Virtual Reality

So after many profound brain things inside my head I'm back on Facebook. While my angst against social networking is not entirely gone and now that there are a million others claiming their individual superiority and new nifty applications that get sued by toy manufacturing giants, I've decided that a known evil is better than an unknown possibility of a good time. Yes, I humbly accept that that makes no sense. It wasn't meant to.
And thus I'm back on the wild world web having decided to let nifty little applications determine my social life. Of course there's also the fact that compared to the real world, the illusion of the matrix is pretty good.
Anyway profile updated and random socially acceptable likes and dislikes are in situ and I can go back to ignoring the site.
In interesting news Madagascar 2 has finally arrived in our fair part of the world and much as i would like to see it... again... for the fourth time I think I shall pass. I can now recite King Julian's new and improved insanity when woken up from a dead slumber. I feel, deep inside, that it will not be appreciated by the hoi polloi around me. So I shall continue to watch it in the privacy of my laptop. Streaming is so cool. As are cheap dvds of the streamed videos. Except of some time lag in the audio which was, after much wrestling, fixed.
But as I wanted to say but as usual got sidetracked, Madagascar 2, some say is not as funny as the first installment. Nay. I refute thy claims, critic. King Julian of course has been put on steroids for his mental condition and it's worsened. The penguins are a trip.
Alex, Marty and this time even Gloria and Melman go into the usual sentiment trip and considering this time it's in Africa, some much self-discovery and emancipation and yada yada happens that serves only to distract us from the real hero.
Bernie Mac will be sorely missed.
Go watch. Watch it. Maurice, you naughty little monkey, shake my arm.
In other such things the Mekaal Hassan Band (which I remember mentioning) and Shafqat Amanat Ali's solo album (Tabeer) and to say the least very good. I'm not going to go into the cool production, the mature fusion of hindustani and rock and the very excellent voices in detail but you get the gist. Some disappointments though especially with Tabeer. Dum Ali Dum and Naina in particular lack any kind of substance. But like always it's worth a listen and some songs will stick on.
So there it is life in a nutshell. More whenever.

PS I'm back on facebook because some mental plans for ganging up and consuming insane amounts of alcohol are made and propagated therein. It's just easier to plan the hangover thus.

Nickel back?

It recently came to my attention that Nickel Creek, a band I've loved for a few years now has decided to indefinitely split up and its 3 members want to pursue their own individual solo careers. While this is yet another instance of something giving me great joy disappearing in a puff of reality, this post is hopefully not yet an obituary.

I remember reading an edition of Rave, a magazine that I will still say has some moments of good music journalism, which was about Live 8 and also had an article on Robert Corwin. Who? Photographer who specializes in music/musician photography. As they say in the IRC way JFGI for more information.
Anyway the article on Corwin (who incidentally is related to that Animal Planet fellow Jeff) obviously had examples of his work and one picture caught my eye.
That's Nickel Creek.
Three musicians, in the air. The next couple of days were spent prowling the net for information and a few torrents later (yeah yeah sue me) I discovered joy.
It's not often that the sheer passion and happiness of music is almost exactly reflected in a picture but this is one instance.
Their music is traditional, folksy, bluegrass injected, acoustic, passionate and just happy.
And after some many years of touring and making music they apparently find it's no longer as easy and natural as it used to be...
So they're off on some soul searching expedition and all I can do is hope and pray that they get back sometime.
Their last farewell (for now) tour did feature one hilarious track.
Google "nickel creek" and "toxic" download the mp3 and listen to it.
Then listen to Smoothie song, House of Tom Bombadil, Beauty and the Mess and the host of others and you'll see what I mean.

To Sean, Sara and Chris, hope you guys get back.

Staying Up...

...or how to trick the hypothalamus and make a mockery of your internal clock. After some many consecutive nights of staying up and trying to keep the drunk denizens of this fair city from eradicating themselves I've shifted to the day shift and all I seem to want to be doing is sleeping. As a result of such clock malfunctions I'm up at some insane hour, bathed and dressed and considering I've woken, washed and wasting time, I should be blogging. So here I am.

