Music Musings

Today I wanted to do something of compiling my ten favorite songs in English in the Pop Genre. I started putting down them. Let me see if I can come up with them.

1. Love will keep us Alive - Eagles
2. Scarborough Fair - S&G
3. Man on the Moon - REM
4. Tears in Heaven - Eric Clapton
5. Streets of Philadelphia - The Boss
6. Imagine - John Lennon
7. Vincent - Don Mclean
8. Sealed with a Kiss -
9. Baby Can I hold you - Tracy Chapman

Hey I could only come up with 9 of them in the same class. Maybe I will add to the list later.

Taking it forward, some of my favorite original soundtracks

1. Forrest Gump
2. Last of the Mohicans
3. All the Pretty Horses
4. Braveheart
5. Legends of the Fall
6. The Piano

Beers & More

Today is Day 1 of the famous Munich Oktoberfest. I also did wonder why is it called the Octoberfest when it has 13 days in Sept and only 3 days in October? I need to do the search on the web and find out the history behind that. Anyway I did visit this place called Theresienwiese here in Munich where the fest happens. As expected, it was a pretty sight. I feel when you are a place different from ours, the best way to get the cultural ethos of the place is through such festivals. Octoberfest brings out the traditional Bavarian (Bavaria is the state where Munich is) costumes and it was quite an interesting sight.

This festival is by the way nothing more than a beer party (I like to use the phase 'drunken revelry') where the beer landlords of Munich (there are about 600 breweries in Bavaria) come in complete costumes on their horses. They set up these huge tents where benches and tables are the only seats available. Imagine these huge tents where in each of them maybe 3000-4000 people are sitting and drinking beer also shouting, singing, dancing. It is some sort of a unique experience.

The digital camera is such a cool thing. I did manage to click quite a number of pictures but need to upload it to the web. Will do it....

About Germans

I was talking to a friend of mine over here about the differences in cultures especially Germans and Americans (having worked with them for all of 90 days each, that makes me an expert). Initially when I came in here, I was apprehensive having heard that Germans are not really as friendly set of people as the Americans are. I think it is true. In fact I had even written about this to my friends in India. But then after these 3 months, I am thinking they are just a misinterpreted set of people.

I think one major difference is that Germans will not be polite for the sake of being polite. If they think you are incompetent, they will tell you just that. The Americans on the other hand would go to your manager and tell him/her that you are incompetent while talking like to you as your best buddy. Both ways work. Though the Americans make you feel comfortable very quickly I could almost say that their behavior borders on being hypocritical. Yes, there are times when you think...hey that was harsh. But that is what you get!!

To be fair to the Americans, they are under the most scrutiny from the world as a country which makes their actions even more exaggerated. But I think in general there are a lot of America haters in the world and that is a completely different post. I wouldn't call myself a major hater of the US (being a very strong consumer of all American brands) but I could say that I am not in agreement with several of the activities from the US especially their foreign policy actions

At the end of this post, it seems to be a little patronising. I think I should leave it at the fact that the cultural differences are quite prominent.