What I’m doing at the Electronic Frontier Foundation

June 21, 2010 in copyright | Tags: , , , | by Heather Ford | 2 comments

Illustration by Tsevis CC BY-SA GB

At the beginning of the year I applied to work with the EFF via the Google Policy Fellowship. Inspired by Google’s Summer of Code, the Google Policy Fellowship is a similar program aimed at supporting developments in Internet public policy. It basically offers students interested in Internet and technology policy the opportunity to spend the summer contributing to the public dialogue on these issues, and exploring future academic and professional interests.

I’ve always respected the work of the EFF. They have defended some really important internet freedom cases in the US and I was particularly impressed at their impartiality when they supported artists, Nathaniel Stern and Scott Kildall after Wikipedia threatened them for so-called trademark abuse. The EFF had represented Wikipedia before this time so it was really heartening when I saw how brave they were in their public statement about this strange accusation.

I was thrilled to learn a couple of months ago that I’d been accepted as the EFF’s Google Policy Intern – working with the awesome international team led by Gwen Hinze, Eddan Katz and Katziza Rodriguez.

I started work at the beginning of the month at the organisation’s Mission headquarters. I’m really impressed so far – by the professional way in which the staff conduct their work, at the trust that they have in one another, at the passion that they have for the issues they work on. Most of all, I’m impressed by the fact that they actually argue with one another about different perspectives. It’s very rare to find an organisation that talks the talk *and* walks the walk. EFF seems to be one of those organisations and I’m convinced now more than ever of the absolutely critical role that they play in defending civil liberties, innovation and free expression online – not just in the United States, but internationally as well.

I am working on a project to help define how global copyright rules can support digital education across borders at the global policy-making body, WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organisation). An agency of the UN, WIPO has until now mostly been concerned with enforcing the property rights of rights holders (most of whom reside in the developed North). A few years ago, a group of countries (including South Africa) got together to try and change the focus of WIPO in a momentous proposal for a ‘Development Agenda’ at WIPO. The Development Agenda implored WIPO to recognise the critical role of intellectual property rights in fostering creativity, innovation and economic growth in developing countries, and to embark on a new development-focused work plan to explore ways in which international laws could be used to regain such balance.

That was in 2005. As I write this, the first substantial ‘development-focused’ proposal for the rights of the visually impaired is being debated at WIPO. It’s a complicated process, and I’ve spent the last week working out the impact of each competing proposal. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this meeting. It will certainly set the stage when/if WIPO gets onto the topic of exceptions and limitations to copyright for educational purposes.

I’ll be producing a paper by the end of the fellowship in August, and will hopefully carry on working with the EFF on this issue as they work with others around the world who are calling for international policies that can better facilitate innovation in the online and distance education sector. There’s an enormous opportunity here, and it seems to be the right time for positive change. I only hope that WIPO and Member states continue to think big and start to recognise the enabling impacts of IP for improving access to and quality of education everywhere.

Much work has already been done in this area. I’m a little concerned about my ability to add anything meaningful that will propel the debate forward to achieving some much-needed action. At the very least I hope to connect some of the really great writing on this issue in making the case for why education – especially online education – needs greater clarity and support from copyright law, and how WIPO is exactly the right place for this to happen. To those old (and hopefully new) friends who have done work on this issue, I’m very keen to learn more about your ideas on the key problems and solutions. Please get in touch if you’re interested in chatting more.

Industries that survive and thrive without copyright protection

June 10, 2010 in copyright | by Heather Ford | 3 comments

I met Johanna Blakeley in LA a while back and when we heard about her project about sharing in the fashion industry, Ready to share, we invited her to talk at the iCommons Summit in Sapporo, Japan in 2008. She rocked it then but her latest TED talk is even better. She talks about how the lack of copyright protection has enabled the fashion, food, and automobile industry to thrive, forcing them to innovate in order to become more unique, less able for others to copy.

TEDx: use our brand but make sure people know it’s not us

April 9, 2010 in events | Tags: , | by Heather Ford | Leave a comment

In my networks class today we were talking about co-creation: what it means to co-create, when it makes sense to do it, how it relates to the two-sided market model, and the state of Steven’s iPad. Now, with soy latte in hand and my first seat at Free Speech Cafe (!), I’m thinking about how this all relates to networking events like TED and their latest offshoot, TEDx.

Organised by potentially ‘anyone in the world’, TEDx events are independently organised events with a distinct TED flavor. TED determines the platform (events share the same format, documentation and purpose) while organisers ‘curate’ the content on the platform.

