Author: sikander

2006 Concerts

Guns N’ Roses!!

Guns N’ Roses in Toronto! thrawn had two extra tickets and convinced lunato and I to buy them off him. Guns N’ Roses man! Guns N’ Roses! all three of us, skid, thrawn, and I, we grew up listening to Guns N’ Roses and have virtually all of their songs etched into our brain.

So, lunato and I went to the concert and wow, what am amazing concert. Simply spectacular. 4 and a half hours after the gates opened the lights dimmed all of a sudden and the intro to Welcome To The Jungle rocked the Air Canada Centre. Almost two hours later they finished the show with an extended version of Paradise City.

Guns N' Roses

Guns N' Roses Tickets

The pyrotechnics during the show were so damn loud but so well-placed and well-timed. Each time the fireworks went off it felt as if the roof would crack open.

The only complaint I have was that they didn’t play Madagascar… but all the other songs.. You Could Be Mine, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, Nightrain, Sweet Child O’ Mine, November Rain, Mr. Brownstone, Don’t Cry, Yesterdays, etc. etc. were just great. The new songs, Better and There Was A Time are also very good.

Oh and Sebastian Bach opened for GnR with his classic Skid Row songs. What could be better? :)

2006 Concerts

The Decemberists

the first time i heard The Decemberists was when they played We Both Go Down Together on Conan. the odd looking bunch of musicians and their unusual mix of instruments appealed to me and I bought a few of their songs off ITunes.

lunato found out somehow and they were going to play in Toronto on 6th of November and she got tickets for us :D The concert was at the Kool Haus in downtown Toronto.. right besides the lakeshore.

lunato had been to concerts back home in Korea and my first and only concert so far was the Junoon concert in Toronto during Pakistan’s Independence Day in 2001 or 2002.. I forget. So technically it was the first concert for both of us.

They played quite a lot of songs and interacted a LOT with the audience. It was a really enjoyable concert and they played our favourite song as well. I also liked Yankee Bayonet a lot and it is another fav song for us now. Some other notable songs: O Valencia, On The Bus Mall, The Perfect Crime, and Sixteen Military Wives.

2006

pigeons

The pigeon’s scientific name is Columba livia, given it by Johann Friedrich Gmelin, a German naturalist, botanist, and entomologist in 1789. Pigeons have been domesticated for several thousand years and have been used for numerous puproses by man. There are almost 300 breeds of pigeons and all of them are thought to descend from Columba livia.

One such breed is the homing pigeon, capable of findings its way home over extremely long distances. Because of this trait, they had been used to deliver messages tied to their legs as early as 1150. In fact, Paul Reuter, founder of the Reuters press agency, had a fleet of pigeons that delivered news and stock prices between Belgium and Germany. They were also used extensively during World War I and World War II. The United Kingdom used about 250,000 pigeons as messengers during World War II and even considered using them to deliver biological weapons.

Pigeons were actually introduced in North America in 1606 through Nova Scotia, Canada. Their natural residence is Europe, North Africa, and south west Asia. Nowadays, pigeons are found in almost every city in North America.. especially in front of the strip-mall near our apartment in Toronto. Their life span is 3-5 years in the wild and up to 15 years in captivity. Numerous people, lunato and I included, give these pigeons food occassionally. Any and sort of bread left-overs are more than welcomed by these birds. They are so well trained that as soon as they see you reach in your pocket or shopping bag, they start flying frantically towards you. It’s pretty scary.. the way they swarm around you in seconds (see Video).

Fat, lazy, dirty pigeons. They don’t have anything else to do now except eat and sleep.