Where the Hell is Matt

There was this American young man Matt Harding who thought the only thing to do in life is to make and play video games. He worked somewhere in Australia at his mid-25 and later quitted the job and roamed about some parts of the world with the money he earned. He created a website and used that to update his current location and status so that his friends and families could know his whereabouts.

While he travelled to a place, he used to take some snaps or video of the place and uploaded that in his site. Later one of his friends suggested that he can dance a little with his weird kind of dance to add fun to the video. Soon these videos became popular and were circulated around the web and became some of the most successful viral videos. He became known as 'Dancing Matt'.

When he finished his money, his videos stopped. Then someone (or some organization) offered him to continue dancing around the world at their expense. So he continued moving around and dancing and this gave birth to some more dancing videos - which when amalgamated, created the massively popular video 'Where the Hell is Matt'.

Garry Schyman is an American music composer who composes music for video games and other multimedia industries. He worked to compose a background music for this song.

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet and was a nobel laureate for his 'Gitanjali' book in 1913. Garry Schyman adopted the lyrics of a poem 'Pran' from the book and composed a music 'Pran' or 'Stream of Life' by Garry Schyman.

Palbasha Siddique is a Bangladeshi-born, American grown-up young lady who gave voice to the song 'Pran' by Garry Schyman. The song was selling at top 10 in Amazon for a couple of weeks.

The song is a modern rock n' roll with guitars, piano, violin and other modern instruments and not really a Tagore tone. But I liked it. Hope you might like it, too.

Now, the dancing video depicts Matt dancing in various countries and location in the world with natives. May be the theme is, everybody can dance no matter where s/he is. The videos are freely available. I think many of you might have seen them in youtube or in Matt's own site. Unfortunately Matt travelled so many countries, but despite he is using a Bengali song written by a Bengali nobel laureate and sung by a Bangladeshi singer, Bangladesh is not yet represented in any of his four dancing videos so far. So instead of where the hell he is, I wonder what the hell he was thinking of this. Still I am hopeful, Bangladesh might be present in his upcoming videos, but as a natural consequence of his country visits and not as a complement.

Now as the last line, Matt didn't even know he might be a world-wide celebrity ever in his life. He thought his mission of life to be a video game player only. And now he is famous and renowned as 'Dancing Matt'. I remember I saw an ad in Emirates depicting his dancing. So capturing moments by video or image might bring you luck. His leisurely videos now made him famous without any effort at all. So try to capture moments of life. Who knows what comes in paving your way to happiness...

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Stream of Life - Tagore - Gitanjali

Praan lyrics – Transliteration and a literary translation.

Bhulbona ar shohojete (I shall not forget so easily)

Shei praan e mon uthuk mete (Let the heart and soul rhythm with joy)

Mrittu majhe dhaka ache (In Death lying is your)

je ontohin praan (Evergreen life)

Bojre tomar baje bashi (Thy flute plays like thunder)

She ki shohoj gaan (That's a precious song (not so cheap a song))

Shei shurete jagbo ami (And I shall rise high with the tune)

(Repeat 3X)

Shei jhor jeno shoi anonde (I bear that storm(y tune) with pleasure)

Chittobinar taare (And feel it in my heart as if the strings of a 'bin' inside the heart is playing )

Shopto shindhu dosh digonto ((Everything in) Seven seas and ten directions around)

Nachao je jhonkare! (Are all dancing with the rhythm)

Bojre tomar baje bashi (Your flute plays like thunder)

She ki shohoj gaan (That's a precious song (not so cheap a song))

Shei shurete jagbo ami (And I shall rise high with the tune)

(Repeat 3X)

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Following is an abstract flow of the song (may be from Garry):

"The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the lifethrob of ages dancing in my blood this moment."

Dropbox download link of the mp3 (4.11 MB): Gary Schyman - Praan

Clip from YouTube:

 

Engineering Rocks - Kola

In Kola, Russia, a project of deeping down the earth was taken around 1970. As of today, the borehole reaches 12,262 meters (12 Km) down the earth and is apparantly the deepest visible location on earth. Actually the deepest is in Qatar where oil miners drilled deep up to 12,289 meters in a very short period of time. But the Kola borehole keeps its versatility due to its historical start of the first such successful endeavour.

Some interesting discoveries and anomalies resulted in the deep excavation. One was boiling hydrogen - actually the mud underneath boils due to evaporation of hydrogen. Temperature was discovered to be about 190 degrees celcius. Such high temeperature prohibited further drilling, so we may think it might go deeper.

The first such project started in the USA in around 1960, but it stopped due to lack of funding. That sounds strange to me as the USA does not lack funding on anything. So the fact might be that, pre-researches or feasibility studies might show worthless discoveries and instead investment of funding to some other discoveries might have been more worthy of.


Alongside the drilling, another putative hocus pocus was going on that some other scientists in Russia drilled about 15 Kilometers below the earth where temperature reaches about 1100 degrees celcius. They said the deeped down a heat resistant microphone and recorded strange sounds underneath that sounded like something supernatural - as if screams of punished people as in hellfire as described in some religions. It may be noted that, the location of hell is described as to be in the core of earth in some religions. I think there is a movie "Nine Miles Down" that explores this phenomenon where deeping down so deep reveals a demon underneath - or something like this. This hoax is called putative as it was even supported by broad media coverage, and it is named 'Well to Hell'.


It may be noted that in their song "Cluster One", British band Pink Floyd used some sound effects that is said to be sonographically recorded sound of the clinking materials floating at the core of the earth. You might know, the core of the earth has zero gravity and it is extremely hot there and only some heat-resistant materials float there in a melted environment. But this should not be confused with the 'Well to Hell' hoax sound.

Anyway, this clearly shows the power of engineering. Digging deep enough for 12 kilometers ain't a cakewalk at all. Try to visualize a road up to 12 kilometers, and then move that road vertically into the ground - then only you will understand what it means drilling 12 kilometers into the ground. Obviously that's a nice piece of engineering.