2 Concerts - Recipe for perfect weekend
Past week, the Gods/Stars have been more than favorable @ personal front but not so much @ the work where 'm getting totally hammered 'n as though my project alone wasn't sufficient enough, tomm on 'm getting pulled into other as well :(
But who wants to talk about work anyways? This post is about all the wonderful things that happened from last fri.
RDP aka 'Raghu Dixit Project'
Last Friday, finally managed to see 'Raghu Dixit Project' perform Live! Since my college days when Raghu's first band 'Antaragni' came out with 'Mysore se ayi..' wanted to watch them but something or the other always came up. Thankfully last fri, everything worked out and got to watch them at 'Nokia - Touch the Tune Concert'. They were amazing and for the first time i saw a predominantly Kannada speaking crowd at a concert!, which isn't all that surprising considering that Raghu Dixit's songs in 'Psycho' movie have been such huge hits. You can listen to RDP here - http://raghudixit.com/ . Later on were 'Karsh Kale' and 'Medival Punditz'. They were good, but the kind of music they played, is best listened while chilling @ some goa beach and not standing @ palace grounds... Anyways it was a nice way to spend a friday evening, hoping such things - getting free passes to these kinda events, continues to happen... ;)
Saturday was get-together @ Grandma's house, gorged on yummy food!
'n Sunday? Sunday was for Opeth! Things didn't start off on a very good note, infact the entire trip was like that, where one or the other thing kept going wrong.
The train to Chennai was @ 6:30am and i had slept the previous night only ard 1am, but still somehow managed to wake up and thanks to some nice piece of driving by my bro 'n the railway station clk being 5mins slower than mine, i made it to the station just in time. :)
The train journey itself was quite uneventful, except finding a person to swap places with a friend. Chennai welcomed us with its usual hot sun 'n humidity. One thing i realized in this trip, it doesn't matter if you know Tamil or not , you will still get conned. We took a bus to Adyar, so far so good and from there we were supposed to catch '5c' bus or something but being the impatient we, took an auto. Rs100 just from Adyar to IIT, wherein apparently for 120, an auto guy will take you from Chennai Central Station all the way to IIT!
Anyways, after that came the best part. This friend of mine - a crazy crazy opeth fan, had somehow managed to become pals with Opeth's band manager! So courtesy him, we got to stand right in front and watch Opeth do soundcheck! Got to take videos 'n click some decent snaps, which you can't do during the concert, with the huge crowd pushing you here and there. As you may know, 've run out of space on picasa, so pics are not there @ usual place. I've uploaded them onto facebook, you can check them out there. Facebook was suggested by my friend who also had ran out of picasa space. And considering that i came to know abt previous RDP's concert through facebook, maybe its time i (re)start using it more often? Though i didn't see an option where-in you could upload videos there, anyone knows if you can do that?
Daylight robbery @ Saravana Bhavan
Well after the soundcheck we headed out to get my friend's eticket printout, which he had left @ his room. Since you could exchange them for real tickets until 5:30pm, we headed out for lunch. Saravana Bhavan was what we decided on and what a crazy trip that led us on. My hunch that you can never get decent directions in TN especially for non-tam speaking ppl was proved right. One guy would say left, (wait not just left but last-left, no idea what that was!) another right...ppl who knew english wouldn't know abt the place 'n well ppl who did wouldn't know english...but yeah after taking some umpteen last-left we did reach the place and i had the costliest 'Onion Utthapam' ever - Rs 84 for this tiny dosa and it wasn't even as good as some of the ones you get in Bangalore! They did serve it in some fancy silver-coated cutlery, so was wondering if the exorbitant charge was for that. Anyways the many varieties of chutney 'n sambar which he served were really good, so we consoled ourselves with that.
An essential skill to have - Picking a car's lock!
