Howzat...

I know this might take some believing, but last Friday I actually went out to watch some live cricket! Dave Watson has some tickets and so we had a boy's night out watching the Islamabad Leopards versus Faisalabad Wolves in the domestic 20/20 Cricket. This was the first time that I have seen cricket live and the first time I have watched live sport in Pakistan, so I have managed to tick two boxes for the price of one!!

Sadly, my first exposure to cricket was not the finest example of the noble game. The Leopards were 103 for their 20 overs, which is not a particularly good score. The Wolves came out, and after a little nifty bowling by the Leopards in the opening over, which dismissed the first batsman, they made relatively short work of achieving their goal. They manage to score the only 6 of the match on their last ball which took them to 106 and won them the game.

After our sporting fixture, Dave and I headed off towards Tariq Road and to nice little Chinese restaurant and indulged in some very tasty food. When I dropped Dave off I was able to collect a couple of items that he had brought back from his recent trip to the UK, namely Angel Delight and Carmelised Red Onion Chutney!

This last month has been a very busy one with the School Arts Week, including the performances of 'Hobson's Choice'. I am pleased to report that the whole week went very well. The opening night was 'An Evening of Poetry, Music and Drama' Year 7 gave a recital of an Urdu poem, Year 8 were the Crazy Chefs which would probably have started a dipolmatic incident had been seen outside of school!! Year 9 gave an excellent rendition of Act 1 of Macbeth. Mixed in between these bigger pieces were performances by the choir, who presented three songs by the Beatles.

Thursday and Friday saw two fantastic performances of Hobson's Choice. We were using an updated version which turned the Hobson family from an 1880's Lancashire family into a modern day family of Pakistani immigrants. The cast were brilliant and pulled off the comedy to great effect. The audience were very impressed and everyone enjoyed it enormously.

The rest of the month became a rather large headache, as we were trying to organise a Geography Field Trip to Muscat in Oman. The problem is that Pakistanis need to have their visas approved before travel and for one reason or another they didn't come through on time. Unfortunately, this meant that the trip had to be cancelled.

There are now just two weeks until the end of term, which will see about 50 staff and students head off to Athens for a week of culture and fun. This of course depends on the Italian Consulate issuing the Schegen visas in time. We have been assured that this will happen, though the assurance was followed by, Inshallah...