The BSBs are all grown up

Youtube just suggested me a new trending video, thought I would like it.

And I did. It was Jimmy Fallon and BSB performing 'I Want it that Way' with classroom toys.

I was instantly transported to the nineties again.

Over two decades later, the Backstreet Boys keep coming back. They are probably the only pop-artists from that era still releasing music and performing together, from what I hear, to sold out audiences. All grown up, with kids of their own, they can no longer be called a boy-band. It was a little painful for me watching the average 42 year olds dancing on stage. Still crying "babe, babe" into the mike like some teenager would do. But on the other hand, rock bands from the 70s are still peforming their best songs, so why not them.

In wise hindsight, its clear that they were more a product of rigorous marketing, than guys with actual talent. They could sing ,for sure. But they didn't have anything special in their voices. Somebody else wrote their songs. And somebody else produced the music. They just sang. What they had for them, was their looks. And that was what was marketed to the teenage audience of the time. I am sure everything from their costumes to make-up was planned and executed in advance. Each of the boys had a persona, a character they constantly played. Some of them played cute, while AJ and Kevin played and looked like mature ,bad guys. All the hats , and goggle and accessories, they were all part of that persona. Listening to their music, it was impossible to say who sang which part, because they all sounded the same. They played the characters of young boys in love, and that was the product.

But still, their songs have aged well, IMHO. Compared to the awful crap being released nowadays, BSB's music was slower and cleaner. It was designed for repeated radio play. This was before the internet hit us so strong, so people used to still buy music on CDs or listened to FM radio. Their music was also heavily pirated. I lost the pirated audio tape I had from their hit album Millenium. I used to wonder who in India would be sane enough to pay 125 rupees for an original disc of 7 songs, when music produced in India was selling for 30 to 50 rupees.

Over the years, I kept hearing of the band breaking up, someone going solo, but in the end they all stayed together. Some of their recent music has had a change of style ,and cannot compete with contemporary artists. A decade ago I had assumed they would disband in a few years and retire for good. And I think its high time they did retire, because again, they are  no longer boys. But it seems they still have an audience. We have aged along with them. And for us , who cannot digest conteporary hip-hop and dance music, BSB is the brand to follow.

I like it that way.

Trip to Phillip Island

 

Man, I’ve been busy. With all the work in office, calls and meetings and gym and yoga and what not, how many hours does one get for oneself ? I wonder how these Auzzies manage to do it. Now one of the reasons we had considered and decided to move here to Australia is to have fun. Enough of this ‘work yourself to death’ mentality they spread in India.  Have fun. See the world. Have some time for oneself.

So thanks to the Queen’s birthday, we got a long weekend to indulge in this time. Went on trip to Phillip island. Its a small part of the country, isolated in the sea, but now connected via bridge to Melbourne. The whole place is one big reservation basically.  Like a huge national park, for birds, animals. And maybe even trees. Theres hundreds of miles of coastline, beautifully preserved , clean of all those rubbish and eyesore usually seen on (Indian) beaches.  And the weather , don’t get me started on the weather. Even in the winter, the place gets a lot of sun, and its perfect for hiking ! Or in our case, lazily dragging feat through the sand.

The place is about 140 kms away from Melbourne, so under 2 hours of driving time. Tour operators run day services to the place, so no worries if you can’t drive. There are some hotels, but I think most people just stay on Airbnb if one needs to stay overnight. For some reason, there are huge surf shops, everyone is driving huge cars into the beach. There is a Koala reservation centre half way through, but all the one we saw were sleeping high in the trees. Also, they don’t let you hold and cuddle these creatures like they do in the zoo. The southern and western coasts of the island lie within the Phillip Island Important Bird Area, so identified by BirdLife International because of its importance in supporting significant populations of fairy penguins, short-tailed shearwaters and Pacific gulls. In addition, there is a wildlife park where wallabies and kangaroos roam freely amongst the visitors and can be fed by hand. Seal Rocks, at the western end of the island, hosts the largest colony of fur seals in Australia (up to 16,000). In recent years, other than local population of critically endangered endemic Burrunan dolphins or migratory killer whales, southern right whales and humpback whales are starting to show recoveries in the area long after commercial and illegal hunts by the Soviet Union with the help of Japan in 1970s, and the numbers using the area as nursery are growing rapidly, allowing a rise in hopes to establish commercial whale watching activities in the vicinity of the island.

