After 30, part 2

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a music project by a friend of mine about life after 30. After hearing the song and reading his blog, I got into contact with him and managed to blag my way onto the second part of his project. I recorded a couple of words about being 30-something, sent it via email and now you can hear it in the second part (I'm not telling what I said or which voice I am, you can figure that out easily).

Whereas the first part was more prog-rock-ish, the second one sounds a bit like being at a rave. He says that the influences were Kraftwerk and Brian Eno but for the younger-at-heart generation it's more New Order or perhaps even DJ Tiesto :D. I can imagine myself dancing drunkenly in a big club at 4am to this song.

Get the second part here.

M25

Last Thursday and Friday I had to go to London for work. The office is located very close to Heathrow, so logically I had to fly in to Gatwick. From Gatwick I rented a car to drive all the way to Heathrow and back. I just asked for a small economy car from Avis and got a Peugeot 207. Nice car but it feels too light and they haven't got the legs-to-arm ratio for the driver correct (my legs weren't fully stretched to reach the pedals but my arms were at full stretch - resulting in an uncomfortable driving position).

To drive from Gatwick to Heathrow and back you have to take the famous M25. This is the ringroad highway that circles around London. So I had the nice experience of driving in the morning on the M25. Traffic jams and all. Trucks and BMWs. Motorbikes and speed cameras. Luckily I found XFM on the radio to keep me company.

For some reason the driving reminded me of Jakarta. Driving on that side of the road. The traffic jams. The traffic jams. The traffic jams. Oh well, at least I didn't have to do the cross-London marathon on trains this time.

As for the weekend, the weather was crap. Sunday morning was overcast, then warm, then suddenly rain, hail, then sun, rain again with temperatures fluctuating a lot. Too difficult to be playing in the mud outside.

Babel

I finally watched Babel yesterday. I have to say that the movie is pretty impressive.

In the bible, the story of the Tower of Babel is about people trying to built a tower that will reach up to the sky. God told them to piss off and created languages so that these people couldn't work together to build that tower. Not sure why God was pissed off, but voila, the bible said so.

In this movie, a gun given to a Moroccan hunter guide by a Japanese created consequences for an American family and their illegal Mexican nanny. It all stems from miscommunication and misunderstanding. But over the course of the movie, all those conflicts are actually making the people involved closer to the ones they were bickering with before.

I can't write too much about it without giving too much away, in case you haven't seen it. And if you haven't seen it, go watch it.

On another note, this morning must be one of my unluckiest ones. I tried to fix my vespa tyre with a quick fix solution but ended up with a flat tyre and lots of rubber mousse on my fingers instead. Then I grabbed my bike and realised it also had a flat tyre. So I had to walk the 10 minutes to work instead. How annoying!

After 30

Thirty is mostly seen as the age where some people tend to have an identity crisis. Ok, maybe not an identity crisis, but a crisis nonetheless. What to do with life when you're thirty?

A friend of mine asked a couple of his friends about being 30 and what it means to them. He recorded the interviews and then made some music (or the other way around). The result: an 11-minute song where you can hear "the fear of being over 30".

Except for some guitar bits, he did everything himself. He's the best musician I personally know. Even a better musician than all those manufactured pop idols. If only he had the marketability of a pop idol, he probably would have a different crisis after 30.

Get the song here (most bits are in Indonesian and so is his blog).

Flood

That's the effect of exponential city growth, lack of proper infrastructures, forest and tree cutting, tons of waste, pollution, rising sea level, global warming, poor city management, and a clueless city governor (and maybe an angry God?).

Hope it all clears out soon and it doesn't happen again (although I have my doubts).

For more pictures, get it here from the beeb.