Came out of the restaurant with happy smiles on our faces that comes from full stomach, only to realize the car key is missing. Found it later safely inside the car's ignition 'n we were locked out, with all our bags, cameras 'n most imp etickets inside the car! This was around 4:30 so we had one more hr to get IIT, to xchange tickets. And that was the most crazy one hr i ever spent in Chennai. Came to know, picking a car's lock is actually very simple if you know what to do. A knife and a wire hook or a scale depending on which car you have, is all you need. We had a basic idea what needed to be done but no matter how much we tried somehow nvr managed to break it. So decided two ppl will go take an auto, goto some internet centre, take printouts and head to IIT. Well that led me to lrn some more abt Chennai autos - It seems the drivers are pretty much local to an area, so this guy from T.nagar wouldn't know abt Adyar or IIT Madras well thats what our auto driver told us neway. It was surprising to see so many autowallas not knowing where IIT Madras is, would've thought it to be some kind of landmark.
And finding an internet centre in Chennai turned out to be another herculean task. B'lore is so much better in that way! Finally managed to find one, took printouts and then hurried to IIT to get the real tickets into our hands.
The Concert
Well words would do injustice, you just had to be there! Sad thing was they weren't allowing cameras inside 'n for the first time i seriously wished i had one of those cells with 5Mp cameras. Did try with my good ol' cell not for any serious recording but just to note that 'I was there'. Yet to upload them onto comp though.
After the Concert headed out to some midnight canteen to replenish ourselves. Food was good 'n cheap. It was nice chilling out there. The Campus is just freaking amazing! Its humongous 'n most of it looks like a forested area. It was really nice walking in the campus @ night.
My Train Saga continues...
And i think 've experienced all there is to experience in train journeys. Our return train was supposed to be @ 4:50am. Friend dropped us @ the station ard 2, many security checks later we enter in, to see that our train is delayed by a good 4Hrs! So for the first time in my life i spent the night in the waiting room. Got up ard 5am, as there was a shatabdi @ 6am but alas no general class 'n no tickets available in any other section as well. Went to Saravana Bhavan for breakfast to be looted again, Rs 25 for two Idlis, which were just Ok kinds but yea as usual the chutneys were good, so... Anyways after breakfast went to the platform to see that 7:15 'Brindavan Express' had already reached and all the initial General Class compartments were full. Walked all the way till the end and as luck would have it, found two seats! And yea so for the first time i traveled in General Class 'n it was an Experience!
Reached B'lore ard 1:30pm, took a BMTC bus to home. In the bus, I managed to make the lady sitting beside me, totally concerned. I kept dozing in and out and she is like keep your cell inside, someone may take it. I was like Ok, then i again start dozing. Since i don't have a habit of sleeping, i keep waking and seeing where i am, seriously when u doze one minute can feel like an eternity, 'coz whenever i opened my eyes i saw that the bus had hardly moved! Anyways this lady starts looking at me, as though she doubts if i'm really in my senses, 'n starts asking me where i've to get down 'n starts telling me the bus number 'n what is the last stop in case i miss my stop... :) Reached home ard 3pm, did get down @ my stop itself... :)
'n that was my weekend. Now back to the usual grind.
But who wants to talk about work anyways? This post is about all the wonderful things that happened from last fri.
RDP aka 'Raghu Dixit Project'
Last Friday, finally managed to see 'Raghu Dixit Project' perform Live! Since my college days when Raghu's first band 'Antaragni' came out with 'Mysore se ayi..' wanted to watch them but something or the other always came up. Thankfully last fri, everything worked out and got to watch them at 'Nokia - Touch the Tune Concert'. They were amazing and for the first time i saw a predominantly Kannada speaking crowd at a concert!, which isn't all that surprising considering that Raghu Dixit's songs in 'Psycho' movie have been such huge hits. You can listen to RDP here - http://raghudixit.com/ . Later on were 'Karsh Kale' and 'Medival Punditz'. They were good, but the kind of music they played, is best listened while chilling @ some goa beach and not standing @ palace grounds... Anyways it was a nice way to spend a friday evening, hoping such things - getting free passes to these kinda events, continues to happen... ;)
Saturday was get-together @ Grandma's house, gorged on yummy food!
