June 28, 2006

Product of the American school system

This afternoon at work an IT guy came around looking for a co-worker of mine who was not in his office. After dealing with business stuff, he walked off, but then he came back because he wanted to have a look at the map of Europe that's behind my desk. So he started looking closely at the map, finding Amsterdam and pointing at Oxford (because he'd just been there). I didn't recognize this guy and was confused because he didn't sound Dutch and, as far as I knew, all our IT people were Dutch. I assumed he was just new or something though and that he lived here, but I eventually found out that he's from Pittsburgh and had to come over to do some stuff in Oxford and Amsterdam.

Anyway, so as he looked at the map, it became more and more evident that geography wasn't this guy's strong point, as well as maybe a couple of other things. He was talking about how you can take a train from Amsterdam to Paris and they look so close, but it takes 4 hours. He then said "There's a train that goes to England, right?" and I said, yeah, you have to go from Brussels and then it crosses the channel in the tunnel. And he said "Underwater?" Oy. The names on the map started to confuse him because all of the place names are in their native language instead of being in English or Dutch or whatever (which I think is pretty cool). I pointed out how it said España instead of Spain and he was all "Oh, yeah... I see." Then I just threw in there that it says Nederland instead of the Netherlands, and he first said "The Netherlands, where's that? Oh duh, right, that's where we are." Yep. Quick one. So he looked at "Nederland" on the map and said "Isn't that how it's spelt in English?" And I explained that in English it is with a "th". He'd apparently forgotten that as well.

The capper though came when he spotted Austria and tried to pronounce "Österreich", as it was on the map. He asked me what country that was. I said it was Austria. He was like "No, isn't Austria down there somewhere?" and he pointed in the general area of Turkey and Romania. I said no, Austria is, well, where it is on the map. And I don't remember what he said exactly, but I came to realize that he was meaning Australia. I said "No, not Australia! Austria." And he seriously said "I always thought Austria and Australia were the same thing." Oh my god. He didn't know what Austria was. I said "You know, Vienna, the Alps, all that..." but it wasn't ringing a bell with him. *smacks forehead*

He sort of saved himself later by noticing Iceland up in the corner and naming it correctly. But he got very confused by the native names of Norway and Sweden ("Where'd the 'way' in Norway go?"). Thank god he didn't look at Finland and start pondering the native name of that one (Suomi).

In English territory, he asked me if Great Britain and the United Kingdom are the same. I'm a bit ignorant myself in this area and I told him they were the same, but I had a feeling I was wrong, and I was. Oh well, it's close enough. He then started asking me though if the UK is part of Europe and if so, why they don't have the Euro, and oh lord, that was a road I did not want to go down. Fortunately he didn't ask much about it.

As I write this, I think, man, the joke's on me if he was just taking the piss to see how I'd react, but at the time, I did not get any sense of irony from the guy. It was just so American.

June 26, 2006

Weekend

I'm very sleepy but I feel I haven't written enough lately and I have a bit of downtime, so I thought I'd procrastinate a bit.

I had a rather nice weekend. Friday there was some going-away drinks for a person leaving work and that was a good evening out. It started with some drinks in the sun and then we moved to a cafe in town for dinner and more drinks til people one by one started heading home. I left around 1:30 am and was happy to be able to just bike home, a nice quiet ride.

Saturday, O and I went into town to buy some presents for the family members we'll be seeing next week in Spain. We got my cousin and his wife a Delft blue thing and a book of photos of Holland (my cousin spent a few months in Holland after he graduated from college and has fond memories from that time, so I thought he'd like some photos). Then we got their 6-year-old daughter a Nijntje doll. I had wanted to get a book about Holland for her, but I have no idea how well she can read or anything. I asked for some advice from someone at the American Book Center, and there were some books that might be the right reading level for that age, but I still had the feeling that none were quite right. So I went with the safer present, since I have no idea what this kid is like. I'll also buy her some stroopwafels. =)

Sunday we went to an Irish pub in town to play a foosball tournament. Everyone represented one of the 16 teams left in the World Cup (well, the 16 that were left) and then there was a whole tournament. I teamed up with a guy and we did really well in the beginning, but ended up 4th after playing against some guys who were really good - good enough to beat us two on their own. It was fun though. Then most everyone hung around to watch the England game. In the evening, O went off to see Death Cab for Cutie (for which he managed to land a photo pass) and I went home to watch the depressing Holland game on my own.

