Whoops!

For some reason I can’t get the video to embed, so here’s a link

I really have to re-quit sometime soon…

I’m drunk!

And loving it.

It’s 4 30 am. I’ve been at home for an hour – rode back from Saket on my trusty Bajaj, never dropping below 90 kmph (well okay, a few times…) and cutting every single red light I saw. I did slow down though, and made sure it was safe to cut them. Hey – at 3 in the morning there’s very little traffic on the roads, and the Delhi roads I frequent are usually 3 lanes wide on either carriageway.

I have an 8 40 tomorrow morning. Fuckin’ ‘ell – I haven’t been for class in like ten days, thanks to my laziness and my classmates being here. Since I’m so lazy, and also part girl, I’ll have to get up at 6 30 tomorrow morning to have a realistic chance of making it to the Arts Faculty parking lot at 8 30 tomorrow morning, which means I’ll get to smoke my pre-class cigarette.

Anyway….

Goodnight world!

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Edit: I apologise… Drunken driving is not cool and I shouldn’t be doing it.

Mediocrity, Mistakes, Motivation, and Persistence

Hilarious posters from Despair, Inc!

Bookends Theme

The week after the Maiden concert, some of my classmates from school came to visit. They all stayed with me, except for one busy chap from Noida (Karate Kid) who stayed there itself.

The Village Person has written about the visit far more eloquently than I ever could. Please give it a read – http://villageperson.blogspot.com/2007/03/wonder-years.html

I’m still in the trough after the crest of their visit. All I have to look forward two are two sets of exams, when I only have enough time to prepare for one set!

Life as usual for the World’s Biggest Procrastinator.

Photos are here - lots of them!

Screaaaam For Me Bangalore!!!

Hahahaha!

Iron Maiden were simply fabulous. Fantastic, awesome, supoib.

I had the time of my life that evening! Went with Revanoor and a bunch of his friends and their extended friend circle. Thankfully they listened to me and we didn’t reach Palace Grounds at noon or earlier like they wanted to, when the gates opened only at 3. We ultimately went in around 5 pm, having missed the mad rush that I knew would ensue just after the gates opened. The first opening act out of three had just begun, and we had a full 3 hours to worm our way forward through the crowd. We finally settled around 10 rows from the front, left of centre.

The opening acts -

1. FtN, which is short for Fuck the Name. A punk band, they admitted to not being Maiden fans. They were only there because they won some Campus Rock Idols competition, and this was their prize. Bah. They were quite rightly booed off stage…

2. Parikrama – did a rather boring set, full of extended violin-and-keyboard jugalbandhis that reminded me of watching Mrigya play in college. Their set was fully original (they’re known for their covers and I was kinda looking forward to hearing them play Yellow and Comfortably Numb!). Nitin Malik (vocals) then fucked everything up by ranting and raving about how they had written 2 songs especially for the honour of opening for Iron Maiden, and how the critics were wrong for pointing fingers at their lack of Original Compositions. He repeated himself twice. Not cool!

3. Lauren Harris – she’s Steve Harris’s daughter, and she needs to be taken to the slaughter as soon as possible. Quite attractive, but a below-average pop singer at best. Her band was full of butt-ugly creatures, although the guitarist showed talent. I spent most of her set trying to figure out the gender of the drummer…
AND THEN!!!!

Iron Maiden are tremendously good on stage. They’re full of energy. I’ve been reading this for years, but seeing them is something else altogether.

They did 3 songs from A Matter of Life and Death, their latest album. I’m not familiar with it so I kinda twiddled my thumbs… but when they did their classic stuff, songs from the late 70s onwards…. oh MAN! The crowd went crazy… I went crazy… I’ve never done the \m/ rocker horns thing before in my life, but went mad with it that night!

Crowd estimates range from 20,000 to 60,000. I’d say 40-50 k myself.

Not much else to say. I screamed myself hoarse, literally. For five years of my youth I LOVED this band. They were what showed me the real meaning of the word ‘fan.’ And there were 49,000 other people at that concert who felt the same way (plus 1000-odd posers, I’m sure!)

Bruce gave an emotional speech where he promised us that the Bangalore crowd was exceptional – sounded like a genuine speech. He also promised to come back to India regularly, and spread the word about the legions of metal fans here to bands abroad.

He happens to be friends with Dream Theater… I’m keeping all my appendages crossed!!

That’s Steve Harris (L) and Janick Gers. Gers is simply crazy on stage… crazy…

Bruce the Redcoat singing ‘Run to the Hills…’

Dave Murray and Janick Gers with Bruce in the background… the A Matter of Life and Death backdrop behind him…

Steve Harris… I got ’shot’ by his bass guitar many times!

