Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

Picking up my e-mail on my new Nokia Communicator 9500 was becoming annoying, because the self-signed certificate on my mail server is untrusted by my device. In these circumstances, the 9500 will ask you evey time it picks up your e-mail whether this untrusted certificate should be used. Unfortunately, it offers no option to register the certificate as trusted until its expiry.

If you're in a similar situation and, assuming you're running Linux on your mail server, here's what to do.

Firstly, convert the mail certifcate from PEM to DER format:

 openssl x509 -in /usr/share/ssl/certs/mail.pem -inform PEM -out /tmp/mail.der -outform DER

Next, copy the DER certificate from your mail server to your phone. I scp'ed it from my mail server to my laptop and then sent it via Bluetooth to my phone, where I saved it to my MMC card.

Finally, go to Control Panel|Security|Certificate manager on the 9500 and select Add. Select the file containing your certificate and add it. You should now be able to see it in the list of certificates. Now, select your certificate from the list and choose View details followed by Trust settings. Change the setting for Secure networking from No to Yes.

At this point, you should be able to pick up your e-mail without confirming each time that you want to trust the untrusted certificate. If it still doesn't work, make sure that you have filled in as the server name the exact same name used in the certificate, not an alias that points to the same IP address. The 9500 will use the certificate only if the server name it contains matches that in your e-mail settings.

Sarah and I viewed our first houses on Wednesday. That was a very interesting experience, as the four houses we looked at were very different to each other. I liked a couple of them, but Sarah only liked one of them. At least it was one of the two that I liked. We'll keep on looking, but at least the ball is now rolling. We'll hopefully view a few more places next week.

A letter of receipt arrived today, concerning Sarah's application for a residence permit. She's in the system, at least, which is good.

Another letter confirmed that the three of us have had our application for health insurance accepted. That's another important concern taken care of.

We didn't do much today. A visit to that most pretigious of retail establishments, Blokker, saw us pick up some exciting items, such as a ball of string, some drinking glasses, a mixing bowl, a four Euro clock for the living room, and a digital clock-radio for the bedroom. Ooh!

We also went to Prénatal in the Kalverstraat. This branch is closing, so they have a sale of their children's clothing with 70% off the original price. We picked up about half a dozen items for Eloïse , costing a total of €18. That satisifed Sarah's acutely honed sense of having found a bargain.

Wow. I can't go on typing this blog entry. Our life here is even more boring than it was in Mountain View, if that's even possible. That's what happens when you have neither a job nor many friends in a city where you've lived for precisely three weeks. I just can't bare to tell you about the items that comprised my dinner and what we watched on TV this evening.

Oh, before I forget, I met up with Simon, an old colleague of mine from Linuxcare the other day. We had dinner and strolled down memory lane. Simon occasionally works in The Hague, but lives in Munich.

I think the three of us are going to have to go on a trip pretty soon. Sarah and I are both getting itchy feet and living in this shitty house is doing us no good.

Sarah and I took Wiesje out in the Bugaboo today. She's become very accustomed to her sling and doesn't care much for the pram, so it was a bit of a risk to take her out in it, but I thought that it had been long enough that we should give it a go. Surprisingly, she immediately went to sleep and we had a good experience, pushing her around town.

After lunch at Bagels & Beans, we walked around the Sarphatipark and then on down to the Concertgebouw, where Sarah made enquiries about concert tickets for her folks when they visit later this month. We then continued into the Vondelpark, which was really crowded with people enjoying this very warm late summer's day. The last couple of days have been absolutely beautiful, with temperatures around 25°C. It's been real shorts and sandals weather.

Today was a nice, relaxing family day. It was nice to walk such a long distance, taking it easy and strolling at our own pace. Wiesje was in the best of moods, too, fussing very little throughout the day. The canals were scenic with small boats; cyclists were abundant; the cafés had full terraces of people eating and drinking the day away; the parks were full of people relaxing and enjoying life, skating, cycling, picnicing, chatting, drinking, etc., etc.