This morning didn't go so well because a meeting planned for 9 didn't happen because the guy meant to be leading everything is now not getting into the office until around 11:30. We were supposed to get something sent off at noon, but that doesn't seem likely. Very frustrating that 4 people in the team have done a lot of work the past week, but the main guy just has not been running things well.

Anyway, I'm already dreaming of how I'll be in sunny and likely very hot Madrid a week from now and work will be the last thing on my mind.

June 21, 2006

The hell?

A few yellow balloons just went floating past my office building. They didn't have strings or ribbons or anything, they were just balloons floating around (not helium ones). Me and two coworkers saw them and were like "What was that?!" Even more were floating around on the other side of the building. We couldn't figure out where they had come from. Very random...

June 19, 2006

Fingers crossed

Today I offically started the process of putting together an application for a permanent residence permit. I've been here long enough now (5 years) that I can get one, though my current permit is good until next February. But since the IND will likely take months to give me a decision, let alone a new card, I thought I'd better start now. So step one was to give a form to my employer which they have to fill in saying how much I work, what type of contract I have, and how much I earn. It doesn't have to be the first step, but I thought since it relies on other people, I'd better get that going. I should get it back this week though. We've decided it's best if I send in one for O as well (especially since my residency is based on my partnership with him), but he has less faith in his HR, so I hope they don't take too long to return it. But this is just the beginning. I also need to get new passport photos taken, get a paper from the gemeente showing I'm registered, photocopy every page of my passport, copy the work contracts for both me and O, copy each of our last 3 payslips, and, oh yeah, fill out the actual application for the permit. At least no birth certificates or anything that has to be apostilled is needed again. I plan to be able to send the application within a month, and truly, I may not have the new permit by the end of the year.

June 17, 2006

Lately

I'm getting a bit burnt out on football, not that I watch every minute of every game, but I watch enough. I'll kind of be glad when the first round is done at least and I gain some time back in the evenings. There's stuff we planned to watch once the series we watch were over for the summer, and then the football started, so we haven't gotten to anything. One thing I planned to watch though was the rest of Six Feet Under, but O's computer crashed this week and he lost all the episodes he'd downloaded (he got other files back though, including his photos). I can't remember though what was the last part I saw.

One break from watching football came Thursday night when we went to see a Boom Chicago comedian at a place called Sugar Factory. O's signed on to take photos of events for them, and this was his first one. The comedian was Greg Shapiro and his show was aimed at people like me, since Shapiro is American but married to a Dutch woman and, even after 15 years or so of living here, he is still trying to make sense of this country. The jabs at the Dutch were about what you'd expect - topics covered included integration (or the term he used, which is more accurate: "assimilation"), home births, riding bikes, Dutch "cuisine" of fries and kroket, and the madness of just trying to do your grocery shopping - but he covered them in a funny and at times silly way, so it was quite a good show. One of O's photos is used on the news page of the venue, but they should put up a whole gallery at some point, I think.

Speaking of O's photos, a few months ago Touch and Go Records contacted O to ask if they could use some of his Quasi photos on their page for the band. Now, finally, they're up and even have proper acknowledgement! To see them, go here, click on the Photos tab near the middle of the screen and then go to any of the last 5 photos.

Sadly, another ant in our Antworks has died. What is particularly sad (and scary) about this death is that we came home and found ant bits strewn around the tunnels of the box. The head and some legs were up on the surface while another section of the body was lying further down in the tunnels. So the ants seem to have gone a bit vicious. None of the others have died this way, fortunately, but for some reason they turned on this one ant. Very weird.

On Thursday, before we went to see Greg Shapiro, we had an extra half hour because O had the wrong time for the doors opening, so I convinced him to look at shoes with me so I wouldn't have to do it in the weekend. And I ended up getting some Onitsuka Tigers which I quite like. I got this type though the colour I got isn't listed. Mine are black with dark purple stripes. Yum. Now I just hope they're quite comfy for a lot of walking, since that's what I need, a sneaker I can walk a lot in when on vacation or just in town awhile or whatever...

June 10, 2006

I'm warm

Thank you, Sun, for joining us on this early June weekend. Apparently it was 23 degrees at Schiphol at about 10:30 this morning. And amazingly it is actually quite sunny and the sky is blue, rather than being all whited out and making the sun watered down.

