Confessions of a Single mind

It’s amazing how fast things change nowadays, it’s not even been 1 year since I left Kolkata and gosh things have change. Nowadays, when people ask you about yourself, you can’t escape this question, “Are you going around with someone?”. And if the answer is NO!, they look at you and think, “Is he some kind of an alien?”. They cross question you, “You broke-up with someone?”, and if your answer is still NO, they conclude there is something wrong with you and you need some mental help. Being single, these days can be a really troublesome. This holiday I began to observe the habits of both single and “committed” people and tried to come to a conclusion whether being single is bliss or a curse. I am going to talk about various observations or rather experiences which I had during this summer.

1) Cell-Phone: It’s like bare minimum necessity for the committed people. It’s funny to see that just 5 mins after they have met they start talking on their cells again. They call up their partner about five times a day and talk for at least 15 mins each time. I don’t know what they discuss, but its certainly not Indian politics. They fight over the phone and go on telling people how they fought and made up with each other. Wow! and people say world is undergoing an economic recession. For single people it’s nothing more than an information box, because the only people who call them are their parents, to know what time they are coming home.

Inference: If you are in cell-phone industry you worship Cupid.

2) Friends: It’s like an extra for committed people, when their partner is not around they call up these people named “friends”, and tell them about their love life. If the friend is committed he or she will compare their love life with them. If the friend is single, then well all the friend says in the conversation is hello and bye. Single people are well single, because most of their childhood friends are committed now, and if any friend is single then they talk about the friends who are committed. If you are single (lets consider you are a guy) and you are going out with a childhood friend who is committed now, and his girlfriend is also coming along. Then you have to be at your best Sunday morning behaviour. You can use no slang, no PJ’s, or you put your friend in bad light, and that friend might never ever talk to you again.

Inference: Friends are randomly happening phenomena for couples, but if you are single, you really are single.

3) Park: Few weeks back I met a friend of mine, and he came up with the idea of going to a park, where we used to jog in our younger days. It used to be a really good joggers park with a lake in between and atmosphere used to be really good. When we reached there we were literally scandalized to see what had happened to the environment of the place. It was littered with couples making out, and as me and my friend were taking a lap of the park, ironically people gave us a scandalizing look. They were thinking that we were you know what!

Inference: If you are single make sure you go to a park with more than one person.

4) Opinions: Well when you are committed your taste starts to change, and mostly for the worst. When I had a crush on someone I used to listen to “Hey there Delilah”, while I had grown up listening to Pink Floyd and Eagles (Man I still can’t believe that happened). People who are committed would rather be rich than famous. To the couples the whole world revolves around them. Well for singles, their friends were the world to them but what they got was a reality check, and they finally end up doing something constructive and more fun.

Inference: Being committed can be beneficial, as they say “Ignorance is bliss”.

Taking all this into account I can now safely say, Single is Sexy! Look at Richard Branson, he’s rich, he’s single and he is a rockstar. Even though I miss my friends a lot but nothing in this world can replace them. I rather cherish the memories of the past than metamorphosize into someone I don’t like.

P.S.: No offence intended to anyone in particular.

To my friends: If your partner finds this offensive and breaks up with you, I will treat you to a drink at Someplace Else ;-).

Black Clouds & Silver Linings

Dream Theater are releasing their 10^th studio album titled Black Clouds & Silver Linings on the 23^rd of June. However, thanks to some seeders, it was leaked on the net, I couldn’t hold back myself and downloaded it. Thankfully my excitement wasn’t betrayed, DT have produced by far their best album after Scenes from a memory. Every time I switch on the PC I can’t help but listen to it.

The album consists of 6 mind-blowing and multi-genre tracks. The album opens up with track A Nightmare To Remember. It’s a 16:10 min track, which has an almost death metal kind of feel to it, with a really heavy opening riff and Mike Portnoy growling in the middle. Prior to the making of the album, Mike Portnoy and Jordan Rudess announced that they are going to inculcate some of the gothic elements into their music. This track is perfect example of that. John Petrucci wrote the lyrics, it’s about a car accident he was involved in as a child. Lyrics like the music is on the darker side and presents a very raw and gory experience of a person who has gone through a tragedy.

The 2^nd track is A Rite of Passage it’s an 8:35 min track. It’s a more of typical DT progressive metal kind of song and it sounds very similar to In the Name of God, from the album Train of Thought, though it doesn’t have any crazy solos by Petrucci and Rudess. Though it’s a very apt name for the theme of the album, as the band itself has undergone another rite of passage. Lyrics involves concepts of involves Freemasonry and secret societies.

The 3^rd track is Wither it’s a 5:25 min track. This song could be compared to Vacant from the album Train of Thought, though it has more colour to it. Petrucci wrote Wither about writer's block.

