Bittersweet Symphony September 15, 2006
Posted by Ravi in Music Reviews.add a comment
I just came across this song Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve today and have really fallen in love with it. Made me realise how much I’m really into Blues.
Lukas Rossi sang it today on Rock Star: Supernova and that’s how I came to hear it. (By the way, Lukas has been named the lead singer for Supernova after winning the 11-week competition beating out 14 other contestants.)
The song starts with just a violin fading in. Sounds very lovely!
Here are the opening lines…
Cause it’s a bitter sweet symphony, this life
Try to make ends meet
You’re a slave to the money
Then you die
They have really touched me. They are so very true!
Richard Ashcroft has summed up most people’s lives in just a single line.
No change
I can change – 3
But I’m here in my mold – 2
But I’m a million different people
From one day to the next
I can’t change my mold
No, no, no, no, no
Very symbolic. Very deep.
Well I never pray
But tonight I’m on my knees, yeah
I need to hear some sounds that
Recognize the pain in me, yeah
The music, the lyrics, being very emotional, have really moved me.
The video features Richard Ashcroft bumping into people as he walks down the Hoxton Street, a crowded shopping area in London.
The song was also featured at the pivotal end scene in the 1999 movie Cruel Intentions.
Great lyrics. Great singing.
One of the best songs I’ve ever heard.
I’ve had it running in a loop since this morning!
Ryan Star on Rock Star: Supernova September 1, 2006
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Hi there,
If you are a music lover and even if just a little bit into “Rock”, you’ll love
Rock Star: Supernova. It’s currently running it’s 2nd season with the Rock band Supernova looking for a young talented Rocker to front their band.
Last season it was Rock Star: INXS with the Rock band INXS being on the hunt. INXS picked J.D. Fortune as their lead singer and recorded their latest album called Switch. The second single released from Switch is Afterglow. A very lovely song with synth, strings and airy guitar which incidentally I’m listening to right now! Caught it’s video on VH1. Really liked the way lighting was done and that it featured the actress Estella Warren too.
Okay! Back to Rock Star: Supernova. The competition has really heated up!
Only the top 6 rockers remain. Ryan, Toby, Magni, Storm, Dilana and Lukas.
I’ve always been inclined to listening to Alt. Modern Rock more than the Classics. I’m into like a couple of Aerosmith’s but a heck lot of U2′s. But, as you go along listening, part of you easily identifies itself with the madness of Classics. Ever felt like screaming at top of your lungs? That’s what I’m talking about here!
My favorite has been Ryan Star. Yeah! That’s his middle name. Star!
But, he truly is a Star! Why? Because, the intensity with which this guy sings the songs and all that energy he exudes, it sweeps you off your feet.
If you like “Loosing My Religion” by R.E.M or “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins listen to this guy once. He’s absolutely brilliant. He gave encore performances for both these singles.
Check him out performing Loosing My Religion and In The Air Tonight live on Rock Star at YouTube.
Loosing My Religion also shows how good Ryan truly is at playing a piano. But, if you really wanna see a guy jump and rock on the top of piano check him out performing Clocks by Coldplay.
Not only is Ryan a very talented singer, a very good musician but he’s an excellent songwriter too! They say nothing beats an original performance as it truly is a window to your soul and that’s why I couldn’t help but become a fan of him when I watched him bring his trademark intensity to his orignal tune while performing Back Of Your Car. A song about making love when the world is ending!
Can’t wait to see Ryan on the record charts!
Happy Friendship’s Day August 6, 2006
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Dear Friends,
A very Happy Friendship’s Day to all of you.
Well, I don’t remember if I’ve ever specially celebrated Friendship’s Day before but now I wish I had. And I wish I could this year. That’s ‘coz this year’s Friendship’s Day is different than all the ones that’ve gone past me before. I’ve got no friends around with me this time. They’ve all flown away to separate places all over the country.
It makes me sad everytime I realise that maybe I wouldn’t see them ever again. But then somebody drops this news to me that this guy has moved to New Zealand, this guy is doing MBA and that guy now works for HSBC and it all brings a big smile to me to know that they have settled and that others are about to.
And as far as Friendship’s Day is concerned, each day I meet any one of them is gonna be like one!
Mehfil at Mehfil April 27, 2006
Posted by Ravi in Life in General.2 comments
Hi,
I had a ball time yesterday!!
I along with almost all my other classmates went to “Mehfil” – a decent eating place that comes just before “Dhanaula”. I don’t know who’s idea it was but it was great!! Gave us all a much needed break from the string of Minors that we had this week.
By the way, we still had one more Minor pending for today but surprisingly it didn’t have much effect on our strength. We were still 27 in number. So, we hired a Qualis that made two rounds to take us all to “Mehfil” and back.
Imagine how 14 people must have made it to fit in!!
We had 2 in the front, 5 in between and 7 at the back!!!
It sure was jampacked. No doubt! But we all eventually did manage to do it. You know how? Because most of us have had some experience of being stuffed like lambs in a bus while coming to the college from Sangrur in the morning. 
We reached “Mehfil” in about half an hour or so killing time all along the way with a series of light verbal combats with each other.