This is an example of a two-sided market model because TED must court both speakers and participants in order to develop a successful product. Much of the value in bringing both together is in the value of the brand and the extent to which the brand’s promise is fulfilled by both parties. Having one’s brand dependent on external parties who aren’t formally contracted with one another is a new and fascinating phenomenon. In the past, you knew that the company selling you a conference ticket was responsible for your experience. When TED informally contracts out this service to people who aren’t responsible to TED, they must trust that the resulting product will fulfill the brand’s promise.

TED has done something pretty clever here in order to gain maximum value out of connecting with people who want to co-create the brand with them, while still attempting to mitigate some of the risks. TED makes sure they select the people who will organise the events (‘no one can host a TEDx event unless he or she has been granted a license to do so by TED’) and they have clear guidelines about the use of the logo and the TED format. Instead of asking organisers to use the TED logo, they use the logo marker (‘TED’) as a way to signal to users that this is the TED platform but that content is independently curated (‘x’). It’s almost as if they’re saying: ‘This is TED but it’s also not TED. We are the platform, but we are not the content on that platform’.

I’m not sure how analogous this is to video game platform producers who have video game developers producing video games on the platform, but it’s definitely new, and it’s definitely something that people who produce events must think about – especially those like TED whose brand is global and who are then under pressure to find a way to scale up the event in the most efficient way.

I’m left with a lot of questions. How do you extract the platform from the content in an event? What role does the brand play in an event like this? And will TED try to control the brand in new ways if and when there are any risks to it by this move towards ‘co-creation’?

Learning entrepreneurship by being an entrepreneur

March 18, 2010 in events | Tags: , | by Heather Ford | Leave a comment

Tina Seelig just gave a wonderful talk at the iSchool titled: ‘Entrepreneurship is an extreme sport’. She talked about how important it is to teach entrepreneurship by doing. The video above was made by a team of her students at Stanford where she teaches a class on entrepreneurship. The students were given a pack of post-its and told to create as much value as possible out of the resource in a limited period of time.

The success of the course led to the Global Entrepreneurship Week. According to the website, Global Entrepreneurship Week ‘connected young people everywhere through local, national and global activities designed to help them explore their potential as self-starters and innovators’. I’m interested to see what happened in South Africa. I had a look at the site, but can’t see similar activities to Seelig’s entrepreneurship-by-doing philosophy. Looks like there was a lot of talking and networking – all great and valuable but I think that the real value of Seelig’s approach is what’s missing in SA.

By actively practicing entrepreneurship, said Seelig, students learn about: identifying opportunities, challenging assumptions, leveraging resources, creating value, learning about teamwork, taking risks, and learning from failure.

Failure is an important part of learning to be an entrepreneur, said Seelig. A colleague of hers has a philosophy of punishing inaction but never failure.

Her advice to people in places that look down on failure? ‘Try to create a hub where you actively promote a culture that doesn’t punish failure,’ she said.

Seelig noticed that students do much better in the course when it is linked to extra-curricula activities rather than linking it to a grade.

‘At the start of the class, I tell my students to: never miss an opportunity to be fabulous,’ she said.

SA could take a leaf out of Seelig’s book: ‘What I wish I knew when I was 20: A crash course in making your place in the world‘. In a way, I guess we’re the national equivalent of 20 :)

Can a conference get too big?

March 16, 2010 in events | by Heather Ford | 2 comments

In my final hour of sxsw, I realise that my.sxsw2010 is a story about queues (a.k.a. ‘lines’).

There was the line/queue to the Mozilla party that snaked around the back of the building and out onto the street. I had been in the VIP queue/line, but when I realised that, despite all my efforts to be one, I was not, in fact, a VIP but rather a JAP (just-another-(one-of-7091)-persons) I stomped unhappily down the street. Just then, my (Mozilla) friend, Aza, hung out the window of the party inside and handed me an orange bracelet.

‘Aha! I have the esteemed orange bracelet!’ I thought, as I marched stealthily toward the blonde bouncers at the front of the line/queue with a smirk and a silent: ‘You thought that I was a JAP. How do you feel knowing that I am, in fact, a VIP! Huh?! Huh?!!’

I now know that orange bracelets don’t get you places. Orange bracelets are just… well… orange bracelets. They are not the key to transforming one from a JAP to VIP. They are not the key to the pearly gates.

