30 days of music - Day 6: a song that reminds me of somewhere

I was looking forward to this.



I was heading back home after an awesome Snow Patrol concert at the magnificent 02.

The Jubilee Line traversed the city, emptying itself of its late-evening passengers on platforms waiting for a long day to end.

I made the 45-minute journey from East London to West, sat by myself, amidst the crumpled free-sheets. And all that time, this was the refrain in my head.

Urgent, energetic, enthusiastic.

I think I fell in love, proper-like, then. London became my city.

And I fell in love with myself all over again. It was about time too.

30 days of music - Day 1: my favourite song

There's this internet meme going around that I thought would be fun to be part of. Y'know, one song posted everyday for 30 days, to fit a description. Pretty simple stuff really.

Why would I do that, you ask?

Well:

1. Because I like music and I like arranging music into lists more
2. Because I really need to make more of an effort into completing my writing and posting on my blog everyday. (3 posts all year. Disgraceful.)
3. It's a great opportunity to explore all that music, and music sharing options, don't-ya-think.

And yes, I have a fondness for Cheese. Don't laugh, don't judge.

Oh and yea, do share with me your songs. It'll be fun.

Day 01: my favourite song




My first genuine music craze, the first and only poster to go up on my walls.

I have about five different versions of this song in my collection, each one making my heart melt in a very shameless, breathless, lovesick, girly, oh-I-wish-it-were-me kind of way to hear JBJ sing those words.

Plus it's a pretty good tune. So there.

Here's the rest of what's coming up this month for anyone who'd like to think about it as well. You know you want to.

Day 02: your least favourite song
Day 03: a song that makes you happy
Day 04: a song that makes you sad
Day 05: a song that reminds you of someone
Day 06: a song that reminds you of somewhere
Day 07: a song that reminds you of a certain event
Day 08: a song you know all the words to
Day 09: a song you can dance to
Day 10: a song that makes you fall asleep
Day 11: a song from your favourite band
Day 12: a song from a band you hate
Day 13: a song that is a guilty pleasure
Day 14: a song that no one would expect you to love
Day 15: a song that describes you
Day 18: a song that you used to love but now hate
Day 19: a song from your favourite album
Day 20: a song you listen to when you're angry
Day 21: a song you listen to when you're happy
Day 22: a song you listen to when you're sad
Day 23; a song that you want to play at your wedding
Day 24: a song you want played at your funeral
Day 25: a song that makes you laugh
Day 26: a song that you can play on an instrument
Day 27: a song that you wish you could play
Day 28; a song that makes you feel guilty
Day 29: a song from my childhood
Day 30: your favourite song this time last year

I Voted!

I voted because:

• I want to feel part of the governance of a nation, part of the System you could even say.
• I don't want to have to refer to "the System" pretentiously, contemptuously, or apathetically. I don't want it to be a dirty word.
• I'm saying I'm willing to take responsibility for my nation. 

These were the local body - Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) - elections. 

Which is why when I cast my (secret) ballot, my choice was for the candidate best placed to ensure ward-level development. 

I think that's fair, but that's a view that is open to change. 

Does larger ideology and party principles take or should take precedence over ward-level issues? 

Me and my violently indigo pointer are going to give that some thought for when the next election cycle starts. 

Meet the Star

Look who got a cool 500 words to write about herself in the paper. 

Education Times Bangalore, The Times of India, 2 Nov, 09.

Note that I also got not one, but two pictures. Neither of them embarrassing. (Have a friend who picked one for me and Photoshop that did the rest, to thank for that.)

Also note the quote that makes the headline.

 I'll admit - it's not just Mum that thinks I'm a natural at this stuff. I'm a Me fan too.

*Bows*

(The link to the page, pdf format.)

Shoebox memory cull

I threw away my Bon Jovi poster. The first love of my life is now lying with his pretty face in old news print. 

It was faded, frayed, spotty, stained, and ... old. It had been an indulgent gift from caring friends that I treasured almost as much as JBJ CDs. The poster was about shared fantasies, dreams, conversations, and stories with friends. But it was dusty and so were the memories.

It all started exactly a month ago when I packed all my life's possessions and moved continents. Besides the 46kg + 8kg hand luggage (+ laptop bag), I was dragging with me enough memories and, some would say, emotional baggage.

So when I first began emptying my room, every little ticket stub and visitors' information booklet was carefully packed away. But during the period of wanderlust that followed, and before I landed up at the next place I would call home, the memory cull had been ruthless. "I can't lift so much stuff," might only have been an excuse to shed carefully collected tokens of memories and shared experiences, left behind as I continued onwards on my travels.

A first restaurant bill was just a piece of paper and my security-blanket t-shirt really didn't have another wear in it. Bin 'em.

