Paralympics 2012: Meet the British Paraorchestra

 The Paralympics have, above all, shown the rest of us that there should no longer be any no-go areas for  those with disabilities, so it was entirely fitting that the climax of closing ceremony saw a newly-formed orchestra of 17 disabled musicians playing out the games as the flag was lowered over east London. So fitting, indeed, that it is hard to credit how hard conductor Charles Hazlewood had to fight to make sure it happened. But he did. “I was jumping up and down, shouting, knocking on doors, like crazy, but once
people started to listen to the idea, they got it immediately”.

Our first goal,” he continues,is to use the global platform of this event to create respect for disabled
musicians,to put a good idea out there to a world audience. I want every major city around the world to
look on and ask why it doesn’t have something similar. And then after that, through education, information and technology, I want to see every big orchestra in the world including performers with disabilities.”

The British Paraorchestra, then, is the first step on a journey that Hazlewood already has mapped out.
“I am not interested in creating a ghetto for disabled performers, but using this opportunity to lift
them up, enable them to take their rightful place.” And that is side-by-side with non-disabled musicians,
on equal terms.

The current almost complete absence of people with disabilities from orchestral ranks only really began
 to rankle with Hazlewood when he had a daughter, Eliza, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. It is not that he feels she is a precocious prodigy being held back from a dazzling career as a musician. “She’s only six,” he protests, “so I’m not making any extravagant claims”, though he does then add with a fatherly pride that Eliza “has a strong connection with music”.

Why can't musicians with disabilities compete at the highest levels, as we have seen sportsmen and women do? “Nobody with any intelligence,” he continues, “would now argue that there aren’t sportsmen and women with disabilities who can compete at the highest level. So why not musicians? Clearly they exist, but where are the platforms for them?

Link to the performance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu9CvbGJmss

Street corner to Corner office :How Jay-z built a $ 450 million empire

Some people think Jay-Z is just another rapper. Others see him as just another celebrity/mega-star. The reality is, no matter what you think Jay-Z is, he first and foremost a business. And as much as Martha Stewart or Oprah, he has turned himself into a lifestyle.

You can wake up to the local radio station playing Jay-Z's latest hit, spritz yourself with his 9IX cologne, slip on a pair of his Rocawear jeans, lace up your Reebok S. Carter sneakers, catch a Nets basketball game in the afternoon, and grab dinner at The Spotted Pig before heading to an evening performance of the Jay-Z-backed Broadway musical Fela! and a nightcap at his 40/40 Club. He'll profit at every turn of your day.

Jay-Z grew up splitting his time between peddling cocaine and rapping in his native Brooklyn. But by the time hip hop had grown into a popular musical genre -- and a powerful economic force -- he had solidified his position as one of its pioneers.

Early on, Jay-Z displayed an acumen for business. In 1994, unable to find a company to produce his debut records, Jay-Z, Damon Dash and a silent partner founded their own label, Roc-A-Fella Records. And when a distributor agreed to take on the album, he negotiated a deal to retain ownership of the master recordings.

In the late 1990s, he discovered that sales of Iceberg apparel rose after he began including references to them in his songs. But when he went to Iceberg and asked for an endorsement deal, the company demurred. Instead, he started his own apparel company, Rocawear. In 2006, Rocawwear was sold to a brand licensing company for $204 million.

There's been much more: a line of sneakers for Reebok, the 40/40 nightclub chain, an ad for Hewlett-Packard, and an interest in the hot New York City gastro pub, The Spotted Pig.
Jay-Z's tale is compelling not just because of his celebrity, but because it embodies the rags-to-riches American dream and is a model for any entrepreneur looking to build a commercial
empire.

Cooking Shows: India’s New Cult.

Food-related TV programmes have spawned a cooking cult in India, and many devotees are children. The third season of MasterChef Australia, which ended in November 2011, earned host channel Star World a 74 per cent market share in the General Entertainment Channels category.

