Or, more properly, one dog and one kid.

Clearly the dog is used to this and the baby’s delighted, so it’s probably not at all dangerous. The last shot when the baby puts his little hand on the dog’s jaw is my favorite. It’s so trusting. At the same time, the confidence makes it look dominant, which makes me think that the child already knows how to handle dogs, specially such gentle, cuddly ones. Adorable as the whole thing is though, I can’t help getting a little knot in my stomach at the fact that the dog’s jaw is about the same width as the child.

So while waiting for the cake to get done, I read Jerry Oltion’s 50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work over at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website. Some great ideas there, specially if you are as pathologically distractable as I am. I love that he’s collected all these because, while some people can use just the one strategy throughout their lives, he tends to subvert any given strategy after a while and so needs to switch tactics to get results. I do that. I do that more often than I admit. Subvert, that is. It’s not that I don’t like writing or find it tedious or anything – writing (and dancing) give me more joy than anything else. It’s just getting started, which requires sifting through ideas to find the one or two or three most worth developing. And as soon as I get started on one, another pops up to distract me, so I follow it up for a while, until another one pops up, and so on. So I’ve got tons of beginnings and endings (I like endings), but not a whole lot to go in the middle.

I also find goal-oriented writing much more easy than just writing for the hell of it. I’m happy with deadlines. Stressed, freaked, overcaffeinated, sleepless, and generally unpleasant to be around, but happy. But artificial goals don’t fool me. For a writer, I’m quite resistant to the whole suspension of disbelief thing. (Made me a frustrating kid too, because I wouldn’t believe that drains gurgled because there were tigers trapped in them. Drain small, tiger big. Does not compute.) So the thing to do is to hornswaggle another person into writing with you. That way, you have the stress of not letting the other person down to keep you at the keyboard. I’ve only had one writing ‘date’ so far, but with another one this Friday it’s actually working. Or I am, rather. Well, except for the cake baking and the blogging, but I have excuses for that.

Not so hot on the man-hater qualifier. You’re lovely, fellas, but really, everything isn’t about you, you know? And can’t men hate men? And…

…it’s a blogthing, Nadia. Let it go.

You Are 100% Feminist

You are a total feminist. This doesn’t mean you’re a man hater (in fact, you may be a man).You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It’s a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.

Are You a Feminist?

One of the best things about Facebook has been the groups set up by and for Third Culture Kids (TCKs) and people who’ve attended international schools around the world. Recently, the term ‘global nomad’ seems to be gaining more currency. It’s more appealing because it doesn’t force a reference to one’s childhood. TCKs grow up too, in our own way, and we’re hardly unique in having our childhood experiences resonate through our lives.

Anyway, some of the groups have ‘you know you’re a TCK when….’ lists to which everyone appends their own experiences. I’ve collected my favorites here. 

You know you’re a TCK when:

