2020 on The Field Blog

My John Doe of songs

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 12:00:00 +0530

Three times in the last two years, I have spent hours finding a single song. I didn’t remember the lyrics, the music, or even the singer’s name. What I remembered was the feelings I had attached to the song. My “want” for the same feeling has led me to spend over 12 hours on three attempts to find the same piece. The most recent adventure, full of frustration, took place on 27 July 2020, when it took me 6 hours overnight to finally listen to Tere Bin by Rabbi Shergill. The first search was because I hadn’t heard the song in years. After finding it, I saved it in a playlist on YouTube. The second one was when I deleted all my YouTube data without exporting or saving it beforehand. I added it again to YouTube because Spotify didn’t have it in its library. The third search happened soon after, also deleting both YouTube and Spotify and moving on to Apple Music. Sadly, they do not have it in their library either. This time, I saved the YouTube link in my browser’s bookmarks because at least that’s one thing I make sure to export before changing browsers. The third time was really tiring. At 1:30 am, out of nowhere, my desire for the song made me start searching for it. I kept searching for it till 5:45 am without any success. I went for a walk and fell asleep. When I woke up, I somehow finally had one super tiny part of the music in my brain. I again kept searching. After 6 hours of browsing the Wikipedia pages of all Bollywood movies between 2000 and 2006, I finally found the song again! If I had gone through the list for 2007 early on, I would have found the page for the movie Delhii Heights , where the song was used. I still can’t believe I spent so much time looking for a song. Only if I showed such determination or a desire to do something in life. Though at the end, I found my piece and got to read about over 1,000 Bollywood movies. That was like going back down memory lane. Some of those movies were the first ones I ever watched. Some of the actors have died, too. Even with all the frustration, it felt good to have got to know more about them all. And of course, when I finally heard the song, I had a rare moment of celebrating the completion of a process. Usually, I love the process and hate the end. I do love Rabbi Shergill’s music. I have been listening to a lot of his songs on repeat in the past month.

Townscaper is different

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 12:00:00 +0530

Prison Architect and Airport CEO are the only two games I have bought on Steam before last week. Townscaper became the third game I have ever bought, or should I say, the first digital toy I have ever bought. No kidding, Oskar Stålberg, the creator, has dubbed it an instant town-building toy. I don’t think anyone would ever argue against that description. There is an irregular grid over which you can build island towns using the different coloured blocks. Blocks interact with each other automatically in various ways based on the underlying algorithm. I guess the algorithm is what makes this ~~game~~ toy’s core.

Changing trains at every station

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 12:00:00 +0530

This is going to be one of the worst analogies you will ever come across. Imagine yourself travelling on the Delhi Metro. 253 stations represent a long list of things you can do in your life, and the list keeps on increasing after every few years. Of course, you are just a traveller and have no control over when new stations are added. It is the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation that takes care of that. They add new stations whenever they think there is a need. Or in our case, a new list of things that can be done in life.