Like A Beanstalk

I’ve talked a lot about the trouble I’ve had with my sleep. I usually can’t fall asleep until the early hours of the morning, and depending on what time I have to be up the next day, I’m often running on very little sleep at all. I don’t know exactly what time I finally drifted off this morning, but I do know I had to be up for my volunteer calls by 7:30am. I was so tired.

All day, I’ve been replaying the calls in my head, hoping I didn’t fall asleep mid-conversation. I don’t think I did, but I remember one lady saying, “Gee, you sound…” and then me jumping in with something that probably cut her off without meaning to. I was fighting to stay awake, trying to sound normal, and I’m dreading tomorrow’s calls because I would be devastated if someone said I’d done something wrong.

Usually I’m pretty functional in a sleep-deprived state. I’ve spent years operating on very little sleep, working and studying and I honestly think it aged me. My sleep is terrible, but I’ve learned how to manage it in a way. I can roughly predict when I’ll finally crash, and if I have the luxury of eight hours, I’ll rearrange my schedule around it. If I don’t have that luxury, that’s when things get messy.

But this morning was the first time I’ve ever felt genuinely worried that my sleep habits made me unprofessional. And that scares me a little.

I had a pretty quiet day, and then tonight I went to the cinema for a fundraiser for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. The film was Gaza: Doctors Under Attack — the director’s cut. Below you can see the table with all the raffle prizes on it.

We were actually sitting relatively close to the screen. I usually prefer to sit further up the back, but I was with a couple of ladies who liked sitting there, so I went along with it. 

While we were waiting for the movie to start, the ladies I was with started talking about how they believe the moon landing was faked. I’m really not into conspiracy theories like that, and I don’t judge someone for believing them, but it makes me wonder how they can honestly think there is this massive conspiracy and that they’re the ones with inside knowledge.

In some ways, I can see how someone might think it was faked. The video footage does look like a movie set. It reminds me of when we were in Antarctica and all the ice seemed man-made. But if you think about it, six missions have landed on the Moon. Do they not believe in any of them?

There’s a special kind of arrogance in denying fact. During Apollo 11, 14, and 15, astronauts installed retroreflectors — special mirrors designed to bounce laser beams straight back to their source. To this day, observatories fire lasers at those mirrors and the beam comes right back.

That’s how we measure the distance to the Moon with centimetre-level precision. I was going to mention these retroreflectors to the ladies tonight. It’s something I know about because my astronomer friend Mariah talks about them all the time whenever moon-landing deniers come up.

Here’s something else that really annoys me: we haven’t just left retroreflectors on the Moon. We’ve left lunar landers, scientific instruments, bits of hardware, and a whole lot of rubbish. All of that is still up there, which makes it even harder to pretend our visits were faked.

But it also makes me wonder: who do we think we are? Who are we to essentially litter the Moon? We had no right to leave those things there. The people who deny the moon landing might have a special kind of arrogance, but in many ways you can’t really blame them, because humanity itself is arrogant and audacious. It’s as if we haven’t fucked up our own planet enough — now we’re starting on the Moon.

Because the movie tonight was a fundraiser, there were a few formalities. Below you can see a gentleman from Health Workers 4 Palestine introducing the movie.

The documentary focused on the impact the war has had on the health care system in Gaza. It followed the stories of several doctors who had been directly targeted. I thought it was an extremely well-made film. It was directed by Karim Shah, Ramita Navai, and Ben de Pear, with reporting by Emmy award-winning journalist Ramita Navai.

Hospitals — and the medical staff inside them — are protected under International Law. Yet Israel has shown total disregard for this, with most of Gaza’s 36 operating hospitals either attacked or destroyed. As I watched, I kept trying to understand the logic Israel uses to justify attacking hospitals, doctors, nurses, and paramedics. How do you justify such a blatant defiance of international law?

Israel claimed that some of the doctors were Hamas operatives, or were treating Hamas, or that hospitals were holding hostages. Apparently, that was enough for the IDF to detain medical staff. But the detentions shown in the documentary were not just inhumane — they were barbaric and deliberately humiliating.