TAM Media Research, an industry authorised organisation that tracks viewership, estimated that Chakh Le India had 5.5 million viewers from January 8 to April 7.

What with these shows and Zee Khana Khazana, several shows on Discovery Travel & Living, and the Food Food channel, Indian audiences' cup runneth over. Party conversations are peppered with names such as Nigella Lawson, Donna Hay and Gordon Ramsay.

What yeast does for dough, cooking shows are doing for middle-class Indians' awareness about exotic food.

Rising awareness is spurring culinary adventures. Far from being armchair chefs, many viewers are invading that former fiefdom of the matriarch and the maharaj - the kitchen. The more avid among them are seeking out workshops and classes to beef up their cooking skills.

Given rising demand, many who have culinary chops are venturing into teaching. Cooking classes are thriving, thanks to the enthusiasm stirred up by TV chefs.

Clearly, TV audiences today are a hungry mob.

Credit: http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/cooking-shows-get-popular-with-indias-next-generation/1/187161.html

Image credit: http://www.startv.in/shows.asp?channel_id=3&serialid=354

Fluffy, white Idlis: There's more to it than Rice!

That plate of fluffy ‘Idli'  may have been cooked with rice bought at a neighbourhood store. Probably, the rice was cultivated and milled a few hundred kilometres from where you are sitting. But, someone sitting in far-away London might have been responsible for ensuring the lily-white colour and softness of the ‘idli' on the plate.

Yes. That someone in London is monitoring online the high-tech equipment at the rice mill closer to home. Even as the paddy is processed into rice, the quality is being monitored continuously from the remote location and suggestions are given online to make the required changes here.

The place is Manachanallur, about 25 km from Tiruchi. Mr B. Rajantran, Managing Director, Rice Land Agro Food Pvt Ltd, is showing around the mill, a Rs 26-crore unit, the largest in Tamil Nadu.

At Rice Land, operations are automated. The milling machine is from a Brazilian manufacturer, Zaccaria, the driers are from Thailand and the Sortex Z+, based on German technology, which ensures only grains of a uniform quality get into the bag, is from London, he says. The Sortex Z+ is connected by modem to the supplier's office in London, says Mr Rajantran.

Use of an array of technology involving high resolution cameras, sensors and infrared technology scanners ensures that only the finest white grains of rice pass muster. All else like broken grains, immature grains, bran, yellowed, chalky or red grains or the stray bit of husk do not get through.

Credit:  http://www.thehindubusinessline.in/2010/08/16/stories/2010081650830100.htm

Image credit:  http://newsfox.in/2011/09/05/south-indian-famous-dish-spicy-idli/.

The White Economy: Story of 1,000 Idli makers in Mumbai.

Pottery and leather, we know, but 700 of Dharavi's families are behind 3,00,000 idlis feeding Mumbai's appetite each day

It's 3.30 am, and Dharavi's 90 Feet Road is in no mood to wind down. The streetfood stalls are ready to down shutters after Sehri, the last meal Muslims eat before the break of fajr or dawn during the month of Ramzan. But for its 1,000-odd idli makers, it's time to move.

The alleys that crisscross this 557-acre intricate area, lined by 15x15 feet kholis, go from dark to glowing as tubelights flare up in successive shanties. Inside, men who only use their first names - Chella, Chinna, Murugan, Karpan — bow to a gigantic aluminium steamer, and light up their stoves.

Between 500 to 700 families that live in over 60,000 structures, several of them caboose-like, earn their living by making idlis and vadas, every South Indian's staple breakfast. Each home whips up a minimum of 400 steaming, fluffy rice cakes every day. A household with two or three men could take that number up to 1,000.

That's nearly 3 lakh idlis leaving the shantytown, wedged between Sion and Mahim, on trains along the Central, Western and Harbour lines to satiate Mumbai's workforce.

This community is easily recognised by what they carry on their heads — a large aluminium vessel with idlis snuggled inside. Fastened to it with a fat industrial-strength rubberband are smaller stainless steel containers carrying coconut chutney and sambhar, a heap of paper plates, and an inimitable horn that announces the idliwalla's arrival in a neighbourhood.