We are about to head into town to see the annual World Press Photo exhibit. We go every year. I hadn't heard as much about it this year though, and I didn't even know what the winning photo was until last week, but it ends next weekend so we wanted to be sure to not miss it.

Before that though, I am taking in some jeans to have them shortened. Last weekend I bought not one, but two, pairs of jeans, both women's jeans, which is the first time in ages I've done that because they usually fit me so poorly. But this time I tried on 3 pairs of pants (the two jeans plus some light, summery pants) and they all fit on the first try. I was shocked. Unfortunately the reason why they fit was that I took a larger size, meaning I've crossed over into the 40s, but when I had on some lowish-waist, flared jeans and they actually went over my bum and besides that looked pretty damn good, I had to put the size out of my mind and just buy them. Even though one pair cost a bit more than I would like to spend on jeans, but they fit so well I couldn't pass them up. The length on both though is too long, as is usually the case, and if they were normal cut jeans I would just cuff the bottoms, but with flared jeans that looks a bit weird, so I've decided to take them to be fitted right. I just hope the seam has that jeans look to it after they are tailored, instead of looking flat and pointing out that I had them tailored.

When we get back, I shall make up a pitcher of pink lemonade. It is time for it.

June 8, 2006

Josh Ritter - Paradiso, 31 May

Yeah, so I didn't meet my less-than-a-week deadline to post about the Josh Ritter concert, and then I remembered tonight that I still needed to do it, and now I don't really feel like writing about it, though it was a great show. (Actually I wrote this last night, Wednesday, but then Blogger was down when I went to post. And it still seems a bit fucked so I'll be glad to get this to post.) Part of that, I think, is due to the fact that the whole concert can be watched on FabChannel so it can remember the show for me and can show more than I can explain. But still, I can tell the story from my perspective.

We got a really good spot only about 1 person back and just to the right of Josh's mic. We thought we were there late enough to only see one of the openers, but they started late or something so we did see both. The first guy who played was fine, a nice Irish lad who I could imagine would sound pretty good with a full band. The second guy who played though... We were scared watching him. I had looked up his site the afternoon before the show and found out he was Swedish and was about to start a career on the Swedish football team, but quit to play music instead. And he was just... psycho. Or on something. Or something. He sang this one really long song about relationships and wanting a girl back and it felt like he was making it all up on the spot, like this is what was happening to him right now, he was touring and he found out that his girlfriend back home had dumped him and he just wanted to pour out all his anger at us. Except that when he stopped singing, he smiled. But he would yell and scream and just act insane and try to get the audience to sing along even though he's an opener. Then one guy in the crowd was singing along a lot so he got invited up on stage and copied what the singer would sing. The guy from the audience did actually have a good voice, so that was cool. Then he stood awkwardly to the side for a bit while the singer went nuts some more before he escaped back into the audience. And the singer carried on with the same song for another 5 mins or so before ending it and then that was it, he just waved and headed off the stage. It was all just weird and I could see other groups of people around us giving each other the same looks that O and I were giving each other. What was hilarious though was I jokingly said to O that it would be really scary if he came out again later to sing with Josh, and sure enough he came back out near the end or in the encore and sang an Elvis Presley cover (I had to look that up, at the time I just knew I didn't know the song and assumed it was a cover) with Josh and the band.

Josh played an awesome set that included many songs off his new album, of course, but also ones that are favourites live, like Harrisburg, Wings, and Kathleen. There was a good energy and Josh just could not stop smiling, but I think I actually preferred the last time he played in Paradiso. I'm not sure why, maybe because I remember the intensity of Harrisburg giving me chills and listening to Wings in the dark because he'd asked for the lights to be turned all the way down (which he did again, so it wasn't as new) and, I dunno, seeing him was just more impressive then. But this time was still pretty damn good and you can just feel the power Josh has over the audience (though there were the usual talkers in the back who got told off by someone for not shutting up during Wings).

Besides asking for them to turn down the lights during Wings, another thing Josh always does is play a song completely unamplified, usually at the end of the show. The first time I saw him do this, he wasn't even the headlining act, he was opening for Damien Rice, and yet the whole crowd of Paradiso went silent. An Amsterdam crowd. In Paradiso. For an opener. I think that was when I was first amazed by Josh Ritter. This time the song he played unamplified was Can't Leave This World Behind, which was good, but I would have preferred the song someone called out for him to play, California. It's a bit more upbeat. We were so close, he stood away from the mic and right in front of us, that he sounded pretty loud to us. I almost wish I was standing farther back for that song, to hear his voice spread out through the space of Paradiso.

