| July 26 2004 | ||||||
| :: BYE BYE UPSAID ::
Yup - I am moving base ...After more than two years of blogging at Upsaid it is time to move on. Not because of their service {they have been brilliant} -but because - for the kind of blog activity I have it didnt make any sense to pay $5 every month for being a Premium member. Did that for sometime .. But guess it is now time to move on. My blog initiator and friend Anand set up one for me at his site with all the nucleus thingie on - But guess I am too lazy and untechie ;-) to now figure the whole thing out. I did do a half hearted attempt ;-) But guess I shall still prefer the simple way of typing something and then hitting the submit button to see the thing all published - as well as read comments one behind the another and "trackback" manually than have the tool do it for me. Anyways - excuses are plenty -but real reasons very few for not learning it ... That said I am taking the easy way out - I am moving over to Blogger. Sorry for the inconvenience - Do update your links and visit me at a newer version of Rock My World at http://imaginati0n.com/vignesh/ The best part of the whole thing is I am not going to lose a single post or comment from this blog. Saved them up for future reference :-) So till we meet - Adieu Amigos !! Cheers Posted by vignesh at 4 : 07 pm | Leave a note {0} |
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| June 17 2004 | ||||||
| : June 6th - Download Festival, Donington Park - I was there !!! :
" What's Life Without an Impossible Dream "
I have written, spoken and used the above thought a couple of hundred times over the last four or five years. But nothing shall ever come close to what I experienced on June 6th. I have a habit of listening to music all the time when I work -either as mp3s or through FM radio. One particular day I was listening to BBC One and the RJ's were yapping about some free concert tickets. On any given day I would not have given a second thought to it -but what caught my ear and seized my attention was one particular word - METALLICA . Nothing was the same after that the whole week .... Let me retrace back. My love for heavy metal music began eight years back. Until then the only exposure to music I had was tamil, hindi and malayalam film songs, closely followed by tamil devotional ones which I had to listen because mom made sure I did. Then came an era of romantic english numbers and a few Guns'N Roses, Bon Jovi and Aerosmith ones quite popular with my school friends. But I still was not hit by what i called the metal wave. Around second year in Engg College I used to hangout with this couple of guys who are till this day what i call - "the cool ones " ;-) - They have done everything - hardly entered classrooms - studied at the very last minute- sometimes flunked badly and in short -somehow scrapped through 4 years. But now they all are very successful gentlemen in various walks of life they choose. I dont know what made me hang out with them. Probably it was their pure intent - When everyother person I met was talking about grades, campus interviews, preparations for GRE and pay packages and ofcourse in the process giving in just the amount of information they wanted to give -never revealing anything fully and playing all kinds of games career careful guys are supposed to do at that time. Anyways here these guys were totally carefree - riding mo-bikes and living life as though each day was their last day on this planet. I dont know yet what fascinated me to them - Maybe the desire to run away from a very secure, but cliched middle class upbringing with all it positives and negatives - maybe the overtly righteous values impinged on me for 20 odd years, maybe the natural desire to break free from so many constrains put on a growing soul. I do not know- But one thing I know - I have had one of best times of my life during those years thanks to these guys. hmm - Coming back on track - two of these guys were rock music fans and they introduced me in a very informal way to this whole new world and boy was I fascinated ... And there began a love story - which has bought me many a happy and estatic moments to sad moments and life long agonies { heavy head banging week after week in pubs like Styx, Purple Haze to the likes of Rammstein, Sepultura, System of Down, Korn & Marilyn Mason lead to Veritgo from which I suffered for a good 6 months} ... Then comes a stage when one realises one has to control. Angst about anything can be let out by listening to heavy metal - but then at what cost ?? This brief, but painful exposure to the negatives of rock music brought me down to a stage when I began to listen to the music behind the cacophony and screams of heavy metal rock. One then realises that one can enjoy anything in more than one way - I still listen to all the above bands and many newers one -but with a more controlled expressions -rather than screaming and tearing my heart out and head banging as though the head and neck where the first things I wanted to get ride off. Now I am thankful that I still havent lost anything major because of over-indulgence and yet I kept the love for any kind of music intact. Now I listen to Yesudas singing Maha Ganapathim with the same fervour and heart as I would listen to Dope going over Die MF Die . It is just that there is a time and mood for each piece. Well - having gone over all that I didnt plan to do - let me go on and do what I had planned for ;-) .. Every music lover has his/her favorite bands and mine in right order are * Metallica * Nirvana * Rammstein Though I think that had Kurt Cobain still been alive and made music with the same heart he used to Nirvana would have topped the charts. Following this order is a whole series of bands like Sepultura, SOD, Dope, Slayer, Slipknot, GNR, Sum41 etc I listen to and groove on ... But today Metallica reigns supreme - 23 years - 