Dogs and kids

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.

Writing time

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.

Well, like, duh.

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?

Third Culture Kids/Global Nomads

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>".

How pathetic can you get?

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.

Levitation

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.

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?