My first post of 2010

So I suppose the correct way to start off my first post of the new year would be to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

I had logged onto my WordPress console a short while ago, intent on writing a post about what I had done for New Years, and how 2o1o was shaping up for me so far. Then I saw the “Upgrade to WordPress 2.9″ button, and went for the automatic upgrade. As I was planning on removing procrastination from my life as much as possible, I figured that I would go ahead and upgrade first. Imagine my surprise when it didn’t work!!  This is the error that I received:

Could not copy file: /public_html/blog/wp-content/upgrade/wordpress-2.9/wordpress/wp-comments-post.php

I tried running the upgrade again, thinking that maybe it was a temporary issue. Alas, that didn’t work. So I Googled the error message and came across a site that had encountered the same error for a WordPress 2.8.5 upgrade. His solution – just manually deactivate all your Plugins and then try it again. Could the solution be that simple? Well, there was only one way to find out – and so here I am, blogging on WordPress 2.9 )

My thanks to Metalpigs blog for posting that – made my upgrade a lot simpler! If you would like to check out the article that I referenced above, then please click here.

Now, onto the New Year.

I may or may not have mentioned this before, but my friends have formed a group, a quintet as it were, and they sing songs at restaurants – mostly Bollywood hits, but some “golden oldies” too. The name of the group is G-RaZZ, and please don’t ask me what it means, because I have either forgotten, and it means nothing. So G-RaZZ were booked to sing at a local Indian restaurant’s New Year’s eve bash. My role in the group is just support – I created their website, their Facebook page, and perform roadie style tasks – setup and dismantling their equipment, as well as looking after the sound during their performances (or at least attempting to!)

The party was a blast! In addition to my friends singing, the restaurant (Sitar India Palace in Durham) had also hired a belly dancer, who put on quite the show! I must admit that it was my first belly dancing performance (viewing not performing), but I thought that she did a great job – from the applause that she received, the audience loved her too! Her name was Sara Beaman, and you can visit her website here.

The guys started playing around 8:45pm, but unlike our earlier shows, people were dancing by around 9:15pm. We had over 3 hours of material ready, but it felt like it went a lot quicker than that. The crowd were very much into the music, and I think that the selection that we had chosen appealed to the entire audience. Knowing very few words of Hindi (the language in which most of the songs were sung), I can’t tell you what most of the songs were about – specifically – but the themes (as I have been told), were things that most of us can relate to – friendship, family and most of all, love!

Other than a few hiccups with the sound (as I said earlier, I try my best!), the program went off without a hitch. I took a lot of photographs, and it was an night that was enjoyed by all! We were done playing by around 12:30am or so, and then we had some dinner (we were starving at that point, and the food that was provided didn’t disappoint!), followed by the arduous task of putting all our equipment away. I got home around 2:30am or so, but found that I couldn’t sleep. Sometimes you get to that point when you are really tired, too tired in fact, to do anything. Especially sleep! So I stayed up and watched TV for a while, and then went to bed around 5am. All in all, a great New Year!

As to what I have done since then, well, I’ve had two game nights at my friend Girish’s house. The first night we played a new version of Clue – some sort of spy version – which I really liked. It was fast paced, didn’t require too much setup, and was an enjoyable game. We followed that by a few games of Fifa 10 with my friends Girish and Strat – enjoyed that too. The next game night was slightly different – while we did end up playing Fifa 10 at the end of the night, we played a board game called Power Grid. It was a lot more complicated, but was also very enjoyable. You can read about that game here.

That brings us to today – Sunday.

Well, today I went to see my friends Sonali and Uttam, and their baby daughter Reva. I haven’t spent much time with Reva after she was born, mostly because I had this nagging cold that I was unable to get rid of. Actually, I still haven’t been able to rid myself of this cold, but it has come down to the point where it no longer bothers me – as much! It was good to see her, and boy has she grown! It was nice to catch up with my friends, and Uttam and I took a drive to BJs to do some shopping. We were trying to do some comparison to Sam’s Club, but were unable to come up with a clear winner. I guess my Sam’s Club is closer and seems to be bigger. Oh, and they sell petrol cheaper than most places – normally!

After I came back, I watched the end of David Tennant’s role as the Doctor in Doctor Who. I was sad to see him go, as I felt (as did most people apparently) that he was by far the best Doctor. I haven’t seen anything that the new guy (Matt Smith) has been in, but only time will tell if he will do any justice to the role. Doctor Who has been around for many years, and while I originally loved Christopher Eccleston, I really felt that David Tennant nailed the role. I will write a separate post about Doctor Who. Allons y!

After that I saw a movie called Bangkok Dangerous – not the original, but the remake from 2008 with Nicholas Cage (when he owned all of his houses). The movie was ok, nothing special.

So it’s now 12:16am, and I am typing this while a movie called “The Mod Squad” is playing on the so called idiot box. This movie too is just ok – nothing special. I think that I have to go to the theatre and finally watch something really good like “Avatar” or maybe even “Sherlock Holmes”. Now that people are back to work and school from today, I guess I could go and watch them in relative peace!

So I will end this post with one more “Happy New Year!”

I hope that 2010 brings you nothing but happiness and prosperity.

Here’s a song that I really like – it’s by a singer called James Carrington, and it’s called “Ache”. I hope that you enjoy it.

Peace!