While I shan't tolerate any jokes about those who can't blog, photoblog, I really like this picture. I call it Sin.

That apart I'm finally listening to music again and sailing the high seas as a pirate of reknown. Though considering I only get to hear the first five or six songs before I drift off and somehow I never remember to start the next listen from track 6 or seven, my reviews of the music that's caught my eye are going to be limited to the first half, Side A, you get the drift...

The Eagles are back. I remember writing a review of their music once and at that point of time we were only stuck with Hole in the World as a taste of things to come and about six new greatest hits compilations that had the same tracks in various permutations and combinations. I remember arguing with Hypolink who used to make an occasional appearance in the comments section about how the song was still Eagles' with it's harmonies and I got thupped at for liking a song that his favourite band had written like it was some boy-band. So we waited and amidst rumors of another break up thanks to Don Felder playing spoilsport we silently wept at the prospect of their demise. But all is good and Long Road Out of Eden did see the light of day. I just realised the connection with the picture above but hey it wasn't intentional. The double album takes time to grow on you and considering it's only the first few songs that I ever hear what little I've heard has grown and taken root.
How Long is the catchiest tune of the album, reminiscent of Take It Easy and Already Gone with the trademark guitar work and almost impossible harmonies. Drive to it if you will and you'll see what I mean. I don't remember the names of any of the other tracks due to many days of missing my multivitamins. But I did feel that some of the songs seemed like solo album material with Don Henley and Glenn Frey hogging the limelight for almost the entire track, but Timothy Schmidt has his moments and Joe Walsh while subdued on the first CD does pull off some neat work in the second album.
Bottom line? It was worth the 13 years for a studio album.

Matchbox 20 I remember from early college when they burst in with Bent, that featured on a Compilation of alternative rock of the same name. Then a friend bought The Mad Season Album and I managed to buy a cheap(very, very cheap) CD of Yourself or Someone like You from Nepal. More Than You Think You Are came in a Torrent as did an assortment of live and acoustic tracks. Rob Thomas' distinctive voice and the magic that he created with Santana in Smooth and a couple of tracks (Streetcorner Symphony, being one of them) in his solo album, Something To Be, albeit guilty of being tainted with pop, had all set the scene for Exile On Mainstream. The Band finally released a Greatest Hits of sorts with 6 new tracks followed by the old hits. Which suits me, as outlined above, perfectly. The new songs, in simple terms, rock! How far we've come is catchy and begs to be covered sometime in life. The video's out on VH1 apparently and all over the web so go forth and enjoy. The assortment of older tracks that form the latter half of this album are, thankfully, a good selection from 3 AM, Push, Bent to Disease, Bright Lights and Unwell. Overall, whether or not you've heard Matchbox Twenty, it's a good album.

I shall confess to have started writing this post a couple of days back and now not knowing how to finish it and running late

Break....

I detest these long breaks from being able to write. I can often blame them on either the lack of a computer to write on, or wrist pain from trying to sms a post or the unreliable sify connection. Mostly it's because I haven't a thing to write about. Strange, ye all say. Not at all. Considering I'm all through with complaining about both Delhi, AIIMS and the Chom assortment that plagues my life as of now. Now I go back to being amused often loudly and in-their-face.

