D-Lovely

Events in the life of us continue to progress  much as they always have, some good, some bad.  The first attempt to appeal the parking ticket was a failure.  We swiftly received a very curt letter stating that, the small print on the back of the ticket indicates the ticket must be displayed on the dashboard or it will be invalid.  So although we had a ticket displayed, because it was on the parcel shelf instead of the dashboard, it counts for nothing.  I sent back an equally curt e-mail to express my disdain for their reply and the ridiculousness of the situation, however I do not in anyway now believe they will revoke the ticket, so we are left with the decision of whether we take it to court or just pay the fine.  Either way the Bayside council is now my least favorite council in Melbourne and I am still considering e-mailing one of the consumer rights programs to see what they would have to say about it.  It is just the kind of story I can see channel 7's TodayTonight running.

Brighton Beach: Not somewhere we will be heading back to anytime soon.

My hours at the pharmacy have picked up recently, I did over 40 hours last week, which is not bad for a part time job.  On top of that I even had the excitement of catching someone trying to palm off a forged prescription for Oxycodone.  It was a very good forgery, computer generated and perfect in every detail except the handwriting requirements hadn't been met.  A phone call to the GP surgery the prescription was supposedly from however revealed the doctor who 'wrote' the prescription had been on annual leave for over a week.  Despite us informing the con artist that we had found him out he still insisted he had literally just been to see that doctor and come straight to the pharmacy, a story which didn't really ring true (even without knowing the doctor wasn't even in the country) as his surgery was in a rural practice over 2 hours drive from Epping.  There is something very empowering about catching someone in the act of trying to pass off a forged prescription, but this was let down a little by the police who failed to follow up the enquiry.

The problem with Barnadi's overdraft has now been resolved, or is at least in the process of resolution thanks to a friend in the UK who has agreed to pay it off for us, then we can pay him back later.  A lot simpler in the long run than trying to get some sense out of anyone on the Natwest phone line.

Barnadi had his first medical check up since arriving in Australia, since he hit 40 he has tried to get a full check up at least once every couple of years.  One year he had a slightly high cholesterol reading and he has worried about it ever since, even though further tests were normal.  His cholesterol was normal this time too, but the balance between HDL and LDL was a little skewed.  The big shock was that he is officially vitamin D deficient and is now taking supplements to boost his levels.  In a country which gets so much sunlight it seems odd to be deficient in vitamin D which requires energy from the sunlight to form in the skin, it hasn't even been that cold and dark a winter.  In reality vitamin D deficiency is quite common in Australia, mainly due to an obsessive overuse of sunscreen.  In Barnadi's case it is due to the natural pigment in the skin as he rarely remembers to wear sunscreen.