Melodies

Summer Wine

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Chiquitita

Queen

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Good Old Indian Rock

Enjoy Gary Lawyer, the Indian veteran of rock music...

Autumn Colours

On a short stroll after lunch near the office, we happened to see these beautiful views. Thanks to the handy camera facility in the phone, I could capture them.



These places, normally lush green, look more scenic thanks to the fall colors.

Recreation

What can be a more entertaining pastime than a good sport, that we get to play easily around the place we stay. Basel, has many TT tables placed in various parks all across the city. The tables are of stones and of the kinds which cannot be moved, the permanent ones. It's a good weekend pastime activity to go a play TT for a couple of hours.



Also TT being my favorite game, among the ones I play, I really relish these times. It's indeed great fun. The beauty of these parks adds to the pleasure. Especially now that in the fall season, the view of the park is simply amazing, where we regularly play.



I miss these facilities definitely in India!

Pleasure of Driving..

I am glad that I am getting drive the good cars on the good roads of this country! It has always been a pleasure for me to drive long distances on these freeways, better known as Motorways here in Switzerland. Though the legal speed limits are 100kmph, most people drive at around 120kmph with occasional spurts of speeds upto 140kmph. The impeccable quality of roads allow such speeds without any problems.

Even at these speeds, I sometimes felt left out at times when a biker went past at speeds higher than what I was driving at. While I carefully negotiated the curves at 120kmph, it was odd to find the biker zip past us and disappear ahead of us in a few seconds.

Car Rental is a great facility to have. And I am glad that we get good cars out for rent. For the first time here, I was forced to rent a car with manual transmission, as the automatic ones were all taken. As I wasn't comfortable with the gears in a left-hand-drive car, I was skeptical. But I enjoyed the experience when I actually drove it. I was even surprised to see the cruise-control feature working well with a manual-transmission car!

Well, the country is so small that we can drive from the north tip (Basel) to south tip (Lugano-Chiasso) in less than 4 hours...

Life in Europe

I had heard about the slow pace of life in Europe. I am getting to see it now. Everyone believes in leading a relaxed life. Even people who own businesses in the cities. They don't care for the extra business they may have by keeping their shops for a longer time during the day. Most shops close by 6pm. It is hard to digest this practice after seeing other places that had plenty of shops that were open 24hours.
I guess, the shopkeepers have their right to lead a relaxed life too.

Even at work, there is always somebody who has gone on a long vacation(of a few weeks to a few months). Especially now, since it is summer and it is about to end. It is so hard for us to even imagine such a thing, considering the way things work back home. Although I would love to do so too...

System of a Down

Although I have reduced listening to hard rock in the recent months, a recent encounter of songs by the band "System of a down", has revived my interest again. This band, of all the newer ones, are unique, very distinct. They may seem quite hard for an onlooker, but they have a unique blend of melody, interspersed with very heavy riffs.

Their album 'Mesmerize' has many good songs. Very experimental music according to me. And the lyrics too are supposed to be relevant to many of the current issues. Proves that orderly noise can be heard as music too!

Fresh Attempt

Attempting at blogging again.. let's see how it goes this time!