Found my Pecos in Oslo!

Yup, finally a place that bears an 80% striking and uncanny resemblence to Pecos... in culture, music, decor, excellent beer. The 20% slack, which shouldnt actually be compared, is the lack of any chilli beef, chicken tacos, chicken curry and dosa or any of those orgasmic dishes on the pecos menu.

Here are some excerpts from their website... recognise a lot of pecos in it? ;)

Last Train is a fecund oasis in a desert of crappy coffee-bars, trendy upholstery-obsessed snob lounges and pretentious hypermodern glass-and-metal showcases for people with a pathological need to feel continental.
Last Train is an essential and important part of the Scandinavian rock scene. Numerous bands were formed at Last Train, and just as many broke up there. Many labels were established at Last Train and most went bankrupt because of it, after releasing some quite memorable records.
20 years is a long time for a bar to survive in Oslo! It really is! 'How?', you may ask. It's been simple, really. No struggle. Just a no-nonsense-no-concept 'concept' combined with an un-compromising love for QUALITY music; be it rock, punk, jazz, pop, rap, reggae, metal or whatever obscure sub-genre of the latter you may think of. Just keep it good, real good! That goes for the bands you book as well as the records you play. And if the customers don't approve… 'Fuck 'em'!… If they ask you to put on something else… 'Fuck 'em'… REGARDLESS of how good a song they request. The customer might BE right at times, but that doesn't necessarily mean the customer HAVE any rights. Feel like playing Daniel Johnston midnight on a packed Friday night? Do it! How about a little Slayer on Sunday at noon? Well 'Show No Mercy' (Haw Haw)!

Records in the background look familiar?
Here's to Pecos, Last Train and every other pub in the world (please name more!) that falls under this unique, unpretentious one-of-a-kind culture!

18th July... Brace yourself Pecos.

Paradoxical

"Its abnormal to be completely normal, insane to be completely sane. Ironic, but part of being perfect is that imperfect element"

..... and people unconsciously strive to be that perfect, sane, normal person.

I'm glad we'll never succeed! Children of the revolution, continue being different and living the insanities...Its the only way we'll sustain our very diverse and interesting existence!

A Realization...

Yes, we've all lived fantastic lives in AIESEC.. ones that have given us a chance to build widespread personal networks... in diverse countries.

As much as we talk about these networks with each other, we've unconsciously taken an oath not to brag about it too much to non-aiesecers, as they'd never understand us. I've been careful while sharing my experiences with close friends, but recently this one incident in London made reflect on this issue a lot deeper.

So we're sitting in London, at a quaint Thai restaurant in Angel. Group consisted of us 5 Indians.. 4 IIT'ians and me. :)

Much to my surprise, we didnt have conversations about the latest in Digital Signal Processing or simpler ways to get through Fourier Transformations. After introducing ourselves, (me very clearly stating I was from India, lived there all my life and now living in Norway), the topic of conversation soon switched to what we were in London for. 3 were on work, 1 was on an IIM-B (arguably the best B-school in India) exchange scheme, and then there was me... just visiting friends. The question obviously arrived - which friends are these? Parallely : warning sign echoes in my head... be careful Aneesh... dont brag. And so I reply.. "Just some friends I've met through AIESEC".... the obvious follow up question out of sheer Indian curiosity was .. "Who are these friends and Where are they from?". So I go on to explain how I met this Danish friend and his Malaysian girlfriend, after which I had to catch up with 3 British friends and 1 Kenyan born Indian (all ex-trainees from Bangalore)....

And that was it! The next question was asked by the girl at the table, in the most innocent tone ever, (which actually surprised me even more)...

"So, which country did you say you were from?"

Boom - Bang - Powwww - Crunch - Splat - Sock... I was blank. Shocked? I dunno... Proud ? I dunno.....

Its lil' experiences like this that if caught, can send you in whirlpool of thoughts of how you represent your true almost finalised identity to the majority who will never relate.

Finally, here's to my beautiful trainee couple, The Danish Lasse and Malaysian Khay Ling, who after meeting in Bangalore 4 years ago, entered a magical phase as newly wedded on the 28th of April, 2005.

Web-lightenment

I beleive we're in the midst of an interesting transformation. At the close of 2004, the active internet population reached approx. 900 million users wordwide. While the spectrum of type of access still remains a contrast (from high end mobile phones to donated 486 DX2's in lesser developed areas), its still encouraging to note this rise. I can't help but observe how powerful this makes us... especially on one aspect - Knowledge. We're entering an era with unlimited access to knowledge platforms. There's no more excuses to not know something since you're literally seconds away from an answer on your favourite search engine.. a gateway to the conglomeration... convergence... unifying force of all our minds. Its scary to imagine that innocence might soon have to be deleted from our vocabularies... this fueled by the increased competitiveness in our cultural upbringing.

On that note i recently stumbled upon one such gateway convergence - YaGoohoogle. As interesting, creative and simple as the solution may be, I feel the interface or experience is rather cacophonic. Nevertheless, it did its bit to yelp a lil' WOW in the back of my head for a split second. Being a simple project too, I totally respect the creator for putting into practice what many internet users might have discussed after a few beers, as a possible business idea... and obviously left them as faded ideas.

(Aside : Imagine if we had the power or found some means to cognite all these random ideas that people around the world come up with at random times, and leave them all on an online database, where perhaps someone else can login, hear their calling, and implement the suggested idea?... Business idea? .. Hmmmmm ... ;) Well i just personally copyrighted that one in your eyes, so promise me you'll testify if i'm ever plagarised)

Back to Yahoogoogle, oops, Yagoohoogle. I particularly liked one part on the Yagoohoogle Blog, the first posting. Personally, I found it subtly humorous that he's clearly eliminated Internet Explorer from his customization offerings, and catered to only Opera and Firefox users. All this brings me to my final word for today - a word to all those naive Internet Explorer users.

You'll have argued time and time again that you'll dont really care about any other browser, because IE satisfies your basic browsing needs. I do think thats more the innocence speaking and hence thought that i'll leave you'll with a few thoughts, in simple - non techie words... thoughts you'll would relate to with respect to "good ol" IE :)

1. Isnt it annoying when you keep opening new windows, it all piles up at the bottom side by side, then suddenly it either all comes back into one pile on top of each other, making it super irritating to keep clicking down there and choosing what you want to see.... OR... at the end of it all your computer hangs?
2. Are you tried of your homepage being reset to some crappy and random site which sometimes even streams porn!?
3. Sick of those zillion irrelevant windows that keep popping up sometimes on some sites you visit?
4. Do you know that by using IE, your computer has some malicious stuff installed that is sending loads of information about you to unknown people? Hmmm.. wonder how that makes you feel about banking online. Does security mean anything at all in your life?
5. Tired of IE taking loads of time to load pages? Even when you sometimes click "back" and it takes minutes to load a page you just visited?
6. Feel your computer becomes too slow when you are surfing the internet?
7. Do you want to customise the way you surf the internet to your own style of browsing and the way the browser should look?

I could go on and on, especially for the more tech-savy people, but all in all, if one of your life principles state that you should move ahead in time, and you answered YES to any of the above - then download a different browser. There's a wealth of resources out there to help you make your choice, but personally, in my most unbiased tone, recommend Opera by far. Why??.. you may ask. I'll save that for our personal debate, coz first i'll wanna hear the good news that you're making the switch. In the meanwhile, for the tech-savy, read this. And for all you firefox users, congratulations on making the switch, but the best experience still remains elusive.. ask me why! :)