Unfortunately we have no photos of our own this time because O's camera was confiscated. He didn't even take it out until the 3rd song, I asked him if he was going to start taking photos or what, so he got out his camera and handed it to me for a few seconds while he closed his bag. As soon as I handed it back, out of nowhere, this Paradiso sercurity guy comes up and asks O if he has a pass. O said no and said he'd put the camera away. The security guy (who we know from other shows as being a hard ass) said "nope, come with me." So he and O disappear into the crowd and O was gone for what seemed like ages. I was starting to wonder if he got kicked out and was getting pretty worried, but then he came back and said he had to check his camera. I think they were being stricter about it beacuse the show was being recorded, since O had taken photos at almost all of the other Paradiso shows we'd been to in May and had no problem. And I had seen on the screens at the front door that it said no photos this time. But they weren't taking away non-SLR cameras, which isn't really fair. If you say no photos, then make it for everyone.

It was very silly of me, but near the end of the main set, during Snow is Gone, I suddenly remembered that two of my friends who are Josh Ritter fans were meant to be at the show as well. I had told them about the concert as soon as I saw he was coming to Amsterdam, months ago, I offered to get their tickets for them, and then when the show came I completely forgot they were coming and to try to meet up with them. And then I remembered, right in the middle of one of my favourite songs, when the show was almost over. I felt horrible. But then they hadn't emailed me in the days beforehand either, so then I wondered if they had come at all in the end (they have a kid so they need to arrange a babysitter and all). But as we were leaving Paradiso and walking back to the Leidseplein, they ran and caught up to us and I told them how stupid I felt for forgetting they were going to be there as well. At least we got to say hi quickly before we all headed home.

So, after having piles of tickets in my desk drawer for months, the pile is now exhausted. We have no shows on the horizon. I had been thinking about going to see The Gossip in Rotterdam in July, but we'll be out of town when they play, which I'm actually really bummed about because I've only seen them live once, years ago, but their show left a lasting impression. I hear The Thermals are coming back, but they can be kind of samey, so I'm not as excited to see them. Unless they bring Quasi along again.

June 6, 2006

Sleater-Kinney back in the day

I was poking around You Tube and came across a whole series of videos of Sleater-Kinney playing in CBGBs in 1997. That's the year Dig Me Out came out and I saw them for the first time in April. Here's them rocking Call the Doctor, but there's more here and here and here, and well, just go search for it yourself if you want to see all of the clips. Carrie looks so young, not that she looks old now, but she looks younger and more riot grrrl-ish, and Corin's got a barrette going on, and Janet's hair just makes me smile, all long and pulled into ponytails on the side. Turn Me On, man, that is so good live, I can remember how I'd move to it when it was a usual song on their setlist, it just doesn't feel that long ago really. Watching these videos just breaks my heart.

June 5, 2006

Bastard insurance company Part II

The saga continues regarding me being insured by two health insurance companies because my old one didn't get cancelled like it should have. When we last left off, I had only just found out that my old insurance wasn't cancelled and it was too late to do so by me, and I was ready to go yell at my new insurance company to make sure things happened. Two months later, things aren't quite resolved and it's just been a laughable mess since then.

So I talked to Zilveren Kruis, the new insurance company, a couple of times demanding that they sort out things since they screwed them up. At first their answer was "Well, this has happened to quite a few people and there are 'negotiations' to get things cancelled and it'll be another 3 weeks or so before we find out the results of that." And I was like, um, no. I'm paying two premiums right now, you guys fucked things up, sort it out. And twice they said something like "we'll send something to the old insurance to get it cancelled" or "we'll call them and fix it" but of course nothing happened.

Eventually I emailed a person in my company's HR to at least let them know I wasn't happy and to ask if they could help at all, since it is a collective agreement I went with, so my company has some part in this. After some not too welcome, but not untrue, advice that maybe I should have made sure things were cancelled a long time back, the HR woman told me that she'd called Zilveren Kruis and was rather confused because apparently the old insurance they had on record for me wasn't from Agis, but from IZR and they even had a polis number listed. IZR is O's old insurance company, and the polis number turned out to be his. So ZK was "in negotiations" to try and cancel with the wrong fucking company.

