Musings in a Reverie

So our Symposium that I described earlier is over, and it was a great experience in thousands of different ways, learnt a lot of stuff about organization and so on. But most importantly, we had a lot of fun.

Meeting people from very different backgrounds and spending a lot of time with them was really interesting (not the german interesting, which means something sucks). Through the symposium we had a nice mix of learning, and fun (nice mix = lots of fun lol)... I managed to connect with a lot of people, and it was remarkable how quickly these connections were cemented. Some became better because people spent a longer time here, but in some cases even that was not really neeeded.

Anyway, so much about the symposium (will try to put up some pictures later on). After the symposium, I joined a group that was travelling around India. First off, we had a sort of after-party in Goa, with close to 25 people, mostly from my batch. The time we spent there was amazing, just relaxing and unwinding after an unbelievably strenuous month and sitting in one place talking about random things. That was my first time in Goa, and I definitely have missed out on something for a long time. Fortunately I've got quite a long student life ahead of me, so frequent trips back are definitely still possible.

After Goa, a smaller group (10 people) traveled to Jaipur. A senior of ours decided to join us there. Following this we did a quick trip to Jaisalmer, back to Jaipur, then to Agra. At this point the group split up, and some of us headed to Varanasi before going to Delhi and flying back to Bangalore.

Sounds like something you'd do over a month right? Well, it was actually a little less than 2 weeks... and because of that, there are a couple of things I've learnt that will probably stay with me for a while.

Firstly, travelling through any place that you go to is important, whether its alone or in a group. Every city town or village has something different to offer, and before you go back home, I feel its necessary to have a bit of variety in the experiences.

It also seemed as though we should have spent a lot longer in each place, especially in the first part of the trip. Some cities are the type where you really want to see some sights, and its important to do that. At the same time though, I've started to feel that its even more important to absorb the place you're at, whether its by talking to people in the shops, or just walking around town looking at all the different things on the streets. It's fine if you miss a few things (as long as you wont regret that later).. but whats more important is that there's a lot of free time in between. This is how it became clear how much I detest over-planned travel (where you decide what you'll do at what time of which day)... and will make a serious effort to ensure that it does not happen again.

I also had the feeling that travelling with large groups simply isn't as much fun.. too much time is spent in organizing and herding people around, making sure everyone is there and so on. Even though the several of the people on the trip were great and one of the other things I've taken back from the trip is that I would like to be a bit more specific about the people I would like to travel with. There are many different mindsets with which you can travel, and I've found that its important to have people who have a similar one to me, to be able to enjoy a reasonably long trip.

The time we spent in Varanasi was with just 4 people, and I enjoyed that bit the best... simply because of the amount of time we could all spend together, and the type of fun we had, and this despite the fact that I liked the other cities we traveled to a lot more.


My favourite place on the trip, was Jaisalmer. Its a rustic type of place, one of those typically 'Lonely Planet' places, which has significantly more foreign tourists than Indian ones... and its beautiful. Its one of those places in India that has managed to look old world and charming, instead of old and dilapidated. The streets are narrow, but not over crowded.. they aren't exactly clean, but not disgusting by a long shot.. and more importantly, the view from every spot in the town is amazing. Whether you're looking at the fort, or out into the desert, or down towards the town, every scene seems apt for a postcard. We went on a short Camel Safari as well, through the desert (of course there were people guiding the camels), and we spent an evening on the dunes. Of course, as everyone likes to joke, my liking of a place increases when you have what is shown below. Its not the only criteria though! It only boosts the amount I like a place.

Labels: Melton Foundation, symposium, travel

A friend of mine who works in the software field shared this with me... hilarious stuff. Felt I had to post it somewhere. Something like a day in the life of a normal employee.. enjoy :)

The last several months have gone by with meetings, studying for exams for a really long time, and more meetings.
Lets not talk about the exams.. I shall defer all cribbing until after the results come. I have already begun work on my bit about how the correction as unfair, how the system sucks (which of course, it does!) and so on..
On these lines, I've decided that its worth my while to explore options to do a Masters Course. The research I've been doing is interesting. Lets see where that leads.

