After two previous succesfull chat sessions with Mary, she has agreed to do another chat session this year during the Dutch tour. The chat session is scheduled on Saturday 18 / Sunday 19 February 2006 (depending on the timezone in which you live). The exact times are listed in the following table (it may be a bit later, depending on the ending of the concert that night. I will try to keep you posted that evening via the mblack@yahoogroups.com mailing list, using the e-mail functionality of my mobile):

Melbourne, Sidney (GMT+10:00)

Central Time (GMT-6:00)

The chat session will take about one hour.You don't need to ask for a username and password upfront. The chatroom will remain open for everyone. Just go to the chatroom here on the website, choose a username and enter the chatroom. If someone else is already using the username you choose, you will be asked to use another login name.

The new chatroom does also allow an audio and video connection to be made to my webcame and microphone. This would mean that you may be able to see and/or hear Mary. However, whether we will turn on audio and video depends on whether Mary prefers to have it switched on or not.

Depending on the number of participants it will be either a completely free chat session or a bit more regulated session (when there are a lot of participants). In all cases, please try to adhere to the following basic rules:

• Try out the chat room at least once before the chat session. Try to login, to send one or two messages to the chat room (even if no one else is there) and try to logout. This is just to be sure that the chat room works on your computer. If not, please make sure you webbrowser allows java applets to be run. If you have any problems, please let me know at webmaster@mary-black.net and I will try to help you much as possible.
• Remember that Mary cannot answer multiple questions at the same time. So we will try to have only one person ask a question at the same time.
• Give Mary and others time to answer or ask their question.
• Mary is free to decide if she doesn't want to answer certain questions.

If there are too many participants, I will regulate the session. In that case, please also follow the following rules:

• If you want to ask a question, please send the message "Raise Hand" to the chat room only ONCE. I (Mark) will take note of all those who want to ask a question.
• When it is your turn to ask a question, I will let you know that it is your turn.
• When someone keeps sending "Raise Hand" messages or keeps disrupting the session, I will ban that person from the chat session (but I assume that we are all resonable adults, so this won't be necessary).