Check these out

Title:Shadow of Doubt
Album: The Vision of Escaflowne : Original Soundtrack 2
Get it here.

The song starts with a single instrument. And then they add another instrument, offbeat. And then a third, again out of beat with the first two. Just trying to concentrate on the offbeat instruments simultaneously is a musical delight.
Towards the end of the song, the pattern repeats, but this time with four instruments playing out of sync with each other but somehow with a certain harmony between them. One can get on a high with just this one piece of music.

Title: Fatal
Album: The Vision of Escaflowne : Original Soundtrack 3
Get it here.

A short song (2 minutes) consisting only of whistling. The tune is divine and smooth and has no instruments interrupting or enhancing it.

Title: Max’s choice: Duty vs. Passion
Album: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Get it here.

A man has to choose between his duty and his love. He needs both to live and without either, he is lost. One of the best in-game tracks from the second installation of Max Payne.

Travelogue

Ranchi to Ernakulam via Kanpur Central, Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin, Bhopal, Itarsi, Kalyan, Panvel, Madgaon, Manglore and Kozhikode (Calicut).

That is 4 days of train journey condensed into a line. Add to that a night at a hotel in New Delhi, watching the Germany – Turkey Euro semifinals (with the inevitable screaming and shouting and abuses at 2 in the morning), the maniac like food spree in the Mangala Lakshadweep Exp (Banana Fry and coffee, repeated ad infinitum), the beautiful and almost Kerala like scenery of southern coastal Maharashtra and Goa (except for a certain non-abundance of coconut trees and banana plants), and lots and lots of tunnels which finally start to bore you and the grand entry into Kerala amidst heavy and brilliant rain, and you have a travelogue.

Prodigious Diablo

Today has been a day of discoveries. First I found out that Ubisoft is indeed bringing out a new game in the Prince of Persia series. Great. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. It has been tentatively titled Prodigy.

And the second is that Blizzard is bringing out Diablo 3. Lots from Blizzard stables this year then. They already have World of Warcraft : Wrath of the Lich King and Starcraft II slated for release. And now Diablo 3. Nice. I am loving it.

Farewell, 374

My last blog entry from my college. Am leaving this place tomorrow.

As usual, packing is a bother and I haven’t started yet. Unlucky is the man who is allotted my room the coming semester. He will have to:-

• Remove all the waste papers/boxes/food wrappings/bottles from the floor.
• Clean up all the cobwebs which now come below the level of the window.
• Exterminate the room of its insect occupants and then clean up the dead insects below the bed.
• And do some misc cleaning.

And so, I dedicate this post to room number 374 which has been my residence for the past year and to lobby 5 in which my room is. The days we spent screaming at 2 in the morning about how the other guy plays worse DotA than anyone else (and in the process waking everyone in the lobby), the days we spent trying to cram in pages and pages of notes the day before the exams, the days we did insane things and had all the fun in the world will forever remain in my memory (till I forget them of course, I am only human).

Room number 374, I bid you farewell. May your new occupant take better care of you than I ever did.

Adios.

Train Pain

Flash News: Train no 3351 Dhanbad Alleppey express has been cancelled from the 22^nd of June to the 30^th.

Flashier News: We had booked out tickets for the 24^th.

Future course of action: Take the Swarna Jayanti Exp from Ranchi to New Delhi (24 hrs), stay overnight and then board the Mangala Lakshadweep Exp from Hazrat Nizamuddin which Will take me to Ernakulam in around 51 hours.

Just when I thought that leaving the college would end all my miseries…

Wild Night

Suchintya has an interesting article on inflation in his blog.

Found this here. Insanely funny.

Wild Night

<Domsey> Woah, I got the weirdest moment of my entire life this morning
<bender> what happened?
<Domsey> you know, there was a party at my neighbours’ last night
<bender> yeah, you’ve been fucking drunk..
<Domsey> you’ve been there, too?
<bender> sure…
<Domsey> well, you see i can’t remember anything
<Domsey> but this morning I woke up in my bed, and there was my mom lying next to me.
<bender> wtf…?
<Domsey> That’s exactly what i thought
<Domsey> So, my mom got up instantly when i woke up, smiled at me and said “U’re so much better than your dad is.” then she left the room
<bender> OMFG!!!
<bender> you didnt do that! TELL ME IT WASNT LIKE THAT!!! TELL ME YOU’RE A DUMBASS LIAR!!!
<Domsey> no, i’m not lying
<bender> OMG!!!
<Domsey> but it turned out she was playing a trick on me. Paycheck for coming home late, all drunk.
<bender> …
<bender> your mom’s such a freak. o.O

Society

I think it was Indira Gandhi who said that she has no faith in society. Or some other words to that effect. Pathetic an administrator and ruler as she was, this is one of the only two things she said or did that I approve of. The other was the Bangladesh War.