One of the other features of the last several months has been my Workgroup, which is part of the tasks relating to the Melton Foundation (read below). This is basically a team, that works online to come up with a certain project, based on the theme suggested, and guidelines provided.
The theme is innovation, and my team deals with social innovation.
This sounds cool.. especially to learn about some interesting things happening in India, but this is not a post about how something is cool. Its back to my raving and ranting :)

Now, I'm coordinator of my group... which is a post I didn't really want (time issues), but ended up doing through some cajoling. I have reached the conclusion that I absolutely don't like being in charge of people who are not bothered, or don't realize the importance/significance of something they're working.
Of course.. I understand that people all over the place are faced with this problem... people working with them just suck at the work, or aren't bothered, or both.... even so, apathy towards a shared task is something that I am realizing that gets on my nerves like nothing else. Which is saying something if you have read my other raving and ranting posts.

Its just an insight which I have gained.... I genuinely enjoy coordinating and leading teams (ok I know many people do), and feel I do a good job of motivating as well as contributing... but I'm trying to reconcile that with the level of frustration that develops in me when sincere attempts at motivation fail, and you don't have the option to fire someone. Any tips?

All this leads me to a decision. I am NOT going to diss the public sector managers any more. Imagine.. this is a part (not so small, but still only a part) of my life, which is voluntary. The results of the group, while having consequences, are not so important as we are assessed individually.... and basically, its all an exercise of sorts. Just this situation is getting me (and other people) SO riled up..... I don't even want to fathom the plight of those who have to deal with similarly apathetic people, in larger numbers, when the task at hand is of some serious consequence. OH. and they're being paid to boot!

Done. small rant this time.. lol.

Most of the last week has been spent on campus, which is not something I would do normally during my brief holidays.. but its fun this time. First there's something to do... and apart from that people from all over the world have come down, some of them a bit early... and they're just hanging around. Whats best is that we even get to interact with many people much more than we would have if our symposium (see below for definition) was in some other country.

Right now I feel all set for work.. tons of emails, of varying degrees of formality based on the person, meetings online everyday, commute to the workplace, one or two meetings followed by some serious work. After this brief period come attempts to find useful (or not) things to do, and extremely extended lunches. Maybe I'll get a salary for doing the same stuff once the recession is over. lol

Labels: life, Melton Foundation, navarithi, raving and ranting

As I said in the previous post, we're planning a Symposium for a lot of people.... and in short its a lot of work.
Recently we had two of the Directors of the Melton Foundation come down to India for a visit, the basic purpose of which was to get planning under way, take stock of where we are and so on.

Most of the week was spent in meetings, and I felt like for a week we had stopped college and started working... interesting work at that. I actually thought it was great... back to the grind now though :(

Anyway, during all the overdose of talk about Indian culture, we decided to make a short trip to the McDonalds near college to get a bite to eat... we were passing through the drive through section and we saw this. Pretty hilarious actually... camera phones are a godsend lol.



It seems as though when there are rules, sensible or not, there's always a whole bunch of Indians feel the innate need to disobey them. Maybe its just convenience, but given the location of this area in relation to the street I would go for the first option.

I think the whole civil disobedience movement just stuck with our genes, minus the part about protesting against unfair rules... this is just doing whatever is convenient without caring who else it could possible effect. If instead of some bribe-able cop coming and attempting to tow vehicles parked wrongly, if the city were to buy a bunch of monster trucks that would just flatten any vehicle parked like that, people would follow the rules.

Labels: humour, Melton Foundation, raving and ranting

Wow! This is probably the longest period between post I've had since I started the blog.
For those few of you who do read my blog regularly.. apologies are in order.

