conference

I make my way out of the hotel on a bright Sydney Monday, down several ramps and through a car park into the Harbourside Shopping Centre. Thence its two escalators, not side by side, and along a concourse before turning left along another concourse out into a vast open space in front of the Sydney Conference Centre. There are no straight lines in Sydney, no easy way anywhere.

Crowds of delegates mill—what else can a crowd do other than mill or surge? Registration is hassle-free, my name found under my first-name initial. A young bloke burdens me with a nylon satchel of promotional material. It’ll go in the first bin where no one can see my sacrilege.

Day one of the conference is hosted by a ditzy blond Channel Ten newsreader. She’s edited a book and no doubt wouldn’t think of herself as anything less than a major intellect. I see no signs of any intellect there of any size during the day.

The first two speakers are major intellects, indeed. Neurologists and brain scientists doing heavy duty brain work on neuroplasticity. Speaker One is the foremost researcher and thinker on phantom limbs. He starts and ends his presentation mid-sentence, like amputated limbs.

Speaker Two could be Mr Burns and we his audience of Homers, dull instruments before his craning neck, bulging cranium and hand gestures like something from a Kabuki play. Guy Three, another American, is more like a televangelist, gesticulating, arms wide in supplication. He tells us our brains get better with age, but I forget the rest of what he says.

The conference format is crap—one large dark room, hundreds of ‘delegates’, and endless speeches. No variety. No practising what is being preached.

After lunch there’s a discussion moderated by an ABC science show presenter with the first two speakers of the day. I confess that I understood not much of it. It is high-brow stuff and way beyond my neuroplasticity or neurogenesis.

Then we hear from the Young Australian of the Year, though I don’t know which year. He’s a one-armed guitar-playing Indian Scot from Tasmania who had a fearful car accident. He gets everyone on their feet singing that we are blessed, then blessed some more. Writing this I find it reads like shit but we’re all on our feet and tears are plentiful.

Other sessions—a woman doctor staving off the dementia that runs in her family, a nun who wants to change our minds about dying, a bloke examining our game plans for successful careers—go ahead without me. There’s a limit to how much time a bloke can spend in a dark room, awake. My limit is limited.   

I’ll try to take more in tomorrow.

Rock on.