- “Where are you from?” has more than one reasonable answer.
- You flew before you could walk.
- You speak two languages, but can’t spell in either.
- You feel odd being in the ethnic majority.
- You have three passports.
- You have a passport but no driver’s license.
- Your life story uses the phrase “Then we moved to…” three (or four, or five…) times.
- You wince when people mispronounce foreign words.
- You don’t know whether to write the date as day/month/year, month/day/year, or some variation thereof.
- The best word for something is the word you learned first, regardless of the language.
- You think VISA is a document that’s stamped in your passport, not a plastic card you carry in your wallet.
- You own personal appliances with 3 types of plugs, know the difference between 110 and 220 volts, 50 and 60 cycle current, and realize that a trasnsformer isn’t always enough to make your appliances work.
- You fried a number of appliances during the learning process.
- Half of your phone calls are unintelligible to those around you.
- You consider a city 500 miles away “very close.”
- You get homesick reading National Geographic.
- Your minor is a foreign language you already speak.
- When asked a question in a certain language, you’ve absentmindedly respond in a different one.
- You understand all sorts of accents, having a mix of them yourself.
- You’ve gotten out of school because of monsoons, bomb threats, and/or popular demonstrations.
- You speak with authority on the subject of airline travel.
- You have frequent flyer accounts on multiple airlines.
- You constantly want to use said frequent flyer accounts to travel to new places.
- When you have a favorite seat on the plane
- You know how to pack.
- You have the urge to move to a new country every couple of years.
- The thought of sending your (hypothetical) kids to public school scares you, while the thought of letting them fly alone doesn’t at all.
- You think that high school reunions are all but impossible.
- You have friends from 29 different countries.
- You sort your friends by continent.
- You have a time zone map next to your telephone.
- You realize what a small world it is, after all.
- You go into culture shock upon returning to your “home” country. 
- When discussing global issues, you’re all sides of an argument by yourself.
-When you practically jump someone when you find out they’re also a TCK.
-You switch between words like “jumper” and “sweater” or “airplane” and “aeroplane”, depending on location and company.
-You swear in a myriad of languages.
-Sleep is for the weak. Or layovers.
-Itchy feet has nothing to do with the health of your feet.
- When you’ve memorized the airplane safety precautions by heart
-You’ve said goodbye forever to more people already than most “normal” people will in their whole lives.
- The idea of retiring in one place freaks you out
- When you understand languages you’ve never heard before just from the speaker’s body language
- When ‘going to see a friend’ generally means travelling halfway across the world.
-You have no idea where you’ll be in the next 5 years. And the thought doesn’t scare you at all. Rather, the thought of actually having long term plans scares you.
-You don’t know whether to greet people with a nod, handshake, one-arm hug, proper hug, one kiss, two kisses, or three kisses and usually end up looking grouchy or invasive.
-The smell of international terminals and airplanes makes you feel homesick.
-When you have your diplomatic or official passport replaced with a civilian one at 21.
-You had to take TOEFL even though English is your first language.
-You’re not sure what your ‘native’ language is because your mom speaks X, your dad speaks Y, and you’ve lived in a whole other country where you’ve learned Z.
-When the most mindboggling thing about college is that you will spend four years in the same school.
- You pretty much know that if a friend doesn’t have a cell phone/ screen name you’ll probably never talk to them again.
- Your first kiss spoke a language you no longer remember.
-Your best friend lives a thousand miles away, but it’s not *that* far.
- You think in different languages
-You use countries to identify defining moments in your life.
-You’ve never been to the country you were born in.
- You automatically know what time it is across the world
- You have an inbuilt calculator when it comes to exchange rates
- You know the strength of the dollar/pound/euro as well as those of the respective countries you and your spread out family are residing in at all times
- You don’t really own any furniture because you don’t know when you’ll move next.
- Every single person you’ve had a relationship with was from a different country.
- You can recognize all sorts of languages even if you can’t speak a damn word of any of them.
- On any particular day, you could list where each piece of your attire came from (the ring is from chile, these leggins from spain, that shirt from the usa, and the sweater from costa rica, etc.).
-”Settling down” is a phrase that has no place in your vocabulary.
- You can’t remember the first time you flew.
- People look at you weird because your skin color/hair color/dress doesn’t fit the stereotype they have of wherever you happen to be from.
- You don’t realize how much of a snob you are about everything because you’ve had better
- You speak multiple languages at home
- You can speak confidently on world politics
- You keep up with news about every country you’ve lived in
- You own a passport, or you own more than one passport, or you own a foreign passport.
- You know what TCK means.
- You know what expat means.
- Your yearbook had more than one language in it!
- You keep having to explain to everyone why you speak English, even though you grew up elsewhere.
- You are tired of people asking – “Where IS that?”
- You speak with authority on the quality of airline travel.
- You get homesick for a place that isn’t ‘home’.
- You have no idea where home is anyway.
- You feel like a local in 3 or more places, you can give directions to foreigners in 3 or more big cities, and you know what the hottest clubs are in Paris, Stocklholm, and Mombasa.
- Finding high school friends on facebook almost makes you cry!
- You can recognize at least four countries by their country code (81 = japan etc.
- You’re not American, but people conclude you are because of the transatlantic accent
- The more you drink, the more American your accent sounds
- You’ve been forced to stay with some random family for a cultural exchange 2000 km from home
- More than half your network on Facebook is on the other side of the world and you’ll most probably never see them for years, yet these are some of the friends closest to your heart
- You live in a parallel world to the locals around you
- You’re so used to misunderstanding people that you automatically pretend to understand when you really don’t understand
- You never feel like a tourist, but you also never feel particularly “at home”, whatever that means, or where ever that is
- Most of your relationships have ended because of international relocation and distance
- One of your pets has an international bloodline, often coming directly from a country you have never visited
- Not only do you have friends from all over the world, but when you do talk about your international friends, you ALWAYS say “so my friend <NAME>” followed by “you know, the one from <COUNTRY>”.