Night duties have been filled with either Sardars affronted when someone innocently asks if it's finally past 12 o clock in order that a break may be taken, 30 odd students of the KSO (read some newspaper for more information) ordered by court to be treated at AIIMS since they were apparently not given the required attention at RML (another local hospital). And considering they were under police custody after trying to enter the parliament protesting the arrest of their brethren back in Manipur. It was all good till we needed to admit a couple of them (which we actually may not have if there was no court order). Now we needed to keep them nil orally and they wanted to eat pork. From Koopchand at CP which is apparently certified free from tapeworms. Mental note to check the place out. In the end of course the KSO stalwart had to settle for a glucose drip and six policemen to ensure that he didn't take the next bus to pork land.
Speaking of tapeworms I've decided to make it known that I shall avoid Pepsi since the blue billion debacle. In any case, the pesticides in Coke are far superior in ridding the gut of the occasional infestations.
Fort Minor plays in the background and despite many accusations of not growing up and listening to angsty nu metal I still like that music. I can list cutting edge production, incredible recording, nice use of mixers and turntables as reasons but I'm going to stick to simply the fact that the man/men have a neat sense of putting words in rhyme and rhythm and generally getting me in a good mood.
Continuing in my flight of ideas and musical genre, the grandparents left happy due to a cartload of cds that we bought a few days ago and the play list now has Rashid Khan - Brindavani Sarang, Kishore Amonkar - Todi and Ahir Bhairav, Hariprasad Chaurasia - Pilu and Lalit and Brindavani Sarang and finally Gangubai Hanagal - Behag. And the winner is Gangubai. I've never heard her before, live or recordings, and she is simply divine.
As usual posts on classical music come with the disclaimer that prevents (theoretically) commenters from taking my trip about what I think.
Finally in a show of either surprising secularism or insight we find this on a bottle of Jim Beam, Kentucky Bourbon. Now either we acknowledge that Urdu is a secular language and one of the greatest tragedies is associating it with any religion or we acknowledge that alcoholism is a problem that all irrespective of caste, creed, religion and tribe face.

All along...

... the watchtower, Princes kept their view...

This is the only Bob Dylan song that I really trip to. Somehow along with the Beatles, the Who, Rolling Stones, Dylan is also around in the list of music that I haven't heard and more importantly don't listen to. With Bob, if he'd pardon the familiarity, it's his voice that drives me up the wall. He is a brilliant poet and a musician, granted. I've even liked Axl's screeching on Knocking on Heaven's door, surprised folks by knowing the lyrics of Times they are a'changing (Simon and Garfunkel version) and of course sworn by the Dave Matthews Band cover of All along the Watchtower (which with the violin and sax solos beats even Hendrix's, then again my take).

That version is what we successfully assasinated. Note to self: check new guitar strings for tuning after every song. And some men can growl, some can't. I lean to the right of that sentence. Don't feel like going on about how I'll miss bangalore (as opposed to how I want to do miss bangalore) and how I hate Delhi (though I'm guessing I'll want to do miss delhi too) so I'll leave you with this video. Be patient and wait till it gets to the chorus.

The bell...

... tolls for me. It turns out that whatever administrative issue AIIMS was having with it's Senior Resident posts has been sorted out and Dispatch has finally gotten around to matching the numbers with the faces and addresses. And if I take what certain well placed sources have had to say seriously, I came close to being a victim of Arjun Singh's vote bank politics. But since most stories have to be taken with appropriate condiments we'll leave it at that.
The downside of it all is that I have about 10 days left in Bangalore. Bengalooru. Whatever. That's not half as bad as I have 10 days before I reach Delhi. Which is scary. The goodbyes, the I'll miss you, this place and the beer and the music are again bad but what is wrenching the gut is the thought of dealing with a swarms of humanity that I've dissed as long as I remember. The good part however is that Neurosurgical Trauma involves people who to a large extent are incapable of speaking coherently. Either due to alcohol or due to the head injury due to the alcohol. Now if I were a less conscientious doctor I'd have figured it would be a good thing to leave them in a state where they can't talk and ruin my life. Instead I'm going to have to scan their brains and set them right. But this is something I've always wanted to do so I'll just not crib about the where.
Polyglyph had their first show, well attended by friends and family as most first shows are. We were as Mr. D has said thus. Here is a short preview. So if you like us and we have another show and you either get a mail or read about it here feel free to drop by. Of course considering I'm heading to higher latitudes that may not happen. Unless you like this so much that you want to sponsor another gig. Or get us to cut an album. I could give up cutting people for that. Or at least think about it. Anyway, enjoy.

Poly..who?

...glyph but that comes later.