Luckily for me, Mark, the god of the Mozilla Happy Hour looked down at us and gave the universal signal for: ‘Open the pearly gates for this woman!’ I was in! And with that, came all the heavenly gifts that a sxsw Mozilla Happy Hour must bestow upon us (including a mob of smart heathens and greasy delights to sop up the free-flowing beverages). I saw old friends and made a few new friends. I was happy. I felt secure. All because I was connected to the god of the Mozilla Happy Hour.

Other lines/queues were not so accommodating – mostly because my sxsw pass didn’t come with a similar god of the Mozilla Happy Hour. There was the line/queue to the bathroom, the queue/line to purchase an overpriced soy latte, and the line/queue to get into a movie called ‘Tiny Furniture’. Apparently the queue/line was so long that the volunteers had calculated it to be too long for me to, indeed, see the film. So I went to the shorter line to watch a worse movie. I fell asleep in the first 5 minutes. I’m sure the movie was fine. I was just exhausted.

I was last here in 2003. The interactive event was just getting started then. I remember feeling exhausted then, but not overwhelmed. And now I realise that there’s a pretty big difference between the two.

Me, Andy, Jack, Ivo, Gaby, Allan, Spratt - pic by Gareth Knight

sxsw is an amazing event. I’ve been inspired and I’ve learned some really practical things that I will actually use after this. But I’m left feeling like I need to lie by myself in Child’s Pose in a dark room for at least a week. Last night I couldn’t do it anymore. I went for a swim, looked up at the skyscrapers around me and marveled at how lucky it is to have guides in this world.

I think sxsw needs to find a way to enable us to guide one another – first-timers with old-timers; locals with out-of-towners.

But even guides won’t change the length of the lines/queues. When some sessions are so big that people feel they can walk out because they won’t be noticed, or even if they’re noticed, no one knows who they are anyway, the conference is probably too big.

At 17,000+, sxsw might just have gotten too big. At least for me.

Panorama: returning to old business models

February 13, 2010 in media | Tags: , | by Heather Ford | 3 comments

David Eggers doesn’t know much about the people buying Panorama, other than that they are people who buy books from independent book stores, that they are ‘very intelligent’ and are ‘charming and good at parties’. He must know, however, that people are loving the 330-page newspaper. Now in its second run, Panorama is being lapped up by McSweeneys fans throughout the Bay Area and beyond. I rushed out on December 13 to buy the last copy at the student book store, and according to Eggers, most of the newsies didn’t make it from their car to their corner before they were relieved of their 10-20 copies. There was also a report of a tackling incident. Most unfortunate.

Eggers was at UC Berkeley last night – with Panorama publisher Oscar Villalon and associate editor Jesse Nathan – to talk about the paper that ‘showed the Bay Area an exciting example of the kind of newspaper it deserves.’

During their conversation with J-School lecturer, Deidre English, the trio described Panorama as an ‘homage to the old craft of newspapers’. Said Oscar Villalon: ‘This wasn’t about reinventing the wheel. All the ideas from Panorama were ideas that were being kicked around in the newsroom.’ These ideas included ‘bigger design, a more literary bent, a wider array of voices and a longer paper’.

Eggers said, ‘We wanted to prove that some of these things might work and to give our friends in the newspaper business some optimism’. Villalon talked about the value of ‘unleashing people’ – giving them the ‘time, space and resources they need to get things done’. None of the contributors had word limits, said Eggers. ‘It’s finished when it’s finished,’ he told them.

The trio firmly believe that profit is the biggest obstacle to newspapers right now and that the solution is not to go digital. They talked about the fact that it’s a fallacy that newspapers are not profitable.

’2006 was one of the most profitable years for newspapers,’ said Eggers, who quoted David Simon who said that 5 or 6% profit on a newspaper should be enough. I can’t find the particular quote he used, but did find Simon’s testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee on the future of journalism in which he said:

‘(W)hen newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, their industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street money. We know now – because bankruptcy has opened the books – that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly 100 editors and reporters in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits. In the years before the internet deluge, the men and women who might have made The Sun a more essential vehicle for news and commentary – something so strong that it might have charged for its product online – they were being ushered out the door so that Wall Street could command short-term profits in the extreme.’

With advertising revenue in decline, Eggers said that ‘for the first time, people will pay for the (newspaper) product’ (rather than advertisers subsidising it). At $16, Panorama isn’t cheap – although the team says that it’s a small price to pay for 320 pages of excellent content.