Finally back home, the things that once defined My space didn't seem that important any more. For one, Jon was already off my wall, rolled and left in some cupboard.

Out went Jon, old textbooks, old stuffed toys (the cow that went moo was put in a plastic bag and stuffed in a cupboard nobody can reach, at least till the next cull), papers, bags, clocks.

As did old birthday gifts, friendship tokens, thank-you/ happy-new-year cards...saved text messages from three years ago.....

I'd like to think that I can get rid of some of this stuff because my relationships have moved beyond names signed on restaurant tissue (yea, we did that) and an awful drawing that sprouted one particularly boring class. These people are still in my life, I'm making new memories with them all the time, and I hope I can show them I care in ways that don't include hanging onto a present from seven years ago.

But I can't escape that some of these things are just dust-gathering-junk, the stories behind them aren't that special any more, and the people or the experiences are from a past that was wonderful, but now well past.

I still love JBJ, I'm pretty sure I always will.

But there's only so much that a shoebox can hold, and we need space for the new.

Excuses for limited blogging in August

1. Free culture - Creative Mind project - the website I built as my final masters project and the purpose of my existence since April.
Still trying to fix IE formatting issues. (Any web developers reading this know where I'm going wrong?)

I've had some great feedback, I've met more smart people and my Twitter feed is getting hard to keep up with.

2. Various distractions.

Sleep....

Erm....

....

Well...

Oh! And Brighton - Travelled far to see the Kissing Cops by celebrated street artist Banksy. For no particular reason. Except that it was there. You think he painted it because the wall Was There?

There it was, preserved from potentially overzealous councils and profiteers. While some might dismiss Banksy very distatefully, it was Art, standing by trash cans and restaurant leftovers. The graffiti around was as, if not more striking; but those remain blotches on the city walls, relegated to being examples of public nuisance and anti social behaviour.

Why, thank you! *blush*

I love a compliment just as much as the next girl, so when it was the national newspaper telling me what my mirror tells me an average of 19 days a month, of course I was flattered.

According to The Times,

Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.

Of course, I knew that this is one compliment that is absolutely true. So it comes as an added bonus that the scientific acknowledgement of my beauty is accompanied by the opportunity to say I-knew-it-all-along.

(Brilliant and beautiful. Can I do human-kind any more favours?)

But honestly, I really can't take all the credit. According to the report,

...good-looking parents were far more likely to conceive daughters.

Thanks Mama, thanks Dada.

Feel free to tell me how you absolutely agree with The Times. And me.

Why I do what I do

Despite an apparent increase in readership (thank you folks for reading!), I'm afraid this blog is going to fail to contribute greatly to fruitful discussion or bringing about world peace (glad someone at least has that all figured out).

Until I finish my final project at least (all about free culture and creativity and art and y'know, stuff) I might find this an especially convenient place to rant. (Let's call it 'documenting the thought process.')

With every meeting with my tutor, and visions of failure and doom related and unrelated to this, an important question comes up.

Why am I doing this?

Because.

Please don't tell the Prof.

Bloody Fire Alarms! Burn! Burn!

00:35

It's been a long day. So shoot me for wanting a bit of peace and quiet before I put on my jammies and crash for the night.

I said shoot me. Not blow my head to bits with the incessant shrieking of six minute fire alarms every five minutes.

(Make it stop, plEAse!!!)

Where's the fire I ask you?

Nobody uses the kitchens to cook anyway - at least not since they were turned into refugee camps thanks to renovations that have lasted long enough for the new table tops to have fossilised food. (Oh and the smell. The smell of paint and turpentine. Moan-groan-grumble-sob.)

Let them alarms cry wolf just once more tonight and I'll give them a fire.

Only blogging etiquette has held me back from POSTING THIS IN ALL CAPS but make no mistake, I am screaming and whining and swearing and making rude hand gestures.

What's a girl got to do to lead a fire-alarm free existence in student housing? - I ask in great consternation.

.....

Oh yea - Move Out.

Website spoiler

After spending 15 hours in front of the computer fixing pixels I think I deserve a distraction.

Since I spent the last two hours (and good afternoon last week) trying to figure out how to post feeds of this very blog you are so kindly reading, I figured I might as well see the fruits of my labour. Hence this post.

Of course weaving all those dreams (the aforementioned 15-hour workday excuses the use of cliches and puns) on Dreamweaver, and the prospect of editing a radio documentary in the next couple of hours means that my imagination is limited.

This is all I have for this post - my website spoiler.

It's one of those open windows...

Thanks for the thought!

An email sitting pretty, read, re-read and treasured - no use pretending I wasn't waiting.

Phone calls, long winded and pleasant.

A photograph that sparks off hysterical laughter to drown out self-righteous indignation.

And everything really is alright.

Good memories just make for more :)

(Pic: Kriplet and the Rascals.)

"Holy Crap!"