So this morning when I finally woke from some nightmarish sleep largely due to the fact that I'd left my lights on and dozed off while in the pursuit of academic excellence, I found a huge milkberg floating in the milk that was to contribute significantly to my coffee. It's still trying to melt and boil so large parts of this post are pre-caffeinated. And thus may be excused.
So a few weeks of constant practice has finally resulted in Polyglyph. For those less inclined to use dictionaries or the Internet it means 'many symbols', I'm sure Sapru would have a lot to say about that but that again is what comments are for. Polyglyph is not a feeling, an emotion or a movement. It's a band. Plain and simple. Four of us got together reaffirming that the world and Bangalore are small places and decided to make music. And since my remaining in this wonderful city has recently come under the shadow of the future we're moving hell and high water to get a gig. And so we have and more about that later.
Currently the Four of us are
Srijayanth - The only one who really knows music. Like KNOWS. Like he'll listen to a chord and pronounce judgment on it's minority and ninth-ness, map a killer solo to the frets and strings or the keys without having touched them. And get bored if we stay on a 4/4 beat for too long. Listens to Jazz (not even mainstream), Blues (black, not white) and the Beatles. Plays lead guitar on a LesPaul custom and keys on a Yamaha PSR. And knows truckloads of carnatic and bollywood.
Anant - Techie, mensan, drummer and occasional rhythm guitar. Shouldn't sing to save any lives but will hit the wrong note unerringly if allowed. Listens to Progressive anything from early Genesis (I know that sounds weird but it's true) and Tull to some many bands that gave me nightmares when I left them playing and dozed off. And also the Beatles. He's the man with the rhythm as long as it's complex. The 'riddim' on the other hand is what he seeks.
Umesh - Quiet as all bassists usually are, Umesh has had years of association with TAAQ so he's going to play well. He was supposed to sing a song before he swallowed a frog so as of now he's playing away on the strings of a low frequency. He listens to the Beatles too.
Yours truly - Rhythm and vocals. Which is good sometimes, bad sometimes and has banshee times. I don't listen to the beatles... or pink floyd. I've been caught listening to hiphop and glam rock and nu-metal and almost every genre of music that most 'rockers' consider to low on an evolutionary scale.
So this is it. Polyglyph.
And we have a show of mostly covers and a couple of originals tomorrow (14th). Evening (around 7pm). At YACS. You can find directions here.
So come along, we're planning to have fun and we hope you will too or at least enjoy the coffee.
Hope to see you there.
Cheers.

Um... Yes!

So I came to pass.

And whatever calamity that forced me to land in the Capital is done and I'm back to home sweet home, which is the best place to be despite the rodents running the government and the assorted insects that populate the city council. It is depressing to see the state of the state and the rather dismal progress in the establishment of infrastructure here when in sharp, stark contrast the NCR has a metro up and running and plans to get an elevated monorail up and running (in more ways than one I guess) in the next 2 years. A giant flyover connecting the airport to Gurgaon should be ready in a month which would shorted transit time between the two points to less than twenty minutes. Depressing but this is home.
After the usual digression we get to the point. Watched an open air concert - Indian Ocean. At the Garden of Five Senses. Yeah I couldn't believe they had a wiki on that but it's not a great one and the external link doesn't work anymore. I'm guessing Delhi Tourism doesn't think too much of it anymore.
It's a lovely place. A huge sprawling botanical park with curvy lanes that essentially go round in circles, effectively making one lose one's way ever so often. I found the amphitheater after about half an hour of searching. It looks a lot like Trans Indus if some of you've been there and know what I mean. A pit of sorts with benches and occasional rocks as seating. Anyway, Indian Ocean started at 7.30pm. The crowd was a spectacular one with almost every year from 17 to 70 well represented and applauding like it was going out of style. Yours truly perched on a rock in the midst of a crowd that started smoking tobacco, went on to weed and somewhere in the middle I could distinctly smell eucalyptus too. In the immortal words of Obelix, these Delhi people are crazy.
Indian Ocean is an amazing band. Rahul Ram on Bass, Sushmit Sen on Guitars (more about that later), Asheem Chakravarthy on tabla and Amit Kilam on Drums. Seamlessly integrating Indian classical with jazz and vocals that include everything from their own rather good lyrics to Kabir and Sanskrit shlokas. Though I've been listening to their music for a while now, their live concerts are always a treat. Vasanthahabba a couple of years ago had them on as the last act at close to 5am. On a post-rain Bangalore morning with the weather taking on just a nibble of cold, clear skies, an amphitheater, an appreciative audience. Perfect. Their show at IIM a year ago wasn't too bad either except that Strings was also playing and within a few minutes it was pretty apparent that Synth Strings are no real match to this band.
The Garden of Five Senses hosted them this time around. November in Delhi feels like Bangalore now. Replete with hordes of them from higher latitudes. And a cool stage setting with boom cameras swaying by every once in a while, since the plan for a concert DVD is on. The three hours were filled with the usual Indian Ocean repertoire of Jhini and Bhor, Bandeh, Hille Re, Ma Rewa (with the gab gubli, which is the strangest sounding instrument I've heard after the didgeridoo) and Kandisa to name a few. Interspersed with the songs are Rahul Ram's incessant chatter and the occasional listing of cars that were parked awry and in danger of being towed away. And the frequent video tape changes. Altogether a good trip.
Indian Ocean though one of the most original and refreshing bands to have come out of Delhi and perhaps India itself does leave one persistent thought. They sound the same everytime one listens to them. It is a good sound, there are no second thoughts about it but somewhere it gets a tad repetitive.
This incidentally was Sushmit's guitar. If you can read Japanese there's more here.