I have an ex I’m very fond of. We got together back in high school in Kathmandu and broke up some time after it, but more because the relationship just died a natural death and there really wasn’t any point continuing it. No dramas, no scenes; just a see you later, take care of yourself and hey, keep in touch. I was about 19 back then. Over the years, we’ve seen each other through various relationships, mistakes, breakups, fallings out, disasters and ultimately each of our ‘holy shit I think this is it’ moments.

I have and have had similar relationships with what I now realize is a fairly large number of men. To be clear, I never dated any of them, but I absolutely adore them because they’re all some combination of intelligent, creative, funny, sweet, talented, silly, downright weird (on occasion), gorgeous (in the ‘I have my shit together’ sort of way), great to talk to, supportive, generous, well-read, able to listen, interested in things I find interesting (animals, cars, motorbikes, books, music, politics, history, physics, whatever), well-travelled, kind, honest, inventive, original and so on. In short, they’re people. Real, functioning, thinking human beings around whom I feel challenged, switched on, comfortable, safe and happy.

I’m all for the whole imprinting on one’s parents thing because my relationship with them is basically a repeat and expansion of my relationship with my father (and arguably all of that formed a blueprint for my relationship with Ameel). It’s always a bit silly to say ‘if not for X, such and such wouldn’t have happened’ becuause X was there and whatever it is did happen and you have no real way of knowing whether your statement is true. But, coming from a relatively ‘conservative’ nation (for lack of a better word – I wasn’t born in Pakistan and spent more time outside the country than in it, so I feel that, if anything my passport makes me from Pakistan-the-idea rather than Pakistan-the-place), I lucked out. I’d always thought so, because bad fathers are an unfortunately world-wide phenomenon, but I realized just how much when I went back to Lahore for college and discovered the utter monsters that are allowed to raise children there. Some had attitudes similar to those of my father (after all, he’s from there too), but what the apparent majority of men(with the collusion of their wives and families) put their children – particularly their daughters – through was appalling.

With some notable exceptions, the men my own age that I met there were just as appalling. (So, too, again with some exceptions, were the women, so ultimately I guess they pretty much deserved each other.)  I made an effort. I really did. But seriously, if a man’s fool enough to pull the macho crap and try to tell me what to do…

But that’s just it. They really, honestly don’t seem to know any better. The few that tried it with me probably still don’t know where they went wrong (or what hit them), and I doubt that they really have any need to seeing as how they’re probably now with women who do the whole subservient little woman thing anyway. And everyone involved is probably quite happy with things too, which I suppose is fine. Just because it’s not my thing doesn’t make it automatically’ bad’.

But what does make it bad is when this crap spills over into my life. The web makes it possible for me to reconnect with all the wonderful people I’ve had to leave behind because our lives went in different directions. I’ve found people I haven’t seen or been in touch with for ten years or more through things like Facebook and Orkut and have, thanks to them, actually managed to stay in touch with people. They’re good applications, specially for us wanderers, because they bring all our different worlds into one easy to manage space. It’s more of a home than any real place I can think of because everyone from evereywhere is there. Virtually.

Along with all of that, unfortunately, comes the aforementioned crap. Because my network or nationality or name or friends or some combination of these usually place me within reach of the ‘desi’ presence on the web, I am occasionally pestered by men seeking to be ‘friends’. Now in desi-speak, ‘friends’ (or ‘frraands’ as it is generally pronounced) does not mean friends who chat once in a while, perhaps even over coffee or drinks, or friends who know each other a bit better and are interested in each other’s lives, generally helpful and kind, and mostly truthful except perhaps when concerning an unfortunate haircut, etc. A ‘friend’ request from a desi man to a woman he does not know means simply that he thinks she’s hot and that he has a chance of getting into her pants (virtually or otherwise) for some reason, be it that he thinks she’s ‘western(ized)’ and therefore a ‘slut’ (read: a woman who has clapped eyes on a man not of her family oh, maybe once?), stupid enough to fall for his ‘friend’ routine, or so starved for attention that she will immediately fall to her knees in gratitude. Need I mention that these men are quite often also delusional?

Unfortunately, they obviously have some measure of success because they just don’t go away.

