Monday, August 07, 2006

Hamilton Summer: The Ballad of Pragyan Pradhan

This is to welcome Pragyan Pradhan (formerly known as The God of Small Things) of Jae and Silent Pradhan fame to enter the world of blogging; adding yet another eclectic voice to "Listening to the Weather". Pragyan is presently pursuing an undergraduate degree in Economics and Mathematics at Hamilton College. When not studying, wasting time, or fighting for civil rights issues in Nepal, Pragyan enjoys fighting crime under the guise of Proverbman. We look forward to a glimpse of his never ending river of wisdom...

On another note, I am dead tired. Thinking is taxing. I should stop.

I did not do any work the whole summer. Maybe read a couple of books: Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", Kawabata's "Master of Go" and Bill Bryson's "A Brief History of Everything" among others. Watched a lot of movies, some useless, some brilliant, like Kubrick's "The Shining" on HD... finally eh? Played a lot of games, learnt how to mix a mojito and the fact that Miami cops can afford Ferraris... one could say that all summer was one lazy sunday.

This weekend I did more work than the whole summer. Pragyan and I have our research presentation due at 6 pm this evening. We started working on our research paper 2pm on Saturday afternoon. Needless to say the next 48 hours were spent bent over three laptops, thousands of loose sheets of research papers and raw data and a bottle of Johnny Walker Gold Label.

I'm still trying to recover from the onslaught. Twenty eight pages of, quite frankly, bullshit. Albeit it's not spectacular, I'm proud of it. I just hope my boss feels the same way.

(Edit: The dinner-presentation went off great! I think...)

"I'll procrastinate tomorrow..." ~ Pragyan Pradhan

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Wonderful Electric

Goldfrapp. Without a doubt, my favorite band. Period. If you don't know who they are, I'm not surprised. I only have one friend who knows about them but that's only because I told her. I cannot tell you how many times I've been met with a stare or a puzzled face after answering "Goldfrapp" when asked, "What's your favorite band?" But this year, at least three commercials from major companies have employed Goldfrapp songs (Coke, Pantene, and Verizon) and they have played on both Letterman and Leno. All I can say is...It's about damn time!! Don't you just love it when commercials play great songs you already know? (And great songs you don't too.) Well, I do. In fact, the only reason I am writing this is because I heard "Strict Machine" in that Verizon commercial for their new Chocolate phone.

Goldfrapp has 3 albums. The first, "Felt Mountain," is very much electronic and what they call "trip-hop." The second, "Black Cherry," retains the electronic sound of its predecessor but has a bit of a pop sound accompanied by dance beats. Their latest album, "Supernature," is a conglomeration of pop, dance, and disco with a touch of electronic sound. It's pretty interesting to hear the progression of their sound over the three albums and unfortunately, I cannot upload songs to let you hear this for yourself.

But, here's a Goldfrapp song to whet your appetite. From the more mainstream album, Supernature, "No.1".