Bruce effing Dickinson!

Stevie again.

Two videos… unfortunately only bootlegs are available. And by the way, cellphones have replaced Zippos as the lights of choice to wave at the stage!

Fear of the Dark… a bit too popular for my liking, but I still love the song!

Eddie, Maiden’s mascot, made two guest appearances. 14 foot tall!

For professional photos, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/axayuchil/

(he’s also taken snaps of the Shakira concert in Mumbai last weekend!)

Did You Know This?

 

Perfume oil is necessarily diluted with a solvent because undiluted oils (natural or synthetic) contain high concentrations of volatile components that will likely result in allergic reactions and possibly injury when applied directly to skin or clothing. Solvents also volatilize the essential oils, helping to diffuse them into the air.

By far the most common solvent for perfume oil dilution is ethanol or a mixture of ethanol and water. Perfume oil can also be diluted by means of neutral-smelling lipids such as jojoba, fractionated coconut oil or wax. The concentration by percent/volume of perfume oil is as follows:

• Perfume extract: 20%-40% aromatic compounds
• Eau de parfum: 10-30% aromatic compounds
• Eau de toilette: 5-20% aromatic compounds
• Eau de cologne: 2-5% aromatic compounds

As the percentage of aromatic compounds decreases, so does the intensity and longevity of the scent created. Different perfumeries or perfume houses assign different amounts of oils to each of their perfumes. Therefore, although the oil concentration of a perfume in eau de parfum (EDP) dilution will necessarily be higher than the same perfume in eau de toilette (EDT) form within the same range, the actual amounts can vary between perfume houses. An EDT from one house may be stronger than an EDP from another.

============= (from Wikipedia)

I love such trivia! I’m sure to you the words ‘perfume, cologne, parfum, and eau de toilette’ all have synonymous connotations. Little do you know! Ha!

And the thing about different perfume houses having different standards inevitably reminded me of shoe sizes! Although the Big Three seem to vary only by half a size here and there.

Btw, the Cool Water Woman in the pic is an EDP!

What sort of a name is Tabu anyway?

http://content.msn.co.in/Entertainment/Bollywood/bollywoodHT_110307_353.htm

 I’m glad, though. I like the book!

 

 Something else I was going to post about. Forgot.

*Commencing countdown, engines off…*

A Week Less Ordinary

Further proof that my priorities in life are stuffed right up my ass.

I have been hired for a week by Tiger Sports Management! Oz (ex-flatmate) works there…

Job Profile: Gyp. No other word for it.
Remuneration: A staggering 1200 bucks a day! (I said no to 800 a day, so they upped it…)

From tomorrow I’ll be sitting in the Claremont Hotel on the Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road liasing with professional women golfers from all across Asia. I’m not sure what exactly I’ll be doing – from what I gathered, the company just needs someone to hang around the hotel in case the ladies need anything. It’s a 5-day Open event, and they’re shorthanded.

I really don’t see why they need me. And I’m very short of attendance. But I’m going to give up a week of class because of the amazing pay! 6 grand for 5 days work. I’m spending a little over half of it on a plane ticket to Bangalore for the Maiden concert (no more train! hurrah!). Thanks to my darling bike, transport will require only around 400-500 rupees for petrol. Food is taken care of by them (I hope!).

I plan to take my laptop and some study material down. That damn NLS correspondence course I’m doing – I haven’t given in even one assignment, although by this point of time I’m supposed to have handed in all five required projects :(

But what crazy hours! I have to be at the hotel at 4 30 tomorrow morning. I’m a total dawdler when it comes to my morning ablutions, so I’ll need to get up at 2 30 am to be able to leave home by 3 30… Even by bike at 4 am, Mehrauli is still faaar away :(

Had a nice weekend though. Friday – met Aby, got smashed. Saturday – met Gupta, Athar, and other assorted personalities, and got smashed again! Sunday – ate lots of eggs and toast in Gupta’s house, used his western-style toilet (you can read for so much longer than on a squat toilet!), and then beetled down to the DLF Golf Club in Gurgaon to meet my new employers!

I’d never set foot on a golf course until today. Always thought of it as a rather silly sport, for old geezers whose paunches stick out of their polo tee shirts. Always vowed that when I reached that age I’d still be playing basketball!

But it was a really lovely place. Being a Club, it was very posh. It’s posh even by golf club standards, Oz informs me. I got to ride around in those little battery-powered golf carts (they’re extremely funky!) and watch various short-clad foreigners and the odd Indian do the proverbial tee off! The course itself isn’t exactly ‘beautiful,’ but it comes close. Lovely hilly lawns, lakes with fountains and ducks swimming around, no road noise, birds in the trees… It was relaxing to just be there!