And Thermal should be playing in the same venue next weekend.
And Lounge Piranha plays tomorrow in Bangalore.
And a couple of posts in the pipeline.

Kids These Days

The weekend past was spent conducting a couple of lit events at St John's Medical College and attending a full paisa vasool concert. I did get in for free so theoretically it would have been paisa vasool if anyone but Himmesh was there but this was also a band that I have and would have paid to watch, time and again. The grammar in the previous sentence is of a dubious nature but there are reasons for that too. And the organisers at John's are a kindly bunch and thus the free entry.
Many thoughts have risen in the old cranium the past few days so this just might be a long ranty post so there's the headlines so you can scroll down to the relevant parts or just leave if you find them uninteresting
1. Lack of substantial participation in lit events
2. Rather depressing state of knowledge of the current TV generation
3. A somewhere it is Thermal and a Quarter Concert
4. The deplorable state of affairs regarding music taste or the difference between good music and popular music
5. Adobe Audition as the best audio editing software no matter how amateur you are or How what you hear is never what you get
6. What is this Gazzag anyway

Part I& II
So I was asked to conduct Word Games and 20 Questions at Autumn Muse 2006. It used to be a good fest in the years gone by attracting excellent talent in literary and debating events. Culturals will always be big anywhere. Vellore Engineering college gets some 15 western music bands so we shan't go there. Now there are hardly 5 teams in registering who know what the event is. And they don't know grammar. Or slang. Or difficult words. And in twentyQ somewhere along the way you realise that they aren't reading classics anymore. They aren't reading medicine either so what are they doing? TV? Awesome!!

Part III - Bring your Daughter to Thermal and a Quarter
Taaq turned 10. Have seen them and heard them for 9 of the 10 so I shall speak and not take flak. Like they say in Cheers, I'm rubber and you're glue, anything you say bounces of me and sticks to you. The concert started at seven and within twenty minutes of it's starting the heavens opened like they did an hour before the concert and the previous day. Incredible really. Autumn Muse does that to the weather. Clear skies for a week before and after the fest and torrential, end-of-the-world, let's all pair up and get on to the ark rains bang in the middle of the Rock Show. Squelchy but it's fun if you're at the sound console.
This was the song list
Galacktiqua, Look @ Me, Paper Puli, Sunset Man (Hallelujah!), Brigade Street, Wonderwall (yeah Oasis but I actually like the song now), Holy Jose (new), Sanity, Bend The World, How Can I Get Your Groove(clean, simple, awesome), Shine On You Crazy Diamond (another trip), Chameleon and Hoedown. How do I know? I've spent the last 36 hours trying to clean up the audio recording but more on that later. The one thing new that I saw this time was 23 year old Nate from the Chicago area who's here with his tenor saxophone which he cleans with used currency notes when it gets damp, by the way. Now Nate changes the way the band sounds to a level that I haven't seen in this many years. Be it blistering solos in Shine or Hoedown or fill-ins in Sanity there's something to it. Treading the fine line between staying in tune and straying off it, as he would say, it was trippy da.
Thank you lord that Bruce is back to singing and Pascal isn't. And like I said it was good fun and so was the 10 year anniversary bash after that.

