And you are…?

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.

Oh my ears

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, tonight

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.  

Goths in books

Goth is easy enough to dis, what with the spooky stuff it seems to entail, but studies of late seem show it in a much more positive light, funny as that might sound. I stumbled across this review in the Chronicle of Higher Education while browsing through Arts and Letters Daily. Professor Mikita Brottman reviews Contemporary Gothic, by Catherine Spooner (Reaktion Books), and Goth: Undead Subculture, edited by Lauren M.E. Goodlad and Michael Bibby (Duke University Press) and considers some of the reasons why goth, unlike other 'youth' cultures, refuses to die. (Yes, I am aware of how many jokes and puns are just waiting to be made there.) Some snippets:
Goth obviously emerged from punk, but punk didn't last. The same is true of most subcultures: Hippies are old hat; skinheads have come and gone; grunge is yesterday's news. Why does goth alone remain undead?
...
According to Spooner's book, the consistent allure of goth lies in the way it achieves a balance between different kinds of contradictions — "the grotesque and incorporeal, authentic self-expression and campiness, mass popularity and cult appeal, comfort and outrage." Bibby and Goodlad put it differently, pointing out that goth has a "complex relation to subculture," or, in the words of one contributor, the self-proclaimed Modern Goth Rebecca Schraffenberger, "there are as many ways of being goth as there are goths out there." In other words, goth can be anything you want it to be, from the theme of tonight's party to an entire way of life.
...
There are goth clubs and pubs, goth movies (anything by David Lynch, Tim Burton, or Ed Wood seems to fit the bill), goth jewelry and fashion, goth-friendly home décor, even goth lingerie. Within its own confines, too, goth embraces contradictions; it contains multitudes. Hair can be long or short, flat or spiky; shoes can be heavy boots or light slippers with pointy toes. And while individual goths can be totally asexual or polymorphously perverse, goth itself breeds peacefully with other subcultures, producing such independent offspring as gothabilly, doom metal, gothic Lolita, cybergoth, and goth 'n' roll.
...
...Anyone can be a goth; you don't need to run in a pack (goths are traditionally loners). And, as teenage subcultures go, it's unusually quiet and friendly. Goths are generally hygienic; their piercings are clean and discreet; they don't stick dirty safety pins through their noses or ride around on motorbikes spitting and swearing.

Giant steps are what you take

...when you have tickets to see the Police in concert. Oh yes. Six months from now, but holy @#$%^&**&^%$# I'm going to actually see the actual Police in actual concert. Fourteen-year-old-me would have killed for this. Current me is pretty over the moon too. We forked out for the mid-range tickets - nosebleed seats when you want to see the drummer just won't work.

This is turning out pretty awesome, really. We get to Oz and Pearl Jam turn up, then the Cure decide to pop back in after 5 years away, and then the Police not only get back together but come down to Melbourne before the year is out. Add the Transformers movie to the mix and I'm reliving 1983-1997, only on fast-forward and at full volume. Which doesn't work on video (remember those?) I know, but does in real life. I think. Whatever. I'm happy.

Now to come up with a viable PhD proposal...

  

Here we go again

So they're at it again. The "Islamists" at the red/yellow/pink mosque in Islamabad. The government in its infinite wisdom reopened it for Friday prayers and promptly had a riot on their hands. The images on BBC World were just awful, but confirm that, in situations like this, while their reporting is fairly even-handed, they opt for the most bogeymen-like images they can get. Over and over, they showed footage of this lunatic with a beard down to his stomach punching the air so hard he kept falling over. Whatever the reporter was saying, whatever other innocuous images they showed, this is the one that'll stick because it's the one closest to what the terms 'fundamentalist', 'Islamist', 'terrorist' all conjure up.

It had the required effect on us too, scaring us into calling our families in Islamabad. But when my brother-in-law finally got through to us, it was just to say that he'd seen the news reports on TV, figured we'd have freaked out, and wanted us not to worry - that what looked like the entire city going to hell was a couple of blocks in one corner and that life was going on as usual in the rest of the city. That was a relief, but I figured I should still call my brother who lives only a few kilometres from the Lal Masjid. Turns out he didn't know there had been a bombing at all. He knew about the Friday prayers being suspended and the government-appointed Maulvi being kicked out, and had heard an explosion, but that was it. Why?

His cable was out.

