
My husband had asked me this week how should he change the format of the date and then get the day out of the data.
Simple, I said, use the TEXT function to change the format, and use the day () function on the date.
"I get #value! error" he winged, and I thought I needed to help him, only to find out that he was right (see below use of functions and results):
The formulas:

Excel date formulas

Excel date results

I thought maybe to use Google Spreadsheet, but unfortunately and surprisingly enough, they are not better:

Formulas are below:

Google docs formulas

Google Docs values

Has google docs lost their mind????

Goggle Docs is my favourite word processing application. Simple: I use it for all of my list of changes in the database. Whatever I need to do, I just type it in. I make sure nothing personal/confidential is in there, and I've found that this is the best way to log changes or to write notes to myself that I can access from home or from work.
Today I tried to create a new document for an article that I would like to write, and when I pressed "create new" there was only "from template". Well, I would like to use my beloved "empty document". Oops, you can't do that. Why? Why? Why? Will I have to give up Docs? Will I write my article with pen and paper? Will I be able to read my handwriting afterwords? And why can't I "give feedback"? That's very unlike the expected behavior from a Giant, is it?
I will let you know the answers, whenever I have them...