Part IV - The serious bit
As the rains poured down the sound console had the usual influx of the audience who didn't think getting wet was a good idea but didn't mind the risk of electrocution with all the cables around. Now in the midst of the hoi polloi was one heckling gentleman screaming for rock. I do understand the individual preferences of the world at large and that would explain how Himmesh and the Backstreet Boys are oh so up in the ratings or why the only thing we get to hear in rock competitions is heavy metal. Or why Strings, Fuzon and Call are raking in millions by selling albums in India. It doesn't quite gel well. Shah Rukh Khan is a superstar while Nasserudin Shah is best known for his role in Tridev. Why no one's heard of Dave Matthews Band but would swear by 'Nsync. Why music with the shelf life of spoilt meat is so popular while enough good bands haven't gotten very far.
Time will change things they say. But a paradigm shift (how I love that phrase) in people's tastes is unlikely to happen and till then Himmesh is going to rule the roost.

Part V
Adobe Audition is so cool. That's all there is to it. Simple any moron (including yours truly) can work it with ease and actually get something that sounds almost, but not quite like perfect.

Gazzag. What kind of meaningless palindrome is that? The worst kind.

More editing remains me off.

And I made no spelling mistakes apparently.

Trip Hop, Industrial and the News

Just read my previous post again and found a rather distressing vein of irritation flowing through it. Is it because I have exams in less than a week? Yes. Then what am I doing here blogging when I should at least appear to be at my desk with some voluminous tome dedicated on how to carve people effectively, safely and beautifully. Yes, au contraire to public opinion we surgeons are aesthetic. We like dabbling in things that would make most people go pale in the face and wrench the guts of a significant proportion but still we are aesthetic. Not Ascetic, acerbic perhaps but aesthetic. Of the many voluminous tomes that I often refer to, in the blog and outside, where I have to refer to them, most wax eloquently about the aesthetics of surgery. And there's the occasional Head of Department (fondly called 'Chief' after the Chinooks or the Apaches I'm not sure which) who'll peer over your shoulder and gently remind you that whatever you're trying to stitch up is a person and not a gunny bag. And so we learn and try drilling this fact into the many scalpel happy children who seem to entering the halls of Surgery nowadays.

That apart this post is about this new genre of music that I've recently discovered. Before certain people accuse me of being pompous enough to say that I 'discovered' a new genre, let me explain. It's been around for a while and I learnt of it's existence now. Like Darwin discovered that big turtle. Those of you who pay attention to what you read and store every word in some vague recess of your memory, you would remember Supreme Beings of Leisure. Those miserable worms of readers who simply scan through, skipping alternate words, lines or even paragraphs depending on your attention span, it's this new band I've been listening to.

It turns out that a bunch of people in Bristol or some such scenic locale in England decided that hip hop wasn't trippy enough and so they made this totally new kind of music with 'ambience' and 'groove'. With 'break-beats' and sample heavy synthesizing. All those technicalities apart it sounds like it sounds - trippy. Morcheeba, Supreme Beings, Massive Attack, Lamb would be a good set to start. The sound is often dark especially with Massive Attack's Mezzanine album. For those of you who've watched House, MD the title track is a sample of a song off this album 'Teardrop'.

When music like this gets too easy going, for times when that extra energy is a must, for late night journeys into the textbook - we switch to industrial. Now don't get me wrong it's not my favourite type of music and given a choice I wouldn't listen to too much of it. But when journeying into the aforementioned, there's nothing like the OSTs of Spawn, Matrix, Mortal Kombat and Prodigy's Fat of the Land to make throw one convulsive jerk and hit it like there's no tomorrow. You can throw in chemical brothers but there's a tendency to zulu dance to galvanize which can be detrimental.

So there it is boys a girls a guide to the latest noise that's haunting my haunt.