Yes, today was Amsterdam at its summer best and it felt good to be here again. There were so many scenes of life to be enjoyed, a far cry from anything we were able to witness back in the suburban hell that is Silicon Valley. Today provided a hint of the truth behind many of the reasons why I wanted to move back here. It's just going to take a little while to build a life here, but there's nothing new in that realisation.

An Australian ice-cream rounded out the afternoon nicely.

Dinner this evening was at Casa Peru. We met an Argentinian woman there and exchanged baby stories. Her latest child had a rash on his cheeks; it turns out he's allergic to her breastmilk. Imagine that!

I bought Eloïse her first bedtime story book today: Over een kleine mol die wil weten wie er op zijn kop gepoept heeft by Werner Holzwarth & Wolf Erlbruch. It's actually originally a German book, with the title Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den kopf gemacht hat or, if you prefer, 'About a small mole who wants to know who pooped on his head'. It's a fun book and I'm going to enjoy reading it to her, but she wasn't in the mood during my first attempt this evening.

Whereas in Mountain View, it would take me until 11:30 to get out of the house and bike in to work, we can't seem to leave the house until some time after noon over here. The day is half-gone before we even get out the door; we've definitely go to work on that.

We had lunch at Greenwood's today, a recommendation from a woman we recently met just outside our house at the Thai restaurant next door. You can get scones with jam and cream there, but I didn't sample them on this first visit.

We then walked up to Centraal Station to buy a voordeelurenkaart for both of us. This will give us a 40% discount on Dutch trains for a whole year. Sarah has been nagging me to take her somewhere exciting before I return to California for a week to see Dead Can Dance later this month, so this was part of that plan. You need a voordeelurenkaart to be able to purchase and use a RailPlus card, which you can use to get 25% off international tickets.

Anyway, these turned out to be useless in combination with the Thalys train that we wanted to take to Paris, so we didn't buy any of them. Instead, we just bought a couple of first class tickets to Paris for a train departing on Wednesday, the 14th. We'll spend four nights in the French capital and return on Sunday, giving me just one day to run any errands before I hop on a plane back to San Francisco for the first of four Dead Can Dance concerts along the Californian coast.

I've travelled quite extensively, but I've rather surprisingly never actually been to France before, so that will add another country to my list. We got a good deal on the first class tickets, thanks to Eloïse . She travels for free, but rather unusually, her very presence reduces the price of our adult tickets. It's strange, but we're not complaining.

Anyway, we always said that we would start to travel around Europe when we got here, and Sarah is making me put my money where my mouth is. It'll be fun to hurtle along the track at 300km per hour next week, making it to Paris in just four hours. One of the Thalys trains has WiFi on board, too, but sadly not the one we'll be taking that day.

So now we have to read the Lonely Planet Paris book as soon as possible and try to remember our school French. It'll be nice to get away for a few days and, in so doing, seal the first rather difficult chapter of our new life in Amsterdam. We've actually accomplished quite a lot in the last few weeks, even though it hasn't really felt like it.

Eloïse will get to visit her third country, too; not bad for someone just about to turn four months old.

At the end of the afternoon, we rode our bikes down to the Vondelpark, which turned out to be absolutely packed with people: cyclists, skaters, people lying on the grass; everyone was having a good time.

After giving Sarah some time to practice on the bakfiets, we went to Café Vertigo, next to the Film Museum. This is inside the Vondelpark at a very scenic spot.

There wasn't much space on the terrace, so we joined a woman and her eleven week old baby boy at their table. When we struck up a conversation with her, we realised we had a lot in common and hit it off really well. She has an Irish boyfriend and he joined us a little later. What was meant to be a quick drink turned into a meal and lasted a couple of hours. It was great to speak to some new people in more than a superficial way; it makes me realise just how much I'm missing our friends. Anyway, perhaps something lasting will come of this crossing of paths. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses, leaving only when Eloïse started to become weary of her parents not having moved their arses for way too long.

The temperature was about 27°C today; very, very warm. It's as if we'd never left California. If only it could continue for a few more weeks; then our friends and family could really see the city at its best when they visit.