When faced with a ‘no thanks’, they first begin to pepper you with messages asking you why not. When you don’t respond, they beg for reasons why their oh so manly manliness hasn’t had it’s ‘normal’ effect (excuse me while I snort). When they still get nothing ( I don’t believe in feeding the animals at a zoo either) they go and steal pictures they find of you on the web, put them in their own photo albums on said networking site, usually with some kind of inane caption, and then leave you a link to it. Now, this generally does get a lot of (desi) girls to contact them, if only to ask them to remove the picture because they’re usually compromising (sometimes the mere fact that a perfectly innocent picture is in the possession of a ‘stranger’ is enough to get them into a world of trouble). This generally gives the harasser a ‘way in’: he’s achieved his objective of getting a reaction and can now blackmail the girls into further contact, whether on the ‘net or, more dangerously, in real life.

The problem that these shits run into with me is that I’m not too fond of being harassed or blackmailed and I’m not one to run from a fight if provoked. I’m also not liable to stop till I’ve ground them into a pulp. This is why I generally stay away from physical fights. I don’t need the lawsuits or the possible jailtime, thank you. But in the virtual world, you can kick someone’s ass from here to next Tuesday quite nicely, and all without getting your hands too dirty.

So when this particular idiot took a picture of me off this site and did the usual (on Orkut, this was), he didn’t get the expected hysterical messages. Instead, Ameel and I

1. put all the messages I had from him up on my Orkut page,
2. messaged my friends about his harassment, pointing out the stupidity of ‘stealing’ a picture that is already in the public domain (under a creative commons copyright),
3. asked them to check out his nauseatingly pedestrian profile, his visible harassment of other women on Orkut (scrapbooks are publicly viewable), his messages to me, and then
4. invited them to come express their opinion of him on my page.

It was hilarious to see him scampering to delete his trail and remove most of the pictures from his album, all the while leaving idiotic messages in his defense. The last was the usual ‘I just wanted what was best for you and promise me you’ll be happy always and I would have been a true and devoted friend’. When that got nothing but jeers (Thanks, mate, but I already have all the dogs I want.), we were all told that this person had had a terrible accident and was in intensive care and that we should all be ashamed of ourselves for being such meanies. When that didn’t get a reaction, we received another message saying that he had died and asking if we were happy now. From his account. A ‘friend’ of his logged in for him you see, because obviously the first thing you do when a friend is dying in hospital is log into his Orkut account and inform all the people there who have expressed overt dislike for him that someone they don’t give two shits about has had a completely random accident, most likely caused by the stupidity he so blatantly exhibited online. Naturally.

If any such thing happened at all. Since I’ve had similar crap pulled on me before (I know. But I didn’t fall for it then either.) I knew not to take it seriously. Sure enough, a while later a person with the same name starts commenting on this blog. Nothing untoward was said, so I didn’t react. Then someone, again using the same name, sends me a friend request on Facebook. Now, I like Facebook because you can ignore requests and keep these people out of your circle and therefore unable to harass you (other than by private message, and that’s a bit of a bother to do. You have to, like, articulate and stuff.)

All was well until lo, one day I get a friend request from a Nadia Niaz whose profile has a picture of me (again from my website, and this time from Ameel’s photo page) on it. Another friend had also received a request and was wondering if it was some kook. So I reported it. Obviously. And so did a number of other people. Facebook removed the account. Bye bye, troll.

Or so we thought. Now there’s a Nadia Niaz on Orkut whose profile picture is the same picture this loser first took off my site (and which I was using on Facebook for a while). Oh and get this, this Nadia is also 28, is single, and is only interested in women because she has had ‘bad experiences’ with men in the past. I nearly fell off my chair laughing. I think I’m meant to be offended or something. I mean, my goodness, a lesbian. How very original. Hands up the women who’ve been called dykes by men they weren’t interested in? I think it’s even funnier because, really, I have no issues being called a lesbian. I think women are lovely. The person I ended up committing to happens to have been born male, but it really wouldn’t have made much of a difference to me personally either way. So umm, no, sexuality’s not really an issue kiddo.

What I would find fascinating, if I could be bothered to investigate this phenomenon more, is why these people don’t give up. It’s not just on the ‘net that this happens. While in Pakistan, pretty much the moment I got a cell phone was when I started getting random phone calls from people who wanted to ‘get to know’ me. How do these people have the time? Are they really all at that loose an end? No wonder the country’s going to shit. And really, how pathetic and frustrated do you have to be to do this ad nauseam? Eventually, I wouldn’t bother hanging up. I’d put the moron on hold and let him talk. (They always want to talk – one of the made up this very entertaining story about why I wouldn’t speak. He probably wouldn’t have figured out he was on speakerphone addressing not just me but my husband and a few friends as well if someone in the background hadn’t burst out laughing.)

