Getting It

Baring all/some. For the cause

Sorry, folks, but somebody had to do it. 

All this talk of Angelina and her implants has the womens mags in a tizz, resulting in a late afternoon request for an interview with me that fast turned into a photo session, and before I knew it, the removal of my top half. 

Yup, I have bared the top of my shoulders and less than you'd see in a bikini top for a weekly mag.

Seriously. You'll see less of me on the news-stands next Sunday than you would in a swimsuit most weekdays at Next Gen gym or in my Spin class at the Y when I lean a little too far over the handlebars. It's that tasteful.

But still, I don't think I'll sleep tonight. There's something not very comfortable about purposefully removing your clothing and exposing even a few inches of flesh, to 105,000 magazine readers.  

Some of them are going to be my clients. Others will be the people I sit on a board with. Oh, God, and then there's that committee. The bank manager. My lawyer. The guy at the Dairy. My kids' teachers. The people who work for me. The lady who checks me in in the Koru lounge for my regular weekly commute, come Monday. The people in my spin class. My friend K, who would rather pull all her fingernails out than make a spectacle of herself in the pages of a magazine. Relatives who never really understood why I did 'it' (the mastectomies) in the first place. The barista where get my coffee. 

I can't help but wonder  what they'll think. And whether they'll think I'm stark raving mad for getting...well...sort of starkers. In a seemly sort of a way. 

But I didn't do it for them. I did it for the somebody, somewhere, who needs to learn to live with different breasts from the ones she was born with, but can't imagine life on the other side. Who some day might pick up that magazine and see that getting rid of those two globs of fat parked on her chest, isn't the end of the world. Who might, as a result, save her own life.

So I'm going to try and focus on what that woman thinks. And nothing else. 

PS the breasts in this shot aren't actually mine - mine (the few inches you'll see of them) are embargoed until the mag publishes on Sunday.

I'll be the one at the checkout with a paper bag over my face.

Doing unto others, the email way

I went to the most FABULOUS Yoga class in Auckland a couple of weeks ago. 

It was everything I'd been looking for, for ages. Think Goldilocks and beds. Not to hard, not too soft, not too long, not to whoo-whoo...and on the list goes. I was so excited about having a yoga 'home' again, after years away from regularly hitting the mat. 

So the  headline 'don't miss this', at the top of their weekly email, sparked my interest this morning. I don't know what I thought was coming, but given it came from an ethically-run yoga studio that promoted themselves as something of a haven and escape from the pressures of the outside commercial craziness,I sort of assumed it was something that would benefit me. 

Oh, EQC, I'm sorry...

You guys really came to the party in sorting our claim out and getting it off to the insurer, after months and hundreds of hours of anguish and phone calls. And for that, we will be eternally grateful. 

But I couldn't not share what just popped up on my Facebook feed...

Redefining the face of patient communications

 I love health communications.

As a profession, we're really getting things right in terms of taking complex ideas and making them simpler, telling stories and creating materials that touch hearts as well as minds, and using real people, and staff as champions. We've come a huge way in terms of creating meaninful employer brands, values programmes effective recruitment and retention campaigns, and brands that really resonate in this consumer marketplace.

Great work is being done to help prepare the public for the changes that need to come, as aging, shrinking health workforces collide with a population that's also getting older. And in need 

But there's a way to go towards a future I got a glimpse of this week, when me and my ear discovered zocdoc.com.

Talk about living your values

Oh my God, you won't believe what just arrived in my alternate office (the hotel lobby).

A goody bag loaded with all things Kiwi - a copy of the Women's Weekly, a Metro magazine, yesterday's NZ Herald (hard copy! Such a treat), a Next magazine, and the piece de resistence, a loaf of Vogel's bread. 

It was hand delivered by Kapa, the Air NZ Concierge who had done such an awesome job, along with his concierge colleagues, of getting the kids home on their own when I wasn't able to fly last week. He knew I was still stuck here and offered to bring a paper. 

My office this week

 

 

Welcome to this week's office - the new Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf  in the Manhattan Beach Marketplace, serving the most kiwi-like coffee that it is possible to find in the US of A. Go the Coffee Bean. 

The lost art of telling it like it is - and the dark side of the consumer revolution

The subjects of two stories yesterday had me cheering for both their maturity and sense of responsibility and their good sense in getting their site of the story out, and owning their stuff.

So what's the solution for EQC?

Getting interviewed this morning by Newstalk ZB this morning while still in my pyjamas and half asleep gave me two bleary epiphanies.

First off, I am an idiot and I know better. Secondly, the phrase 'physician, health thyself' exists for a reason. 

Get real, EQC

I write this post at the risk of our already stagnant EQC claim being shoved even further to the bottom of the pile, but I just can't let this this headline pass without some sort of comment. 

 There are not enough words for how ridiculous it is for EQC to be 'shaking up' its 'spin' (and in the case of this organisation, that's exactly what it is), when the service itself is so badly flawed. 

Is it a bird? Is it plane? No, it's a temporary Koru lounge

Top marks, Air NZ, for brand consistency in the face of temporary relocation of premises at Queenstown airport.
Us Cantabs have high standards for such things and are not easy to impress - practically everything jn our lives is temporarily located in a creative and interesting way these days.