I had never been to “Mehfil” before. So, being new to the place I didn’t really notice but was told by Shashi that the Air Conditioning was new to it. The first thing that came to my mind then was, “Well, we’ll be able to dance better!!”. And we sure did!!
Once we got settled, it was Boy’s Talks everywhere. It didn’t take much time for the whole scene to turn into a fish market but we somehow managed to decide and order what we were gonna eat.
The moment I took the first bite, I had a great sense of pleasance that can’t be explained in writing. Hadn’t been to Home for weeks. So, what a great respite it was from the food that I’m served at my hostel. Everything tasted real damn good!!
Me, Manu, Rahul and couple of more guys were yet to finish our plates when the music system was turned on and the rest of them started mellow dancing. But soon everyone started to groove into the music and that’s when I looked at Manu and gave him the look, “We are missing all the fun dude!!”. Not wasting any more time, we joined the Club ASAP!!
For the next one hour, it was all about moving your body. We danced to all the popular Punjabi Beats and Tunes and gave all types of background playback singing performances. Just more than half an hour later – east, west, north, south – wherever I saw, it was a complete chaos. We really rocked the place inside out!!
There were a couple of candid moments too that I’m sorry, I currently do not own the copyrights of, to give the juicy details about them out here. But rest assured, we do have that on tape!!
In the end, it was Me, Sumit and Tony that kept on dancing and weren’t willing to budge from there. So, one of the guys who worked there had to cold reboot the system – you know when somebody simply pulls the plug out!! – to bring our “I’m-gonna-dance-all-night-DJ” feeling to a screeching halt. Of course, we got pissed off!! But we realised that it was time to get back to the hostel just to raise some hell over there too!!
On our way back, we already knew how 14 people fit in a Qualis. So, it wasn’t much of a problem this time. I don’t know when exactly we hit the hostel but it has to be around 2:30 AM.
After the usual Hoo-Hah as we entered the hostel, Pratyush set up his Creative Inspire 2.1 as I, Sumit, Sanjeev, Kapil, Pratyush and Tony still had a sweet tooth for dancing the night off!!
This time it was a mix of Punjabi, Hindi as well as English foot stumpers and we all danced on and off in the corridor. In the end, again it was just Me, Pratyush and Tony dancing relentlessly. I guess we were ones enjoying these moments the most.
At one time, in the heat of the moment Me and Pratyush tried to beat the holy Michael Jackson out of ourselves with MJ’s “Dangerous” going on in the background.
At other times, it was so much fun dancing with Tony on Punjabi tracks.
After whooping it up till 4 AM in the morning, we three finally called it quits.
It was such a lovely experience. I hadn’t danced in months and it felt so good to dance with people who truly appreciated dancing and gave their 110% while on the dance floor.
I hope we have one more shot at high jinks before we all split up.
My 1 Mbps Dial Up Connection April 25, 2006
Posted by Ravi in Life in General.add a comment
I have a 2 Mbps leased line connection at my college. The Bandwidth here has been further divided into 1 Mbps for students and the other 1 Mbps for the faculty.
Now, during the daytime that 1 Mbps leased is reduced to a little more than a 34 Kbps dial-up connection ‘coz the whole wide college campus wanna get online for the following important reasons:
- 30% – Idle Surfing – Greetings, Wallpapers, Dating, Pr0n etc.
- 20% – Chatting – Yahoo!, MSN, Skype, Google Talk etc.
- 20% – Email, Social Networking – Yahoo! Groups, Orkut etc.
- 20% – Downloads – RapidShare, MegaUpload, DivX, Mp3s etc.
- 10% – Research, Job Hunt – What Internet was provided to us for!!
People check their e-mails like most check for IMs – 6-10 times per day!!
40% of students live their life online on SantaBanta.com browsing endlessly for “that hot celebrity wallpaper” they think they might have missed somewhere!!
End Result: I have to wait till 3 AM to get access to the real broadband!!
That’s the time when I get to have a big chunk of that 1 Mbps and I touch speeds to the tune of 110 KBps. Yeah! That’s B for Bytes.
700 MB DivX in 2 Hours Flat!!
Needless to say, when something goes FREE in India, people misuse it like hell!!
Need an example? How about SMS. It went from being free to being paid as soon as the mobile operators realised what a grave mistake they had made.
Bottom Line:
“We won’t use it ‘coz we need to, we’ll use it for the sake of it being free!!”
Are we ever gonna change?
Bandwidth Cap on DataOne April 14, 2006
Posted by Ravi in Tech/Software.add a comment
Hi,
Almost all DataOne plans have had a Bandwidth limit imposed on them, thus inviting a lot of criticism.
The argument put forward more or less always goes like “This download cap thing absolutely sucks. It defeats the very purpose of an always-on, high speed broadband connection.”
I, on the other hand, think that a Bandwidth cap is absolutely necessary to keep the “Prices” in check. It’s not that I’m a very huge fan of this cap thing but I like to think of it as a “Necessary Evil” because I’ve had a firsthand experience of what happens when Bandwidth is not capped. It deserved a post of its own and here it is!!