I have lost faith in society and it is going to take a long time for it to be repaired I think. The ideas and concepts that get embedded into a kid’s mind during the formative years end up staying there for the rest of his life. That is probably why parents love listening to those unbelievably shitty songs that they heard when they were teenagers. During my formative years, I saw some interesting things around me. And these have remained in my mind ever since.

Mrs Bindu was our biology teacher. A brilliant teacher, we all loved her (even the ‘rowdy’ gangs loved her). So we were shocked when we learnt that she had been in an accident. So the next day, all of us kids went to see her at her home where she was on bed rest. And was she happy to see us! And then she explained what had happened to her. The annual school fest was coming in a week and as one of the teachers who had learnt dance, she was in charge of the dances. Now, a sari being difficult to dance in, she had gone home during the break to change into a suit. On the way back, something happened and the shawl she was wearing got stuck in the wheel of her moped. Because it was made of some synthetic material, it didn’t rip apart. She didn’t realise it and pretty soon the whole thing got totally stuck and she was being strangled. She lost control of the moped and both fell into the middle of the street. Thankfully by that time the moped had switched off and she was not strangled to death.

And now here is the interesting part.

She was on the road, half strangled and with bruises all over. Soon a crowd of onlookers gathered (as usual) and what did they do? NOTHING! They just looked at the injured woman in front of her and started the usual babbling, “These women nowadays, why cant they wear normal saris instead of these new outlandish dresses.”, “Why cant these women walk to work” and shit like that.

Then thankfully a neighbour saw her and took her to the hospital.

I have seen society ruin reputations with nothing but some choice rumours. I have heard plenty of incidents about society’s indifference to accident victims bleeding to death right in front of them.

And now I am sick of it. I decided long back to not give a damn about the society that does not care for its own. Not that I wont help people who need them and all. But that I don’t care now what the society says or thinks. If they think my actions are weird and stupid, let them. Let them go on and comment about my tastes and ideas. Let them gossip.

Thats all they are good for.

Break it up

I am alone in my familiar room in the hostel. It is raining outside and I am lying on my bed listening to ‘Voyageur’ on my iPod. The music is divine. The rhythm makes the body move. Eyes close up and the only thing you can sense is the song. That and the rain outside.

A cold wind comes in from the partially open window, adding more to the already goose pimpled skin. Ah, if only feelings could be put to words. Your mind would be dancing with mine.

To take a song and break it up into the constituting sounds, and then analyse each one individually, keep changing the sound currently in my focus, and then listen to the brilliant symphony of all the sounds together…ah…if there were heaven, this would be it trapped in a moment.

Listen to :

Voyageur (Voyageur), Push the Limits(The Screen Behind the Mirror)

Enigma

I completely forgot to tell you about the IBM test. So here goes.

I got recruited into IBM in august when they came to my coll for campus placements. They gave me an ‘Expression of Interest’ letter and left. Instead of sending me an offer letter, they send me an email in June asking me to write a test in NIT Rourkela and that I would receive the offer letter depending on my performance in the test.

So I went to Rourkela, gave the test, and came to college from there (had lots of formalities to complete). BTW, test was almost a piece of cake.

So right now I am back in coll. Met up with most of the gang. Went to Mots’ place.
For the record, Dolly is the first female in the world to tell me that she loves me. Of course, 2 hours later she said that she hates me, but still….

The day after coming here, I caught a fever. the next day, that fever broke and I went to town with Sandy and Mots and Dolly. The next day (I.e.yesterday), the next fever came. And now, I am all right except for feeling tired coz of lack of food.

Most friends are here, so am having a ball….

Woke up an hour ago and brushed my teeth after >48 hours.

Road Rash

When I drive on the road:

• I am always right.

• I can overtake anyone I want.

• No one can or should even think or consider thinking of attempting to overtake me.

• Every driver on the road (except yours truly) is an idiot, asshole and has his head stuck up his ass.

• They are dunces, drunkards, illiterates and probably haven't yet hit puberty.

• And they probably still confuse between the brake and the accelerator.