The blue ball in the foreground is NOT a golf ball that was too close to the camera… It’s to mark the tee for the Blue course. There are courses of varying difficulty on the same course, if you get my drift. Blue is the hardest – the longest distances to the hole.

I’m trying to figure out what the heck that blue stick in the right foreground is – have no idea!

So I have two hours before it’s time to get up. I still need to smoke my last cigarette of the night, brush my teeth, pack my bag, and fall asleep. It should be one a.m. by then! Sigh…

Varsity Blues

I saw a killer movie last night! Well, ‘killer’ might be pushing it, but I really enjoyed it – and that’s the point of a movie isn’t it?

Varsity Blues gave me exactly what I’ve been looking for in the last few movies I’ve seen – fun. It’s well shot, and has decent enough acting (except by Ali Larter – but she’s pretty!) And I liked the cast too – Jon Voight (who overdoes his performance), James van der Beek (from Dawson’s Creek), Paul Walker (later from 2Fast2Furious), and Amy Smart (later from Starsky and Hutch and The Butterfly Effect – i looove her :)).

Sure, it’s full of cliches - a maniac American high school football coach hanging on to titles he won decades ago, a solitary black student in a small Texan town, the town’s official religion is American football, the head cheerleader sleeps with the star quarterback…. but if you’re not too arrogant to put aside your annoyance at cliches (I do it, and it allows me to enjoy a lot more movies than I otherwise could!) it’s great fun seeing an all-out All-American movie.

Being set in small-town Texas means there are lots of monster SUVs, southern drawls, Sheriffs, beer, shotguns, fat pigs (both human and porcine), and cute naked girls. It has a good soundtrack ranging from Green Day to Aaliyah to AC/DC to Stevie Ray Vaughn to Collective Soul.

And to top it off, it’s the best-shot sports movie I’ve ever seen! I know only the basics of American football, but I could understand exactly what was happening on the field at all times. Maybe it’s hard to shoot realistic basketball action, but I’m yet to see a basketball movie that got me fired up. And I love basketball as much as I love Dream Theater!

It came at the end of an enjoyable day too. Went for my solitary 10:30 and listened to a good lecture on Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution (not to mention the First Amendment of the US Constitution) which deal with the right to freedom of religion. Read the latest Overdrive which had articles on the new Pulsar 200 cc, the new C Class, and a shootout between the Zen Estilo, the Santro Xing, the Wagon R, and the Indica Xeta. Ate vada and egg sandwich at the D School canteen. Picked up my bike from its bimonthly service at Bagga Link Bajaj at Karol Bagh, rode it down to CP, spent many minutes navigating the inner and middle circles (one-ways make it hard to get where you’re going if you don’t know exactly where you’re going!) and finally found the teka I was looking for. Only to find that they were out of peach schnapps (birthday gift) so I bought white wine from Grover Wineyards, Karnataka instead. Discovered that I couldn’t go back to Karol Bagh and thence North Campus the way I’d come, thanks to diversions due to the Metro construction, so I moseyed over to India Gate instead. Discovered a new route home from India Gate, which always gives me a kick (I love maps and navigation!). Found myself at the front of most red lights, which meant open road ahead once the light turned green. Excellent riding weather – warm enough to be able to wear only a shirt, cool enough to not sweat, bright enough to need sunglasses. Fun!

From Dictionary.com: 

var·si·ty      /ˈvɑrsɪti/ [vahr-si-tee]  noun, plural -ties, adjective

–noun

1.	any first-string team, esp. in sports, that represents a school, college, university, or the like: He is on the varsity in tennis and in debating.

2.	Chiefly British Informal. university.

–adjective

3.	of or pertaining to a university or school team, activity, or competition: a varsity debater.

---

[Origin: 1840–50; cf. versity university, in 17th century; pron. prob. preserves historical outcome of ME ĕr, as in varmint]

(I’d never understood how Archie and other high school kids could play on varsity teams – thought varsity just meant university!)

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 Edit: After reading a couple of reviews, I find that the 1983 Tom Cruise film (yes, I like Tom Cruise, although his smile can get irritating) All The Right Movies is apparently a better version of this. Hmm.

Teenage Dirtbag

I’ve got two tickets to Iron Maiden, baby
Come with me Friday, don’t say ‘maybe’
I’m just a teenage dirtbag, baby
Like You
Woo hoo hoo hoo!

 I can’t believe I’m going to see these guys live in Bangalore! Muahahahahaha!

 I used to love Maiden in school. From around 10th grade right until 1st year of college, when I gradually switched to Dream Theater. Never thought I’d be able to sing those lines and mean them! (Although I am twenty-one.)

Anyway, here’s another good song -

Muse – Starlight