It occurred to me today that, in her short young life, Eloïse has travelled by plane, train, boat, car and bicycle. Not bad for a girl who has yet to celebrate her fourth month on Earth.

The Belastingdienst (the Dutch inland revenue authority) frightened me today by sending me one of their dreaded blue envelopes. It turned out to be Wiesje's SoFi-nummer (social security number or social fiscal number, as it's called here). I didn't think that one would be automatically allocated to her, since she wasn't born here, but for some reason, enrolling her on the population register was enough to trigger the process. I'm not complaining, of course, as it saves me a trip to their offices to pick one up for her.

I also received a Dutch credit card today, so I can now rack up expenses in Euros and not have to resort to my American plastic, with its crappy exchange rate. On the other hand, all of the money in my Dutch bank account comes from a wire transfer from one of my American accounts, so I lose either way, I suppose. Almost all of our money is still in good old devalued greenbacks.

Another thing that arrived today was the pass-card for my Greenwheels car-sharing subscription. Greenwheels is a great idea. All over the city -- all over the country, in fact -- Greenwheels has cars parked across each of the various neighbourhoods. If you find you need a car, you simply reserve one either on the Net or via the telephone reservation system. You tell them from which location you want to pick it up (usually the closest pick-up spot to your house), then you use your pass-card to get into the car and drive it until your rental period expires. If you find you need the car for longer than originally planned, you simply call while on the road and extend the rental period (so long as no-one else has reserved the car immediately after your original slot).

Obviously, this system only works well if you just need a car for a few hours and that's all it's intended for, really: the running of awkward errands. You also have to return the car to its original spot, since each car only has a parking permit for the neighbourhood in which it is registered.

You can fill the tank at any petrol station in The Netherlands, using the pass-card. You don't actually pay at this stage, though. Instead, you run your card through a special machine in the petrol station, tell it the number of kilometres that the car has driven, and then you are invoiced later for the number of kilometres you have driven.

Apart from that, the only fee is a monthly subscription fee, but that can be as low as €5, depending on the package you choose.

I think this is a great idea. Given that Greenwheels has been smart enough to position some of its cars outside all of the major train stations in this country, it's extremely easy to go from one end of the country to the other and find a car waiting for you right outside the station. You can even take the car abroad.

I'm not ruling out owning our own car later on, but this will be a great solution for now, as we're bound to want to buy a television, baby furniture, a temporary table or two from IKEA, etc. In fact, we already need all of those things.

Sarah bought Wiesje a few fairy-tale books today from the second-hand baby shop in our street. I'm looking forward to reading those to her.

On the way back from lunch, we were lucky enough to be able to pick up a new charging base for our Sonicare electric toothbrushes. The bases we brought from the US use the wrong voltage, but it just so happened that the Witte Tanden Winkel in the Runstraat had some old bases lying around for our model of toothbrush, which is an old one. €10 is all it cost to be able to use our brushes again.

On a similar note, we received a new adaptor for Sarah's breast-pump in the post today. Again, the US adaptor is useless here, but the complicating factor here is that Sarah's model of breast-pump hasn't yet been released onto the Dutch market. Nevertheless, Medela had an advance model at their office, and they were kind enough to sell us the adapter from it. Sarah hasn't even started pumping yet, but she'll need to when her Dutch course starts in a couple of weeks. I'm going to have to be left alone with Wiesje for a few hours each week, so I'm going to need to be able to feed her. Lacking the correct biological apparatus, it's going to have to be a bottle full of pumped milk.

And so ended another fun-packed day in the life of the world's most exciting family. And you thought that the Osbournes were wild?

I'd forgotten to change the time on my digital camera from PDT to CEST, so all of the photos I've taken since getting here have timestamps and EXIF headers that are nine hours off. Rather than live with this, I quickly cooked up the following one-liner to rectify matters:

 for i in *.jpg; do cp $i /tmp; jhead -ta+9:00 /tmp/$i; \
 time=$(ruby -e "puts Time.at("$(($(stat -c '%Y' $i)+9*60*60))")"); touch -d "$time" /tmp/$i; done

There's got to be a better way, though, right? I mean, it would be nice to feed the output from stat right back into touch's -d option without having to use Ruby to convert it to a human-readable string. Note that the file must be touched after one has modified its EXIF header, not before, because modifying the header also resets the modification timestamp.