The 4^th track The Shattered Fortress is last song of Portnoy's Twelve-step Suite, which began in the album Awake with the song The Mirror. The series was started as a result of Mike Portnoy’s various experiences with alcoholism. The song has lines from The Root of All Evil, The Glass Prison, and This Dying Soul .

The 5^th track is The Best of Times which is perhaps the most emotional song ever written by DT. The Best of Times is about Mike Portnoy's father, who died due to cancer. It captures the emotions of two of the greatest songs of DT, A Change of Seasons and Hollow Years. In this song Portnoy talks about the great years he had with his father and also about the regret of the time they weren’t together. He played the song for his father prior to his death.

The last track is perhaps the best of the album, titled The Count of Tuscany, it’s an epic song which talks about the writer’s fated meeting with an eccentric man who proclaimed himself as Count of Tuscany. Listening to this song is like journeying into a path unknown. One can’t guess what’s coming next, whether it will be a beefy solo by Petrucci or an elegant piece of work by Rudess. If you think Octavarium was the best piece ever by Rudess, its time that opinion changed. Rudess is absolutely marvelous in this track. The song has shades of Metropolis Part I, may be it’s a foundation of another concept album like Metropolis Part II- Scenes from a Memory. My, my I am already getting excited about it.

Well I can’t wait to get hold of a copy of this grand masterpiece!!!! Hopefully they come to India as a part of the albums live tour.

Ref:

Every man has a price!

It’s a famous quote by a British politician of the 18^th century, Sir Robert Walpole, and till today he hasn’t been proved wrong. In the recent week newly elected Real Madrid President Florentino Perez has been making a mockery of the ongoing Global economic recession by making the two of the highest transfer deals in the History of Club football. He shook the entire football world by spending around 140 million pounds to bring in Kaka from AC Milan and Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United. An amount of money which can easily buy all the 8 teams in the IPL(Indian Premier league).

Has professionalism reached this far? Has winning become that important? The first encounter I had with the so called “The beautiful Game” was 9 years ago when Real Madrid beat Valencia 3-0 in the European Cup final. It was a magnificent display of football artistry by the Los Merengues which cast a spell upon me that night and this game became my favourite sport. At that point of time Real didn’t have any really big names in their ranks, and star players were mostly home-grown talents. There wasn’t any team in Europe who could match their brand of exhilarating football.

However a certain man named Florentino Perez became the President of the club, He was a very successful Madrid businessman and wanted to make Real Madrid a club which could win championships and also make money. To ventilate his interests he adopted the policy of ”Los Galacticos” by which he went to any extent to bring the big names of football to the club. The policy initially was a big hit as they entertained and won trophies after trophies. However, it backfired when they bought a certain man called David Beckham, Real name started to disappear from the sports page and appeared on page 3 more often than not. Despite lacking success on the pitch, Perez said,” I will never let go of Beckham, he sells T-shirts for me”. But was Perez really the root of the problem?

English premier league in the 90s was a sub standard league dominated by one team Manchester United, it was light years behind Spanish and Italian leagues. So it was not a very popular high earning league. In order to pep up the revenue it started to target Asian market to gain popularity and get revenues out of it. So the league with the help of the ever exaggerating English media gained control of the Asian market and started earning massive revenues compared to other rival leagues, hence English clubs were able to price away big names of the game from other leagues of Europe. Not so great players of English league were converted into Demigods. People in Asia knew David Beckham and didn’t know Zinedine Zidane. So in order to counter this, people like Perez broke their bank accounts to remain at par with English clubs. However, English clubs went a step further and started selling the clubs to foreign investors who would pump in millions of pounds get the best players in the club.

However in the whole process only one thing suffered: “The beautiful game”. The game has been slaughtered by these people, who in the name of professionalism have taken away the very essence of the sport- “Amateurism”, the raw love for the game. Even players are to be blamed, they are nothing more than mercenaries, who kiss the crest of the t-shirt after scoring a goal and the very next day would pounce on a lucrative offer which would pay them more. Some of them even go as far as saying that they love the club and would retire there and then behind the scene threaten to leave it if they are not paid as per their demands. Ronaldo as far as one month back said that he won’t ever leave Manchester United, but as soon as he got an offer of 12 millions pounds per year he readily packed his bags and set off for Madrid.

The game is really dying, every year we see the same teams reaching the top. Where have the Steaua Bucharests and Red Star Belgrades gone? Where are players out of Ajax youth academy who blew away each every team in their wake and won 4 European cups?

The thing is that, when it’s a battle between money and love 99 out 100 times, it is the money which wins. Love it or hate it , Robert Walpole’s words will always be right.