11 albums later they still rock like there is no end of time. They are to me living legends of our era. To keep on doing what you do without a tinge of boredom for 23 years is something commendable { and I believe in an industry like heavy metal music if you dont love what you do - it will show - the fans will figure it out and the higher you are the bigger will be the fall !!! - you cant fool people .. } My close to impossible dream was -to be part of one live Metallica show in my lifetime. I often wished they would make it to India like Bryan Adams, Deep Purple or the Rolling Stones did. But till that day it hadn't happened. So that fine tuesday I was awakened from my work stupor by the mere mention of the words Metallica and Live. It was an annual rock music festival held at the race track down at Donington Park, UK. It was called the Download Festival -I dunno why ;-). That very moment I knew I would be there come what may. Then began a frantic search for details, tickets and transportation - since not knowing how to drive a car does not come handy in such circumstances. Anyways the tickets were easy to book online -but the travel posed a huge problem since I was two days away from the event. A lot of kludge up and screw ups later - i basically hitch-hicked to the location which was a good 3 hours with the traffic jams included ... 
The venue first took my breath away - Never before in my life have I seen such a big conglomeration of humans at the same time at the same place. It was awesome beyond comparison. With a programme list of bands like THIS - how can one be at peace ;-)  Well - there were other interesting stalls to go around and huge varieties of food to choose from -but the beer was only Carling- went around all the rock artifacts,posters, metal chains, rings and other oddities, bought myself an official Metallica tees and a freaky ring. From 12:00 in the afternoon to 11:15 in the night - I ate- drank - rocked to the music - ate - drank - rocked to the music - drank - drank- music -music ...
That is when at 9:45ish Metallica make their entry on stage. The mere anticipation of the event is enough to get the adrenaline oozing ...The ambience of the entire mass of humanity around you adds to everything ... Thus they made it - Sadly they didnt have Lars Ulrich at the drums due to medical reasons -but he was substituted by Joey Jordison from Slipknot and Dave Lombardo from Slayer. It was a dream coming true for me that night ... 
James Hetfield was exactly the way I have always imagined him as. Huge and commanding. Kirk and Rob Trujillo each had their moments of glory. The real nice surprise for me was to see the new man Rob playing brilliantly- He has got this unique way of standing with his feet apart and the guitar slung around him like a long samurai sword on the reverse side. He has a raw energy about him which hits you hard and high ...  They didnt play any from St.Anger- which would have made me touch heaven - but then what they did was superb...
For a complete Scoop of Metallica at Donington read on ... Though the return journey took about 4 hours and i ended up like a sizzle-lost-beer at 4:15 in the morning - it was worth every bit of it ... And that then is the story of Download Festival '04 ....
Posted by vignesh at 2 : 05 pm | Leave a note {10} |
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| May 27 2004 | ||||||
| .: TROY :.
I am pleased. After a long time I watched a good hollywood movie. Have been living through- reruns of my movie collection until this Tuesday, when a bunch of us went out to see TROY.  Having read the reviews I went in without much expectations, but was pleasantly surprised. The movie is not boring or slow even for a minute. There are innumerable defects as all the reviews point out. To start with it is a highly modified version of Homer's Illiad. There are no Gods coming in or going out as in the epic. You are never made to feel the beauty of Helen. You wonder was it " the face that launched a thousand ships". She is just there in the movie and that's it. There are not much dialogues or lines you would remember unlike the Braveheart or Gladiator. Same is the case with the battle scenes. They don't strike you as anything spectacular as compared to Lord of The Rings. The movie then has been made around the characters of Achilles and Hector. Brad Pitt and Eric Bana shine through their roles respectively. Brad Pitt does not have any emotional scenes to bring out his acting prowess, but his sheer presence { as well as absence } is felt right through the movie. He plays the role of Achilles to hilt - rough, arrogant and rutheless { reminded me of his wonderful role in Seven Years in Tibet}. But the movie never touched on how he became the greatest warrior or even about the infamous Achille's Heel !!! One of the best scenes involve the 5-10 minute one on one battle between Hector and Achilles. It is very well shot and the action scenes in that particular squence are very different from any other I have seen till date.. { There is one such interestingly conjured up fight sequence in Mel Gibson's The Patriot where he does the act of killing 5 odd people with a mere dagger in less than a couple of minutes. } At the end of it, though Hector -the moral family man is slayed -you know Achilles had to win - there was to be no other result. There are few other interesting pieces here and there - Like the one with the wooden horse. Had read about it long long back in school I guess ... That is well taken too -without much emphasis on the grandeur, the horse is shown just as an instrument in the story. In short TROY does not spur you with the raw power of the Gladiator nor does it send a bolt of energy, as when William Wallace screams "FREEDOOOM" in Braveheart. But it still has Achilles and Hector and some good fight scenes and ofcourse the history to back it up. Worth the time...