I was absolutely livid. I told the HR woman that I had no idea why on earth that company and number was tied to my name when it wasn't mine, and then O, already in a pissed-off mood, got on the phone with ZK and got things straight with them, though you never can trust they actually got things straight.

A couple of more weeks pass and I finally get a letter from ZK telling me they can't insure me, though the reasons have nothing to do with my actual situation. They say that can't even take me on as a customer because I didn't send in my application before the 1 March deadline, which is complete bullshit. And besides, they've already taken me on as a customer, sending me not just 1, but 2, polisbladen, and paying one of my bills already. We were just about to leave for Brussels though, so I was going to call them when we got back.

After we got back, I had another letter from ZK, this time tailored a bit more to what was actually going on. It had my customer number and all and said my insurance with them was being cancelled due to being insured with two companies. I love the part that says "Are you unsatisfied with our service or feel we've made a wrong decision?" and then an email and post address where you can file complaints. Yeah, those might come in handy. Also, they let me know that if I turn in the zorgpas that I'd not even received to one of their service points, it can be recycled in an environmentally friendly manner. Yippee. Nothing in the letter, however, about what I am slightly more concerned about: how and when am I going to get all the premium I've paid refunded? I love how the first thing I ever got from them, before I even got my information packet, was a letter saying they were taking 4 months worth of premium, and likely the last thing I'll ever get from them is a letter with them finally saying I'll be getting my money back.

A couple of days after the cancellation letter, I get yet another letter in the mail from ZK. My zorgpas. Before O even gets his. Yay, now I can go have it recycled. Or maybe I'll write what I think of ZK on the card and post it back to them.

So we pass into June and I still am having two insurance premiums taken out of my account each month, a total of almost 200 eur every month I'm paying right now, and I'm just waiting for the day when I'll finally get back the more than 500 eur or so owed me by either of the companies, but that day is not here yet. I let the woman in HR know my insurance with ZK was cancelled, because she said that I could possibly get a reimbursment from them for not being able to join the collective agreement this year and I wanted to know how I can get that, and she wrote back saying she had forwarded my emails to her contact at ZK and we'd see what happens. I'm not sure if she means they might be able to sort things out and get me insured (if so, why didn't she do this when I emailed about this weeks ago?) or if she'd see what they say about me getting the reimbursement. I'll have to ask her tomorrow. I just want this whole mess over with and my fucking money back, and then I can write a nice little letter to ZK, and also to whatever consumer organizations I can find, and let them know how happy I have been with them in the short time I've been (or was) a customer with them.

June 3, 2006

Sleater-Kinney - Botanique, Brussels, 27 May

A couple of days ago, on the 31st, our long spring (and especially May) concert madness came to an end when we saw Josh Ritter play at Paradiso. To recap who we saw and when, here's the list:

Caesar - Patronaat, Haarlem, 10 February
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Melkweg, 19 February
Two Gallants - Paradiso Kleine Zaal, 28 February
Death Cab for Cutie - Melkweg, 8 March
Calexico and Iron & Wine - Tivoli, Utrecht, 26 April
Andrew Bird - Paradiso Kleine Zaal, 6 May
Belle & Sebastian - Paradiso, 8 May
The Decemberists - Paradiso, 18 May
Presidents of the USA - Paradiso, 24 May
Sleater-Kinney - Botanique, Brussels, 27 May
Josh Ritter - Paradiso, 31 May

Some awesome, memorable shows in there, especially just about every one of the 6 we went to in May (the Presidents were lively, but the show was much the same as when we saw them last year, so it wasn't as high on my list as the others). Below is my week-late review of Sleater-Kinney, and hopefully I'll get my Josh Ritter story up before a week's passed on that one as well.

This was of course one of the shows I was most anticipating because S-K are one of my favourite bands, especially live, I think they keep getting better and better, and I've not see them live since the last time I saw them in Portland in 2000 because they hardly ever tour in Europe. And then seeing them was delayed a few months after they cancelled their European tour last fall. So I was very psyched for this. But things didn't feel right for some reason, even before the show. Maybe it was being in Belgium and not being sure of what the crowd would be like, let alone that they were playing at a venue that was less rock club and more tropical greenhouse.

