Just dropping in to say a quick ‘hi!’ from Kohima. The trip has been a blast and I am having the time of my life and this is just the first 4 days! 20 more to go and lots of updates shall happen .. but for now .. I bid farewell as I trudge on

I have clicked tons of photos as expected and I will be uploading them soon so all of you can see

In a couple of hours I set out on the longest and possibly the most interesting trip I have been on yet! I am going to be traveling with ‘The Raghu Dixit Project‘ on a 7 city tour of the North East of India as part of the Roots Music Festival. We are traveling with 4 other bands, Too Late Lucy from the UK, Dub LFO from Israel and 2 musicians from the North East, Guru Rewben Mahsanghwa and Warklung.

We are playing at the following venues over the month -

ROOTS 2008 TOUR DATES:

May 03 Saturday ROOTS Fest IMPHAL @ BOAT
May 04 Sunday W’SHOPS IMPHAL

May 24 Saturday ROOTS Fest SHILLONG @ FIRE BRIGADE Ground
May 24 Sunday W’SHOPS SHILLONG

It has always been my dream to travel to the North East, right from when Sashi in college described the place to me. This is one trip I shall not want to miss for the world!

I shall do my best to keep in touch, but expect me to pop up at the most inappropriate times! … So wish me luck and I shall miss a lot but I hope I will be able to catch up and more importantly .. regale you with stories from the North East!

It was my birthday a couple of weeks back and as a birthday gift the lovely Shilpa rounded up a few of my friends and got them to contribute to my “Buy a new Lens” fund!

Needless to say, my generous friends dug deep into their pockets and helped me along nicely! now its only a matter of ordering the right lens and getting it which should happen soon

Thanks again to Shilpa for getting it done and for all of you for contributing! And for the brilliant card that came with the gift! Thanks all you guys for doing this .. it is really really special!

I have put up the card online, so please take a look!

I had a very very interesting day today! Firstly, the previous day spilled over majorly into today and today started way too early considering that!

I landed up at the Taj Land’s End hotel in the morning for some a interesting discussion with Mr. Jasbir Singh, who is *THE* biggest music instrument dealer in the country and who has the who’s who of brands with him and has big plans for music instrument retailing in the country! The discussion led to very interesting ideas which if executed, will absolutely change the way music retail is carried out in the country!

That was followed up with a music networking lunch at the Zenzi club where we met a whole bunch of interesting people from very very diverse areas of the music industry! lets hope something comes from that also …

It all ended with some more meetings about endorsing instruments and finally a party at a friend’s place with some Tequila!!

So I go to bed now and wake up early for a 4 hour drive to Pune for our first gig there! That promises to be fun

I heard this on the way to work today when going through my weekly dose of the NPR podcasts. It fascinated me no end and I just had to share this ..

6 Masai warriors from the remotest jungles of Africa have come to London to take part in the London Marathon to raise money for their village so that they can have a permanent drinking water solution. As I write this, the marathon is actually over and the Masai warriors did complete the marathon and everything went as planned. I’ll even bet they managed to raise the money they required!

What I wanted to concentrate on was the culture shock that these guys faced when they landed in England. Right from the clothing to the food to the temperature to EVERYTHING would have been such a culture shock!

The journal maintained by one of the warriors as listed here is a very nice fun read and also the guide to living in the UK, exceprts of which are posted here written for the Masai warriors by the people taking care of them is abosolutely hilarious!

It just goes to strenthen the belief I have that there is SO much to see in this world and its so easy to just go through life missing all the good stuff! Need to change that!

While chatting with a female friend of mine, I got into this spree of typos which caused me to say to her … “you make me weak in the knuckles”! I liked the line enough to make it my status message …

This was then picked up by another friend of mine who posted it on a blog which documents status messages that people have. The Internet I tell you .. its a crazy beautiful place!

As the clock struck 12 … I went past that milestone and into the 25- whatever age fits category … and I thank everyone for making that moment memorable!!

Thanks Shilpa for putting it together and for everyone who was present in body and spirit!

This year holds a lot of promise … lets hope  most of it comes through …

I have never been this busy with my work in the office and this time round its for real! The work just never ends and so I am playing catch up with all that I have.

On other fronts, the British Council finally announced the award last week. Check it out! I am supposed to meet with them next week for some discussions and some interesting projects both of us have in mind

RadioVeRVe looks dormant to the world but there has never been so much action happening in the background as it is now … and the fruits of it will be seen very very soon! Don’t lose the faith yet

On the music front, the band is taking a well deserved break before we launch into tour mode again by the end of this month and from then on its going to be madness!!

So this phase of my life can be called ‘the calm before the storm’!

This happened a couple of weeks back, when I was in the Sula Vineyard for the Sulafest. Raghu and I were walking to the stage when we saw Anushka and Pratichee, the girls from Viva. And while we were chatting with them, we were asked by the “official photographer” of the event for a Page 3 type pose!

What we ended up posing as was anything but Page 3 and I completely forgot about it also. Today, I came across the picture on the Sula website and I just had to put that up on my blog!

Over a month and a half ago, I was contacted by people from Fastrack who just launched their biker’s collection of sunglasses and they offered to send me a pair of glasses to review and give them my feedback on.

I finally got those glasses today, it was delivered to my office over the week, but since I was on my jaunt around the countryside, I managed to get them only today!

The first impression I had was that it was a little too small for me ..but after using it for sometime, on the drive back home, it seemed quite comfortable, though I need to get used to the form factor (is that what its called?!)

I will post a more significant review soon .. but right now, I am loving it! and until someone tells me otherwise … I am looking cool in it also!