Posted by vignesh at 7 : 14 pm | Leave a note {13} |
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| May 18 2004 | ||||||
| .: Summer is Here :.
After about two months of cold, unyielding weather, summer makes it's way in fully glory down here and I guess I am one of the very happy person's around. Having grown up in Trivandrum, I can live and enjoy hot, sultry weather, but cold, wintery kinds are not my cup of tea. From my kitchen window I can see couple of families barbecuing in their backyards almost every evening. And then ofcourse there are innumerable people who just put out a chair anywhere they can - backyard or frontyard and soak in all the sunshine. Having sunlight till 9:30 in the night helps too - maybe not - i sleep very late these days and get up early since the sun is out by 4:00 and it is bright sunshine by 5:30am. But all in all things are looking good. My present accomodation here is coming to an end and I am again in search of a good house to lodge myself. I am pretty bugged with this whole temporary arrangements of staying here and there. Something has come up - Hope it works out. The only negative point is it is going to burn a big hole in my wallet. But then one cannot have everything in the world at the sametime... Last week had me scared when my laptop began crashing everytime I booted up. I religiously update my patches and virus definition files - but then one can never be sure esp with the kind of sites I frequent ;-) Anyways a little debugging and a proper patch updation saw me get through without my problems. This laptop has been my main company on this trip. Music, Movies, browsing to just reading some ebooks. It has been a great companion. An interesting thought ran through my mind. If this were to get permanently damaged or something would I feel something of mine is lost and gone away ?? Do I have an attachment to this machine ?? I should think so especially since it is my first ever computer and that too bought with my own money. But dunno... That leads to another interesting pattern I observed. If the laptop is yours, you tend to take care of it more and do not be careless with how you handle it or how outdated your virus systems are ..etc.. But ever observed guys who handle your computer. They have their lappies provided by the company they work. The attachment is not there at all. And what saddens me is when they use the same standards of detachment with mine as though I had nothing to lose if something happened to it. Isn't it a little logical to think otherwise ?? hmm !! Well - another dose of Vikram Seth from 'All You who Sleep Tonight' .This is one of the best poems I have read. So simple with words -but powerful in the imagery conveyed and finally it leaves you where it began.. Read on.. Round & Round After a long and wretched flight That stretched from daylight into night, Where babies wept and tempers shattered And the plane lurched and whiskey splattered Over my plastic food, I came To claim my bags from Baggage Claim Around, the carousel went around The anxious travelers sought and found Their bags, intact or gently battered, But to my foolish eyes what mattered Was a brave suitcase, red and small, That circled round, not mine at all. I knew that bag. It must be hers. We hadnt met in seven years! And as the metal plates squealed and clattered My happy memories chimed and chattered. An old man pulled it off the Claim. My bags appeared: I did the same.. The past weekend saw me take a bus up north to Cambridge. This adds another university to my "reputed universities visited " list. It is an interesting place. Cambridge is actually a town and it just ended up being a university town with about thirty colleges sprawled around the River Cam. The first college was started by few faculty members from Oxford after they had a tiff with the local people. It was build to challenge Oxford. So much is the rivalry that people in Cambridge dont call Oxford by name -They call it "the other place". It is very beautiful and one can only imagine how students get inspired here. It has some beautiful buildings and chapels and ofcourse there is this whole lively atomsphere of students going around in bicycles along winding stone paved roads, pubs with loud football coverage and people punting on the river.... * King's College 
* One of the many walkways 
* Punting on River Cam 
Posted by vignesh at 6 : 04 pm | Leave a note {9} |
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| May 03 2004 | ||||||
| .: Pics from Scotland :.