Anyway, at 03:00, this is the best I can manage and it gets the job done.

Lots of people have been nagging us to put up some new photos, so we finally have. Since the move, we haven't been diligent about taking photos whenever a good opportunity presented itself, but we'll try to be more discplined about that from now on.

My God, it's hot in this town. The weather has been amazingly good for well over a week now. Hot summer days with no rain whatsoever pass by, one after another, the evenings as humid as the days are sunny. Coming from California, it could be easy to take such weather for granted, but I remind myself every day that this Indian summer will not last. For now, however, we're enjoying the blue skies and 27° from the shade of the café terraces.

On Wednesday, our friend Bonnie took us to the Makro, which, for the Americans out there, is like the Dutch version of Costco, except that there's no membership fee: you just need to have a registered company, which you prove by showing your enrolment at the KvK (Kamer van Koophandel or Chamber of Commerce).

In all of my years in Amsterdam, I'd not been to this before, so I was surprised to find that it stocked way more than Costco does. We picked up everything from a beard trimmer to toys for Eloïse , from German pasta and kiwi fruit to a baby's changing pad.

In the evening, the family made its first trip in a Greenwheels car to Media Markt, down near the Amsterdam ArenA in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost. This part of the city is picking up steam now, with some very large shops in the style of an American mall. Just a few years ago, there was nothing here. Now, it's a really ugly, but thriving commercial centre for the kind of shop that just can't fit anywhere within the confines of Amsterdam. Of course, this unfortunately necessitates the use of a car.

Anyway, after much deliberation, we finally bought a new LCD TV to brighten up our empty, dishwater-dull living-room. We settled on a Philips 37PF9830 model.

Once we'd paid for the thing and hauled it down to the underground car-park, we soon realised that we could not fit the TV, two adults, a baby and a pram into the small Greenwheels car, so I had to drive the TV home and come back for the other precious cargo.

Anyway, after much heaving and sweating to get the thing up the narrow stairs in this house, we finally have a decent TV... with Teletext!

The very next morning, I went down to the UPC shop to order digital television for us, only to find that UPC has decided to freeze sales of this product as of 1st September. The saleswoman told me the product would be back in a new form in a few months, possibly with a new decoder and who knows what else. So, for the time being, we're left looking at a crappy analogue picture blown up to 94cm. Ironically, the image was sharper on a smaller television, but this will be a great television in the long run. One can admire its true sharpness by putting a compact flash card in the back of it and viewing one's digital photos, which are as crisp as you can imagine.

We've been viewing some more houses, too, although we haven't yet found the right one for us. Hardly surprising, I suppose, since we've only been at it for a couple of weeks.

If you're a Ruby/Google user and recently discovered that the library had stopped working, you'll probably be interested in this patch to version 0.5.1 that fixes things. It appears that Google made some silent changes at their end, probably to the WSDL file that they use. This caused Ruby/Google to fail.

I would release a new version of the software containing the patch, but since my computers (including my CVS repository) are currently in the hold of a ship somewhere on the mid-Atlantic, I'm unable to issue a new release of the software for the time being.

Patches are supposed to fix things, not leave them broken in new and interesting ways, so I thought I should redo yesterday's patch in such a way that it would actually have value. If you are scratching your head after applying yesterday's patch, please reapply it.

Hurray! The family leaves for Paris on the 12:56 train Wednesday afternoon. Four hours later, we'll all be in gay Paris (well, its Gare du Nord to be precise).

It's going to be fun to go exploring the French capital. Peter, an old Google colleague of mine, has given us some good tips for places to go and things to do and it looks like the weather is going to be mostly good, too. That's handy, since we still have almost no clothes to choose from. Everything is still underway from the States.

In other news, I took the Greenwheels car down to Prénatal today and purchased a pen (called a box in Dutch) for the tiny tyrant.