'n Sunday? Sunday was for Opeth! Things didn't start off on a very good note, infact the entire trip was like that, where one or the other thing kept going wrong.
The train to Chennai was @ 6:30am and i had slept the previous night only ard 1am, but still somehow managed to wake up and thanks to some nice piece of driving by my bro 'n the railway station clk being 5mins slower than mine, i made it to the station just in time. :)
The train journey itself was quite uneventful, except finding a person to swap places with a friend. Chennai welcomed us with its usual hot sun 'n humidity. One thing i realized in this trip, it doesn't matter if you know Tamil or not , you will still get conned. We took a bus to Adyar, so far so good and from there we were supposed to catch '5c' bus or something but being the impatient we, took an auto. Rs100 just from Adyar to IIT, wherein apparently for 120, an auto guy will take you from Chennai Central Station all the way to IIT!
Anyways, after that came the best part. This friend of mine - a crazy crazy opeth fan, had somehow managed to become pals with Opeth's band manager! So courtesy him, we got to stand right in front and watch Opeth do soundcheck! Got to take videos 'n click some decent snaps, which you can't do during the concert, with the huge crowd pushing you here and there. As you may know, 've run out of space on picasa, so pics are not there @ usual place. I've uploaded them onto facebook, you can check them out there. Facebook was suggested by my friend who also had ran out of picasa space. And considering that i came to know abt previous RDP's concert through facebook, maybe its time i (re)start using it more often? Though i didn't see an option where-in you could upload videos there, anyone knows if you can do that?
Daylight robbery @ Saravana Bhavan
Well after the soundcheck we headed out to get my friend's eticket printout, which he had left @ his room. Since you could exchange them for real tickets until 5:30pm, we headed out for lunch. Saravana Bhavan was what we decided on and what a crazy trip that led us on. My hunch that you can never get decent directions in TN especially for non-tam speaking ppl was proved right. One guy would say left, (wait not just left but last-left, no idea what that was!) another right...ppl who knew english wouldn't know abt the place 'n well ppl who did wouldn't know english...but yeah after taking some umpteen last-left we did reach the place and i had the costliest 'Onion Utthapam' ever - Rs 84 for this tiny dosa and it wasn't even as good as some of the ones you get in Bangalore! They did serve it in some fancy silver-coated cutlery, so was wondering if the exorbitant charge was for that. Anyways the many varieties of chutney 'n sambar which he served were really good, so we consoled ourselves with that.
An essential skill to have - Picking a car's lock!
Came out of the restaurant with happy smiles on our faces that comes from full stomach, only to realize the car key is missing. Found it later safely inside the car's ignition 'n we were locked out, with all our bags, cameras 'n most imp etickets inside the car! This was around 4:30 so we had one more hr to get IIT, to xchange tickets. And that was the most crazy one hr i ever spent in Chennai. Came to know, picking a car's lock is actually very simple if you know what to do. A knife and a wire hook or a scale depending on which car you have, is all you need. We had a basic idea what needed to be done but no matter how much we tried somehow nvr managed to break it. So decided two ppl will go take an auto, goto some internet centre, take printouts and head to IIT. Well that led me to lrn some more abt Chennai autos - It seems the drivers are pretty much local to an area, so this guy from T.nagar wouldn't know abt Adyar or IIT Madras well thats what our auto driver told us neway. It was surprising to see so many autowallas not knowing where IIT Madras is, would've thought it to be some kind of landmark.
And finding an internet centre in Chennai turned out to be another herculean task. B'lore is so much better in that way! Finally managed to find one, took printouts and then hurried to IIT to get the real tickets into our hands.
The Concert
Well words would do injustice, you just had to be there! Sad thing was they weren't allowing cameras inside 'n for the first time i seriously wished i had one of those cells with 5Mp cameras. Did try with my good ol' cell not for any serious recording but just to note that 'I was there'. Yet to upload them onto comp though.