A little late with the pictures. But then they are here now :-) * Isle of Skye - A beautiful island on the Highlands 
* A boat ride on the Loch Ness river 
* A Church by the river - Inverness 
* Edinburgh - The City & the Scot Monument 
* Scottish - Irish ??- Music at a local pub 
Another long labour day weekend has come to an end. This was one of the most peaceful weekends I have had after coming here. Two days did absolutely nothing -but eat,drink and watch the depressing rain pour down. It was good -- though I so very much wished some of my friends from back home were there to chat up a little about how fucked up we are or about any new girl at work who needs sizing up or any such mundane issue which needed our valuable attention. Or maybe the mind was just preparing for a very rough month ahead at work which may bring in some drastic results - good or bad - keeping everything crossed ;-) !!! But then again on Sunday did take my now customary ride to London- This time to one of the most historic spots I would have loved to see - Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, SouthWark. This is the theatre were his plays were first staged. It was destroyed in a fire and later rebuild. It is an exciting place for someone interested in Shakespeare, his writings and plays. The unexpected moment was when I entered the playhouse where the plays are actually staged. It was nothing like I have ever seen before - An almost circular arena with the stage at the centre and seating all around it - There were three layers of seating areas depending on the class of the tickets. There are other numerous artifacts from the period of 1600B.C. which correlate to his works. Added to my long list of wishes is a chance to see a real play in that stage sometime before I drop away from UK. Reading through some random poetry links I chanced upon Vikram Seth's Sit from his volume of poems All You who Sleep Tonight published in 1990. It did make me sit back and think a little while Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile. You're twenty-six, and still have some of life ahead. No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead. The world is too opaque, distressing and profound. This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day: To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around, Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.
Posted by vignesh at 7 : 18 pm | Leave a note {13} |
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| April 26 2004 | ||||||
| .: Scotland :.
Two weeks have gone by following my four day visit to Scotland - But the memories and images of the trip linger on.. Awesome, exotic, extremely beautiful -- Words fail to describe such places. Reminds me of the first time I saw the Grand Canyon. No photography skills or lines of poetry can describe a place like the Canyon ... It is ethereal .... The interesting part about Scotland is - it has everything - a buzzing city life in Edinburgh to the quite and scenic islands up North - Like Isle of Skye-with the famous Peeble Beach or the dreamy city of Inverness -the Millenium City with the Loch Ness river running right through it ... The whole place is a interesting combination of culture, history and architecture and ofcourse castles. Places aside what made this trip memorable was the stuff I got to do. The very first night in Edinburgh we stayed at Caledonian Backpackers - a proper backpacker's hostel with bunk beds,shared bathrooms and lively bar attached- In my room there were a bunch of interesting people - 2 girls and 2 guys from Brazil - they left their jobs in their home country and were intending to travel around Europe doing the odd job here and there and then return back to resume their life where they left it ... Had a long discussion with them that night. Only one girl knew proper English -that meant a whole bunch of translations to get the meanings across. They were I should say -poor -but very happy people. They were running out of money -but it didnt dim away the sparkle or dampen the enthu in their spirits. The girls plan to drop by India sometime next year.. I found a little of my own spirit in them. I too would have wished for that life. One short life - So many places to go and things to do, rather than getting stuck in one job,one place and the perks that come along with it. But I realise that I have got so conditioned now that I cant imagine a life without the things I now say are mine. I cant imagine a life without a regular paycheck coming in end of every month with regular bonuses and promotions. But sometimes - there is this inner voice which puts forward the very basic question - Where is all this leading to ? and Quite frankly I have not been able to find an answer ... The next interesting encounter was to happen with a 64 year old Scottish-Welsh gentleman down at a local pub. I was so fascinated by this man -that we set up a date the next day too for pub hopping. He had fought for the Queen's army and now designs fly traps for fly-fishing. He takes courses down in America and is about to release a book.. A very rich man in every sense. The interesting part was him and another friend of his - {another gentleman -who was introduced just as a person who knew everything about ships} knew quite a lot about India than most of the other educated foreigners I have met in the cities. They had no racial prejudices and were well informed on our independence struggle. They talked about "IT" and how India is going to rule -but then again it was not baised like the news we read in all these websites- They also were telling me about what the pitfalls are and