When asked whether Eggers was worried about the fact that some of the investigative stories (such as the story about the true costs of the Bay Bridge and about the Pakistani 25-year-old who taught himself law to defend people against foreclosures) wouldn’t make as much impact as they could if they were online, he replied that some of the stories have been made available online but that people would have to pay for the newspaper if they wanted all the content.

When asked about the costs of the model, Villalon said that as a prototype, the paper was more expensive than if it were being produced regularly. He said that, at 20,000 copies per print run, Panorama couldn’t make use of the economies of scale that could bring costs down, but that McSweeney’s broke even on the first run, paid all of their 220 contributors and would make ‘something’ on the second.

Eggers says that Panorama should show journalists, by working together in a small collective, that it is possible to have a small operation with 10,000 readers a day, and a reading public paying $2, and that you don’t even have to be a non-profit in order to achieve this.

I’m not convinced that Panorama is necessarily a model for a daily newspaper (it took more or less a year working on an off to produce) but I am totally inspired that there is still some hope for newspapers and the printed word. And for that (and not even beginning to talk about the incredible writing, graphics and illustrations), Panorama has done its job.

InfoCamp comes to Berkeley

February 10, 2010 in events | Tags: | by Heather Ford | Leave a comment

I’m on the team at the iSchool organizing the upcoming InfoCamp. It all started when we were sitting in a meeting last semester talking about doing an event in the Spring. Someone mentioned InfoCamp. I emailed the organisers and Kristen and the team from InfoCamp Seattle welcomed us with open arms. It’s been a great experience so far – all the richer for having the Seattle team as supporters and collaborators (and providers of great event content that we’ve used as templates). Makes me realise how cool this model is and how we should do it for GeekRetreat – especially the principle of letting local groups decide on the specifics of the meeting but still sticking to some core principles around the unconference format, lack of advertising etc.

Anyway, more on that soon, but in the meantime, check out InfoCamp Berkeley and if you’re in the area, and you’re interested in information design, policy, experience or organisation, you are most welcome – to attend, speak and/or help out.

More below:

Mark your calendar–the first annual InfoCamp Berkeley is taking place Saturday, March 6 at UC Berkeley!

InfoCamp is an unconference for anyone interested in user experience, information architecture, interaction design, user-centered design, information design, librarianship, online search, information management, informatics, and related fields.  InfoCamp features an egalitarian, community-driven format in which you, the participants, create and lead most of the sessions!  The purpose of this format is to encourage collaboration, interaction, discussion, and real-time innovation. And, it’s a lot of fun!

Tickets are just $20 and can be purchased here:

http://infocampberkeley2010.eventbrite.com/

Learn more and keep up-to-date with the latest information about InfoCamp:
InfoCamp blog
Twitter
Facebook

WikiWars and the politics of despair

January 22, 2010 in events | Tags: , , , | by Heather Ford | 1 comment

Dror Kamir talks about the war of the wiki at WikiWars in Bangalore

Last week, I was in Bangalore for ‘WikiWars: Critical Point of View‘, a workshop organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (India) and the Institute of Network Cultures (Netherlands). As our invitation letter outlined, ‘WikiWars is not a traditional conference. It has attracted not only people from across disciplines but also people with different kinds of stakes in the Wikipedia knowledge network that we seek to build.’

I was pretty nervous about the event. It was the first time that I spoke publicly against the architecture of  “free and open” organisations and projects, and the first time in a very long time that I’ve presented an academic paper rather than speaking from my experience or with my “free and open” advocate hat on.

I’ve discarded that hat for now. I think I had probably discarded it a long time ago – or at least started to understand that my role as critic will be much more useful. I had started to become disenchanted many years ago, but kept thinking that I just needed to work a bit harder, be a little more convincing, in order to prove that we really could build something better, more globally united, more fair and just than what we had built before.

WikiWars was an eye-opener. Almost everyone came from a similar place. Many of us are (or were) Wikipedians or open-source activists, and this is, I think, what differentiates this kind of critique from most of the mainstream criticism that we hear about Wikipedia. The perspectives of the participants came from a very deep understanding and experience of Wikipedia. It was this experience that made the one perspective from an academic with little (or no) experience of Wikipedia so stark against the background of such rich experience.

There were geographers, political scientists, social scientists, media researchers and artists – a hodgepodge of the people from Israel to Taiwan, the United Kingdom to Australia who shared what is so rare these days: a critical perspective on one of the world’s most powerful information sources.

