scala and kolacny brothers

yet again i was spending (wasting) my time on youtube in search for the best soundtrack to get me motivated for work.

-> dont try it, it wont work

but instead, when i listened to one of my favourite german songs "hungriges Herz" from the berlin band MIA, I stumbled across a cover version.
At first I really did not care much or it. I found it way too soft, as if washed with fabric softener. I read the recent comments and went back to the original. but one comment never left me:"es kommt doch immer darauf an wo man das lied hört. beim bestuhlten scala konzert passt hunriges herz 100%ig in das wundervolle ambiente. auf einem sommerfestival ist es aber mindestens genauso toll das lied beim mia-gig mitzusingen. dann würde ich von der scala version nichts wissen wollen..." it shows that eeryhting is a matter of perspective. I went back to the scala cover, and noticed to my delight that they had made covers of many different songs, which I flipped through. In the meantime I fell for the band. by now their cover of creep is under "fave links" and the CD in my player.

what I really like is that these girls really can sing. they get the choir acoustics perfect: whistper, loud soft. this creates a real goosebump feeling. secondly, they take the songs and do their own thing with them but still manage to keep the meaning. this means that they can cover a whole range of artists: marylin manson, placebo, kylie minogue, die ärzte, rammstein, U2. thirdly, the arrangement also is pretty neat. often it just is piano played by the conductor, sometimes strings, percussion, depending on what the song needs.
It is calming music mixing the traditional elements of choir with modern texts, meanings and sounds. currently my favourite song (which I have on CD) is the cover of joga by björk.

the girl choir from belgium are playing a gig at the street festival in saarbrücken the first week of my summer break. I hope that i can go see them (yay its even for free) and perhaps meet with some friends from jsut over the border at the same time.

I remain right though. you could criticise that despite great dynamics, the many voices take away the edges which destinguish many artists and songs, but in the end I must agree that it all depends on where you are. a few days later I was back on youtube and clicked on the hungriges herz cover again. this time I didn't get bored half way through, but now value the cover as much as the original, because both carry the message of hurt love in their own way.
the picture is from the choir's website www.kolacny.com

mshff

when i wrote my entry previously i realised in a shock that we've had this blog more than a year. this means pragathi has been gone for more than a year.

its unbelievable how quickly time can fly, i still can remember casablaca like yesterday, the roaming around town (I actually know a lot more cool places i could ahve taken you to now), bugging teachers and driving fellow students insane.

time for a news update. a lot has changed. ISS has changed. the atmosphere of a desperate clinging, the suspense before the potential fall, the depression so to speak, is gone now. with the new headmaster, not that much has changed, but you can feel a completely different atmosphere. despite tense financial crisis, there is new hope. desperation has moved on, and teachers and students alike notice it.

but what concretely is new? the lunch stand has moved back into the fishbowl, they also sell soup now, and a brezel for 45 cents, good for the poor hungry student (eg. me), the necessity of a weekly assembly is gone, and next year we shall get better fieldtrips again. the this years one was horribly organised.

on the other side, the down sides, which mark iss life are still there: mr. t and my new "wonderful" tok teacher, a not (well) functioning student coucil, too much homework, too many assessments and the usual people you dont care much for seeing.

social life is much the same too. theres the ppl that drink and go out, and the ones that dont, and the americans. nothing really new. then endless on and off of couples: let me see, maddie and michael are going out, jeff has a gf in 10th grade, yannik and jule on their second run etc etc etc.

as for my own aspirations im still into medicine and of course dancing. I still am passionate about things i like and probably annoy everyone with it, and apart from a slight german diction reform (i weeded out most of the slang I hope) and a weird love life, its as you know me :). well to the last part I must add that fayes love life is definately much more interesting. Im not too keen on mine rumouring around school.

this time in a year im free(of school/to visit india). wow, rather scary thought(the schooll part).