As you may recall (from my Amsterdam trip post) I'm a fellow of the Melton Foundation. Again, as I said before, it is basically an organization that is affiliated with 5 universities in 5 different countries, and facilitates inter cultural exchange, and other learning opportunities both online and in person.

The biggest "event" that the Melton Foundation organizes is its annual symposium. The symposium is hosted in a different country each year, and consists of learning related to the "theme" (see below), and the cultural of the host country.

Anyway, 2009 Symposium is to be held in India, and I've been working tirelessly (with a team of course) to have the website for this Melton Foundation activity up. And a few days ago it was!

The name of our symposium is नवरीति or Innovation in English (thats the theme we chose). Navarithi is fine too

.

Check out the site (at least as a favour). I'm pretty proud of it since I was half of the core team that worked on it..
Melton Foundation India Symposium 2009 Website

The brilliant artwork on the site, some of which I've got on this post is courtesy Rohan Shetty.

Labels: Melton Foundation, navarithi, symposium, website

Opeth performed for the first time in India, at the IIT Saarang festival in Chennai.
I still can't believe that they came... I remember thinking the first few people who passed on the news were having some fun at my expense since I'm a huge Opeth fan. But yes, India indeed (just not Bangalore unfortunately).
The show met and surpassed ALL expectations... but lets get a bit more detailed.
There are basically two ways to review a show/concert. One is to only talk of the performance (set list etc etc), and another way is to include the organization of it as well. I'll pick the second.

Lets start with the ranting, then get to the good stuff. The (few) metalheads in IIT-M who managed to get Opeth down for their fest, Saarang, have to be held in the highest regard by the entire Indian metal fraternity.
However, the same cannot (and will not... it should be put into the constitution or something) be said about the other idiots who were involved in organizing the show... that is the volunteers on the ground.
I'll pick a chronological ranting order. First off, the sound check.. it started off with Axe (the drummer) just doing some basic stuff, then Akerfeldt (vocals and guitars) came on and did another sound check... both times we all rushed in and after a while were shooed off after a little while. Almost all of us were taking the opportunity to get a few photographs of him

I don't get it.... the volunteers firstly were most obviously people who had never been to a rock or metal concert in their lives. The band had no issues with people being around during the sound check... actually they seemed really nice and even took photographs with some people, which didn't seem to deter the strong belief that all fans had to be thrown out of the empty stage.

Small issue though.

There was also some stupidity during the autograph sessions

The crowd management was the issue. There were huge queues built up at all the entrances for quite a while. However, no one was allowed into the arena (I'll say arena because thats what they called it, its nowhere nearly as big as the word indicates).

So, inevitably, we got tired of standing in a queue that was simply not moving at all for close to two hours, and decided to sit down.... in the queue mind you, actually many many people did the same thing. Now this situation apparently wasn't acceptable to the organizers, who kept walking about making people stand up. wtf! We were pretty pissed off, and rudely told the guy who kept coming around that we'll stand only when the queue starts moving. (Our altercations with him started when he kept insisting every 5 minutes that all the groups stand in "pojichun", and not stand next to each other to talk while passing those 2 hours).

Anyway, while making everyone stand up, and get into "pojichun" he constantly kept feeling many people up. All guys (he was a guy too). I'm ok with homosexuality as a concept and all that, but please... to all gay people: its NOT ok to constantly feel other guys up under the pretense of trying to keep them in line.
Next, due to the idiotic idea that they would not start letting people in until 15 minutes before the scheduled start time (thats right 15 minutes!), the show started before MOST of the line could even see the entrance. We were right up in front of our line, but this didnt help either.

The first opening act was Demonic Resurrection, and, to speak for my group of friends at least, we were keen on catching the show because they're a good band.
So when they started playing well before we could get in, we were very pissed off. When Mr. Pojichun walked beside us again everyone was yelling at him for starting the show before most of the crowd, at least in our line, were in...As he approached us, just near the entrance, we joined in. He then proceeded to put his finger on his lips. That sent me and a friend over the edge and we threw in a few swear words... he then whisked us off to another volunteer who took us to the cops saying we were drunk.