The film showed Palestinian men — including respected doctors and highly skilled surgeons — stripped down to their underwear and blindfolded. Some of the doctors described the torture they endured inside Israeli prisons: beatings, pliers used to rip out beards and fingernails, and even a toilet brush shoved into a doctor’s mouth to mock brushing his teeth. The documentary also mentioned cases of gang rape in the prisons.

Some of these doctors are genuine heroes. Some had lost their entire families — their wives, their children — yet they still chose to keep practising medicine inside dangerous, barely functioning hospitals because the people of Gaza needed them. Others refused to evacuate when things became extremely dangerous, choosing to stay with their patients even when hospitals were under siege by the IDF.

In the name of transparency, the journalist Ramita Navai did point out that a number of the doctors had publicly declared support for Hamas — one even praising the October 7 attacks. I don’t know exactly how I feel about that. I think Hamas are very bad people. If I didn’t think that strongly before, I do now after seeing reports of their public executions of so-called dissenters during the alleged ceasefire.

So yes, Hamas are bad — but the reality is that for some Palestinians, including doctors, there aren’t many options when it comes to political allegiance. I don’t blame them entirely. Hamas hasn’t been good to the Palestinian people, but the occupier, Israel, has been far worse.

After the movie, a Q&A had been arranged with Dr Waleed Alkhazrajy. You can see him answering questions below.

The doctor actually sounds like a pretty extraordinary person. He came to Australia as a refugee on a boat from Iraq. When he first arrived, he picked apples in Western Australia, and eventually moved to Adelaide where he sat the medical exam required to practise here. Apparently, he earned the second-highest score in the entire country. He now works as a consultant anaesthetist, and the reason he was interviewed tonight is because he recently spent two weeks in Gaza.

He was very emotional as he spoke. He had to stop and choke back tears more than once, sharing some of the absolutely heart-wrenching stories he witnessed in just a fortnight. The one that affected him the most wasn’t even bloody or graphic — it was simply soul-destroying. He told us about a young boy whose entire family was killed in front of him during an attack. The boy woke up alive, learned that everyone he loved was gone, and said he wished he had died too. That story brought the doctor to tears.

The movie and the Q&A were very heavy, but I’m glad I went. It only solidified my belief that Israel acts with impunity — with no regard for international law. But the thing is, they’re able to do it because the international community continues to let them get away with it.

Tonight was about the doctors and medicos in Israel, and my focus was razor sharp on this issue. I also noticed Peter Coombe was at the event — he must have an interest in Gaza, because he performed at a rally I attended a little while ago. But something a little bit weird happened to me tonight. As I walked in, I saw my friend Liam working at the cinema. I knew he worked there in some sort of managerial role, but I hadn’t put the two together until I saw him standing there.

I know Liam through a society I’m a member of, and I used to be on the council doing communications. We worked quite closely together. I was really happy to see him, and we had a little chat before I let him get on with the job. Then I saw him sort of bossing people around a bit and I liked it. He has a partner and there is absolutely no way he would be interested in me, but for a split second I morphed into that desperate, man-hungry, pre-menopausal woman I’ve become and I thought to myself — wouldn’t that be nice.

I would never, ever, ever think he would be interested in me, but he came up to me again and I have to say he was very touchy-feely and, I will say, a little amorous. After the movie he was waiting at the door, and I went up to him and gave him a big hug and we talked a little more, and then he told me to message him. I know he wouldn’t have meant anything by it, but I’m beginning to think I am subconsciously sending out vibes that I want a man as a matter of priority.

It reminds me of this article I once read about an anthropologist who got a job as a stripper to study it. She said she got more tips the week before her period, probably when she was ovulating. Maybe I have some biological signal going out there to men like Roger and Liam saying — over here!! But maybe I’m just delusional.

The reality is I have unconventional looks, but even if someone could get past that, I’m actually very fat. I’m fat because of my flaw. The fatness happened and I haven’t been able to drop it, but I am currently in the process of passionately trying to change this. I know some men like fat women, but they wouldn’t like me because I look shocking. But even Amanda Vanstone has a husband — and he is the total opposite to her, in my view he’s like a beanstalk.

Below you can see what I looked like before my flaw. I look different now.