I dance again

yesterday I went to ballet lessons in my dance club in ludwigsburg. My feet have been itching for the pirrouettes, the jumps, the excercises on the "stange", jsut as my body has yearned or complete control, form finertips, to body weight to non sticking out body parts, to head motions, everything has to be paid attetion to at once.
yes, i used to dance. i started before I can remember, i must have been 5 or 6 years old. I vaguely remmember my first ballet school, it was near to where ISS is now, but when the teacher changed, i went somewhere closer to home. of this i remember much, plastic fingernails, a new colour each week, pointing my arms, my stomach, my neck, my bum, correcting my heels to point forewards. then her voice, a slight foreign accent, and rather strict. she made the girls cry a couple of times, but not me, as far as i can remember. I was always good, never the best, but good. I stopped when I hit puberty. It was too much peer pressure saying ballet was stupid, i didnt like the other girls there, had no connection with them. thats something which i thnk i could now get along with, btu not insecure me at 12 years of age.
The ballet fever never rerally left me. it was my ballet teacher who encouraged my mum to buy me my first latin shoes, when we met her coincidentally downtown. On her advice from then, i started up dancing more intensely again, with the formation, and now im back where i started: ballet.
Its scary to realise how much i have forgotten. the french names of the excercises sound familiar though, in a really good way. my new teacher, male, american and also with a foreign accent noticed that. yesterday, when i sneaked into the beginners group, and then watched the advanced one, he called me over and told me my body was good for ballet. I was happy, even more so as it seems like i will be better than an S class latin dancer, who started with me yesterday. im still rubbish at latin, so that gave me a bit of an ego boost.
so lets see where it gets me. I enjoyed the almost empty class (5 including me, 4 in the advanced class), which means everyone can be paid special attention to and left with the promise of coming by next week as well.

india on big screen: a movie review

a few hours ago i watched slumdog millionare.

It is like a greek tragedy: the story is known. an indian boy who lived in the slums wins at who wants to be a millionaire. but as my language teachers repeat like an ancient magic formula, its not what you write but how you do it, the suspense, the empathy, the "leserlenkung". slumdog millionaire fulfills this basic sucess formula. take a story that can be told in a sentence and make it somehting special.

I remember a few scenes where i turned to my accompaniment in horror, disgust, i just couldnt see it, didnt dare to see what i knew was coming: misery, torture, pain hurt. the movie has a strong undertone of what reality is like for "poor" people or people that arent as priviledges as we are. it surely contains all the above: loosing loved ones, hunger, interrogation, child labour, dirt. ...ouch.but its good that an entertainment movie talks about this.
of course slumdog millionainre is not the first, blood diamond, hotel ruanda, seven years in tibet etc, etc,etc. but for me slumdog millionaire has a take home message. i just have to work out what it means for me, but ill have the night to sleep over it.

then theres the touching scenes. the other part of the movie; a love story worthy of a huge bollywood export hit, and truely touching scenes.
one of the ones that sticks out goes somethign like this:, the protagonists favourite movie star is coming to his slum. of course like all the others he wants to go see him, but hes been locked up in the bathroom...shitplace or whatever the propper term is, by his older brother for taking too much time. he sruggles to get out but cant. what does he do? hes faced with the decision, shit and moviestar, or no shit and no moviestar. he takes the shit.

all is blended in with some great pictures of a very different place from here, the typical head nod which i couldnt destinuish fron a no until i realised it actually meant yes, the atmosphere of violence, dirt, tension comes across. so if you havent already, this is a movie well worth spending half your weekly pocket money on.

picture from http://dansemacabre.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/slumdog-millionaire-poster-full-1.jpg

avalanche

whilst pragathi over there was charming india (or at least bangalore) with her amazing english accent, I was out of the country once again- skiing with my mum in austria, in a pretty touristy place called ischgl.

driving there through a winding mountain road that sllthered its way through the valleys of giants, Ischgl was the second to last village before the high alpine road, which was not open due to snow.

the weather was wonderful. the right moutainside had no snow at all, at least not at 1300m (but surely above 1600m+). the left mountainside which was the one we skiied on, was still well covered in the white fluff.

you know that I dont especially like snow. it wet and sticks to you, is freezing cold and melts to a mush in your boots, down your back (if some ideot dared to do that) and well basically everywhere it gets. no usually snow really is not cool. but my attitude changes once im on the two long planks called skis. I all the sudden adore snow, find it the best possible invention ever and curse the spots its melted away from.

