How to bring an Arena down?

Ever wonder what would it take to bring a big city like Frankfurt to a halt? Ever wonder what could cause a "stau" (traffic jam)on the "autobahn" (freeway)? Ever wonder what could cause even a hospital parking to be used for all the out of the city cars? ... all this is possible ... just bring U2 to town.

Paul David Hewson aka Bono, back all fixed up in Germany, in his terms "Made In Germany" stamped on his ass, with David Evans aka The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen decided to pay Frankfurt a visit on the 10th of August 2010. When U2 come visiting these days they touch down in a spaceship. The spaceship touched down at the Commerzbank Arena and it was one heck of a sight. Pictures cannot do justice to the setup but still here goes -



To be fair, U2 has been on the periphery of the bands which I follow but getting a chance to see them live was something which I was not going to loose at any cost. What is remarkable is that this is one band which sounds so much more better live than on CDs. Maybe it was the acoustic of playing in a football stadium or the huge bank of speakers everywhere on the spaceship or whatever but the atmosphere was simply electric. The first notes of distortion guitar from Edge were just electric and all through the night there was this pulsating energy which came through. Bono, really looked fit and revived after the back surgery



I do need to get back to the spaceship because though the band's music would have been enough alone to blow us all away - they were in such flow that night - it was this piece of massive engineering which was fascinating. As I mentioned it was stacked with speakers plus the cockpit in the middle was a collection of screens which opened up to provide a massive projection medium. Maybe this picture helps you to get a perspective



True to form Bono did have a social message or two which he shared through the night. The 1st was a canned speech by Desmond Tutu propagating One Love which was appropriately played before "One" and then the prayer for Aung San Suu Kyi preceding "You'll never Walk Alone".
S said the other day "I have seen more than I can remember, I can remember more than I have seen" and I could relate to this statement when they played "Where the Streets Have No Name" or "I Still Haven't Found What I am Looking For" or "With or Without You". There were these flashes of memories associated with these songs which transported me to some other planes.
The set list for the night was -

1. Return Of The Stingray Guitar
2. Beautiful Day
3. New Year's Day
4. Get On Your Boots
5. Magnificent
6. Mysterious Ways / My Sweet Lord (snippet)
7. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / Movin' On Up (snippet)
8. Glastonbury
9. Elevation
10. In A Little While
11. Miss Sarajevo
12. Until The End Of The World
13. The Unforgettable Fire
14. City Of Blinding Lights
15. Vertigo / It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) (snippet)
16. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight / Discothèque (snippet)
17. Sunday Bloody Sunday
18. MLK
19. Walk On / You'll Never Walk Alone (snippet)

encore(s):
20. One
21. Amazing Grace (snippet) / Where The Streets Have No Name
22. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
23. With Or Without You
24. Moment of Surrender

which kind of covered the Discography spectrum pretty well. It also allowed each member of the band to have their solo time under the spot light or the strobe light.
The show was so good that we seriously think of going again in a month's time to Munich to watch the concert again. Whether we do it or not is a different question but U2 truly brought the Commerzbank Arena down on the 10th night.

Apathy

The last few days have forced me to wonder about the value of life in our country.
We lost 200 people to an air crash, we lost another 150 people to a train accident and another 50 people to a bus accident. I am not even counting the "normal" deaths which occur on a daily basis without making it to the national TV.
Why do we have such apathy towards the value of human life? The air crash probably could have been avoided, the train accident definitely could have been avoided and probably same is the case for the bus accident. However, why is it that these incidents do happen and happen on a regular basis?
It is amazing to see how an unnatural death in most of the other countries is seen really like that - unnatural while we don't even miss a beat and carry on our daily business as if nothing has happened. We are so used to disasters. I am sure it cannot be because we have too many people. I hope the logic of surplus is not being applied to people because each individual life is an irreparable loss.
Could it be because of our disregard for basic safety norms?
Could it be because of our dilapidated and archaic infrastructure?
Could it be because of our belief in the "chalta hai" attitude?
Could it be because of our disregard for rules?
Could it be because of lack of rules?
Could it be because we don't know how to protest decently in a country where nonviolence was unveiled as a powerful weapon?
What?
How many more need to perish for us to raise these questions and find some answers...

Reflective...

Everyone knows, appreciates and possibly understands the realities of human life - the birth of a life is inevitably followed by the end of the life but once in a while these realities touch each one of us when we least expect them...today was one such day.

My daily dose of emails had an email from a colleague informing me that he is not going to be in office as he had just become the proud father of a "prinz". For good measure he had the pix of the new born attached. :-)

There was another email from another colleague informing me that he is not going to be in office as over the weekend his father passed away. :-(

Since then have been in a reflective mood..

What's in a designation?

Please excuse the play on the Shakespearean adage but had a nice animated discussion with folks a couple of days back on the topic of designations and the importance they play on a person's professional life specially in the IT sector.

The way I look at it - the value of designations is driven a lot by the socio economic environment in which the job / role is located.

