Fun in Chicago

Hello Possums. I’m having a ball in Chicago. This is due to a variety of factors:

1. Its a beautiful city, and even the fact that it has been snowing has been special. I walked the streets of Chicago early yesterday morning and I felt like I was in a snow globe, you know – those things you shake and you watch the ’snow’ settle ever-so-gently back onto the scene. Quite magic! Also the food and the nightlife, especially the live bands, are excellent. I haven’t yet experienced the shopping, but that is on the agenda over the next couple of days. I also intend to visit the Art Museum and Century Park, as recommended by Anne Marie, the guide on the Architectural Tour I did yesterday.

2. I’m with a fairly large group of Australians and one of them is super organised. He has printed a schedule of breakfast and dinner spots for the whole week. This is important because there are around 13,000 people at this conference and you could easily get lost amongst the masses. In fact I’m up early this morning, because I have a 7am breakfast with these guys at the Billy Goat Tavern – opposite the Chicargo Tribune building, and purportedly where the journalists go for breaks all the time. (Also I’m having trouble sleeping in the new time zone, so I keep waking up before the alarm at ridiculous hours like 4am and such).

3. This is probably the most important reason, and one I want to stress – women are brilliant company!

Last night I went to a jazz club with my colleagues from Melbourne. The club had been booked exclusively for a reception by a couple of Canadian universities. Our collaboration with these universities under a special program called U21 ensured our invitation. We were all given two drinks tickets upon entering, and I enquired as to the type of drink these entitled us to order from the bar. I was expecting the reply to be, oh wine or beer and soft drinks, but the response was much vaguer. I therefore decided to try my luck at ordering a cocktail, went up to the bar with the ticket, a Cosmopolitan please and promptly received one, much to the squealing surprise of my Melbourne friends. What is that? they all enquired, laughed at my audacity, then promptly went to the bar to get one for themselves!

A great way to start a party is to give everyone one of these drinks, or a champagne cocktail.

The band was a collection of people from the Canadian universities. I laughed when I was told it was the dean on the drums.

After settling in for awhile at a stool at the bar, I noticed a group of Canadian women dancing discretely behind the action, so I went up to them, hi, hi, Bindi from Melbourne, and you are… why aren’t you guys dancing on the dance floor, come on! So I joined them dancing in front of the band for the whole bracket of music. Other women joined us and the group of women dancing really started to let loose.

Why is it so often only the women who dance? I put that question to one of the more flamboyant Canadians on the floor.

Oh, men don’t know how to move their pelvises. She said, moving hers in illustration of her point, and then continued with, I vowed never to ever date a Canadian man ever again, precicely for that reason! They don’t know how to move their pelvises.

We both laughed. Thanks for the tip I said, looking around the room at the men standing around and playing in the band who were mostly Canadians.

Then another woman joined us on the floor and I introduced myself to her. She smiled cheekily at me and gestured to the large pole to the edge of the dance floor. The pole was there for structural engineering reasons, ie to hold up the roof. There were a few such poles through the space of the venue. What can you do with that? she asked me. I backed up to the pole and just shrugged. Um, it doesn’t seem to do anything for me, I said, I think you’ll have to demonstrate.

You won’t believe what she did next. Here is a woman, a tenured academic, in her late forties or early fifties doing sexy pole dancing moves in a public space, fully visible to all the people sitting at the tables who were watching us and the band. And, Possums, she was good!

We do actually have pole dancing classes in Australia, I said after complimenting her with surprised admiration, but I’ve never been to one. Do you do classes?

No, she said, I just practice on my own at home.

I laughed.

You should see what I can do with a feather boa, she said!