door 13 (@ tedx sydney)

I am more or less inspired by five things.  My friends and family.  People who write well.  The others who don’t.  Actual puppy breath.  Not my hair.  And all of those free on-line TED talks.

Last month TEDx came to Sydney.  I had to go.  I tried to get a ticket but somehow ended up with a filled-out application to volunteer instead.

I nailed it.  

My day started early that Saturday.  Too early, I thought, until I got to the Sydney Opera House and saw the sunrise.  Oh my breathtaking.  If you’ve never seen morning come up over the Opera House, put on your pajamas and look at the picture below.  Look at it!

I am not this pretty at 6 am.

It went uphill from here.

All the food on this day was grown or bred or made by locals specifically for the event.  Produce, meats, butter was whipped up on the spot.  Actual bees were set up in the neighboring park to make honey for the conference.  The food was donated on Thursday and from this edible pile of randomness, the chefs made the most amazing, fresh, healthy meals for Saturday.

I ate a plum the size of a water balloon and the innards of this box.  

#delicious

My job that day was Door 13 of the concert hall.  Behind my door was where you wanted to sit. The sweet seats.  But you only got through Door 13 if this was the door number listed on your ticket for that particular session.  I assume it was to prevent melees and the stampeding of me. Welcome to Checkpoint Charlie.  Only Door 13 people came in Door 13.  Some disoriented Door 14 people were not happy.  All Door 13 people were the opposite.

But I was probably happiest of all the peoples because once the doors were closed, it was an inside job. I got to stay with my Door 13 people.

With the sweet seats.

And with these five badasses.

Joost Bakker.  A fifth-generation tulip farmer intent on saving the world with recycled pee, minimal waste and growing food everywhere.    

David Sinclair.  An Aussie biologist from MIT and Harvard who wants me and you to stop getting old.  But really me.  

Tom Thum.  A beatbox genius who definitely spat on his microphone.  

Ron McCallum.  Adorable, interesting, blind.  Standing ovation by everyone.  

But the unexpected prize of the day and the reason for this post:  the irreverent Kate Miller-Heidke.  A classically trained singer from Brisbane who became an alternative pop artist.  Her voice is magic.  Whether she's doing a cover of The Real Slim Shady or original material.  "The Tiger Inside Will Eat The Child" will make you eat your child.

And my very very very favorite song of Kate's: "Sarah." About a friend of a friend who went missing at a music festival.  It is hauntingly beautiful and a perfect follow up to her lady part story.

my nude scene

There is no such thing as an annual physical in Australia. You go to the doctor and ask for it, and they look at you like you’re some overindulgent yahoo who wants her bones counted. Here, and in New Zealand, you are considered well until you come forward with a cough, lump, or plague to prove you’re not.

Or. You’re of that age and you get a letter.

I recently got a letter stating it was time for my health check. It opened with how as we get older, many of us become more vulnerable to disease and it ended with me. Their records showed I was within the “age rage” for a health check. A perfectly placed typo. Old me was furious. I didn't like being of that age. But if you add up all the cakes, I was. So I made an appointment. My bones couldn't wait to be counted.

Now I’ve been to my doctor here before for a sore this and a swollen that. The specifics of this and that or my incessant need to Google it all is not important. What is important is my doctor and I have a relationship. One based on respect, honesty, and both of us being fully dressed. 

That relationship changed on health check day. 

Things you should know at this point:

• No nurses at doctor’s offices here.
• None of the doctors I have encountered wear a white coat or drape a stethoscope around their necks like they do in the movies or America. 
• Most family doctors’ offices are in old repurposed buildings. Craftsman houses. Terrace apartments. Mine screams low-performing brothel. 

Things I didn't know at any point:

• NO PAPER OR FABRIC GOWNS?!

I was called into my doctor’s room by my doctor. Her office is old, wooden, creaky. There is no sink even though I (and all those girls before me) wished there was. An examining table is pushed up against one wall. A desk occupies the opposite one. In between the two, so much space you could twirl.

What happens next is what nightmares are made of. You know the ones where you show up to an exam, your in-laws’ house, your work four jobs ago and find you have no clothes on. This is that guy but with more gravity.      

