This Post Brought to you by the Letter D, and the Number 11...

I am often asked how I find living in Karachi. I have never had a great answer for this. Maybe it’s because I’m not a big fan of small talk. I’d rather talk about "things" rather than generalities and niceties. In fact, sometimes I think that small talk is designed to make any sort of normal human discourse impossible. The questions are always so general that any meaningful answer becomes very difficult. It reminds me of when I would go to summer camp or something, have a great time, but then when my parents would pick me up and want to know all about it, all I could ever think of saying was, "It was good." But the worst part of small talk is that you just know that at some point or another, there will be that awkward pause while both parties desperately try to either think of something else to ask or think of a way out of the conversation. It is inevitable. And yes, I know that it is a skill, and that I should probably work harder at it, but sometimes I just don’t have the energy.

Anyway. Digression. To get back to what it’s like living in Pakistan as a big white Canadian, I finally thought of an analogy. It came to me while I was at a party last night staring at a tree. You may ask why I was staring at a tree, and I think you’d be justified, since even just writing that kind of makes me feel silly. But my group of friends had gone off to dance and I just couldn’t find the energy to join them because I’m coming down with something and was feeling ill. So I was standing by myself, trying to look like one of those people who don’t mind standing by themselves, when my eyes fell on the tree across from me. For whatever reason, my mind made one of those inexplicable leaps of association, and I found myself thinking about the big tree at the beginning (or was it the end) of Sesame Street. I remember there was a tree in a park and all these kids keep running behind it but not coming out from behind the other side. And poor Barkley the dog is chasing them and becoming mighty confused. Then that made me think of one of my favourite parts of Sesame Street where the animated ball goes careening through this wicked cool pinball machine and hitting all the numbers up to the highlighted number of the day. I loved that. I do not know why. The higher the number, the longer the ball travelled, the happier I was. Then I started thinking about another favourite, which was the little cartoon typewriter that would squeak on screen, type out a word on itself like L-I-O-N, and then a lion would appear, scare the shit out of him, and then 3 seconds later, completely unfazed, he would roll back off the screen singing, Nooney, nooney, nooney. Then I remembered the "One of these things is not like the others" game. And A-Ha! We have finally reached the substance of the reverie. Suddenly I realized that being a Canadian in Pakistan is just like that. One of these things is not like the others. One of these things is not the same. It’s like being the obvious choice in that game every time. And you know, sometimes its great standing out and being different… But by the same token, sometimes it sucks.

So the next time someone asks me what it’s like living in Pakistan, at least I can keep that all in mind when I answer, "It’s good. I like it."

God. That post was a whole lot of nothing.