Of course I had the option of talking about Aldous' Brave New World or what's been happening in the world for the past week or so but it's depressing enough to have to read it in the newspaper. Why waste blog space ranting about the ABVP or the NSUI, or how politics today is like politics 2000 years ago - founded on clan and tribe, or how political parties are wooing Abu Salem to contest in elections.

May Balrogs eat them all.

Bail-ey me out of here

The days draw to an end in the space-time continuum (yeah I picked this word of Wonko's blog where he waxes ad nauseum about continuing on some continuum or the other and gymming at the end of it) as my exams get far too close for comfort. It is in times like these that one resists every temptation to read Revolting Rhymes or The Lord of the Rings or the transcript of the Matrix (all of which, in a moment of weakness, I put onto my ipod to peruse at will while listening to the Supreme Beings of Leisure). Instead, having delved through the oft mentioned textbook of surgery, I decided to do a last minute sprint through the bible of all surgical trainees - Bailey and Love's Short Practice of Surgery. It's not short and I won't tolerate any practice jokes. Will join hands with a lawyer and practice on you.

The book has always been a favourite. Not because it's british and has large illustrations that significantly reduce the amount of text to be read. Not because at the bottom of every page footnotes exist outlining the life and times of the person who lent their names to the many eponymous conditions that often attracts medical students. But simply because it almost feels like reading PG Wodehouse or Stephen Fry ever so often. Examples follow.

What's 'yaws'? - Syphilis.

On pruritus ani - In case of pinworm infestation, children should be made to wear gloves since they may reinfest themselves by scratching and nail-biting. Parasites lost, parasites regained.

Or when the books warns against proclaiming brain death in a patient who's hypothermic - No body should be declared dead unless it's a warm body.

So I'm morbid. Sue me.

For the amount medical students have to read at all points of time in their lives it's a relief and a joy to see a book that makes life just a little more enjoyable.

Of course one has to tolerate lines on the line of, 'So Bailey's your new Love?' But it's a small price to pay.

For those interested in other such moments of joy feel free to refer to Robbin's Pathology (where he speaks of congregating amyloidologists and thyromaniacs and quotes Isak Dinesen's 'What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?' at the beginning of the chapter on Nephrology. )

Again I reiterate my nerdish claim. And also plead exam-induced insanity but there I know I'm not the only one. Got this message from a colleague at a similar point on the space-time continuum - 'You've been building castles in the air all these years. It's not a bad thing. Now is the time to build foundations under them.'

This incidentally is also the person responsible for putting the idea of forwarding service messages.

Bugged? It's wan ley a blog, init?

And so it came to pass that a computer was tormented by moisture and decided to not work till it had dried off. Such is the tale of woe that a friend of mine (and a significant contributor to this blog) is currently playing a role in. Reminds me of the earliest transistor and vacuum tube run machines that crashed one day. The engineers (evil laugh track) took a week or so to check every wire and circuit and discovered that the culprit was a moth. Thus the term bug. Or so says Apocrypha.
Bone (dead) tired after some two instructors at the gym decided that today was Judgement Day and I hadn't been a good boy. All references to BDSM apart, it felt like that minus the dirty bits. So here I am back waiting for God to intervene and a benevolent MI to end the suffering.
Craving meat again. To eat, you filthy minds. Cooked, you filthier minds. Like Chicken, dope.
It doesn't help that a friend's been belting cheap food at some chinese joint called Wan Ley. How that name lends itself to poor humor... Dinner for two? wanley 200 roopees.
I wan ley you down in a bed of roses....
Ok that's it. But that Bed of Roses is another potential. Take out the down and there another kinky movie. I'm beginning to think I'm in the wrong line of work... Or perhaps its just that I haven't done my cutting bit in a while. Gross as it sounds, it's true. It doesn't even help that I'm in a vegetarian house (despite being an ardent supporter of the right to eat red meat) otherwise I'd have come up with some cheaper albeit denigrating alternative.
Like Carving meat. To eat, you filthy minds. Cooked, you filthier minds. Like Chicken, dope.
More new music. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. It's a really good jam band. Get on stage and noodle for a few hours on a banjo/mandolin, bass, horns/flute, percussion. Neat stuff. So they have this song called Chennai off the album The Hidden Land. It's called chennai so we assume, with valid reason that it's inspired (unlike annnnuuu malllick) by something Indian classical. So it is. But this is what a reviewer had to say. And this too. Middle eastern? Mongolian? You'll have to dig a bit for that Mongolian bit, but it's there. The world is doing it's I'm better off ending thing on me again.
The other new band/artist is Jack Johnson. Curious George's Singalong songs apart, he's pretty good. Nice john mayer/dave matthew-esque voice and acoustic guitar. Nice.
Notice ye evil being, who's moisture ridden calculator is now back to being high and dry, It's nice so go listen.

