The State Of Being Blank !!

Did I just take such a long break ? Oh no how is it possible for me to stay away from my blog for such a long period of time ? Was I too lazy to even open my blog and at least give it a glance ? These are some questions that I have been asking myself. Just the way my blog stands blank my mind stays equally blank with my life becoming lately uneventful. It has been quite some time since I last wrote about being selected in IBM and my happiness about it. I was truly overjoyed at my little success but when I saw the same post after about a month or so I felt stupid to write so enthusiastically about my placement. No harm in being enthusiastic but there is a sense of fear that creeps in letting the mind be skeptical about seemingly innocuous things.

Okay so lets come back to the present.  Here I am sitting in Chandigarh in the middle of Punjab - the land of the Sikhs waiting for a single call from IBM to invite me to join work on....well I don't know when. Chandigarh though being a joint capital of Haryana and Punjab is mostly Sikh dominated and every second person will be speaking Punjabi here. At this point I can proudly say that I have lived among and observed the two most divergent and prominent cultures of India and thus I am a true and real Indian...haha !! But unlike Tamil I am satisfactorily comfortable with the Punjabi language which is very much similar to Hindi. The first thing that you notice about Chandigarh is its comparatively lesser population than big cities like Delhi and Chennai. This has an advantage in that it lets you stay in peace of course and the disadvantage being that it has no big malls or anything advanced for that matter which leaves you craving for the shopping pleasure that you used to get in the big cities (Of course shopping is my weakness). But, overall, its my home and almost my native and hence I am sure to have a gala time here. But, unfortunately, I cannot do anything without any proper dedication which I do not have currently. I would have loved to start working here itself but I have to give way for the big brother and that is IBM which has led me to kill my time by staying at home all day and making my laptop steal the much acclaimed and suitable tag of an 'Idiot Box' from the television set which doesn't get as much as even a glance from me. All hail the Internet. Right now is the most demotivational time which will distract you from your bigger responsibilities without any external force mounting any pressure on you. You are just left at the mercy of your sluggish mind with on and off periods of motivation with minimum results.

In fact, this is what happens when your vacation period extends the normal duration to keep everything in balance. And, you find yourself desperately wanting this period of nothingness to end. Here, give me the liberty to fast forward to my future posts.       

Yeah that is what I am - bored

Music - Its Evolution as I see

I have been a die hard fan of music since the time I remember. After all who isn't ? I haven't heard of anyone who isn't fond of listening to music. If such a person exists then he is definitely not from this world. Even babies shake a leg at some disco music. There are many ways and methods that I followed to listen to my favorite music since childhood. These 'methods' make their memories precious. 

Starting from the time I remember when I just started understanding what is music, I will describe my first 'method'. 

We had a very antique radio with us. During the 90's the radio used to be the modern age music system with very huge body and very heavy. But, at that time that was the only source of music for us. It had a cassette player too. But I was unaware of the concept of buying new cassettes as I was just a kid with no knowledge of music and the cassettes kept by my parents were very old and the music didn't seem to interest me at all. So, all I had to do was to dote upon my radio. I, as a kid, used to carry around the radio all over my house even keeping it by my side whenever I used to get bored and sometimes, surprisingly, hiding under the table with it and lying down listening to all kinds of songs being played by the radio jockey much to the disappointment of my mom. I was at the mercy of the radio jockey who played whatever songs he liked but I never complained. I simply enjoyed myself listening to it. 

Then when I grew up, I caught hold of the concept of audio cassettes. And, most importantly our radio was replaced by a sort of deck. It had very huge speakers and professional looking cassette player which did nothing but just played audio cassettes. The old radio stations went into a state of oblivion as now I had the freedom of buying audio cassettes of my choice and thus listen to music of my choice. And yes, sometimes, making others listen too at times much to their disappointment and at other times to their pleasure. At that time I loved my music system so much that, occasionally, I just had to stand and dance in spite of myself as I always rocked to the tunes being emitted out of the huge speakers that you now particularly find only in marriage ceremonies.

Until here, I was used to large music systems that weren't portable and thus whenever there was any kind of outing I always assumed there would be no music. But then technology evolved a bit and there came the turn of walkmans. A walkman, as it's name suggests, used to be a portable, battery operated and small sized cassette player which could be used to listen to music while walking or doing anything else for that matter.   

Being portable, I used to carry one along with me at the time of an outing without missing out on my favorite music. Of course, it required me to carry many cassettes and batteries that used to increase my already overflowing luggage. But, it was worth it. Music was there with me wherever I was. And, not to mention the rapid speed with which the Everyday batteries used to drain out.  

After the generation of walkmans, came the generation of audio CD's. The biggest advantage of audio CD's is that they can be played on any computer system as well as a music system. We even installed a CD player in our car such that car rides became all the more enjoyable. But, at that time these CD's used to be very expensive and did not allow me to exploit them just the way I did the affordable audio cassettes. But they did brought about an amusing change.

Then when I came at an age when it becomes almost impossible to live without music, something very interesting happened to the world of music. It was as if it listened to my growing addiction to it and completely revolutionized this field. Welcome the father of all kinds of music - the MP3 !!! This music format just changed the way I listen to music even today. Walkmans got replaced with MP3 players with their size ranging from almost negligible players to quite impressive and stylish ones. I still remember the way I squealed when I first came to know that my little player in my hand can play any song that I like and can store thousands of songs at a time without the hassles of carrying batteries and cassettes. This was like feeling myself to be in heaven.

Earlier I was troubled by the fact that to play MP3 songs I had to once again take the trouble of buying MP3 audio CD's. But then, music was not the only field that got revolutionized. All hail our friend the Internet. Any song, yes, practically any song can then be downloaded from the Internet and within minutes can be transferred to our players. And, Voila !!! Our favorite music then is there right in front of us without doing any hard work to acquire it. 

Today, in the age of smartphones, the same MP3 music can be played in our phones as well. That makes listening to music even easier than ever. 

Now when I am writing this, I have my earphones plugged into my ears listening to some awesome music as the day seems way too dry without some. And, it's a pleasure to think the way I saw the evolution of music in front of my own eyes within 25 years. Now, I am curious as to what the next generation has to witness in the world of music. Till then, plug in the earphones and forget the outside world.

PS: Don't forget to check out my favorite song of the week on the right hand side of this page.