We got to the venue rather early and sat around for awhile waiting for the doors to open. We were also waiting for Steven and Natasja to arrive, but we didn't know at the time that they were madly driving around the streets of Brussels trying to find how to get to the venue. They ended up not arriving until just before S-K started and we didn't see them til after the show.

As part of his ongoing photo project, O had tried to arrange seeing the band to take some photos, and managed to get on some list via someone at SubPop. As we waited, he went off to see what he could do about maybe seeing the band before they played, or making sure he could get photos afterwards. He talked to some guy from the venue who took O into the stage area while I waited outside the doors. O eventually came back, having talked to a girl who was in charge and he said he'd not only been allowed a photo pass, but a backstage pass as well. Sweet. So we went to the ticket counter and they gave him the pass. O then decided to see if he could find the band backstage. I waited outside the stage area again and he came back a bit disappointed. He'd found Janet, the only one to arrive so far, and he asked her if he could get photos for his project, but she bluntly and shortly told him no. He said she did not seem very happy at all. Hrm.

On a side note, as we were waiting for the doors to open, we spotted none other than the guy we'd seen at a couple of Amsterdam shows who looks very much like a certain actor from a show that takes place in Southern California. We hadn't seen him in months, and then he pops up in Brussels. I thought "what is he doing all the way down here?" but then I realized he could wonder the same about us.

After an opener that I don't feel is worth mentioning (O didn't mind them, but he said they were very Belgian and you just have to like that stuff, which he does), and after waiting through the tuning and then some more waiting, S-K finally took to the stage. It was so good to see them again. The setlist:

One Beat
Rollercoaster
Jumpers
Sympathy
Wilderness
An song introduced as "older", but I didn't know it, had Corin singing "go on, go on, go on"
The Fox
All Hands on the Bad One
Night Light
What's Mine is Yours
Start Together
Modern Girl
Let's call it Love
Entertain

Encore:
Yr No Rock and Roll Fun
Words and Guitar

So they played every song but one from the Woods, which was awesome, plus older stuff like Rock and Roll Fun and All Hands on the Bad One were good to hear. I would have liked to hear a Call the Doctor song, and a bit more from One Beat, but it's ok cuz the Woods stuff rocks so much.

In the end, the show felt a bit disappointing, though I know I had a lot of expectation for it. But that feeling of things just not being right carried on into the show. The band did not seem very happy and they hardly chatted with the audience like they usually do. Janet in particular never smiled and seemed to want to push through the songs as quickly as possible. And the crowd, while containing some obvious fans (including the 3 girls, also from Amsterdam, who were going nuts behind me) seemed way too subdued. Not enough rocking out going on. Where was Corin and Carrie asking the crowd not to mosh because they didn't want people to get hurt? Where was anyone even pogoing? Ugh, I knew we should have gone to see them in Glasgow again versus bloody Belgium... Especially when I read this thread about their Bristol show just a couple nights later which sounds like it was the kind of S-K show I remember.

But it's not to say I didn't enjoy myself... To see Carrie right in front of us doing her trademark leg kicks and the occasional windmill and all her posing, it made me so happy. The one of the best songs of the set was What's Mine is Yours, which is probably my favourite song off of Woods, and the band and the audience really seemed to pick up some energy then. I even saw Janet singing along a bit. The other high point for me was Let's Call it Love, with its incredible soloing by Carrie, leading into Entertain with her amazing vocals and that pounding, military-style drumming in the second half from Janet. Also I thought Modern Girl was fun because Janet plays some harmonica and you just don't see the harmonica/drumming combination very often.

There was a guy to our left who must have been very happy they played Words and Guitar because he called out for it a couple of times. It was just funny though because he had such a strong, surely-you-are-taking-the-piss French accent.

After the show, and after we found Steven and Natasja, O made another attempt to go back stage, and he ended up talking to their stage manager, who said "It is not going to happen." He at least was apologetic, but yeah, it sucked that O got so far with arranging things, got a backstage pass and everything, and then it was just not a good time to see the band. Maybe they got stuck for ages driving around Brussels too and it made them grumpy...

I left wondering when the band will be back to this side of the Atlantic, and I'm afraid it might be another 5 years before I see them again. I'm rather determined though to not let this show be the last S-K show for me. I am prepared to travel again to see them because when they are on form, there's nothing in the world like it.