Disoriented

Of late, I seem to drift off to a completely different thought stream from whatever I am currently working on. I just now spoke to a friend over the phone and a minute after the conversation ended it took me some time to recollect what I was doing. When I tried to trace back the events all I could remember was talking to someone but couldn't immediately recollect who.

Back to music!

Being revisiting ARR's old goldies... hope I can keep up the momentum and get back to music. If only I could buy a piano :( 

What's the analogy behind ?

Why do people ..

1. Refer to the ears as speakers (eg. speaker erundum out ah)?. Ears are input devices while the speakers are output devices.
2. What's the analogy behind "nandi maadhiri nirkuriye" ?. What I know from my limited knowledge of temples is that the "nandi" is a statue of bull in a 'sitting' position watching over the main shrine. I don't think it blocks the view or that it could be a synonym for statue, if it was, of all the statues in the world why single out nandi ?

Someone please enlighten me.

Goosebumps

For someone who was never meant for this world, I'm suddenly having a hard time leaving it. Of course, they say every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. Maybe I'm not leaving. Maybe I'm going home. - from the movie Gattaca.

Sometimes out of the blue you suddenly get to watch some amazing movie that leaves a lasting impression.

Back from the dead!

After nearly two months got myself an internet connection!

Hmmm..

Been working for 12 hrs a day for three days straight.

Nothing Fancy

One thing great about Illayaraja music is that you don't need fancy equipment to enjoy the music.

Listening to "Mela Mela" from the movie vazhkai on a  zebronic headphone (the one with a mic.).

Mella Mella - Vazhkai - Illayaraja

Airtel Super Singer 2008

I tried hard to stay away from watching this show for two reasons. First, these reality shows bring in more drama then actually any talent. Second, it makes me really really miserable. For seven years I learnt music from a great teacher who tried his best to teach a dumb student like me and here I am wasting it all away. Its been over a year now since I did anything even remotely significant in music (not that I did anything before but at least I was practicing hard). I get extremely jealous and miserable watching these shows.

My mom was(is) addicted to this show and as was coming home early from work for a few months I just couldn’t keep away from it with the TV blaring between 9-10 pm. Strangely, I started liking it. And pretty soon I got extremely addicted and have even gone to extent of blogging about it :). With so many innovative rounds, I thought, for once they had refrained from too much drama and were actually concentrating on the musical talents of the participants. 

Things seemed fine until the finals. I can’t believe they actually let the audience decide the winner. It was completely atrocious and it clearly showed all that the channel cared about was keeping its ratings high. It was a great insult to all the hard work put on by those extremely talented singers.

I may sound arrogant but come on! most the people who would have voted would have had no clue about music. All they know of is ‘Suriya songs’, ‘Vijay songs’, ‘Simbu songs’.. etc. Only if the music director is A.R.Rahman they refer to it as Rahman songs. Yuvan, Harris come next but people like Devi Sri Prasad, Vijay Anthony, GV Prakash don’t even exist. You can easily get popular even if you aren’t talented. Its really easy. I have had some personal experiences. I have given extremely sloppy performances and yet have been praised just too much. I am not being humble here. Its really irritating when people praise you even after a sloppy performance. If someone plays a classical piece and if I play a popular film song with some fancy accompaniment, I can easily get popular. Even if its sloppy. It kind of happened to me in school. The college I studied in wasn’t a big one and none of them had even seen a electronic keyboard and again it was easy to get popular.

Ajesh, the winner of super singer 2008 is a wonderful singer. In fact, all of the top five finalists were pretty good singers. I am in no way trying to belittle the dedication, hard work and the musical talents of Ajesh. Unlike me, he really has pretty good talent. I am only p***** off by the way in which the winner was chosen. I damn sure that Ravi would have been the judges choice. He was far far better than others and had given a very consistent performance right from the start. As a young college goer and with such good talent it was only natural that Ajesh was more popular. Its really disappointing that the winner of such a great show was chosen by popularity count rather than by the music legends like Chitra, Sudha Ragunathan and others who were also present at the finals. I would have had no qualms if Ajesh was selected as the winner by the judges themselves. 