Credit: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-06/food-reviews/33064390_1_idlis-chutney-batter

Image credit: Cafe Idly.

A Dieter's Best Friend: Idli…..

 Low on calories and easy to digest, the Southern Classic,  Idli.

SOUTHERN DELIGHTS Idlis are amongst the few foods today that are healthy and low in calories.

Idlis with sambar and coconut chutney make for the Classic South Indian breakfast or Tiffin . South Indians tend to be particular about their idlis. The steamed rice-lentil preparation must neither be too fluffy nor too rubbery, neither too fermented nor too flat.

Three big Idlis (100 gm) contain around 130 calories. This is an astonishingly low number of calories for any dish. The rice and lentils complement each other: one makes up for the amino acids deficient in the other.

Since Idlis are fermented and then steamed, the soft, fluffy white patties are among the most easily digestible of foods. The Idli's easy digestibility makes it an ideal food for infants, the elderly and the convalescing.

However, Idlis can be too easy to digest for some people. Diabetics, for example, need low glycaemic index foods like chapatis and whole wheat bread rather than Idlis for breakfast. Fibre-rich foods and whole grains are digested slowly and release glucose at a slow and steady rate into the bloodstream.

If you are on a diet, the Idli is one of your best friends.

Credit: http://www.hindu.com/mp/2006/09/12/stories/2006091200750400.htm

Image credit: Cafe Idly.

Dark Knight Rises composer on creating Gotham Citys ominous sonic landscape

Before Christopher Nolan shot the first scene of The Dark Knight Rises, composer Hans Zimmer, who scored the soundtrack along with James Newton Howard for the first two films in the director’s Batman trilogy was hard at work creating the music for its final installment. It was a new process for the Oscar-winning Zimmer. “Chris quite rightly accuses me of putting the ‘pro’ in procrastination,” Zimmer tells. “So I just thought I’ll beat him at the game.” To that end, Zimmer wrote a 25-minute suite for the film’s villain, Bane, before ever seeing a reel of film.

 A much-debated aspect of the film has centered on whether Nolan’s depiction of Bane(the film’s villain) tricking Gotham’s 99 percent into revolting against the rich is a statement against Occupy Wall Street.  Zimmer believes that, if anything, this particular aspect of the film is merely a byproduct of the director being attuned to the current cultural climate. “All good filmmakers have a sense of zeitgeist and Chris definitely does,” he says. “Most of the good filmmakers I know are always interested in posing questions as opposed to providing answers.” Zimmer adds that issues of social oppression and rebellion are deeply  rooted in history; he says that he, Nolan and the director’s co-screenwriter and brother, Jonathan, read Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities as inspiration during filming.

Above all, Zimmer believes the biggest accomplishment in completing the trilogy is that the relationships among its creators have remained positive and intact. “Chris managed to keep this family of filmmakers together and we still love each other’s company,” he says, proudly. “Eight years of our life, seconds are ticking away. So you might as well work with people that you love.”

The composer has had little time, however, to bask in his achievement: he’s already in the development stages of the score for the Nolan-written and Zack Snyder-directed Superman epic, Man of Steel. ”I asked everybody to not talk to me about it until we finished  ’Batman,’” he says, “and I was good enough to say after I wrote the last note [of The Dark Knight Rises] that I’d written the last note. In 15 minutes they were talking to me about Man of Steel. I had a 15-minute break.” As for where he’s at in the writing process for the film, set for release next summer? “I’m searching,” he says. “Which is what you’re supposed to do. None of this ever comes easy to me. Right now I’m just humbled before the task. I’ve seen [the film]. That’s the other problem. Zack has done a great job so that makes it even more daunting.”

Zimmer’s fans,should enjoy the soundtrack and appreciate the new elements that he’s brought to the
table for Nolan’s final venture with the Caped Crusader

here is the sample of the soundtrack.