Standing in the so much space, I twirl to face my doctor. In her floral dress. With no doctor’s coat. Or stethoscope. Or medical anything anywhere on her person. And this is when I realize that my doctor, as competent as she is, doesn’t look like a doctor. She looks like she could be anything. And this exchange we’re about to have? Well. It could be between me and just about anyone.

Doctor:  Okay, so I’m going to need you to take your clothes off.

Me:  Okay.

Anyone:  Down to your underwear.

Me:  Right. 

I wait for some sort of gown to be offered to me and privacy.

The bookstore clerk offers me nothing and waits.

I awkwardly take off my top. 

The accountant awkwardly watches me fold my top.

I hope a curtain will soon be pulled. But I notice there is no curtain for the off duty security guard to pull. 

I unbutton my denim.

The librarian doesn’t.

Confused but compliant, I pull my jeans down, all the way down, and step out of them. I try not to trip over my shoe as I trip over my shoe.  

The bus driver looks away to check her bus schedule as I discover I’M WEARING THE WRONG UNDERWEAR!

I am mortified.     

The florist looks up and sees my inappropriate thong. 

I apologize for my panty selection.

Astronaut:  No worries. 

Oh but I am worried. Because I am nearly naked! Just standing there. 

The CEO of a Fortune 500 company, also just standing there, reminds me:  Bra too.

Bra too? I think out loud with words.

The farmer nods.

I begrudgingly take off my bra. And, yep, there are my boobs. I am now super naked.  

Your sister:  Let’s get started. 

I cannot believe we’re not done. 

The very not naked human resources manager walks over to the examining table and pats the piece of hygienic paper covering it.

I want to Project Runway that piece of hygienic paper into a robe but it is too small to turn into anything besides a thong, which would be inappropriate and redundant, so instead I sit on it. 

Not Google:  Lie down so I can count your bones.

End scene.

I wish I could say the above word jumble was a one-time dealie, but it wasn't. It happened again weeks later at my mammogram and again at my mole check with varying degrees of me being nude in front of people who weren't nude and had no gown cover up drawer. But that's okay. With experience comes confidence. I now take off my bra before I'm even asked. And I can rattle off my chicken sausage pasta recipe with my pants off. Which is good because I am of that age.  

Tomorrow I go to the ophthalmologist.  

our tom cruise to tasmania (part two)

The Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania is interesting and fun and weird and shocking and unexpected and irreverent and special and very much like the HBO show "Girls."  You don't think you want to see Lena Dunham in a see-thru yellow mesh top with no bra on but then you do and there's something appealing about it all.  Her.  The show.  Even that top.

MONA's just like that.

Located in Hobart, MONA is Australia's largest private museum owned by David Walsh.  His bio says that his mother named him Glen at birth but then found God and changed his name to David.  He has a dog named Bruce and a cat named Christ.  And he is, he says, a prick. Glen/David came up with some sort of mathematical gambling equation that he applied to poker and ponies and made millions.  With this money and that backstory and no allegiance to God, he built a museum.

It is free for locals and $20 for me.

But.  Beware, socially conservative toddlers.  It's not for everyone or children or my dad, as it does dabble in the disgusting and inappropriate, but it is so incredibly amazing and not many things are these days.

Lena Dunham should definitely put a bra on and go.

http://www.mona.net.au/

You can take a bus or ferry there.
Take the ferry.   

The three-level, cliff-face museum, carved out of the very sandstone it sits in, starts here.

An artist buying stories on the street for a dollar bought this one.

A dark room with one light.
And the blurry, hard-to-articulate/impossible-to-photograph, mesmerizing aura that surrounded it.

This is a scalp.  And that is a bullet hole. 

I loved this painting.

Of tiny little things that I couldn't or wouldn't stop looking at.

Choreographed rain.

Erect bubbles in rubbish bins that moved when you blew on them but just stood there when you didn't.

The human digestion system in machine form.
Food scraps go in, number twos come out.

A socioeconomic statement with backs.

The ones that I thought were the happy rich backs were actually the sad poor ones.

God's mistress drives a really nice car.

The entrance and tennis court and view.

One of the cottages on the grounds you can rent if your name is Brett.
It comes with a peacock, Brett.

Go.