P.S: This post should have been made a long time ago but as usual I was too lazy to finish it up :). I had started on this post long before the finals when I actually liked this program. Fortunately, procrastination has helped me rethink about it.

Slept for two hours one day and then the next day, slept for 13 hours straight. I sure do know how to compensate for loss :).

Thanks for calling

I have a broadband connection from the infamous BSNL. Why?, you may ask. First, In my area no other service provider has coverage. Second, compared to others BSNL has some really cheap plans.

I've been having this connection for nearly 1.6 years now and surprisingly the maximum days I have gone without internet is 1-2 days on 2-3 occasions, which I believe is pretty good in BSNL standards. Also, the maximum time they have taken to restore the service back is only around 12 hrs from the time I make a complaint (the catch is it takes 1-2 days just to get them to pick up your call).

Now, for the last two days I was facing the blackout (not surprising as its been quite a while) and after the usual one day of trying I somehow got someone to pick up the call. For around 20mins they made me play around with the TCP/IP setting and the modem configuration and in the end were successfully able to restore the connection back. I was quite surprised by this as I expected the problem to be on their end which is the case usually and then came the shocker.. the person actually said .. "Thank you for calling"
!!!  

Did you vote?

No, I didn't.

Being alone..

... has never been a problem for me. I've been alone for most part of my life. Have extremely few friends. Have gone for days without even talking to anyone.

Things seem to be different now. Not that I am having any company now ...

... it feels like I have a problem.

 

Saved!

For those of you who saw my last post, well, I made it through in one piece :D . I was expecting to get the biggest thrashing of my life from my keyboard master. I had planned to meet him and collect my Grade 5 Piano Exam certificate (which I did a year ago and scored badly :( ) at my old apartment where he teaches a kid. I was already expecting a trashing as the certificate had been with him for over a year now and to top it all my parents had also planned on visiting the neighbors on the same day. I was damn sure that my parents would quetch that I haven't even  touched the keyboard for a very long time. The meeting between the two seemed inevitable and I was certain that my fate woud be sealed. As expected they did meet and lucliky he was in a hurry as he was getting late for the next class and they didn't talk much :).

This may seem quite trivial but I have the greatest respect for him as a guru and according to him I am a hard working dedicated student (I could be the worst learner). I would do anything to keep this reputation from being damaged.

Oh God Please Save Me

Tomorrow's gonna be a really really bad day for me. I swear I'll never be lazy and waste my time if I make it through in one piece tomorrow. Oh! plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz god :(

More about Slumdog Millionaire

Was just blog hopping and found this interesting article.

"For the Indians you have to show nice skyscrapers, flashy suits, neat
roads and they will buy it (atleast that was how it was). For the
Americans you have to show utter poverty, destitute, chidlren with
bloated stomachs fighting for food packets, tenements alongside sewers.
Basically, people like seeing in movies what they dont experience in
reality."

Read the full article here

Thalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy ..

Congrats A.R.Rahman

The Pink Slip

Oh, How I would love to get that one. Yup, you heard it right. I would be really happy if I were to lose my current job. Crazy you say ? Sometimes I really need to be forced to do even the things I like most.

I F***** It Up

Recently lot of people around me have constantly reminded me of how much they associate me with music and how much I have distanced myself from it in the past one year. I have been giving lame excuses and have been extremely lazy. I think its time to start all over again!

Insights - I

Sometimes its important to do the boring stuff to get to the interesting ones.

Slumdog Millionaire

First, I am happy than A.R.Rahman has won the Golden Globe award. Was waiting for him to get some international recognition which he rightly deserves. I happened to listen to the soundtrack of the movie only today and I must say I wasn't really impressed. Also, I haven't seen the movie yet and from what I hear about the storyline it doesn't seem impressive too. Certainly, Lagaan and Rang De Basanti were far better films and ought to have got him international recognition (I donno much about the Golden Globe awards. Should the movie be in English for it to be nominated ?). Nevertheless, it would have been really a unique movie experience for the white people which I believe is what has led to all this hype.

One of my favorite bloggers, hawkeye , says it all well here.

Anyway I do hope A.R.Rahman goes on to win an Oscar, but I certainly would have been more happy if it had happened for Lagaan.   

loneliness

.. is the safest bet.