Shyam's Blog

Family + food --> fun = my vacation in Detroit. What else do I need for a perfect vacation? A big 10-day stay here with arrangements to 'work-from-home' is a welcome treat for me.

Really missing my cats today after hearing to stories of their dogs in the office meeting! One Monsoon, it was raining heavily and a small creature was crying for shelter. It was all wet and no energy to move because it's mom had abandoned it. This was my first kitten - lussy, named so because it was white in color. One can term this as a street cat, but, soon, it became part of our family by being around our house and playing with Table Tennis ball. A harsh night saw a pot in our garden fall on it to end it's existence. Few weeks later, my dad brought home a super baby from a rehab center - 1 month old female golden kitten. Dad liked a Japanese movie in which a kid's name was something like, 'Chungya'. In those lines, he named this 'Chungnyee'. ha ha. Once we had taker her to a Vet and he was surprised to know its name. This kitten was so small that it didn't even know to drink milk from a bowl. For many days, we bottle fed with a small bottle with a sm...

It is boring to remember 100s of names and 1000s of dates. Who came and who died next? Why people fought there and when? They all won or lost the battles/wars. 'mujhe kya lena dena?'. This is what I felt when I was studying History in school. Now I know why that History teacher was teaching History ;). Recently, I am going through a book on World History and get these questions, "Who is there to prove all these? Are these really true?". Many of the current texts on History are written by person X/person Y and not many have questioned them. For example, the buzz topic, "Aryan invasion"! (Read here ). While reading history about other countries/continents, I am just assuming that whatever is there in the book is true. Even pre-civilization history is one thing I always question. All those BCs - 1900 BC , 1700 BC.., who knows whether it really happened then? ;). If I want to write a fiction, I will write about me going back in time and running through those da...

It is so quick. 2006 is coming to an end!

I was running in the gym and my mind was running faster than I;). "Why is this gym so empty? Why don't people us the facilities? If these were provided in our country, people would have flocked the area round the clock." This thought led me to one of my most sought out discussion - education system. When I was a kid, people visiting home from the US explained a lot about encouraging kids in activities. There were few comments on me moving to the US. I mean, it was just a dream then. Coming to today's world, I surely feel that India too has developed in the past one decade. It is a fast paced world out there. Talking about education system, people always discuss the pros and cons of the systems in both the countries. Pros in India being, standard of education is high and tougher competition. Cons being, some might say that education in India is not industry oriented, in other words, not practical oriented. Continuing with pros - this ends at a certain level of the educ...

Picnic Spot Bridging two ends Harmonic waves

My friend showed me this original track (Code Monkey) online. This track is for all crazy remixers ;) who can put anything to this track and send it to the original creator. You too can try something ... http://www.jonathancoulton.com/ Within minutes, I put my voice to that. Listen to remix here ...

I am just back from "cloud nine", the place of dreams and fantasy and there is no space for the so called 'world'. It is so weird to start a blog like this. The title too is a word repeated thrice. I have many other options for the title, like, "visit to Chinmaya Mission, Boston", "Phil's Surprise Birthday Party", "Party filled with music", etc. But, let me stick to the one I chose and will mention why it was chosen. This is a blog where names are not hidden in algebra like, person A or person B. I name people here AS IS because, the whole blog gets weight by that. It was Phil Scarff's 50th year Birthday which was arranged by his wife, Megha, at the Chinmaya Mission, Andover, MA. It was an hour's drive for me with the birthday balloons filling my back seat. After reaching the venue, it was time to arrange for the party scheduled to start at 2PM. It started well with Noram, who is a Jazz Guitarist. It was my turn to sing - I sa...

Morning tea couldn't be a more shocker than this. See the caption and the picture which is from today's newspaper. FYI, that is the victorious ace shooter, Jaspal Rana in Doha.

Here is a song saying, "I am blessed seeing Him." "You have filled my eyes of mind. I have traveled countries making me more ambitious all the time. Make me see within." This piece is an elaborate one which is around 20 minutes. The first part is the rendition of the raaga giving a mood to go into the lyrics of the song. After the song is complete, here comes the improvisation with the seven notes of the raaga (melody). Set to a cycle of three beats, this song is in the raaga, 'pantuvarali', which is similar to the 'puryadhanushri' in the Hindustani style. I have tried to keep this raaga improvisation on the lighter side and not make it sound too orthodox. The reason behind choosing a lighter and softer touch is the song ahead, which is a semi-classical piece. The swara impromptu in the end is a real-time rendition of notes which just flow from no-where and vanish out. Basically, I mean to say, I may be good/bad at points which I have no control of ;...

Today's practice song in the raaga ' yaman kalyani ' Listen here...