While aspects such as your choice of apparel, cuisine etc can be attributed to the maturity you gain over the years, I don’t think any such explanation exists for a person’s musical taste. Or at least, there is none that I know of.

Since the time I first gained exposure to music, I’ve listened to numerous artistes. Some of them became instant favourites while the others faded away from my memory instantly. Today, I find that my choice in music has evolved (or devolved, depending on your point of view) to such an extent that I can hardly imagine myself listening to artistes that used to be my idols only a few years ago.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I used to be a huge fan of boy-bands such as Boyzone, Backstreet Boys, Blue and Westlife, back when they were all the rage. That was largely due to the airtime provided to these bands by the music channels on TV. Owning a cassette (yup, CDs were way too expensive then) of these bands used to be a sort of status symbol and ensured that you were always in demand. Those were the days…

Then, I moved on to Linkin Park, whose mania lasted for a little over 3 years. After that, came the lostprophets, Green Day, Franz Ferdinand et al. The next phase in my musical journey saw A Static Lullaby, As I Lay Dying and Finch take over my headphones. And right now, I’m mostly listening to Daughtry and Fightstar.

So what makes me reminisce over these things now?

The reason is, the Backstreet Boys are gonna be performing live in Bangalore on the 21st of this month. This could be my only opportunity to see my one-time favourite band in person, on stage. So now I’m mulling over whether to attend the gig or not, considering that I’ll probably have to go alone since most of us have spunked our cash on our weekend trip to Coorg. The tickets are not exactly dirt-cheap at Rs.1000 apiece, but that is a fair price to pay to see your boyhood favourites, right?

I’ll see if I can entice someone to part with his dough, and if I can’t get someone to take along, I’ll probably go solo (or not go at all, depending on what my mind tells me then).

So if you’re in Bangalore/Delhi and have fond memories of the band, do go and watch them live. It’ll surely be ‘larger then life’.

Chelsea are up against Burnley from the second tier of English football, who will no doubt be looking to do a Barnsley. After all, the giant-killers Barnsley beat Liverpool at Anfield and Chelsea as well, to reach the semi-finals of The FA Cup last year. Maybe Barnsley had Lady Luck tied up in the luggage compartment of their team bus, but that’s no excuse for taking a lower-league opponent lightly.

I’ll expect Mr. Scolari to field a strong team, with a mix of youth and experience. Drogba is likely to start after bidding farewell to the medical staff, who must be having their hands full these days. I hope Ivanovic starts as well; the poor lad hasn’t put a foot wrong and still can’t get a game! And please, oh please, give Di Santo some time on the pitch. Apart from these, I don’t expect wholesale changes to the Chelsea lineup.

As for the result, barring a calamity of gigantic proportions (a fancy phrase for complacency), we should win this one comfortably.

P.S. – Those who can’t watch the game on TV, tune into a stream of your choice from here.

Anger is not an emotion I normally associate with a Chelsea defeat. Usually it’s bitter disappointment coupled with an unwavering optimism that we’ll bounce back stronger. However, the events that occured on matchday 4 of the UEFA Champions League left me fuming. And it was not just because of the defeat or even the match entirely. Allow me to explain.

In India, the rights for Champions League matches are allotted to Ten Sports and Zee Sports. Now these two channels are like the poor cousins of ESPN-Star Sports, and have to survive on whatever little coverage of European football they are allowed to broadcast in the Indian subcontinent. And how grateful I am, that it’s only a ‘little’. The reasons for this are plenty – poor presentation, lousy commentators (barring a few times when Andy Gray & Martin Tyler commentate), ignorant TV pundits. The list goes on. But the biggest gripe is their shameful bias towards Liverpool and Manchester United. On matchdays, 90% of the time they’ll be showing live mgames of these two teams, while other matches are either delayed or shown Live on Zee Sports. Zee Sports being the poorer of the poor cousins, is not available on my Tata Sky DTH service and hardly any cable operator carries this channel.

So here I was, my DTH box connected to the PC, tuned in to Ten Sports, watching the pre-match scenes at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. They had earlier told us that Liverpool vs Atletico is on Zee Sports, so it was only logical to conclude that Ten Sports will be showing Roma vs Chelsea. You can imagine my surprise when the host informed the viewers, with a sheepish grin I may add, that there’s been a mistake and Roma vs Chelsea is on Zee Sports.