That's not to say the situation itself isn't awful because it doesn't affect my family or my neighborhood or the majority of the population of the city, but it does put the media caterwauling in perspective. I can understand the reporters on the scene being shaken though - the BBC person was only a few yards from the explosion and other local reporters have been unable to say much except how much blood they can see and how many pieces of those closest to the bomb are scattered about - and this is only going to make the tension between the government and the fundos worse. But it's still just a symptom. The bigger problem is still unaddressed and will probably continue to be so.

Despite the media crap, Pakistan is still on the fence about a lot of things. Yes, there's a funamentalist government in the NWFP (the province that, joy and happiness, borders Afghanistan), but in five years, they have been unable to implement any meaningful legislation. Yes, they've turned off TVs in public places. Big whoop. The area was conservative to begin with.

And speaking of TV, because of Musharraf, the media is now more free than it has ever been; so much so that the goverment cannot prevent it from turning on Mush now. That is fantastic not just because of the free media song-and-dance but because it means that at least some part of society isn't entirely dependent on the will of one person. That's a first in the history of the country.

But despite the fact that I'd vote for Mush over the other clowns vying for power if it came down to that, he's on his way out. He has to be - he's messed up too badly to not go. And that'll coincide nicely with Bush's exit, so that the popular view that the army leadership gets its orders from the US (and is therefore on a quest to exterminate all Muslims - a view that the Lal Masjid situation will go a long way towards perpetuating) will not taint the next administration. Convenient, no? But then again there's that execrable bill being proposed in the US that will give financial aid to Pakistan based on its performance in the 'war against terror'. (Dance, monkey, dance!) If it goes through, our next collective of charlatans may have some fast talking to do. Given that one is barely literate and the other unable to speak a language the population of the country can understand, that should be very interesting indeed.

A review

Some time before the summer between eighth and ninth grade, I started to volunteer at my junior high school library. I shelved books, checked books out and in, sorted index cards, and did all the other things you do to help keep a library running. In exchange, I got first dibs on all the books that were discarded at the end of the year. I think my haul that summer was about 120 books. Most were tattered and dog-eared and quite a few fell apart before the year was out, but what an amazing find. I'd been a good little overachiever and was already familiar with all the 'serious' authors my anglophile upbringing required I know, so nobody objected to my bringing home this 'young adult' stuff. I was free to read all I wanted. And boy did I read. Science fiction, fantasy, biography, horror, suspense, mysteries, mythology, poetry, and books that were simply about kids growing up. I've forgotten all but a few of the authors' names, but I always imagined them to be magical beings, almost. Adults who could somehow bridge the gap between their grow-up selves and the kids they used to be and who could use this amazing ability to tell other kids trying to muddle through this whole growing up thing that we'd make it to the other side ok. Most adults I knew at the time couldn't do that. Most I know now still can't. Like me, they got to the other side and just kept going.


And I might have kept on going had I not met a few people through my MA who still have that magic about them. I've spoken of Penni Russon before - she's written the amazing Undine trilogy, Undine, Breathe and Drift and has other projects underway - but this semester I also met Jennifer Cook. Soon after meeting her, and having just come off the fantastic ride that Penni's books had taken me on the previous year, I decided that I absolutely had to read her books as well. So, the day I handed in my thesis, I headed over to the library and picked up Ariadne: The Maiden and the Minotaur.


Now the thing about this book is that it's not like anything I've ever read. And I'll bet it's not like anything you've ever read either. Having been 'into' mythology aeons ago, I knew the story of the Minotaur and of Ariadne and Theseus and I was curious to see what Jen had done with it. I was expecting a strong female voice. I was expecting something written for smart thirteen- to sixteen-year-olds. I was expecting something exciting and eventually empowering. And I have to say Jen delivered on all of these things. But the thing about Jen, speaking as someone who has the priviledge of being able to call her 'Jen', is that she does everything in a way that is absolutely, unmistakeably, uncompromisingly her own. You sit up and notice when you meet her. And you sure as hell sit up and notice when you read her.


Ariadne begins with a girl, sixteen and dumped. Yes, it's thousands of years ago and she's on a stony island in the middle of the Aegean Sea, but that's not the point. The point is she's angry and from the get-go you know you don't want to get in her way. Her heart may be broken, but she isn't and from the story, you get the feeling she won't be, no matter what the gods throw at her. She'll get bruised and battered - she already has after all - but she's the sort who cusses her head off at fate and keeps going. She may be the daughter of a king and the granddaughter of gods, but our Ari is no 'princess'. Yes, as the blurb on the back and the prologue will tell you, she's had it a bit rough the last few days and does need "a good lie down", but you know, you just know, that she's going to get up again and come out swinging.