It turned out to be a bastardly awkward thing to put together, with inhuman amounts of torque required to screw in the screws for the casters. Then, a couple of the hexagonal screws were recessed, which meant that the allen key was fiddly to insert and then could only manage a quarter of a turn on each insertion.

Anyway, I got there in the end and Wiesje now has a place to lie down in our living room. Hopefully, she'll be patient enough to use it. I put a mobile on the side to draw her attention, but she's always been more one for the human touch than for mechanical interaction.

The little one has just turned four months old. She gets more beautiful with each passing day and I feel myself loving her more and more over time, which always surprises me, because I already love her so much that more simply doesn't seem possible. I suppose this is Mother Nature's clever bonding process.

We'll be back from Paris Sunday evening. I don't think I'll bring this laptop with me, so this may be my last posting until then. Hopefully, Wiesje will travel well on the train. We're treating ourselves to first class, which I'm looking forward to experiencing. It's actually the first time I've ever travelled first class on a train, so I'm feeling a little decadent.

We arrived back from Paris Sunday evening.

What can I say? All of the clichés of wildly gesticulating Parisians and angry, arrogant, rude people have been grossly exaggerated. We found the French to be courteous, polite, helpful and kind to a fault.

The food was out of this world, with bakeries and brasseries at every turn. There are probably twenty bakeries in Paris for every one in Amsterdam and even more probably more bakeries in Paris than in the whole of the US.

And, for a big city, we couldn't believe how relaxed its atmosphere was. No-one seemed to be in a hurry or stressed in any way. No nutcases screamed unintelligible expletives from the corner of the street. No-one tried to mow us down in a car. No-one bowled us over as we boarded the metro. People even gave up their seat to Sarah; consistently, too. I thought such politeness belonged to a bygone age.

The trip down to Paris was sheer bliss. The first class of the Thalys train took good care of us, with Wiesje sleeping most of the way there. A quick metro ride from Gare du Nord to Châtelet brought us to our hotel, which formed the base for our daily excursions out and about.

The Cathédrale Notre Dame was overhyped, in our opinion. It was an impressive building, but not the stuff of global fame. We much preferred Sacré Cœur with its domination of the horizon and stunningly ornate interior.

Many kilometres passed underfoot during our few days in Paris. We managed a visit to the extremely busy Eiffel Tower, several walks along the Seine, a walk along Les Champs-Elysées, and the discovery of many of the city's back-alleyways and passages. The baked goods, strong coffee, hot chocolate and freshly squeezed juices made us feel like royalty. Good weather formed the icing on the already delicious cake.

In short, Paris really surprised us. We can't wait to go back and visit some of the city's museums, as there was just no time on this trip. Both Sarah and I can easily imagine owning a small apartment there and using it to escape from the overcrowded Dutch capital from time to time.

Anyway, I've put up some of our photos from this trip. More will join them later.

Tomorrow, I get on a plane and head to San Francisco for the first of four Dead Can Dance concerts. I'll be meeting up with my old friend, Geoff, and driving down the Californian coast, passing by Los Angeles and ultimately arriving in San Diego. It'll be weird to be back there for a week.

In my absence, Sarah will be a one-parent family for three days, before being joined by her folks, who are coming to Amsterdam on a two week trip. Hopefully, the weather will be kind to them. The forecast at this stage is good, at least.

Well, I landed safe and sound in San Francisco amidst thunder and lightning. Most odd; the weather in Amsterdam this morning was decidedly better.

Geoff picked me up from the airport, where I had been given the third degree over my immigration status. It turns out that the consulate in Amsterdam hasn't yet informed the authorities here that I've surrendered my green card, so they wondered why I was coming in on the visa waiver programme. Whatever.

After coffee at Café Borrone in Menlo Park, Geoff drove me to a car hire agency, where I rented myself a handy little Nissan for getting around over the next few days.

After dinner at Pizza Chicago and a quick coffee down the road, I headed back to Jim's place, where I'm staying while he and Susannah are out of town. I'm about to crash, as I'm absolutely knackered. Internet access here isn't working, so I'm using my mobile phone as a Bluetooth modem. Bah! It's as slow as hell.

