Today, I went shopping at the Sunshine’s Myer Megamart. One would thought, with a name such as Myer Megamart, it is only sensible to assume that it is part of the Coles Myer’s Corporation. But, hell no, not according to the employees I encountered today.

We had received a discount voucher from Coles Myer and were at the counter, attempting to pay for our purchases. The employee took a look at our discount voucher and said, “Oh, we are not part of the Myer group and so, can’t honour this!”. My husband, being himself, asked, “Aren’t you wearing a Myer T-shirt?” The response was “I am going to continue wearing this T-shirt until I am given a new one, but no, we are their competitor now.”

I felt like responding to that with “Lady, you sound like there is some tension here with Myer’s …”. I have heard that Coles Myer planned to rid themselves of the Myer Megamart stores. But from the response I received from the store, one feels that the employees felt hard done by Myer and extremely unhappy about their treatment.

Well, no need to take it out on the customers, because there will be no returning customers at this rate!

In the end, we drove to Myer Highpoint to make our purchases. I know, crazy, but it was a matter of feeling good about our purchases.

I was watching the game between the Melbourne Victory and Queensland Roar game on television. Is it just me or do you find the game today extremely violent? I just saw the second player being sent off!

Throughout the game, all I saw was a lot of tackles, fouls and lots of toilette paper! I watched half the game behind my hands, wincing at every painful tackles …what a painful game!

As Corinna pointed out, it was quite difficult falling asleep last night.

A very unexpected warm blast, which is very unusual for this time of year. It does get hot at times, but it doesn’t stay that consistantly hot at this time of year. It’s only early November. We’ve just passed Melbourne Cup.

Usually in Melbourne we’re blessed with weather that likes to change all the time (yeah, you know, that 4 Seasons in one day thing that Melbourne’s famous for!). Unfortunately, that change didn’t come about til about 4am in the form of rain and thunder which lasted for the next few hours of the morning.

The thunder got quite loud at one point, and yet it wasn’t enough to wake me up fully. I guess the effects of finding it hard to sleep affects you most when you’re trying to get up, out of bed and ready to tackle the new day.

If this is the start of things to come, then I say we’re going to have a bunch of walking zombies right across Melbourne. If not, then perhaps we’ll have a bunch of Melburnians with empty pockets after paying for the hefty electricity bills!
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It was soo …… hot! I suppose summer is already here and here to stay too. It was still sweltering at 2 in the morning. How are we going to survive when we get to the middle of summer?!? I am going to consider sleeping with an ice pack!

Dr Reina Michaelson holds a PhD in psychology. For her community work in combatting child sexual abuse she was awarded a Young Victorian of the Year Award in 1996 and a Young Australian of the Year Award in 1997 . Her Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program won the Australian Institute of Criminology’s Violence Prevention Award in 1998 and the National Child Abuse Prevention Award for Innovation from the Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services in 2001. In the same year, her doctoral research was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Medal for Excellence in Research by Victoria University. Clearly she’s an expert in her field and a credible source.

Yet her story is so outrageous, were its source slightly less credible, one would be tempted to dismiss it as a paranoid fantasy. She claims that a powerful network of child sexual abuse operates in Victoria (and nationally), and has done for many years. This network allegedly includes high profile individuals, including icons of australian television, and even more seriously members of the Victoria Police. She further alleges that those public bodies responsible for the investigation of these claims, the Victoria Police (including its Ethical Standards Division) and the Ombudsman have been negligent in those investigations; at best incompetent, but more likely corrupt.
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