It comes across as cruel at times, I realize. But I’ve tried being nice, and I’ve tried reason, neither of which I think they’re entitled to. I’ve also tried ignoring them. And yet he/they seem to think their lives are some shitty bollywood movie where the hero (them, of course) must pursue the heroine (whatever woman they’re fixated on) even though she claims to not be interested in him because, of course, she either is secretly mad for him and is simply too dishonest to admit it, or is just too stupid to realize how great a catch he is and so must be repeatedly dazzled with his…er….well…nothing much really…but…it’s just….well…he’s male dammit and he wants her so how dare the impudent female say no? That’s not what happens in the movies! And movies, specially big bollywood productions, are absolutely realistic. Oh yes they are!

Morons.

Anyway, I’ve reported the creep again. Let’s see how we go. Orkut is apparently less stringent about such things, but then most of my friends have migrated to Facebook already, because it affords one more, obviously much needed, privacy from such fuckwits.

The Telegraph recently carried a story about levitation and how it could be used to help nanotechnologists keep ”tiny objects from sticking to each other.” It can do this by reversing the Casimir force, which causes things to be drawn together in the first place. In theory, this could be used to levitate whole humans and, more importantly, move large objects.

The Casimir force is a consequence of quantum mechanics, the theory that describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles that is not only the most successful theory of physics but also the most baffling.

The force is due to neither electrical charge or gravity, for example, but the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together, also explaining a “dry glue” effect that enables a gecko to walk across a ceiling.

Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attact.

For more on the Casimir effect and the Casimir force, see The Casimir Effect: A Force from Nothing. For more on this story, see Perfect Lens Could Reverse Casimir Effect.

This is from from the Bad Astronomy Blog and was taken by the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Jupiter is possibly my favorite planet. I was quite fond of Pluto too, but we know how that went…

Not unlike a lot of other women my age, I didn’t change my last name when I got married. There was never any question of my doing so, as far as Ameel and I were concerned. It only came up once when I referred to someone we knew changing her name and my observing how odd a concept that was. He agreed. End of discussion.

Of course we were aware that some people would have trouble with that, if only because it’s not what they’re used to. The funny thing is who has trouble with it. My father doesn’t. Ameel’s entire family doesn’t. My mother and grandmother, on the other hand, can’t get their heads around it. It’s been over three years and yesterday my mother calls asking what name she should use when mailing me something. Specifically, “Mrs what?”. (Not because she doesn’t know Ameel’s name but because somewhere the message that his last name is not the default has apparently sunk in.)

Because it isn’t so much which name I use, apparently, but the ambiguity that not using that particular loathsome title causes that bothers them. At this point, they just want me to tack a ‘Mrs’ onto the front of my name, regardless of what it is, or how bizarre it sounds.

I just don’t get it. I really don’t. And apparently neither do they. But what I do expect is for the people who actually know me to respect my “choice”, specially when that choice does not involve any change. I could understand if they had trouble remembering a new name or title for a bit, because that happens, but I can’t understand having trouble remembering, well, nothing.

Which is why I kick up such a fuss. I told my mother that any mail addressed to a Mrs anything would be sent back. I have refused to attend events to which I’ve received invitations addressed to a ‘Mrs’. I have made friends resend/re-address invitations to weddings and such when they’ve made that mistake. After all, that’s not my legal name, so I conclude that the mail or invite or whatever is not for me.

If I’m harder on the people I’m closest to, it’s because I expect them to know my name. Random strangers address me as Mrs Khan and Ameel as Mr Niaz when they know we’re married but only know one of our names. I don’t have a problem with that. I’ll correct them when and if necessary but they don’t matter to me and I don’t to them, so why go off on a rant when they’re just trying to be personable/get a job done? I’m not trying to prove a point or make a huge statement. All I’m saying is that I am who I have always been.

But that isn’t ok. The way they read it, being married confers upon women the honor of being someone’s property and we should therefore all proudly declare our status as chattel. To not do so is to give great offense to our husbands and their families and society in general and, in doing so, dishonor our own families. The less medieval see it as simply being disloyal or somehow indicating that we don’t love our husbands as we should because we’re not willing to take on the shiny pink extra-special role of wifey-pooh.

What a load of bullshit.