Now that I'm far from the place I'm used to calling home, once ignored aspects of daily life take on greater importance. Like religion.

With essay deadlines staring me in my face and the daunting task of having to eat food I cook myself, it should come as little surprise that I find the need to call on favours from higher powers.

But finding a temple I'm comfortable with has turned out to be harder than finding god.

My latest religious misadventure - Ramanavami celebration at ISKON London.

They promised a festive feast and I can shamelessly admit that I went because more than my piety was piqued.

The temple is in Soho. In an area known for hight-street fashion, gay bars and fun options for nights/ evenings-out. We've all been here before on a different kind of pilgrimage, but it's not exactly what I'd call a 'spiritual atmosphere.'

The 'temple' seems little more than a room up a narrow stairwell, above the organisation-run vegetarian restaurant.

The hall had no ventilation and no emergency exit that I was immediately aware of, a fact that worried me greatly as the prayers of the faithful got more vigourous as the evening went on.

(For a better picture, watch a Beatles documentary or read this entry.)

I was momentarily distracted from making sure none of the dancers stepped on my feet when I spotted a pierced and longhaired rocker with his electric guitar and spiked jacket turn up as well.

I try not to be judgemental; I don't intend to sermonise about how anyone else follows their religion, I myself love the ISKON temple back in Bangalore and I quite readily embrace their approach to religion. I chant Hare Krishna. The people were probably there, as the Hare Krishna man said, to get rid of their miseries, and who's to say that their chosen means of doing that is right or wrong.

But there seemed something fundamentally wrong with pundits serving prasada in dirty socks.

Any place of worship has to be holy and I didn't feel that here.

It's not holy when food isn't cleared off the floor before serving the next set of famished believers (?), when tuneless prayers are screamed out at random, different ones at different parts of the room, at the same time, when waiting-room entertainment is a cartoon Ramayan, and the cloak room/ shoe stand area is also where you dump the unconsumed food.

It was surreal and rather hilarious. It seemed like I'd stepped into a confused mix of cultures and generations (didn't the Maharishis and the Gurus die when disco took over from Flower Power and rock-and-roll?) and just plain confused people.

As a friend and I prepared to make a quick exit, we overheard: "Hare Krishna. I'm stepping out to Starbucks for some herbal tea."

Either this place is the ultimate confluence of free religion, or the most messed up Hindu temple ever. Or was I the confused one?

All work all play

The sports journalist has the best job in the world after the Swiss chocolate taster.

QPR were playing Sheffield United in London and my first assignment as fancy-shmacy sports hack was to cover this. (Read my report here.) Work at a football match was definitely in itself the benefit of a lifetime of accumulated good karma. But it only got better.

I was at a Championship game having paid 22 quid less than the cheapest ticket, with the added invitation to "enjoy the Cipriani's catering." (I did. Whoever Cipriani is.) My vantage viewing point was as good as it could get in the stadium, letting me keep an eye on the TV screen showing matches I was missing while I was at Work as well.

I was offered a press sweatshirt to keep me warm and allow me to turn my full concentration to the game. The bright blue thing was arguably fashioned for a strapping ex rugby player turned sports columnist, but it was cosy nonetheless.

Us sports types don't hang around with the common folks. We with our ubiquitous press passes and memorised stats reels collect in the press rooms to write match reports of a game where the most interesting thing to happen was that I went to watch.

Of course there were challenges. Like concentrating on hastily improvised shorthand while a rather easy-on-the-eye Portugese coach was talking at the post match press meet. And understanding that it might not be highly professional to ask the players to sign my press pack, however star struck I may be.

I could get used to such pampering. Of course, I'll be working for my supper.

Like when I visit the dog-racing track next week. On Work.

Lost masterpiece

These four walls
A window
Dark drapes hang heavily in unfinished blink.
Dust colours the unseen painting within
A shadow
Then not at all.

At a store near you...

I thought updating your blog three times a day and punching in a new status message on Facebook before the ink even dries on the old one, had there been ink to dry, was the ultimate egotistical exercise. Who’d want to hear about your lame life when I’ve got my own to gripe about?

But taking narcissism to a whole new level of grandiosity is the phenomenon of The Book, where every academic worth his half-a-dozen degrees thinks he’s doing a great literary service by compiling a lifetime’s worth of lectures, during which time actually stopped, into a book. His mother has bought a few copies to display on the table by his graduation photos and to hand out as Christmas gifts, and his colleague has picked up a couple to burn; the rest are stocked in dusty corners of university libraries until someone decides it’s time it went on the essential reading list for his hapless students.

It’s another example of an education system gone mad. When I write my book, a whole chapter shall be devoted to just exactly what I think of this.

Just.

"For you, a thousand times over!"
-The Kite Runner

That'd be a truly exciting refrain for a life song.