Ischgl was a completely touristy place: 4 star hotels basically made out the entire village. après ski bars lined all roads etc etc. cheese and getting money everywhere. but the pists for skiing were wonderful. great snow, nice and wide "highways" where you really could get nice speed,sun, and a big area which went over at least 5 valleys.

needless to say i enjoyed it, despite my slight sunburn on my forehead which came from not using any sunscreen...bad idea. travelling with mum is still great, (and cheap for me) and shes a plesant companion(most of the time;). plus shes also a pretty good skiier and has a car. two big bonus points. and no i dind not get covered in an avalanche. but so many had come down in the valley this winter that they were inevitable to notice-i even climed on one (without skiis).

on air!!!!!!!!!!!!

it was almost a dream..so exciting and pretty cool. it was just like any other day, got up early, walked around in a trance till my glass of bournvita (indian choco drink) jolted me to my senses, went to my door, shut the door and started studying.

i put on the radio, got fed up of why boron was a very inmportant element (some serious bore on stuff). so i sent radio 1 a message saying i wanted this song and that dedicated to this and that..and then i sent answers to a question on one of the only movies i have seen for a long time. hardly was i expecting it and then she called ---the RJ FROM RADIO 1!!!!!!!How COOOOL---!!!!

But somehow only to be a tad disappointed. She puts me on air for a show called Dosti Fatafat (roughly translated to FAst Friendship or something on those lines). basically a girl (or guy) asks a whacky question and the guys try to impress and then she exchanges phone numbers and you can become friends.. Well, the thing was she kinda called me at the wrong time when i was about to go and eat lunch. biut how could i refuse. it was the CHANCE...so we had a conversation,..sort of interesting. but i really couldn't scream or jump up and down with excitement cos my mom was just outside wondering how long i would be on the phone. so the disappointing thing was that i didn't sound all that excited (actually mayb even a little morose). so teh question of the day was

If you were to compare a mother-in-law(saas) and daughter-in-law(bahu) to a vegetable which ones would it be?

Point no 1 she gave me the topic
POint no 2 she gave me the question and askes me to ask it
Point no 3 if she had given me some time, i could have come up with an original question, mayb not quite as good but still..
Point no 4 it felt BOGUS!!!!!!!!!

anyways some guy called teja came on air and compared saas to potato and bahu to beetroot. they are good when cooked seperately but a disaster when mixed. i think the guy had a pretty good imagination (i hope the RJ didn't tell him t tell that..i don't think so). so we came on air again and talked again. and that was it. no contact with that guy again. no phone no. exchanged as promised on air (not that i've the time 4 tat)... but after all i came on air. AWWWWESome..(now i actually respect an RJs job, it's pretty difficult to handle people like me on air. you did a good job pavithra)


so that was one differnt thing that happened in my monotonous life.Since im learning physics right now, id like to add...

my life (right now) is like a monochromatic light, while yours julia is the visible spectrum...

apart from this my life is a constant rush, rush to the auto stand, rush to classes, rush to catch the bus, rush to college, rush to the phone, and sorry have to rush again..mums calling..!!!

pragathi.

sushi with lassi and hummus

I have gone to ISS for a very long time. If anybody knows what ISs stands for or what it should stand for then its me: commitment, diversity and openmindedness. these should be the true values of ISS society.

Sadly enough some recent people at the top of things messed this special spirit up a bit, but its slowly resurfacing. and even it the big guys do bullshit, there are always plenty of parents, kids and teachers willing to fight for their right to put in energy to make ISS life more enriching.

one very special event is the multicultural evening. In the past years it always was a performance paired with some food at the end of it. this year both the events got split up, and today was the food part. I helped in between piano classes with setting up, an d later of course with eating :) "julia you are a stomach!" was one of Blandine's remarks a couple of days ago. o:) yes I do eat a lot but its not that bad. I just adore food. especially indian food nad i havent had that in some time. so of course i raided the indian table as soon as i got there. I had mango lassi, and the infamous rice that had kept me alive, as well as the bread and chickpeas and samosas...it was all soooooo good. but i also had sushi, thai, hummus, chocolate "kisses", and at the end, a shotglass of red whine. and of course a handfull of henna. no multicultural evening without that.

I always love these events, you really notice whats in such a school like ours. a few parents bringing in some dish, setting up some tables and putting effort in decorations, and voila! a great evening, and one of the yearly recurring events i will always remember as being part of ISS.