The book consists of the story of the events that led Ariadne to this desolate island and is written in Ariadne's voice. No hemming and hawing for this princess though. She calls a spade a spade and often much worse, and I have to say that the book deserves prizes for the inventiveness of the cussing alone. It is hilarious and so real that you forget at times that you're actually in "Mythical Greece".


And that's the beauty of it. Behind the hilarity and the fantastically indignant voice that Jen weilds so effortlessly is the incredibly meticulous and ultimately convincing retelling - re-weaving, really - of a story as old as Western culture. It is fascinating to watch as the King and Queen of Crete, for example, are shown not just in all their terrible mythical glory but in their role as parents. Jen explores the relationship that Pasiphae and Minos have with their daughter and, for the first time, you see them as real people with real problems and worries and duties and obligations and fears and jealousies and all the rest of it. You see how they (and by extension, we) set traps for themselves and paint themselves into corners. But while you're reading all this, somehow, at the same time, Jen makes sure you are aware of the politics at work, of the cultural landscape of the age.


Ultimately, yes, this is a book about a girl finding her way into womanhood and working out her relationship with her mother, with her legacy, with other women, and with what it means to be a woman in any age. That's plenty already, but Ariadne manages to be more than that as well. By the time you read the last page you've travelled so far and back that it's hard to believe the book is actually only 200 pages long. There's the incredible tale of the Minotaur and the story of Theseus's battle with the beast, there's the story of Ariadne's sister Phaedra and their relationship, there's the story of how Ariadne ends up on the island. And then there's the 'real' version of all these events, as told by an Ariadne who will brook no romanticised nonsense in the telling of her tale. And I can't think of a better, more magical person to tell it than Jen Cook.

I’m DONE!

I handed in my thesis a few minutes ago and I want to collapse. Or sleep. Sleep would be good too. Instead of being all elated and relieved, I'm feeling quite bereft. I want it back. I want to do it over. Not because what I handed in, despite its pretentious title, is bad, but because I just want to go again. Orientation for semester 2 has just started, which is aggravating the the whole nostalgia thing. I want to be at that end of it again. But that's what the PhD's for, right? Right. Here's hoping!

Eight bits and pieces

It is amazing how Penni always manages to distract me at just the right moment. This time its 8 things about yours truly. Yes, I know. Fascinating stuff, isn't it? But first, the rules:

  • each player lists 8 facts about themselves 

  • the rules of the game appear before the facts do

  • the player ends by tagging 8 people, which means listing their names and then going to their blogs to tell them that they've been tagged, then going back and commenting on their lists.



  1. Nothing in the world melts my heart faster than a dog. Big, little, puppy, grown up, recognizable breed, mutt, whatever. I go from a relatively articulate post-grad to a jibbering, cooing, baby-talking fool at the sight of a dog, regardless of where I am when I see it. People on the tram have been known to move away. 

  2. I hate wearing socks inside the house because they feel funny in my slippers and on the carpet. And they feel funny because I never had to wear any when my dog was alive - he had a habit of sitting under my chair or as close to me as possible, which made it easy for me to slip my feet under him when they got cold. German Shepherds beat socks any day.

  3. Some people's singing voices make the bones in my forearms itch. Their speaking voices are fine though.

  4. I remember the layout of every house I have ever lived in, except the one in Colombo because we left when I was only about 16 months old.

  5. I can understand more Turkish than my parents realize.

  6. I'm scared I won't be able to learn all the languages I want to learn.

  7. I'm afraid of medication and won't even take pain pills unless absolutely necessary.

  8. I love people who challenge gender/sexual identity because it just goes to show how artificial and socially constructed our concept of it is in the first place.


On to tagging. As it happens, I don't think I know enough people...Eunice and Ameel for starters. Miriam--or Nome, rather since he does the blogging. Roy, if he gets around to blogging. Sin and Kyla too, because I like them.

So THAT’s why I love cars!

I'm almost done with my thesis. So almost-done, in fact, that I watched the Transformers movie yesterday. I think there may be spoilers in the following post, although there's really nothing new about the storyline.

Wow. I was kind of expecting it to suck. I really was. But while there were loose threads galore and some of the acting was a bit overdone, I thought (but then how else are you supposed react to giant robots from outer space?), it really was ol' Optimus and the gang. Sure he wasn't a MAC truck like in the cartoons (all the cars are General Motors models) and had an unnecessarily bright paint job, but the voice was him and it gave me goosebumps just like it used to back when I was five years old.