Typically, in America it seems to me that it is easier to get fancy titles. People with not that much of experience in the profession do call themselves Directors, there are lot more hierarchies between the Director - President level etc. Maybe that's driven by the fact that there is lot of entrepreneurial focus in States and of course when one is running his / her own business one can decide to call himself / herself what one wants. The other reason could be that everybody prefers a shorter job life i.e. one prefers to retire earlier or get out of a job mode earlier and do what one wants to do.

In Germany, on the other hand I find that the designations have lesser value, hierarchies start much lower, middle management is bloated etc. I believe one of the most important reason for this is the fact that the job life of an individual is longer. People are typically risk averse and when they join an organization they tend to retire from it. Maybe the entrepreneurial spirit is lesser as compared to other places. Also people concentrate a lot on quality of life where they really value their free time and sometimes prefer not higher designations or responsibilities concerned with the fact that it might affect their time for themselves. People do value the work they do and believe a lot more in perfection even if it means that they are doing repetitive tasks.

In India I notice there is extreme importance laid on designations. Here India is more like US but the difference is that the hierarchies are more extensive. Maybe that is got to do with the fact that designations back home are linked to the professional success of an individual. Unless every 2-3 years a person gets a vertical growth he / she is not seen to be good. Maybe it is got to do also with the fact that the work which is done is not that high in the value chain and to retain talent organizations depend on titles. Many things like marriages, house ownership, social standing etc. are all linked to titles too and hence they have critical need for people. Typically job lives are longer in India but people do change many jobs and one of the important criterion for talent acquisition or talent retention is designations. With entrepreneurial opportunities growing there is the trend coming up that designations in previous jobs also influence the ease with which people get funded for their ventures.

Of course some of the things which i wrote are controversial but they are my own observations. Do let me know what you think about it.

its fine for sustainable practices to not be altruistic

Yesterday while watching the televised debate between the UK Prime Ministerial candidate I happened to view a TV spot announcing a new contest known as "World Challenge" which focuses on sustainable practices which are today changing the world.

One of the first contestants to be featured was a vegetable market from Indonesia. Now whoever has been to a typical vegetable, fruit market ( not the supermarkets ) would easily recognize that on a daily basis these markets produce a humongous amount of organic and inorganic waste. Apart from the fact that most of this waste makes its way to open landfills where it rots and releases greenhouse gases like methane, it is also a breeding ground for diseases. The solution which the Indonesian market has come up with is to segregate the organic waste, process it and convert it into fertilizers. This is used locally by the farmers and the crop yield has grown by almost 30%. The produce from the local farms is then sold again in the local markets setting up a cycle of reuse and thus a sustainable business model.

This is one example which goes to show that many times sustainable activities also make sense economically and when ever they do they are adopted faster by people. The example I quoted was from Indonesia but I believe the model could be replicated in many places and probably is being followed in other places in some form or the other.

As a foot note, I found the UK Prime Ministerial debate very dignified. Should something similar be initiated in India for the next general elections? Interesting thought but might be difficult logistically as there are so many parties in our country.

Fly to or into the Everest

China again proved it can do what it wants to do with absolute no disregard to anyone else.
First it was the road to Everest and now read today that an airport has been opened up at Xigaze. Why do we make absolute perfect effort to spoil everything pristine? China wants to make this area a climber's paradise but did anyone ask the climbers whether they want this "luxury" possibly at the cost of environment.

Thank God I am a Woman!

No I didn't get a sex change but it's the catch line at the launch of the Spring/Summer Collection of a woman's clothing brand.
Today while watching news I saw the shocking news of female infanticide still prevailing in Rajasthan. In today's world where we as Indians are talking about the great progress we are making as a nation news like this makes my head hang in shame. Will we blame the government for this? Well yeah if anybody wants to take the supposition in that direction then sure as usual we can blame it for this too by contending that not enough is being done towards education improvement in the hinterlands of the country. However, I believe government cannot do everything in this matter. It is the society and the people which have to make the paradigm shift in thinking and break these chains which are termed as traditions. Its the new generation of Indians which have to break out of these molds in which some of our archaic unreasonable "traditions" try to bracket us in. Keeping our cultural traditions alive is absolutely fine but basic human emotions, human right - the right to live can never be sacrificed in the name of demonic practices camouflaged as "traditions".
We still have popular TV serials like "Is desh mai na aana Ladoo" which make the practice of female infanticide as their punchline. I don't follow the serial and maybe it carries a social message pointing out the evils of this social curse but the couple of episodes I saw I didn't get the message. Probably in matters like this subtlety doesn't work.
Yesterday I was sitting with friends and heard about colleagues at work who are still thinking in terms of "arey yaar meri beti hai. mujhey uskey liye bhi tu sochna hai". When we have city bred, highly educated professionals living abroad talking in these terms one can understand how deeply ingrained the malaise runs in our society.
Will we ever reach a stage where women in India would be able to say "Thank God I am an India woman" and not worry about being termed "manhoos"?