At the beginning of the event, co-organiser, Geert Lovink talked about the role of the critic. ‘We know what a literary film critic is, but what is an Internet critic?’ he asked. ‘Usually the way we look at critics is that they are losers, but they have an important role that can be very productive – productive because there is a direct relationship between the way we talk about things and about how they are actually represented.’

‘It shows that people from the outside care so much that they will put something like this on,’ said Lovink. ‘It is a desirable state of emancipation that Wikipedia research moves out of the Wikimedia Foundation.’

After I had presented, I talked to Nishant Shah, research director at CIS, who must be one of the cleverest, most eloquent people I have ever met. He talked to me about the ‘politics of despair’ and said that my talk reminded him of this. ‘Despair is not negative,’ he told me. ‘Negative would be if you ignored it.’

I feel like many long, dark days of isolation are over – for a while at least – and that this is a community that I have the utmost respect for. Watch this space. WikiWars will be publishing a reader later this year with the papers from the event series.

My presentation | My draft paper

The power and the peril of self-congratulation

January 22, 2010 in events | Tags: , | by Heather Ford | 2 comments

Justin Spratt, Elan Lohmann and Daniel Neville shoot the breeze in true GeekRetreat fashion last Saturday

It’s exactly a week since GeekRetreat Stanford Valley and I’m sitting in my freezing cold Berkeley apartment collecting my thoughts and the countless pages of notes that I wrote on the plane back to the US on Monday night. (Moving around the world at such an alarming rate is such wonderful medicine for perspective.)

After some heart-warming perspectives from participants (Marlon Parker, Snowgoose, Jarred Cinman, Eve Dmochowska have all written insightful, provocative posts – but there are others still emerging) there has been a great deal of debate whether the retreat is a ‘talk fest’ or whether ‘anything changes’ as a result.

I think this debate is fascinating – but for less than obvious reasons.

The first is implied with the horrible ‘circle jerk’ term (which I promise never to use ever again unless it is absolutely necessary). If you don’t know what ‘circle jerk’ means, please look it up, or take my watered-down explanation here. The term refers to a group of young men sitting around in a self-referencing circle pleasuring themselves. Although gross, I think this is a really good analogy for the kind of self-referencing, isolated, homogenous, male-dominated community that often dominates when members of the South African IT community get together.

On the other hand, I’m struck by the liberal use of this term for every event initiated by this community.

Self-congratulation, where not warranted, is no good (although I can think of much worse things). But I find it incredible how hard we South Africans are on ourselves, and how seldom we are able to congratulate ourselves and one another. I always remember an old mentor telling me how we Africans grow up with a very large burden. Everything we do has to save the world, or the continent at least – and it robs us of the kind of play and enjoyment that enables innovation to thrive. Being in the US I understand the value of congratulation, and I also understand the value of play – both of which need to be nurtured in order for us to build anything worthwhile.

I also think that the circle-jerk term is probably a symptom of the dissatisfaction that many feel with the self-referencing, smallness of the ‘IT crowd’ in SA. There are, however, some incredible people on the outside (and even the inside in some cases) who are optimistic about breaking up the circle and looking for some deeper meaning for the community.

This is the last that I’m going to say about it personally because I’d rather spend my time on more important debates, especially ones where the critique is more well-informed. Don’t get me wrong – I’m thrilled that there has been critique – it shows that people care, and that is our greatest battle overcome. I only wish people would be critical about important things like why a particular strategy for mentoring young geeks was chosen, why the culture of the retreat is dominated by particular world views, or why IT pros find it impossible to have a constructive discussion about race and solutions towards diversity.

I, for one, will continue to sing the praises of those who came and shared at the GeekRetreat – and especially those who will continue the conversation after the event. I’m only certain of one thing these days and that is that ‘change’ comes in different forms and that deep, meaningful change happens slowly, gently, without the kind of fanfare that we’re used to.

As Elaine Rumboll said in one of the sessions, ‘It’s questions that change the world; not answers.’

For me, and for most (if not all) of the people who attended the GeekRetreat, so many questions were fired inside of me to say that that, for now, is enough.

Over.

My first Bangalore adventure

January 9, 2010 in travel | Tags: , | by Heather Ford | 1 comment

I set out for food and adventure after arriving at my hotel earlier today and passing out in the kind of drunken stupor only possible when flying half way around the world. Ramanashree Hotel is about 50m away from the renowned ‘MG Road’ (I don’t know much about it but it conjures up images of wide boulevards and people drinking beer on pavements).

