The meat safe and the study desk

Why are these two the only sports where the crowds are asked to keep quiet when the game is in progress? Haven’t the other sports and their sportsmen moved on with it? Afterall, its only natural for the crowds to respond in a particular manner.

* Had been to banglore yesterday for a concert. Yea, it was just a marriage concert. Reached banglore at an insane time, 4.30 am, in freezing temperature. Reached my cousins place, faced his wrath as he opened the door for us, threw me a blanket and ordered me to sleep. Went to the factory after that, met Mridu and Lokesh in the afternoon, at her new house. Was given a very thoughtful and pleasing ‘Thank You’ card for their wedding.

* Reached the concert venue, Ganjam Mandapa, at 7.15 pm. Pretty nice place, an old house converted into a hall, rented out for small scale functions.

* Sound Check at 7.30 pm. First time for me, wonder if it made any difference, finally.

* Concert from 8.30-10 pm. There were countably 2 people who sat down and listened to me.

* Back on the train at 11.45 pm. Sleepless night, owing to some arguing and fighting between passsengers in the same compartment.

Strange acquaintance: Spoke to a girl at the wedding, to enquire about the bride and groom’s background. I asked her, “So , are you Murali’s friend?” She replies with a smirk and a disdainful uh, “I am a Wedding Consultant”. Never heard that before in this part of the world.

P.S: This post is being posted from the new ibook that we have purchased at work. Guess i need something like this to keep the posts coming!

There was this program on NDTV on saturday night, with the stars from the movie Rang De Basanti, which is to be released soon. The program was a face-to-face discussion kind of thing, with some college students and the actors. When asked to sum up the essence of the movie, the director says that one dialogue of Aamir Khan’s in the movie brings out the essenece of the whole movie and its ethos. It goes something like this,

“There are two ways to live life – One, either go along with things that happen around you by following suit, or try and change them”

Most of us would like to believe that we are of the second kind, but end up living like the former in our daily lives. I tried to change something around me, something which was just going along all this time, without any real effort, and it worked.

I am happily relieved.

Finally, after all these years of planning and inaction(from my side, atleast), someone has taken the initiative and done a great job to create a wiki page for the DAV 1999 batch. Great work Karthik.

Student profiles, photo galleries, teachers section and even an anecdotal section. Check it out here.

A group of scientists in Bangalore have formed an innovative company with only one product to sell: maths. Evidently, an algorithm could change your life.

http://www.businessworldindia.com/nov0104/invogue01.asp

Thanks [karthik]

As was expected, the India-Pakistan test at Lahore ended in a boring draw, but buoy, the game’s second half was made interesting by Sehwag, in the only way he could. Blitzkrieg! 254 of just 248 balls, and yes we are talking test cricket. The Indians would have loved to have a shot at the remaining world records (lots of them were smashed yesterday) and who knows we might have a had a new world record holder for the highest individual score if a whole day’s play was possible.

I wouldnt like to think that either team won any psychological points over the other. Both are aware of their strengths and will be wary of them in the games to come. Yes, I know Akhtar was smased around and Kaneria was dismissed, but so were Irfan Pathan and Harbhajan Singh. The teams will go to Faisalabad(Jan 21-25) pretty evenly matched.

Meanwhile Down under, Sri Lanka scored a convincing victory over South Africa, who had beaten Australia a couple of days back. Meaningful knocks from Sangakkara and Mubarak. This was followed up with some tidy bowling and appaling running between the wickets by the South African batsmen (2 run outs, Gibbs and Rudolph). What was pleasing to see was the way the Sri Lankans were cheered by their supporters. Very colorful and entertaining. The supporters even went one step further and booed and ‘no-balled’ the South African off spinner Johan Botha, whose action has recently been reported for review. Fair call, they’ve been at the receiving end for long enough. This win opens up the VB series and the forthcoming games should be interesting.

Carnatic Music followers or even others who live in Madras will know that December is the month of the year when there is a lot of musical activity in the city. Those guys and girls, who are not that musically inclined would have heard their parents or grandparents or neighbors talking about going to concerts to the Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha etc.. So what exactly is this Music Season? Does it have somthing to do with the climate? (why the word season, then!!)

The December Music season started off as an activity in the year 1927. In that year, when the All India National Congress conference was held in Madras, efforts were made to arrange for musical concerts of leading musicians in the evenings, probably as a source of entertainment after day long debating and fighting! Who knows how politics and politicians were, back then. This series of concerts was organised at the Madras Music Academy and ever since, regular concerts have been arranged by more and more organisations every year, in the month of December.

Some amazing stats about the ‘Season’, as it is known. This is the only activity of its kind where there are over 3000 music concerts scheduled over a period of 30 days by 70-80 organisations. No where else in the world doesnt ay event of this magnitude take place. Top ranking musicians sing something between 20-30 concerts, each concert’s duration being 2 and half hours(average), in the same 30 days. And much more…

Personally, this past December, was my second Season. I have been a regular concert goer for many years, but this is the second year that I have performed during the Season and its been a great experience.
More on the Season and music, coming up…

I was having a discussion with a friend on blogging tools available. Having seen and used blogger, I thought I should check out WordPress too. Pretty impressed. The templates here are better, simple minimalistic design. May be I will continue blogging here. The subject and nature of this blog is unclear as of now, but may be it will materialise into something concrete. But for now, cheers WordPress!!

Update:

1. WordPress now has the much wanted Import feature to import existing Blogger/Movable Type blogs to WP blogs.

- Jan 27, 2006