how far behind we are in comparison with China ... It was engaging two nights with those men. Got to go for some live music pubs - the difference - Music of a kind i hardly listen - Scottish and Irish !! The good part of my journey was spend going in and out of museums and architectural buildings. The interesting thing I noticed by end of the trip was -within a matter of 4 days I managed to pick up a major part of Scotland's history - their origins - the british rule -their fight for freedom - truths about William Wallace and Robert the Bruce { i had got that grossly wrong after Braveheart -the movie} - like the guide had explained - "a brilliant hollywood movie with totally screwed up historical facts". That set me thinking- How much do I know about my India ?? Granted that India is so huge with so many cultures melted together into one that it is impossible for an average person to know them all. But do I know my history atleast - my roots as they term it -atleast about the history of Tamil Nadu and Kerala -two places which are a part of me ?? Who were we 300-400 years back.. It sounds funny to really ask myself such questions.. But it did occur back there when I felt I knew more about Scottish history than Indian. I guess I should make some efforts to start digging up a little about ourselves : something out of genuine interest, rather than something to be learnt to score marks in history or social sciences... Another eye opener from the trip- The Truth About Macbeth and how William Shakespeare had mixed up facts and fiction -making the play pleasing for the British audience. My obsession with Macbeth dates back to my school days when it was course work- But somehow I took a special liking to the character of Macbeth and till date quote quite a bit of Macbeth in my regular discussions. { In Scotland - it is considered to be a bad luck thingie to quote from Macbeth ;-} Anyways it was interesting to get such information in such an unexpected way. I could go on forever at this rate - about the castles, the boat rides, the highlands, the loch ness monster, the local pubs, the train rides ... But then too much of anything is bad enough.. On a passing note as I drop Scotland - the trip was at some point marred slightly by some racial discrimination me and my friend went through late in the night when we were returning from the pubs- Use of strong language against us and ourselves being reffered to as the Iraqi's were something we had put up with. Ever wondered what goes through a person's mind when you are in the receiving end of such discrimination and how your mind goes on to rationalise the whole thing to make it understandable - you know -just to answer the basic question - "Why Me ?" My friends at work have got Tuesday nights ticket for Kill Bill Vol2. I am looking forward to seeing another brilliantly made - but equally violent movie by Quentin Tarantino ... I loved the first installment of this movie -except that all the friends who accompained me to the movie -back in India had hated it to core ... This time though it is going to be all Tarantino-fans-only affair :- )!!!!! Expect some artful violence here very soon :p) !!
Posted by vignesh at 7 : 17 pm | Leave a note {8} |
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| April 08 2004 | ||||||
| :. 2 Years .:
Today is a special day for me. This blog - Rock My World completes two years. It has been an achievement atleast for me- specially because I am not known for sticking to one thing for long. It all began on April 9th 2002 - when after following my good friend- Anand's blog for sometime - I decided to start one of my own- quite secretly. It didnt stay that way for long since anand -himself found it out. Anyways - in those days my only intention was to write what comes to my mind with no censorship at all. I was in the United States and needed some medium through which I could easily stay in touch with my friends back home and this seemed perfect. Little did I know that I shall gain so many new friends who will stay on in my life forever. Way back then most of them were just unknown faces with websites which I visited -then commenting became a major thing for me - putting in my thoughts -hearing their thoughts - discussing anything under the sun -it was a whole new world. Then as time passed I met up with quite a few of them and almost everybody turned out to be exactly the same as they where through mail or phone calls. It has been an exciting ride all through. I have taken long unscheduled breaks from blogging to a max of two months due to various reasons like work, frustration and the regular -too lazy to blog excuses -- but it has never till date occured to me to stop this thing forever. Hope I never feel that way. Thankfully and quite surprisingly this blog has been free of any kind of bad comments, angry remarks, anonymous threats or any comments from unknown people who don't even have a wee bit of courage to leave their name behind. I am frankly quite surprised since the topics I write about are generally ones that bring in lot of heat !!! -- hmmm - Touchwood ;-) Hope to see you guys here as long as I can write :-) .. Sadly I might move over to some other site since Upsaid has now become a pay-site. :-( - But then two years has been good and long enough ... Thanks Upsaid In other news -starting today I have a 4 day long weekend. A grande SCOTLAND Trip has been planned out. Hope the famous Scottish weather holds good this weekend. HAPPY EASTER EVERYBODY !!!! :-) and Have a Great Weekend ... :-)
Posted by vignesh at 9 : 23 am | Leave a note {16} |
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