After the Concert headed out to some midnight canteen to replenish ourselves. Food was good 'n cheap. It was nice chilling out there. The Campus is just freaking amazing! Its humongous 'n most of it looks like a forested area. It was really nice walking in the campus @ night.
My Train Saga continues...
And i think 've experienced all there is to experience in train journeys. Our return train was supposed to be @ 4:50am. Friend dropped us @ the station ard 2, many security checks later we enter in, to see that our train is delayed by a good 4Hrs! So for the first time in my life i spent the night in the waiting room. Got up ard 5am, as there was a shatabdi @ 6am but alas no general class 'n no tickets available in any other section as well. Went to Saravana Bhavan for breakfast to be looted again, Rs 25 for two Idlis, which were just Ok kinds but yea as usual the chutneys were good, so... Anyways after breakfast went to the platform to see that 7:15 'Brindavan Express' had already reached and all the initial General Class compartments were full. Walked all the way till the end and as luck would have it, found two seats! And yea so for the first time i traveled in General Class 'n it was an Experience!
Reached B'lore ard 1:30pm, took a BMTC bus to home. In the bus, I managed to make the lady sitting beside me, totally concerned. I kept dozing in and out and she is like keep your cell inside, someone may take it. I was like Ok, then i again start dozing. Since i don't have a habit of sleeping, i keep waking and seeing where i am, seriously when u doze one minute can feel like an eternity, 'coz whenever i opened my eyes i saw that the bus had hardly moved! Anyways this lady starts looking at me, as though she doubts if i'm really in my senses, 'n starts asking me where i've to get down 'n starts telling me the bus number 'n what is the last stop in case i miss my stop... :) Reached home ard 3pm, did get down @ my stop itself... :)
'n that was my weekend. Now back to the usual grind.
posted by Puthali at 3:30 pm
6comentarios:
Why did you even considered Saravanabhavan ? It is a place which is hyped a lot and is outrageously costly. You should've tried something like Anjappar Biriyani, etc.
I had this same auto zone problem in Mumbai also. The auto people claiming they wont come out of their zone is there in all big cities. I am surprised that even an auto guy agreed to cross his zone.
Chennai has the most notorious auto drivers of all places, aiming to loot the last ruppee from you. Next time onwards, always go by metro train or the buses.
Its an Experience!!
Damn! I didn't make it to the concert, but hopefully will get to see much bigger ones. How many times have you been to chennai, not to know about the auto issues ?
And I disagree with the autowallahs in Mumbai part - Autos are not allowed into the city areas -only taxis allowed (dont ask me why a rule by the city council) and that is the only reason they refuse.
@shrek:
>Mumbai auto.... the only reason they refuse
Oh Okay.
as though my project alone wasn't sufficient enough, tomm on 'm getting pulled into other as well :( - > hahaha!Now,who would do that to you?:D
And yeah,chennai can be unfriendly if you dont know Tamil.But the bus service is really cool.Way better than what's in bangalore.Auto drivers in chennai?I dont bother talking to them demi Gods:D
but to be fair,I've paid 120 bucks for a ride from madivala to koramangala when I came to b'lore for the first time :D
Hi Puthali, IndiBlogger.in has organized another Bangalore blogger meet exactly a year after the last one. And this is also at the MS office in EGL.
The IndiBlogger team would like your presence at this meet too and blog about. Please do bring as many blogger friends as you can. This time we are also planning for some interesting discussions like "blogger rights", etc during the meet.
Please visit http://www.indiblogger.in/bloggermeet.php?id=26 for more details and to confirm your participation.
Hope to you see you at the meet. Please do give me a call or send me an email or just comment on the IndiBlogger meeting page if you would like to reach out to me towards the meet.
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P.S:- Awesome to know that you love heavy metal music. The IndiBlogger team is nuts about Hard Rock and Metal Music :)
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