Leaving the family behind this morning was excruciatingly hard. I shed more than a few tears during the course of the day. I don't think I'll make another trip away from my ladies any time in the near future.

Tomorrow sees Geoff and me head to Oakland for the first Dead Can Dance concert. That should be pretty special. Let's hope so, because I've come a long way for it.

Geoff and I drove up to Oakland last nigt for the first of two Dead Can Dance concerts at the Paramount

As someone who attended two of the European concerts earlier this year, I have to say that Dead Can Dance were in superlative form last night. The band seemed tighter and more polished than they had back in April; not that there was anything wrong with their performances back then, of course.

I spoke to Niall after the show and told him my thoughts, wondering if the show I had just witnessed had seemed better merely because I was still in the moment of it all, whereas the shows from back in April had sunken somewhat into my memory.

Interestingly, he agreed. He said that the band was much tighter now than in Europe and that Brendan had spent a lot of money on improving the sound of the band on stage. Clearly, the European dates had acted as great preparation for the North American dates and the current line-up of the band is rapidly distilling into its most sublime form.

The new songs had evolved in small but significant ways since the European concerts. There were subtle variations, some cymbal where there had previously been none, and the arrangement of How Fortunate The Man With None had been changed slightly at the point where Lisa sings along. Lance now joined in, too, which I don't think was the case earlier.

A new song was played last night that wasn't played on the European leg of the tour, but I didn't get a set list, so I don't know its name. I'm not sure which song had been dropped from the set in favour of this one, either.

Lisa was her usual serene self, but Brendan was conspicuous by his sense of humour and generally jovial demeanour. He seemed to be enjoying himself more than I've ever seen him in the past.

The only new merchandise on sale was a grey version of the hooded sweater. The prices of the various items seem to be much cheaper than in Europe.

The version of the programme on sale was the same as in Europe, i.e. with many of the North American dates appearing incorrectly. I had wondered if they would reprint it.

In just a few more hours, we'll make the drive up to Oakland again for the second night's concert. Needless to say, I can't wait.

It now looks as if we won't leave for the drive down to L.A. until Saturday. The concert isn't until Sunday, anyway.

The second Dead Can Dance concert in Oakland was every bit as good as the first.

Saltarello has never sounded better and Dreams Made Flesh stood out as a particularly spirited rendition, as it did the night before. Other personal highlights for me were Rakim and Severance, with its new hurdy-gurdy virtuosity at the end.

Brendan rehashed his jokes from the previous night, which had already been used in Seattle and perhaps even earlier. Time for some new comedic material, perhaps.

I managed to obtain a set-list from this show, so I now know that Lisa's new song is called Compassion. Yamyinar has made way for this in the set and was also left off the recent Best of the 2005 European Tour CD, so I suspect it has fallen from favour with the band.

The set-list was as follows:

1. Nierika
2. Saffron
3. Compassion
4. The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove
5. The Love That Cannot Be
6. The Lotus Eaters
7. Crescent
8. Minus Sanctus
9. Saltarello
10. The Wind That Shakes The Barley
11. How Fortunate The Man With None
12. Dreams Made Flesh
13. I Can See Now
14. American Dreaming
15. Sanvean
16. Rakim
17. Black Sun
18. Salem's Lot Aria
19. Yulunga
20. Severance
21. Hymn For The Fallen
    

    After the show, Geoff and I went backstage and hung out with Niall and Simeon, two of the band's percussionists. A couple more down-to-earth guys you couldn't wish to meet. Brendan was there, too, but we were so busy talking to the other guys that we didn't look for an opportunity to grab a moment with him.

    Soon afterwards, we adjourned to what is seemingly Oakland's only open pub after 23:00 and spent a couple of hours there. Shortly after 01:00, Simeon and Niall had to go back to the tour bus for the drive to L.A., so we shook hands and arranged to try to meet up in Hollywood on Sunday.