I’m not even going to bother addressing the whole honor thing. But I can’t get my head around the idea that I should have to ‘prove’ to anybody how I feel about my husband. As far as I’m concerned, that’s between me and him (and maybe the people on public transport that we nauseate every now and then). And why does being married make a difference? Are unmarried couples in long-term relationships automatically less committed? If so, what if one of them took their partner’s last name? Would that make people feel better about their relationship? Isn’t how they feel about each other the important thing? And isn’t all of this very much NOT anybody else’s business?

I feel about my husband exactly as I did before we got married. A ring and a piece of paper, whether or not accompanied by a name-change, in the final analysis, have nothing whatsoever to do with how you feel about someone or how committed you are to the relationship – they certainly didn’t change my committment. They just mean that, on top of being goofy about each other, we can share health cover, live together legally in countries that require cohabitants to be married,  and travel together more easily. And that we got to invite lots of of people for a huge, fun party three and a half years ago. We didn’t stop being the people we were because of any of that and I don’t think either of us should pretend that we did. If anything, I think we’re most ourselves when we’re together and that is altogether too precious for me to taint or burden with such stuff and nonsense as ‘tradition’ or ‘appearances’ or whatever the trend-du-jour happens to be.

It. Was. Awesome.

And surprisingly heavy.

We were about six people away from the stage.

And right next to the speakers.

They played the entire 3-hour show.

And they played every song I was hoping to hear.

Three encores. (as one person standing next to me observed, they could’ve just taken a break and done a two-part show.)

You can get some of the NOISE of it on the main page of their site, although that’s from a 2005 festival. You can see some pictures of yesterday’s show here.

They started with ‘Fascination Street’, which I recognized immediately. This is remarkable only because I never recognize it when it comes on normally.

They did a fantastic version of ‘Walk’ three or four songs in. Danced my ass off, I did.

Their second encore was ‘Friday I’m In Love’, ‘Just Like Heaven’, and ’Close to Me’.

Their third included ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ (Sin, I SO thought of you) and ‘Why Can’t I Be You’, although I wonder if I’m getting mixed up…sounds like that last one was part of the second encore…??

And they did lots else that’s all jumbled up in my head at the moment. My ears still hurt a little from when the music got all screechy at one (long, long) point. But it’s so worth it. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. If anyone’s still wondering whether they should go to whichever concert is nearest them, DO. I have no idea what the local goth forum people were on about. The show was energetic and fun and I think each person around me was singing along at some point. They’re in New Zealand next, and then the US.

Now. On to my gripe. I don’t want to sound like little miss manners here but oh my god some people are so bloody rude. If there’s a crowd and you don’t have room to wave your arms about without banging into someone, here’s an idea: don’t. This is not a difficult concept. People who get there late and then try to push their way past you piss me off too, as do the people who let them. If I get there first, I’m not fucking moving. And I have pointy elbows. Contact with lots of people I’ll deal with for the show, even having to brush up against everyone around me, much as it makes my skin crawl, I’ll put up with. But pushing? Hell no. I’m quite proud of myself for not letting this obnoxious group of girls through. (“Oh I’m sorry, did I jab you in the head with my elbow? Funny, I could have sworn there wasn’t anyone one inch from me a moment ago.” Rinse and repeat as often as necessary.) I suppose I did learn a few things in Lahore after all. But it’s annoying to have to use it because it means I’m paying attention to something other than the music that I am there for.

But, on a positive note, the black-clad of Melbourne were out in force. We had an enitre tramful of goths and goth-alikes smiling vaguely at each other on the way back. Lovely.

Tonight we go see the Cure! People have been reserving their enthusiasm, but reports from the Adelaide and Sydney concerts are that they’re actually putting on a great show. That’s a relief since I’ve never seen them live before. Here’s hoping the energy continues.

The setlist from the Adelaide show was

Open, Fascination Street, alt.end, The Blood, A Night Like This, The Walk, The End of the World, Lovesong, Pictures of You, Lullaby, Never Enough, The Figurehead, From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, The Baby Screams, Push, Inbetween Days, Friday I’m In Love, Just Like Heaven, If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, The Kiss, Us Or Them, Wrong Number, One Hundred Years, End

1st Encore: Hot Hot Hot, Let’s Go To Bed, Close To Me, Why Can’t I Be You?
2nd Encore: Three Imaginary Boys, Fire In Cairo, Boys Don’t Cry, Jumping Someone Else’s Train, Grinding Halt, 10:15 Saturday Night, Killing An Arab

Given that it’s been a few days (and they’re not Pearl Jam), I’m hoping they’ll do a lot of the same again.