Quote of the day - Yes Prime Minister - A Bishop's Gambit
Dean of Oxford - "Isn't it awful in Qumran (random fictional middle eastern country) they cut off your hands for any offence and women who commit adultery are stoned..."
Sir Humphrey - "Unlike here where women get stoned and then commit adultery."

Peace be on ye.

Tried and tested...

Listened to the album I mentioned yesterday. The John Mayer Trio - TRY! Good stuff. The boy's shed that teen pop image and has grown into a brilliant blues/rock 'n' roll guitarist. The album has some nice rock enriched covers of Hendrix and Ray Charles and some of Mayer's own work (Daughters and Something's Missing). Steve Jordan (drums) and Pino Palladino (bass) complement him superbly to create what can be simply described as 'good stuff'!
Mayer's voice though is still a bit of a let down... He is an excellent singer, no doubts about that. I heard 'you're body's a wonderland' and 'why georgia' first so I tend to associate his voice best with such songs... For the rocky renditions this time around his voice falters. Though the guitarwork more than makes up for that, one does feel the lacuna of a good voice in the trio.

Bottom line(s).. if you like good guitar intensive rock, pick it up. If you believe that John Mayer is best with a thousand swooning teenage girls, most of them without even a chance in a million of having a body resembling any kind of wonderland, then forget it.

About hangover cures.... no matter what the world says about coffee, orange juice, multivitamins, Jeeves' pick-me-up, water, the powder from some himalayan herb... the only thing that really works is another shot of the vodka watermelon... Alcoholically yours.

Have a feeling that I'm coming down with a viral fever. Time to concoct my elixir involving numerous nefarious phamacological products of doubtful FDA approval.

PS think my bird flu?

Vodka Watermelon...

Take a decent sized watermelon, cut a small window. Take a bottle of decent vodka (anyone will do depending on your taxation slab - skyy, absolut, finlandia, grey goose; then smirnoff, fling, fuel [my current personal favourite], romanov, mgm, yada yada). Empty the bottle into the melon. Freeze for 4 to 6 hours. Cut the fruit open and well... eat!
The hangover cure comes tomorrow.

Just laid hands on a John Mayer Trio album called 'Try!' Not sure if its a confession or a request. Take on that comes tomorrow too.

Euphoria, yes our very own hind-rockband, played at the indiranagar club of bangalore. some 200 buck entry with unlimited alcohol... or so I heard. Going 'damn! I missed that' in the head but then again the realisation dawns that I've heard them thrice and its been the same list of songs... just confirmed that too... apart from the eternally euphoric dhoom, dhoom again, maaeri etc etc there's the standard issue it's my life, we will rock you, o humdum(from saathiya the remake of the mani ratnam gem [!]), et al. But one neat thing that they do do is a nice rocky version of mast qalandar and follow that up with ke ghungroo toot gaye very very nice. And well doing the same old songs apart the man has a great voice and its good music at least half the time.

Irony of my life happened. Due to some inexplicable screw up by the powers that be wasn't and havent been paid for a few months now. But in a moment of weakness gave my little car for its second year service. That, be warned for those of you on the way for your own, is a major overhaul... They change every thing that can be changed and then some and charge you a bomb. But that isnt the whole story. To be honest the car moves like a new machine after the service. The irony comes now, its a bloody expensive service. So thanks to the powers and the weakness I, for a while had a car that was such a pleasure to drive and was too broke to fill fuel...

Life...