A Western Classical concert by the Galatea String Quartet was held at the Hyder Mahal, ITC Hotel - Kakatia. Yet another event arranged in association with Goethe-Zentrum, who were kind enough to hand out free passes to all interested. Some links -

• Swiss Arts Council Link
• Hindu Link

Events like this one are actually meant for people who understand and appreciate classical music. Being an ardent fan of “weird” metal (read : power, symphonic, metal-core, industrial) I am not much for Classical music, western or otherwise. Even if you do not appreciate, or know anything about Classical music, events like this one have two major things going for them-

• There is free food served before the event. Which is usually quite nice.
• It happens to be one of the very, very few places in Hyderabad where good looking women can be seen

String Quartets are a music ensemble of four stringed instruments, as should be fairly obvious from the name. The last time we had gone for a concert by a string quartet it was, for lack of a more appropriate phrase, quite shit. That probably had something to do with the fact that we know next to nothing about the music, and that they seemed to play a lot of “modern” compositions, but thats beside the point. Everything they played seemed to have far too much “noise“.

One moment, you can hear the faint breathing of the guy 10 rows ahead of you. All is quiet. The next moment, the four people on stage start shaking like epilepsy patients having a seizure (as politically incorrect as it may sound). Your ears are assaulted by random strains of noise from not just one, but FOUR stringed instruments - squealing and squeaking in a fairly random manner. Quite frankly, it was audio terrorism. But not all Western Classical concerts by string quartets can be that bad…. or CAN they?

About 10 of us decided to attend this concert. I suppose, to some small extent, we all wanted to hear their music, just to make sure that not ALL string quartets played terrible music. But for the most part, it was the free food and a the chance to gawk at hot women.

The Galatea String Quartet

They all seemed hugely skilled despite being below 30 years of age. That was a given, I suppose. For one thing they had been asked to perform in an event like this one, and for another - they had won loads of awards. The first two pieces they performed were not very pleasant on the ears, imo. The third one on the other hand, was actually pretty good. Things got much, much better after the interval, when they played some of Beethoven’s compositions. They ended the performance with a piece by Tagore.

On the whole, the concert was quite all right, with the second half being much better that the first. The crowd at the event? That is something which requires another post.

-> Badrinath.S

P.S.: Next post will probably include a more detailed write up of the event. All posts from this point on will be somewhat hurried.

P.P.S.: Wanted to write a review on the India Ocean concert, which was quite good. But its already been done. Same irritating blogger who keeps pestering me to post. Indian Ocean live performances are far better than their studio albums. When listening to their studio albums, notice the difference in the way the words are sung. Very bland when compared to the live concert. Link of the review below -

P.P.P.S.: On a completely different note, its quite shocking how people react when their preconceived notions about something are put to test by a third, neutral party. Surprising what they do to prove to themselves that their previous, ill conceived view was correct. Human psychology is bloody interesting.

Thinking up a good name for a blog is bloody difficult. My very first idea for a title for my very first blog was “The Apocalypse Diaries“. That was three-plus years back. Now, “The Apocalypse Diaries” sounds like something you would type when you are fifteen and have just woken up from a dream about the end of the world. To be more precise, a dream involving a post nuclear all-out war scenario with people breathing through cool-looking masks, eating radioactive rats and drinking their own piss to survive. But that is a story for another day.

“The Apocalypse Diaries“? Oh yes, indeed a lovely name. Was i talking about the end of the world? Not really. Something to do with the other meaning - a word from God? Well, no, I’ll be damned if I begin to preach religion, of all things. Well, what was it then? A blog, with loads of seemingly pointless rants. What did it have to do with the Apocalypse? To be honest… nothing quite. A silly name for a blog then? All right, fine.

I am now paying the price for that little act of stupidity. The URL I registered is such that it is not very conducive to a blog-name change. This and the fact that I no longer remember my password forced a URL change. A reasonably re-usable URL, I already had one registered. All I had left to do was search for a new name.

Many bloggers seem to prefer titles with the phrase “My Life” somewhere in it. That is quite ironic, because those who actually have “a life” rarely blog, and those who dont have nothing to blog about. Besides, I see SO many rant-friendly topics, i would not want to limit the scope of this blog to stuff which concerns just me. Isnt it fun to criticize things you dont understand? Spewing vitriol (metaphorically, of course) on something which doesnt concern you one bit is so satisfying, it should be the Eight Sin. The pleasure you get on looking down on people you dont know and probably dont like was just a bit too much for me to deny myself. The conclusion - the phrase “My Life” was definitely NOT going to be in the title of this blog.

My next idea was to look at literature. Maybe i could flick a name off a short story, or maybe a poem. “Neutral Tones” was the only promising one i got. The only reason i liked it was because nobody would really understand what it meant. “Cool name for a blog!” people would exclaim when they came to this page, mouths wide open, wondering at the creativity of the writer. On the flipside, i dont quite know what it means either. What if someone asked me to explain what my title meant? Tricky. Besides, the poem is probably a bit too popular for me to plagiarize without someone noticing.

Next, i looked to music. My current playlist is currently crammed with emo, metalcore and related genres of music. So, i had the following options -

• The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage
• A fever you cant sweat out
• The Second Stage Turbine Blade
• I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love

Honestly, would you use any of these literary gems to title you blog ? Well, thought not. Music - scratched off the list. Then, an idea struck me. An idea so good it should be typed down and framed. An idea so good, it should be a dialogue on Blackadder. An idea so bloody good, it should have an entire civilization dedicated to worshiping it. F-o-r-e-i-g-n-w-o-r-d-s. Foreign words? Indeed!!

You could name your blog anything from “Eat shit, blog-reader” to “I like children. I mean, I like LIKE children” to “Necrophiles of the world - UNITE“, or perhaps even “Hello. I have hemorrhoids, and this is my blog“. Do this in english, you would be considered a freak. An outcast, someone who doesnt conform to society’s standards of “normal”. But do the same thing in a reasonably obscure language, nobody would know! Pure genius!! My choice of language? Latin.

But I dont know Latin. So, I fired Firefox up, went to the Google toolbar, typed in “Totally awesome Latin phrases I can use without knowing Latin” and I waited. And I waited. I then coughed theatrically for a bit, which didnt seem to help pass the time, and I waited some more. A good hour later, i scored a huge victory over the IIIT-H internet connection. It finally yielded, my query was processed and i managed to open the pages which were spat out by the search.

I liked what I saw so much, (link 1) and (link 2) for example. I repeated the query for a dozen different languages. A long, satisfying surf later, it suddenly struck me that the reason I had started on this tangent was my search for a new blog name. Sadly, I didnt find anything good enough. I wanted to do something boring, mundane - browse a random bunch of phrases for a meaningful title. The internet gave me something else - a few hours of fun.

All hail - The Power of the Internet.

< Badrinath.S >

P.S.: Thanks to the internet, I now know almost everything I need to know if I ever go to Rome, Italy.

• You charge how much an hour? (Quantum in ura hora imputas?)
• I’d like to buy some condoms. (Volo comparare nonnulla tegumembra)

If only i knew how to say “Do you do it doggy?”…..

P.P.S.: How did I get the blog name, you ask? Having wasted so much time on something so trivial, I decided to go with the first thing which came to mind. There was an image titled “Rocks and the Sea” or somesuch on my desktop. A part of the image can be seen in the image header of this blog. I finally settled on “The Crashing Waves”. Now, let me think of some deep and meaningful interpretation of it, in case someone ever asks ….

A test post on a test blog. Just reserving the blog URL, you see. May need it some day.