In short.. the took us to the fucking cops because they were too fucking stupid to let people in before the show started.
Anyway, both of us speak Tamil, and we explained the situation to the cops... who then used a breathalyzer to ascertain that we were not, in fact, drunk.. (it showed 0 in fact).
After that we got in... since the review has already become very long I'll keep the bit about the opening bands brief.
I'm really glad I didn't have anything to drink before going... even though I wanted to be sober for the concert, if it had been in Bangalore we would have spent some time in a pub and had a few mugs... nowhere close to getting anyone high, but it would have registered on that analyzer for sure.

Demonic Resurrection were really good... we just saw 3 songs, but those were great. Next up was Motherjane, who are talented, but it really felt like they played for way too long. Also, many of us had this feeling that most of their songs had a very similar riff.
If I remember right, this was where the weirdest bit of the concert was... after Motherjane, they decided to play some ads, which involved a free hugs campaign. It was a long annoying ad, but the bad bit was that the MC kept trying to pump the crowd up without any idea what type of event it was.

Now thats not what you try with a to bunch of metalheads, most of whom had traveled from other cities to watch a really heavy band.
So the first attempt "put your hands up" was responded to, as you must have predicted, with screams of "fuck off", and hands going up (showing him the finger).
After this he tried to get a mexican scream..... which provoked a long chant of "fuck you fuck you"... somehow it didnt seem like thats what he meant, although I'm sure mexican Opeth fans would have done the same thing.

Anyway, Opeth came on... and this where the fun starts.

They started off with Heir Apparent, from Watershed. Thats a song that was really written to be performed live, because it sounded brilliant, and was executed perfectly.

Next up: The Grand Conjuration, from Ghost Reveries. One of my favourite songs by these guys, and as far as I remember perfect execution. In fact, it seemed slightly sped up, but maybe that was because of the adrenaline of watching these guys perform. \m/

Godhead's Lament - As with all Opeth songs, this is realy good too, however I wouldnt put it in the same league as many others. I thought they would play Serenity Painted Death from Still Life. Opeth's songs are a class apart anyway, and the performance was still really good.

Wreath, from Deliverance was next. And this was absolutely KILLER... Another one of my favourites (as you'll see my Opeth favourites are a reasonably long list). From the first big drum roll I could see that most of the crowd enjoyed this one just as much as me... lots of headbanging ensued, while the crowd went mad. \m/

As expected, this was followed by a song from Damnation..They played Hope Leaves, with an extended solo. At first I was trying to place which song they were merging (a la Megadeth with Mechanix), but it was something completely new. That bit of change was brilliant.
The best part about this song was the place I was standing when they played it, had awesome sound.

Next up was Lotus Eater, from Watershed. Some people I talkd to don't really like Watershed or this song very much. I disagree, and when the first note of the song came I was screaming my head off. It doesn't sound like a song that is too forgiving for live performances though. There were a few seconds where it seemed like the harmonized vocals on the album didn't come out properly. Very minor... but my favourite part of the song. However, my favourite part of the song, i.e. the keyboard jam in the middle didn't come off too well. I'm unsure of whether this was because of the sound being bad.. but it just didn't sound very good. The rest of the song was perfect though (its a long song so thats definitely worth mentioning)... the transition into the recorded outro was also really smooth. This too is on my favourite list btw.



After this they played the Night and the Silent Water from Morningrise. I really like the first several minutes of the song, but some of the bits towards the end caught me a bit by surprise, which only made it more enjoyable. I'd say it was an unexpected pick, although it is on the Roundhouse Tapes. I would have definitely preferred Nectar to this though, since they're of similar length.