Believe me the ONLY reason BSNL is being able to deliver a TRUE Broadband connection is because there’s a cap to check people like me and my friends who can suck up to 3 GBs in a single day via P2P. Had you been getting a sub-100 Kbps speed, Bandwidth being capped would have been the last thing on your mind!!
I opted for a 256K, I was getting 253.2K. 
Without the cap the QoS would have gone down and I would have been forced to go for late night surfing sessions. I think we should give BSNL some credit for that!!
It’s not very hard to realize the fact that it’s the speed that tempts you to have an Unlimited connection but it’s only the Bandwidth cap that’s keeping the speeds where they are!!
Seems like an Irony to me but as a matter of fact it really is!!
My Experience with DataOne April 12, 2006
Posted by Ravi in Tech/Software.add a comment
Hi,
Last year I used BSNL’s DataOne for about 4 months around my summer holidays. Although I didn’t expect it to, it turned out to be a really nice Broadband experience!!
I was already having Broadband at my college as an always-on connection in my hostel room for just Rs. 600/- per semester.
So, I knew my Broadband usage pattern and the fact that 1 GB wouldn’t even last 10 days for me!! I therefore went in for the Business 1200 plan with a Bandwidth cap of 4 GB.
That stretched my daily Bandwidth limit to 136 MB per day. It was sufficient for casual surfing and downloading Mp3s, Softwares but I had to give up listening to real-time audio streams and downloading DivXs. 
If you’re already having a DataOne or planning to have one, you’d be better off using a Bandwidth Monitoring software to keep track of your daily Bandwidth usage. This would help you to step on the brakes before you hit your Bandwidth limit or you would have to foot a hefty bill!!
My personal favorite is DU Meter. Cool GUI, lots of options and the ability to switch between daily, weekly or monthly statistical views for Bandwith usage.
@ DU Meter Users: This applies to other BW Monitoring softwares also.
Check that you have set “Network interface to monitor” to “WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface” and NOT “All Interfaces”. If you don’t, DU Meter will report twice the actual Bandwidth usage – once for “BSNL to ADSL Router” and once again for “ADSL to LAN Card”.
You should also periodically check your Bandwidth usage at DataOne.in as it reports your data flow usage down to the number of bytes as well as your exact login time and session duration.
Try using an Ad-Blocker too. It will cut your Bandwidth usage by more than 40%. If you choose not to, the next time you see that half page Shaadi.com Flash Ad on Yahoo!, do remember You paid for it!!
Word as a Whole February 4, 2006
Posted by Ravi in Uncategorized.add a comment
Hi,
Here’s a funny fact about how our mind actually reads when we try to read something.
It deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are!
The olny improetnt tihng is taht the frist and the lsat ltteer sohuld be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit any porbelms.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Now isn’t that interesting?
2006, A New Year Has Come! January 22, 2006
Posted by Ravi in Life in General.add a comment
Hi,
The year 2006 is officially here and I’m very very excited!!
Wanna know why? Well there are 3 reasons making me so happy.
- I’m Bailing Out!
First and foremost, I’m getting bailed out this year. Now, before you put your wild imaginations to work, I’ll like to step in and make it very clear that NO I’m not writing my blog from the confines of a prison cell. Although my college, the place I’m in right now does qualify as one.
See, I’m “kinda” claustrophobic in nature. Not exactly afraid but surely uncomfortable in closed spaces. Now, I know that my college is “spread in a sprawling area of 451 acres” and hence shouldn’t be categorized as a closed space at all!! But, you see the acres don’t really matter here.
An assemblage of immature people with irrational or no opinions at all; with no dreams, no vision; running in a mad race for numbers to score over each other (which by the way ends up in futility if you can’t back it up); lacking capability (both written and verbal!!) to interface with the real world; standing still with closed eyes, closed minds; with no idea of what’s waiting for them outside the box; is what really qualifies those 451 acres to be claustrophobic.
Disclaimer:
The para above doesn’t apply to Raj, Vivek, Sumit, Sanjeev, couple of more close friends and Me of course!! Though, at times I feel a little doubtful of Sanjeev. So guys, don’t come knocking on my door. Okay!!Trust me!! This acres of land doesn’t do any good.
In fact, over these years it has done nothing but hurt my legs a lot.But this post isn’t about my college. So, let’s just move on to the better things in my life…
- Tata Consultancy Services
Hopefully, I’ll get placed in TCS this Fall. I said hopefully because I’m yet to see my offer letter and they selected me like some 6 months ago. Kinda scary, isn’t it? And then there’s this guy who keeps on pestering me to switch to HCL. Now, is he outta his f* mind!! I bet he is.
- The Element of Surprise
The much needed element of surprise is back in my life again. For the first time in five years, I wouldn’t be knowing where I’m gonna spend my New Year’s Eve. Now, isn’t that great!!
I think of it and a lot of ideas start brewing up in my mind. There’s a certain vibe to this uncertainty and I’m loving it!!
So, with this post I kick off my official blogsite: blog.ravi.co.in.
I’ll keep you guys posted. A post a week is what I feel comfortable with.
So, till my next post, it’s adios from me!! And by the way, Happy New Year!!
