Ekushey February

Daily Star na khulley monei portona... je ajkey bhasha dibosh, ekushey february! koto kichu je ajkal par hoye jay mone kono rokom kora na nere. jai hok, asha kori shobai deshey bhalo achey...

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Inequalities

Read an article from the Daily Star fully today after a very long time. Its a voice on the matter of income inequality of Bangladesh.

http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/02/19/d6021901011.htm

I think the widening gap will ultimately result in adverse social outcomes. Already there is in other news the headline: Baby trade booms at hospitals! Well, thats enough news for today, I'll go back to my escapist reality now. tata.

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Kyrkan = Church

Kyrkan, is pronounced as "Sher Khan" .. no... kidding... like "Shirkan" rather, and is the swedish word for church. My landlord goes to a church called the Advent Church here in town, and they were starting a separate sermon in English, and thus, of course the turn up was expected to be lower than expected. Anyway, since today is the first day, my landlord asked me to come and play something, and i just for the experience of playing in a church said yes, but being the coward (teamplayer) that i am, i tugged Pongpan (a friend from Thailand who is a brilliant flute player) along. We met this morning, jammed on an idea we had... and it stretched to 10 minutes, mainly because of Pongpan's brilliance! Anyway, we liked what we heard and we were ready to go.

We arrived there late according to the time we had been given. As it turned out, people were late too... the sermon didn't start, the room to be used for the sermon didn't even get a row filled with people. Pongpan and I got a bit restless, so after they sang a few of their devotional songs, they asked us to play, we played complete with an introduction by me. And we played till the finish, and gave a smile to our mini audience of about 10 people. My landlord said thank you and that was pretty much the only sound before the subject of discussion was changed. They weren't impressed.
I used to think the 'Appluase' is a ceremonial thing, but i guess its not. Or maybe (hopefully) they have rules in their church against applauding.

As soon as we got out (pretty soon) I told Pongpan that maybe it wasn't their type of music. And later I was asking him in plain words whether we sucked. LOL. I smiled all the way back here.

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Orality and Literacy

We are doing a course on Interactivity and Narrativity this term, which has brought us face to face with a book of the title Orality and Literacy, by Walter J Ong. Its full of interesting concepts, but very boring at times, since it is laden with names and references and dates. And of course a lot of Homer and his Iliad and Odyseey. The greek influence on art and literature is so immense it is fascinating, but its not for people with failing memory cells.

The book of course starts with the invention on languages, and how oral traditions were established first, since writing basically took a long time to develop. Thus memory also played a major part in the cultures and societies of the early ages. And to have important instances and stories be easily stored as memory, it had to be made in patterns and a lot of cliches or repititions. It also mentioned computer languages in the book, citing the difference between that and human languages. The computer languages have rules that are made first and then it can be processed or usable, and in human languages, the usage came first and the rules (grammar) were then abstracted from it. Our language is very interesting i think. Especially with its abundance of different versions of one sound, like the Dirgho-E (lengthy E) and the Roshyo-E (the shorter E). I once had the opinion that these versions should go and that they are redundant. I have now changed that opinion. This is since i have started learning Swedish a few weeks ago. Swedish has a lot of extra alphabets and different pronunciations, and our alphabets are now helping a lot to explain to myself the twists and turns of the swedish speech! It is quite fascinating, the dirgho-E, the Doy-shunno-R... they are all useful again. But i wonder if that is the only use for them, since the distinctive sounds are almost non-existent in our speech today!

As far as cliches go, they are really useful for remembering things. It commits to memory easily. Like 'seeing is believing', maybe i cannot remember who first said it to me or where i first read it, but i remember the saying. Related to vision, there is also the saying "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king". Now songs and poetry recitals are probably the more prominent of oral traditions today. Story telling probably still exist in some societies or clubs and some radio stations. Anyway, I will end with my extracted saying: "in the land of the sleeping, the blind can be king", to reflect the condition of democracy in third world countries riddled with illiteracy, lack of education (or proper education), and corruption.

Keep talking, and keep blogging.

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Dreams

So, i have crossed realms and my dreams have gone international.

A few nights ago (or dawns ago, i hear thats the best time for dreams), i was playing bass for Joe Satriani! it was an awesome show, i kicked ass with my bass and i was wearing a trenchcoat (i think it was the same one Joe wore in one his old videos... probably 'big bad moon').

* For those who don't know Joe Satriani but know Metallica, he was the guy who Kirk Hammet used to learn guitar from.

For those who don't know Joe Satriani but know Steve Vai (the actor against the kid in the guitar duel in the movie Crossroads and and interim guitarist for Whitesnake), Joe taught Steve Vai too and they tour together as G3.

For those who don't know Joe... period, click - HERE.



And this morning i woke up with the recollection of a funny one. I was talking to a woman (who was clearly from the west and white) about 'Fuchka' (pr. FOOTCH-KA)! I don't just mean talking... normal talk.. its like i was a salesman and i was selling the idea of how awesomely tasty treat a 'fuchka' is... I was describing what it looks like and how to eat it.

I miss fuchka.

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