But the real highlight of the place is the penguin parade. Every evening, a bunch of ~1000 penguins waddle up from the deep blue ocean, into their burrows on the island. They have been continusly studied since the sixties, so by now, they are used to being stared at. Again, they can’t be watched from close quarters, due to it being in the evening, and because the burrow area is restricted to visitors. It is amazing how the staff have taken care not to disturb these gentle creatures in any way, opting to let them enjoy life in the wide open.

We also went trekking to Pinnacles, its a 2 hour return hike at the southern most tip of the island. Blue, pristine waters. High in the air on the cliffs. The feeling cannot be easily explained.

Again, the way these sites have been preserved it astonishing. Auzzies really know mother nature, and have steps in place to preservce ancient sites like these. And visitors happily comply. Most of the hiking areas and beaches are free, and see millions of tourists annually. But there was no litter to be seen on the beach. Neither in the water. With only a few sign boards asking visitors to keep the place clean, they have managed to enforce a cleanliness lockdown.

 

Happy to have moved here. And there are still more places to explore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A May Wedding

 

I just returned from India. From a wedding. And now I can personally assure you, May is not the best month to attend a wedding in India. What with the blistering heat and melting humidity.

But having said that, it was a day to remember. Only problem is, so much was happening, in so few days. It all seems like a blur.

The family has grown. And I hope this new , bigger family stays strong. For a long , long time.

 

 

Westworld is seeking new borders

 

The HBO show Westworld is now running it’s second season on TV. Its got critics and fans hooked, as well as I think the makers of every other TV show out there. Ambitious, and growing with ideas, it seems the creators are surpassing their own limits of creativity. Although it still says it is inspired by Michael Crichton’s movie, that is where the current similarity ends. It has left the premises of the original movie script and is now going where no other TV show has gone before.

Awesome !

I was a little dissappointed at the end of the first season, when the show decided to kill off Robert Ford (Antony Hopkins),  the park’s surviving original creator. I took it as a sign that the writers had run out of ideas, and found this was the only way to shock the show’s viewers. Also, that turn was faithful to the Westworld movie. But as the majority of fans predicted, the show has decided to bring back Ford, in a new , much more powerful meta form. Add to it the presence of many other parks, including the Shogun world, and now the possibilities seem endless. I am sure even Michael Chrichton could not have predicted how these new generation of writers could have built on his original idea of broken-theme park. 

With every episode, the show not only puts forward new twists and spectacular acting, but also asks deep questions: on artificial intelligence, conscience, about playing god. The greater context of right and wrong, and cause and effect. And about life and death. I caught myself thinking if our world was also some kind of simulation controlled by a higher power….Bah ! Humbug !

The first season talked about conscience and becoming self aware. It was centered around Dolores, the oldest host in the park, and her attempt to understand her artificial world. But now the second season discusses artificial life, and life and death. The park creators are trying to come up with a way to beat death, by moving people's consciuosness into a sentient being, allowing the mind to live forever in an artificial casing.

These are not new ideas. Ever since sentient beings have died, others have wondered if there is way to beat death, and gain immortality. There are numerous legends of waters, fountains and prayers which provide immortality to the consumer. It now seems that modern and future technology could provide a way out.  Current technology can build the exoskeleton so simulate a human being, but without an intelligent mind with a personality, it is just a shell. Pretty sure somewhere out there , right now, somebody is investigating how the human mind can be captured in code.

I am hooked ! Looking forward eagerly to what new ideas these writers are going to through at us in the coming episodes. And what how far it’s new borders are.

 

 

GMail’s confusing icons

 

For a long time now, I have hated GMail’s icons on the main toolbar. Specially on the app. It doesn’t make sense, and they are confusing. I wonder who are the numbnuts who came up with them, and on what basis.

Thankfully, others too have felt the problem. And somebody else wrote about it. Read on.