    As Sunday nears, my anticipation of the Hollywood Bowl concert is mounting. It's going to be a real treat to see and hear the band be accompanied by a 45 person orchestra; something really special and unique and even more of a night to remember than the two so far in Oakland. As usual, my expectations are high.

Last night's orchestral concert at the Hollywood Bowl was excellent, but marred by the inconsiderate and selfish behaviour of a handful of individuals. I even ended up losing my temper and threatening a couple of them. Get the whole story if you care to know why.

The backstage party was a lot of fun, though. I mostly hung out with Niall and Simeon, but had a good conversation with John Bonnar about his involvement with the band. Sadly, he doesn't think the band will ever perform together again after this tour, but you never know, of course. Who'd have thought that the band would even reunite for this one? Similarly, he's doubtful about the prospect of the band ever recording together again.

A few words had with Lisa and Brendan ended the evening on a high note.

And now, we're in San Diego, just fifteen miles from the Mexican border.

The day started in Los Angeles with an atrociously bad breakfast at IHOP and half an hour spent at the impressively large and complete Amoeba Music on Sunset Boulevard. After that, we embarked on the drive down to the tail-end of southern California.

Once we'd dumped the stuff in our room, we continued south to San Ysidro, where we parked the car and took a coach across the Mexican border to Tijuana. It was my second trip to this border town. Last time, I had a girlfriend with me, but this time, there was nothing to discourage the droves of massage and sex show peddling doormen from ad infinitem offers of gorgeous girls, each assuring me that the competitors could offer only old and fat women and that the true beauties awaited us within their establishment.

I was curious enough that I would have ventured inside (purely in the name of journalistic investigation, you understand), but Geoff was reluctant to explain to his wife that he had beheld naked women, even if his intentions were not to be aroused. Sadly, the lovely ladies of Tijuana therefore remain unbeknownst to me.

An amble around town and a decidely mediocre dinner with a one time Ethiopian refugee turned Ohio night-club owner completed Geoff's low-brow introduction to Latin America. We headed back to the bus station. Thankfully, no grief awaited me at the US border control as I reentered the country.

Tomorrow night is my fourth and final Dead Can Dance concert of this trip. I don't have to tell you that I'm looking forward to it.

Tonight was the last night of my stint following Dead Can Dance around California.

We had time to kill during the day, so we went to San Diego Zoo in the afternoon. Some of the highlights were the reptile house, the various apes, some big cats and a lot of tortoises.

When we got back to the venue, the band were in the middle of the soundcheck. Those who think of Lisa as otherworldly would have been shocked to witness her singing in plain black clothing, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap: not very ethereal. Brendan was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt.

Geoff and I had dinner and then settled down for the show. The sound was great and the crowd was a good one, spirited but respectful. Brendan was in a particularly good mood tonight, joking with the audience at regular intervals throughout the concert. He seems to get more jovial with each passing day. Saffron stood out as especially vivacious and energetic, with Brendan really giving it his all tonight.

After the show, I attempted to go backstage with my VIP pass, but was stopped by one of the security guards, who informed me that my pass didn't entitle me to enter the backstage area. At that moment, Lisa very conveniently emerged and told the bloke that I was a friend of hers, so I was allowed through.

Inside the backstage area, we hung out with Niall, Simeon, John and Michael. Lisa left quickly, but Brendan was there with some of his family.

Around midnight, we shook hands and parted company. The band are driving back to L.A. tonight and flying to Mexico tomorrow morning for the next date of their North American tour.

For me, however, the tour has come to an end. Tomorrow, we drive back to L.A., where Geoff will drop me off for my flight to Amsterdam, before continuing alone back to Mountain View. I should have arrived back home by around 13:00 local time on Thursday.

I've had a fantastic time. Not only was each of the concerts a special and memorable occasion, having backstage passes for each gig made for a truly unique and personal experience. I shan't forget these four evenings in a hurry and I'm indebted to Niall for putting us on the guest list each night.

As much as I'd like to stay and catch more shows, I can't. All good things, as they say. Besides, I'm missing my daughter and can't wait to hold her in my arms again and watch her giggle with glee.