Fidgety Foots

http://www.flexer.info/2008/08/28/hug-a-developer/

Watch the video

“had to do it. no choice”. I hear that all the time from people dear and passing. Someone said that to me today when I behaved badly (in my defence I’ve been provoked for a week).

But that’s not ever true. And relinquishing the knowledge that there’s a choice disempowers and robs one of the possibilities that the future holds.

Being the function of an environment doesn’t appeal to me at all. I’d like to do better next time.

I mean it, go to your favorite music store and buy every CD of Indian Ocean that you can. Once you have acquainted yourself with their interpretation of jazz/sufi/blues/rock, mark your calendar for the next time they might be visiting your area for a live concert. Once the said performance has been attended, you can email me your gratitude at your earliest convenience.

We attended an Indian Ocean concert last night in Palo Alto, and as you might have guessed, we absolutely loved it. It will rank up there with among the top-3 shows I have ever been to (Deep Purple, and Zakir Hussain/Shiv Kumar Sharma being the other two). These guys absolutely rocked - lots of energy, long jam sessions, and lots of cheerful banter. They achieve their unique sound with an array of instruments including guitars, drums, tablas, and last night an instrument that I had never seen played, a gabgubi. We have been to shows by other groups/artists where the concert was pretty much a rehash of their albums. But Indian Ocean made their concert unique with their jugal-bandi’s, sheer caliber of their improvs, and earthiness. After a long, energetic show, they still chatted with their fans, signed autographs, and posed for pictures for close to an hour on stage (lead guitarist Susmit Sen even allowed me to hold his guitar, giggle, giggle). They had no pretensions despite being one of India’s premier bands. Thanks for the great show guys!!

This weekend has been dedicated to house cleaning. Cleaning in the sense of cleaning OUT not cleaning UP. My mother-in-law is visiting in a month’s time, which means a second bedroom needs to be reclaimed from the universal-dumping-ground-with-closets.

We started the purge yesterday. Closets were emptied, old treasures exclaimed over, memories revisited. We promised each other that we’d be ruthless with the stuff - anything that was not used for the last year had to go.

Post-sorting, a pile of Some-Day-Stuff stared back at us. The inventory is as follows:

1. Lego mindstorm set
2. Electronic keyboard
3. My dance stuff
4. Sunil’s glof clubs
5. Climbing gear
6. Roller blades
7. A candle-making kit (hasn’t surfaced, but will)
8. Pottery tools (hasn’t surfaced, but will)

How do we throw these away? They’re part of the life that we’ll live when we’re not so busy with work, our mid-life retirement plan, the possibilities that soothe fraught weeks.

So back they went into closet, under bed, under the chaddar awaiting our leisure.

NYTimes has a great article on Jon Stewart and his particular brand of journalism. The Daily Show is certainly a good way to get the news. Intelligent reporting doesn’t demand gravitas.

Think about the Japanese. There you go, feeling better already, arent you?

A great read. We all know this, but it’s so easy to forget, no?

Thanks to TT for the link.

Dont drive an automatic.

Smart carjackers these.