I turn left onto the main drag and have to ask a couple of people to confirm that I’m actually here. It’s not quite what I expected. I stumble along what looks more like a bad tetris game than an actual pavement. To my right is a road over which uncountable numbers of auto rickshaws, taxis and other methods of transport fly. Their flying is accompanied by the very unmelodious hooting by the same. I wonder how hooting makes any difference when everyone is hooting… all the time. I guess driving in India is about understanding that we are all held in suspension in a kind of cosmic, dynamic fluid. We alert one another to our presence in the fluid by letting one know where we are. Perhaps this means that blind people can drive in india too…

I continue along the pavement, keeping well to the left. Apparently there isn’t a clear boundary between the main road and the pavement. This doesn’t deter the locals. Although it is dark and the cars are hurtling towards them, people calmly walk along with their backs to the horror behind them. I want to shout out and save them. Instead I keep my eyes on my real live tetris game, imagining just the shape of block that it would take to level it.

On my left I pass what appears to be an army recruitment center. There are large billboards with images of helicopters and battle tanks with captions like: ‘Join the army and be a hero for life.’ (ok, that isn’t it, but you get the picture) After being tempted to give it all in to play soldier soldier, I come to a small room in which a host of krishna (and other) idols and flowers and other gold bits and bobs sit. I wonder how this works. It looks like someone is sitting outside tending to the place. Perhaps you must pay to visit?

I hear the sound of electric bass guitar coming from the mall up ahead. A band of teenagers is singing bad rock music on a stage that seems set up for Saturday sessions of this kind. About 20 people are watching. This is my idea of a concert! It’s like being on the set of Idols auditions. A young teenage girl is singing about being in her room waiting for ‘him’ to call. She’s surrounded by angsty looking boys who strum violently at their instruments. They’re hot. She must be the talk of her school. I think I see her mom. She looks concerned – not because her daughter is singing bad rock music about boys, but that her other daughter might not have gotten it all on the small video camera that she is dangerously wielding.

Seriously doubting the fact that this is the MG Road that everyone talks about, I ask a nice lady who is waiting for the bus. She says that I have passed MG Road but that there is a great mall just up ahead for getting food. I forge on. The mall is just up ahead on the other side of the road. A zebra crossing lies across the road, but apparently zebra crossings in India are a little game of ‘how to trick the foreigner into believing that these symbols mean the same everywhere’. I make as if to start walking across the road, expecting the way to part for me like Moses parted the sea (it was Moses, right?) No one stops. In fact, they actually hoot at me! I stare indignantly and then beseechingly at the wall of traffic. After a while I realise that my blonde hair and pitiful stare are not going to work. I glance around me and try to work out how everyone else is getting across. Ah. This is how it goes. Lone travelers wait for a large enough group who want to cross the road to gather. Talk, handsome man confidently holds up his hand for the oncoming mass of traffic to halt, and people follow him as he bravely holds up the traffic for the few seconds it takes to cross. Just like Moses.

I’m in the mall and it’s crazy. There are a gazillion people here. There’s a Marks & Sparks; a Mango; a lady on a stage with a microphone selling insurance. Nice. I head up to the food court on the fourth floor and straight to what looks like the local Indian food joint. I don’t know what anything is, so I pick the ‘combo’ deal with aloo paneer (which I think means potato and cheese). After holding out my pale white hand with my receipt stupidly for a few minutes, my face lights up when the plate of food I was really hoping was mine is shoved into my gleeful hands. I rush a seat in the food court and tuck in to a plate with those cool little compartments. A dhal, a chickpea curry, a cucumber raita and four triangles of the most delicious fried naan-type bread stuffed with potato and paneer. Just the right amount of heat. Just the right flavors. Just the right combinations. I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.

As I eat, I’m starting to get a weird sensation from the people around me. No one is watching me! WTF?! I’m like the only blonde person I have seen in this place. I thought I’d be getting cat calls and propositions. It’s a relief… but also not.

I’m in such a good mood that I decide to splash out on a salwar suit. I go into a shop where there are many determined young women, opening up beautifully folded items of clothing and dropping them just as quickly. These gals know what they want. I look at a couple of the gazillion tops in as many colors and choose a pink short-sleeved top and black pants that look like they are made for a human-sized praying mantis. Apparently this is a salwar suit. I skip the try-on queue and purchase the goods. It feels good to be alive.

India. Baby. I love you.

I walk back along the way that I came, pausing only for a strawberry miracle smoothie and a smile from the gaggle that serve it to me.

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