I love this movie. Not because it's a particularly great story since we've heard it all before, but because, in a way, it was like going to see your favorite band play. You're not going there to get to know their music but because you already know it and them and now you want to see them up close, doing what they do. I'll admit I teared up a bit when the Autobots appeared and when Bumble Bee first transformed and when Jazz died and when Ironhide wanted to kill that stupid chihuahua and when Bumble Bee kept fighting and when they did the whole motorcade sequence on the way to the big battle - every couple of minutes, in short. The humans were ok too, although you really shouldn't put John Turturro in a scene with nobodies because he steals it completely. You know the other actors are there, and that you're supposed to be on their side, but he's such a presence that it's hard to remember all that. The man could do a movie entirely by himself and I'll bet nobody would notice that there weren't any other actors there with him.

I'll probably go back to see it a few times since I want to see them again ('them' being the Autobots, although I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Starscream as well. I seem to remember him helping out the 'bots at some point so he's a borderline baddie.). The action sequences are really well done and I love that the noise they made when they transformed in the cartoon is still there, even if it's been updated a bit. Yep, this was totally a rollercoaster ride down memory lane, but with more ups than downs, really.

Everbody go ‘wheeeee!’ again

Because I have, in my grubby little paws, two tickets to go see the Cure in August. I wasn't expecting the line outside the shop, and it was bloody cold but hey, people have endured worse to get tickets so I figure I lucked out. I almost didn't get floor tickets but some poor sods lost their hold on a pair and the nice ticket-seller-man pounced before anyone else could. Good reflexes, he has.

Now I just need to find a place to put them that's safe enough for them to not get lost but not so obscure that I forget where I put them. It's a problem I have. For now though I'll just leave them out and glance at them lovingly from time to time.

Can you tell I'm grinning the biggest, goofiest grin?

Bye, bye, unconscious

Lo! 'Tis done! My last assignment has been handed in and I am free to dip my aching fingertips in some warm, salty water. Seriously, they're getting all funny looking from all the typing I've been doing. Or maybe I'm just getting old. Which I am, really. Next week, in fact, I'll be a whole year older. Yay me.

But for now, I am still last year's me and I have handed in my assignment and I feel good. I don't know how I managed to turn that damn short story into a play, but I did and I justified it too. Seriously though, no more Freudian-Jungian-anythingian analysis for me any more. It's exhausting and ultimately just pisses me off, but I shall wax indignant on that at a later date. Right now I need to sleep.

The realist interviewed

Oh this is exciting. Dawn interviewed my baby brother author Ilhan Niaz for its weekly 'Books and Authors'  supplement. Read the interview here.


Ilhan's description of the book:


“The first chapters of the book deal with the subcontinent and describe the major empires that ruled the region. I started with the Harappan civilisation, moving on to the Guptas, Mauryas and Mughal period; this is what we call ‘macro history’. The following chapters go on to explain India and Pakistan and their common culture of power that has evolved in the 60 years of independence. The culture of the ruling elite is essentially the same — subsequently any consequent inadequacies in both states are also basically the same.�


When the interviewer suggests that it might be the heat that predisposes the people of the subcontinent to emotion and egotism (the comparison being, as always, with the 'cool' British), Ilhan responds:


“We can observe that since 1066 AD, there has been no invasion of England, whereas the region we are now sitting in has endured 70 major invasions between 1000 AD and 1800 AD. It could be this atmosphere of heightened insecurity and instability that contributes in making a nation more spiritually and emotionally charged.�


And of course this post wouldn't be complete without a plug for An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent. I'm more than halfway through it and have put it on hold only because I have deadlines I can't extend. It's a great read.

Because I have other things to do

I'm going to voluteer to be tagged by Penni. So answers to the follwing questions:

1. Four of my favourite jobs
2. Four of my favourite local places
3. Four of my favourite foods
4. Four of my favourite international places
5. Four names of people I am tagging

Favourite jobs

  • Teaching/tutoring, particularly the creative writing tutoring I got to do this semester. I love that moment when you see the light flick on in a student's eyes. 

  • Editing - I spent five years as a technical editor at an energy and environment consultancy firm and can't say I didn't enjoy it. It helped that people were willing to let me resort to violence on occasion. I also learnt how easy it is to collapse into hysterical giggles when you're five hours from an 8am deadline.

  • Content writing, when you're working with sensible people who actually give you the information you need to do your job. The opposite has also happened and that can turn it into a nightmare.

