My dad of course like a lot of Asian parents wanted me to be an engineer or doctor and never could understand why I would want to be a lawyer. And then when I first said I wanted to run for office he thought that was absolutely insane.

My dad is a doctor a professor of psychiatry and my mum is a psychotherapist.

Although my dad was a doctor we weren't necessarily a super-artsy family. We were just a classic traditional family who got to take a lot of piano lessons and became a bunch of musicians.

Dad and mom would have preferred that I be a doctor a lawyer a scientist or a great humanitarian.

The moment my doctor told me I went silent. My mum and dad were with me then we all went to pieces. I was saying No I've got my flight to Sydney in two hours. I'm getting on a plane.

My dad's a doctor and when I was 8 I went to one of his medical conferences where they were demonstrating laser surgery on a chicken. I was so mad that a chicken had to die I never ate meat again.

My mother raised three children on her own and my dad was a doctor working 16 hours a day.

And as a child I was filled with passionate admiration for acts of civic courage I had seen performed by an elderly military doctor who was a friend of my family.

A smartphone links patients' bodies and doctors' computers which in turn are connected to the Internet which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual's internal organs in the hands of every hacker online scammer and digital vandal on Earth.

Smartphones can relay patients' data to hospital computers in a continuous stream. Doctors can alter treatment regimens remotely instead of making patients come in for a visit.