Watching TV on TV

First of all, thank you to everyone who’s still reading and/or following this blog despite my recent negligence and laziness to post anything new, even after my vow to post at least every Sunday, if not more often. I’ve hardly been online recently because the easiest thing to do after getting back from work late in the evening is lie in bed, turn on the telly, and doze off at some point.

Secondly, about the title: I'm talking about watching The Voice on television. After several shows with mostly average contestants, mean judges, intense melodrama, and bitchiness in the air, it’s nice to have one with great contestants and judges, healthy competition, and a positive approach.

The concept of blind auditions is wonderful, and the talent was amazing. I don’t know if it’s because all the singers were people who were selected for callbacks, or also because the show was well edited, but either way, the lack of terrible singers was a nice change (although terrible ones also have the potential to be the most amusing and entertaining).

Then there were the coaches. Ah, Adam Levine!

I think there were three others too.

Okay, I'm not that enamored by him. I loved all the judges. I was most excited about Christina Aguilera being one of them because she’s been one of my favourite artists ever since I first heard her. I’ve always loved her, and I always will, no matter what people may say about her unnecessary runs and slutty make-up and all that jazz.

Cee Lo is someone I liked as an artist, but I was pleasantly surprised at how nice he seemed as a person. I didn’t expect much depth from someone as blingy as him, but I was wrong. Blake, to be honest, is someone I hadn’t heard of before the show, but I loved him too, the main reason being the Papa Bear kind of pride and love he had for his contestants (although I did find it really strange when he said “Dia reminds me of my wife”. And Adam, well… HOT!

I’ll skip to the final four contestants, because I’ll have way too much in here if I have to rewind even one step back. Javier and Beverly I loved right from the blind audition stage. Dia is someone I liked to a point but then started to find slightly annoying, although I can’t deny that she really knows how to make a song fabulous. Vicci Martinez is someone I noticed in the blind audition because when she started singing, I thought, “Oh no, yet another person singing Rolling in the Deep!” Then she sang a couple more songs and quickly became my favourite contestant. Here’s one reason why:

Gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it.

  

Too bad the show wound up so soon! Now The X Factor has begun, and I do enjoy it, complete with all the drama, but it’s just not the same. And I swear I’m not saying that only because Adam Levine is way hotter than Simon. 

You've Got Mail. Or Have You?

Letter writing was such a huge deal in school! I wonder if the teachers and other authorities realized that in the real world, we would hardly ever write letters, leave alone use any of those formats we were taught.
English grammar exams demanded that we knew the format of both formal and informal letters. Here's what I remember:

FORMAL LETTER

INFORMAL LETTER

I'm not sure how many people write actual letters any more. Written communication seems more like this:

FORMAL

 INFORMAL

(This is based on the assumption that the writer uses spacing at all)

Or more commonly seen...

You know, people are right when they say that you learn all the important things in life when you're in kindergarten, or elementary school at the most.                              

Stages of Reception

Since the new telly has been one of the major hindrances to my blogging recently, I felt the need to change that by making it the topic of a decent sized post.

Stage 0: Basically the background to make everyone understand what a big deal this is to me.
For over 21 years of my life, I’ve had just two TV channels: DD (Doordarshan) National, which had (and still has) vague shows and never bothered trying to look the least bit appealing, and DD Metro, which I used to watch for the daily half hour (or 1 to 1 ½ hours, at some stage) of cartoons. That was fine, because I had other things to do and one cartoon a day was enough to keep me happy.

Then DD Metro was suddenly replaced by the redundant DD News which consistently seemed to give one news from the previous day. Suddenly, the quality of the weekend movies on the National channel dipped, and my frequency of viewing them increased since they were the most watchable things at that time. Every time I went to a friend’s house and the telly was on, I’d be glued to the screen, no matter what was showing.

Kind of like these guys:

When I got my laptop, I started watching shows and movies on it thanks to friends who downloaded regularly—I never download any of that stuff because I like letting other people do the dirty work—and sites that allow free streaming.

At this point, not having watchable channels on the telly was something of an advantage. I could watch new episodes of shows airing in other countries almost as soon as they came out, unlike everyone else who had to wait for them to be aired here (if they ever were aired here, that is).

Stage 1 
And then, a couple of weeks ago, after a few years of debate, we got a new TV set. The deal was that if we bought a new telly, we’d get all those channels to go with them. The dish connection came only about a week after the telly, so the first week was kind of like this:

Stage 2
I returned home after being away for the weekend, and found hundreds of channels to flip through (although I didn’t bother previewing most of them), accompanied by mixed feelings of joy (“Oh, so many channels! I don’t have to wait for stuff to stream online and watch off a small monitor any more”) and cynicism (“Now I can watch shows at specific times dictated by the TV. With ad breaks. After they’re at least a couple of seasons old”).

Stage 3 
Despite the cynicism, after not switching on your telly for months because you knew it was pointless, you’re more excited than anything else, and so you decide to see what the channels have to offer. Initially, everything is awesome. Even the advertisements are refreshing, simply because they’re more aesthetically pleasing than the ones on the DD channels. So you're kind of going back to part one of stage 0, where you’ll watch pretty much anything.

Stage 4
After the initial excitement wears off, you fall into a routine. There are certain shows you watch regularly, and others that you watch while waiting for the regular shows to begin or return after the ad break. Not so much magic any more, but it’s nice to have a couple of good shows to watch and not be obsessed with simply any colourful show on the telly.

PS - Looking at this post makes me realize that I really should get back to my real drawing materials.