Next up was Deliverance. No announcement was needed for this song, the minute it started, everyone started headbanging and going wild.... it was almost like a calling. I was also in the best section of the crowd as far as the people surrounding me were concerned... everyone was ecstatic by this time (at the shows length thus far, as well as the fact that they were playing Deliverance). There were several simultaneous moshpits formed. That was the most beginning of the most enjoyable performances of the night. Needless to say this song too was on my favourites list. \m/

Demon of The Fall. From what I've read, this is supposed to be a crowd favourite.... and little wonder. The announcement of this song was preceded by another, saying that it would be the last song.... which prompted massive amounts of chanting for more.
Anyway, again, on my favourites list... I absolutely love this song, and the euphoria of the previous song was amplified when the song started playing. The song has a break, which was extended to work everyone into an even bigger frenzy. Great execution of a great song \m/

Of course we knew they would have to play an encore... there was just too much excitement for them not to. What we didn't realize was that the organizers had no brains at all.... they decided to do some Nokia announcements. Fucking idiots even played an ad with some terribly lame music... it really seemed like this guy was trying to MC between events at some small college fest. They even did some lame stuff (not the second free hugs campaign I feared but almost as bad). Tying up the crowd repeating some incredibly lame stuff to them playing more.
"touch opeth, feel opeth, play opeth" if I remember right. Fucking loser... they even made a weird show about presenting the phone to Mikael, and him playing coil off the phone.
Of course, it was great that he had some amazing quips to make those idiots look even stupider than they already did... "Phones are good, but heavy metal is pretty much better". lol

Anyway, once Akerfeldt started talking it became quite funny... he's awesome with the interactions with the crowd, extremely relaxed, joking and chilled out, none of that taking yourself too seriously nonsense... and he did an awesome job of making fun of the stupid organizers.

Anyway, after all that rubbish, he said they would play two more songs. The first of those, was The Baying of the Hounds. Again, on my favourite list, and this is one of those thats really high up on the rankless list. I was thrilled to bits when it started, because I'd never expected them to play this one... brilliant surprise.
I had also gotten a temporary energy boost due to the anger that surged when the MC started talking crap, and this worked well to completely enjoy the song. \m/

I'm sure not too many (among those who didn't have the set list) expected that they would sign off with Drapery Falls.
Maybe we should have though.. I think thats one of the songs that really captures their style well. As with the previous one, one of my most favourite favourites lol, and again, quite a surprise... I even knew the lyrics of a lot of it, and the energy boost was still active. Really well done too, Akerfeldt's clean vocals sounded pristine... and though the sound was a little iffy, it still was great... all the intricacies of the song came out. \m/

There was only one song that I really missed... Blackwater Park... overall it was a great mix of all the albums, very appropriate for a live show in my opinion. Of course with a band like Opeth, there are so many good songs that everyone goes back enjoying the show but still wishing other stuff was played too. Things that I wish were played: Blackwater Park, Funeral Portrait, Ghost Of Perdition, Face Of Melinda and Windowpane. But I was really happy with the set nontheless.

The fact that the ended their unbelievable, 12 song, 2 and a half hour (i think) long show with 4 brilliant songs made it all the more special. I really hope they come back sometime realy soon , with a new album too.... but this time to Bangalore. It was acknowledged by EVERYONE, that more than half the people at the show were from Bangalore...

Anyway, that was a LONG review, so I'll stop here...





PS: If you like Opeth, and didn't go for reasons under your control (even remotely)..then you really missed something spectacular, and should really regret it.

Labels: metal, music, opeth, raving and ranting, reviews, travel

A review will follow very shortly, but until then, here's the set list for Opeth's performance on the 25th of January in Chennai:

1) Heir Apparent
2) The Grand Conjuration \m/
3) Godhead's Lament
4) Wreath \m/
5) Hope leaves - with an extended solo
6) Lotus Eater
7) Bleak \m/
8) Night and the Silent Water
9) Deliverance
10) Demon of the fall

---encore----

11) Baying of the Hounds
12) Drapery Falls

Labels: metal, music, opeth