  • Cat sitting. Getting paid to take care of a cuddly, purry cat? Yes please. Poop-scooping is not fun though and is probably why I remain very firmly a dog person, but it was nice to get to know a cat properly.


Favourite local places

  • It's pretty big, but Sydney Road pretty much from Brunswick Road to Bell Street. I don't know how many times I've walked from Coburg to Parkville and back, but it serves up something new each time.  

  • Coburg Lake Reserve for picnics or for days when you want to lie out in the sun and read a book next to a lake.

  • The CBD for me. Although it doesn't have nearly as much of a vibe as other cities, it combines some of their speed with a sense of safety I find almost odd at times. Great for when you want to dance your ass off too.

  • Ashi and Nuz's apartment. It's the comfiest, coziest, homiest place I know in Melbourne.


Favourite food

  • Croissants and baguettes fresh out of the oven. Also bagels. Also fresh naan. I am an Atkins aficionado's worst nightmare.

  • Chop suey, which I used to hate until a few years ago.

  • Pakistani food of pretty much any description. It is quite possibly the most delicious kind of food on the planet. And no, it is not the same as what you get in Indian restaurants. The spices are different, as are the cuts and kinds of meat. So there.

  • The burgers at Munchies' in Islamabad.


 Favourite international places

  • Kathmandu, Nepal. The approach is one of the most spectacular in the world (if you can still look out the window once you realize what you're looking at is rock, not cloud). The place is small but extremely friendly and, with the right company, is full simply fantastic.

  • Still in Nepal, the Annapurna Circuit. I only did part of it, which meant ten days of trekking and camping including a stopover in the village of Ghorepani and a dip in the Tatopani hot springs, as well as dodging rock falls and goats and one very nasty mountain buffalo.

  • New York City. It is the most amazing, electric, alive place I have ever been. Living 28 stories above the East River didn't hurt either. I still squeal when I see 'my' building in shots of NYC in movies. (Look left of the UN building. That building that looks like a stack of cigars? That's it.)

  • Hunza in Pakistan, nestled in the Karakorams. Where the Himalayas give the impression of softness, the Karakorams are naked rock. Terrifying and beautiful. In fact, here are some pictures of our trip there in 2006.


Four people I'm tagging

Let me take a leaf from Penni's book here and say, consider yourselves tagged.

Connecting

The Australian Association for Literary Translation had its second public lecture at Monash University's Caulfield Campus yesterday. It's just as well I checked the newsletter one last time before leaving or I would have ended up in Clayton which is a good deal farther away. I'm glad I got to the right place and in time though, because it was just so good to talk to people about the work I'm doing, the work they're doing, about language acquisition, linguistic shifts, choosing languages, who 'owns' language, writing in another language, picking up other languages through the languages one already knows, translation, interpretation, regional variants in language, accents, the linguistic/cultural dominance of English-English vs US-English...and all this is before the actual lecture. *swoon*

Dr Jean Anderson teaches at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and "fell into" translation. She translates into French and her lecture was primarily about issues of cultural difference when translating literature from the Pacific island nations - a group of which she contends New Zealand is a part. Her particular problem had to do with translating work that, while written, comes from a highly developed oral tradition into French, which has fairly rigid conventions. Repetition, she said, was one example. Where a Mao'hi writer could repeat words, 'good' French writing demands that a particular word not be repeated until several paragraphs after its first appearance. Such conventions, be they in whatever language, throw up interesting quandaries for translators and quite often one has to make a decision based on what will ultimately be most acceptable to readers.

That raises the question of domesticating a text: risking the elimination of the original voice of the text by absorbing it too deeply into the target language (and culture).  And that in turn raises the question of why a translation shouldn't 'look' like a translation. Why shouldn't it look foreign if that's what it is? All of which constitutes a fairly long-standing debate in the field of translation.

 I don't know if translation studies is where I want to go necessarily; it represents to me a fairly black-and-white approach to language that I don't think I'm entirely comfortable with. I prefer a more nebulous approach to language and that may well have to do with having grown up speaking three languages. I never had to 'learn' any of them formally although I've had lessons in all three at one time or another. Actually, when you think about it, it's odd that this should come as a 'surprise' to translators because I'm hardly alone. The majority of the world's population does grow up multilingual - there's usually a national language as well as a regional language or dialect at the very least, as well as English and any other languages that may be relevant. It's people in English-speaking countries who have to make an active effort to learn a new language, and those who do constitute a fairly small minority of language learners. And yet our theories of language acquisition center on the latter approach to language learning. ...I have to go read me some more Venuti, I think.