That wasn’t in the script!

Thankfully, I’d noticed a few days ago while channel-surfing, that my cable operator was carrying Zee Sports. I swiftly unplugged the DTH box from my PC and attached the cable wire in its place. A few minutes and adjustments later, I was all set for the match.

However, it just wasn’t going to be my day. At half-time, I left my chair to get myself some refreshments, hoping we’d be able to overturn the 1-0 deficit in the second half. When I returned, i was greeted by a black screen.

What the hell happened?? Arrrghhh!!!

As I switched to another channel, I feared the worst and thought that there must have been a power failure at the operator’s premises. That wasn’t the case. Other channels were there, only Zee Sports had gone missing!! Another channel scan yielded the same result. I’d been left stranded with a stupid cable connection that was of no use to me now.

As a last resort, I fired up my browser and went straight to Justin.tv, hoping they’d have a decent stream for the game. Guess what? They did. And what a stream it was. On my 256kbps connection, it was butter-smooth and re-buffered only 7-8 times during 45 minutes. If only the match had ended in our favour as well.

So what are my views about the match?

• First, we need a proper striker who won’t go missing in crucial matches. Anelka was nothing if not anonymous during the game.
• A genuine pacy winger is a must-buy in January. Letting Robinho slip from under our noses feels worse with each bad result.
• Mikel, who has been a revelation this season, had a poor game. First he sold Deco short with a pass, causing the Portuguese to foul Totti. The freekick led to the opening goal for Roma. Then, he lost the ball which led to another goal.

• Carvalho’s absence in the defence is telling. Alex does not offer the same pace and mobility as Carvalho does.
• We lack a Plan-B. Sometimes we are too predictable – full-backs will go forward, swing in crosses into the box. Lather, rinse, repeat.
• The referee had a bad game. Deco’s second yellow was pretty harsh. The ref also missed a couple of dives from the Italian team.

This 3-1 loss is the worst defeat Chelsea have suffered under Scolari so far. That said, I still think we’ll top the group and make it comfortably into the last-16 of the Champions League. I just hope the next time it’s a European night, I don’t have to go through this kind of ordeal again.

It’s been around long enough, but I got a taste of it only a couple of days ago. Internet TV actually lets you watch television on your computer using the Internet, for free or for a small fee. In my case it was free, as in free beer. Now you’d think why would someone want to watch TV through the Internet when you can just watch it on the… err.. TV!

According to me, this kind of service is pretty nifty if you don’t get a particular channel in your country, such as in India we don’t receive Sky, Fox etc. Being a football lover, the off-season brings a lot of boredom with it. The only notable sports channels that broadcast the beautiful game in these parts are ESPN & Star Sports but even they don’t show any pre-season friendly matches. As things stood, I was getting bored to death waiting for the new season to start, until I stumbled upon  my saviour – www.justin.tv. The site is one of several Internet TV sites on the web, offering a collection of channels catering to different tastes like sports, news, technology and a lot more. Eureka!!!

It took me just a couple of minutes to find a channel that was broadcasting the match I was looking for, so that was pretty easy. But alas, in my excitement I’d all but forgotten about my pathetic excuse of a broadband connection. It offers me a blazing speed of 256 Kbps which, sadly, didn’t seem enough to sustain a constant video stream. The streaming would be interrupted after every few minutes while the data was being buffered, with a message ‘Not Broadcasting’ written across the top of the screen. Beggars can’t be choosers though, and I had to settle with whatever was on offer.

Twiddling my thumbs while the buffer refills...

But then again, in this age of HD video output, the quality of this broadcast was downright pathetic. I tried other channels to check if it was a problem with this particular channel, but there wasn’t too much of a difference. Instead, I started getting more slowdowns due to the better quality. Switched back to the old channel. To give you an example of what it was like, at times I couldn’t make out where the ball was. The players looked like sprites made up using an 8-bit palette, in full-screen mode.

Reminds me of my 8-bit gaming console of yesteryears...

Inspite of all this, it was quite fun actually. Sometimes it’s refreshing to rewind back to the days before HD, 1080p and what-not. Getting to see a channel that will probably never get aired in India, and that too for free, is quite fulfilling in itself. Overall, I got what I wanted and I was more than satisfied.

Maybe someday I’ll be streaming a live broadcast in full HD on my 100 Mbps Internet connection… I can dream, can’t I?