When I landed in Dubai back in February, I had a few things on my bucket list; one of them was to try to learn to play drums; the reason behind this was twofold:
- I wanted to know how it would feel to play drums and if it was feasible to have it as a hobby because I can’t play guitar due to my bad left hand.
- There are a couple of tracks that I love so much that I can play on the guitar, and they happen to be in my top 10 all-time favourite songs. I know how to play them because they are extremely easy. The drums on these tracks are simple yet extremely effective.
One weekend, after seeing a friend in a mall, I went to an electronic megastore to find a battery charger for my phone; I noticed that they had a musical instruments section, and I saw this dude playing drums on an electronic drums. He was awesome; he listened to music on his iPod with the earbuds and played along on the drums.
After a very long while, the guy left. I asked one of the staff if I could try it out, and so I did. I was really bad. My legs were heavy, and apparently, air drumming was way easier.
I talked to the sales guy about the drum set and went back home. I researched the model and its setup. I listened to online sound samples from the drum machine. I started mapping the songs I liked to the electric drumset and playing air drums with me, imagining using the electric drums I saw in Virgin Megastore.
Two weekends later, I copied those two songs on my iPod and went to pay a visit to the electronic megastore.
I put on my iPod and tried jamming to the songs. I was awful. After 15 minutes, I got my grip on the drumset, put on one earbud in my ear, and played the songs, drumming along with them.
After two repeats of one of the songs, I started jamming nicely. The drum sound was in sync and in tune with the song. I felt extremely happy—euphoric!
The second song was a bit harder; it used more symbols and toms, but I managed to play with the song, and after a long time, I started drumming it nicely.
Around the hour or so of trying to play the drum set, I kept looking at people watching me while I was playing. At first, I got nervous, but with time passing by, their faces started fading away, and all that was around me was pure bliss. I am dead sure that I was awful in the ears of those who were near, but for those minutes, I was at the top of the world.
When I parked my car at that mall, I wrote a note on my phone about where I parked my car. That weekend, when I went to the parking lot, I couldn’t find my car… It took me over an hour to go through the parking level, searching for it with no luck. The parking was full, with cars driving around trying to find a parking spot, and my shirt was soaking with sweat mingled with car exhaust fumes. After that dreadful hour, I saw a security guy trying to direct the influx of cars on that parking level.
After talking back and forth with him for a while, he told me I should be on level 5, not level 3. I shrugged off the idea because I had written where I parked on my phone.
After losing hope of ever finding my car (being stubborn), I went two levels up… Lo and behold….there was my car… waiting for me.
And if the above incident didn’t ruin my day, I was stuck for two hours in traffic on my way back home.
I don’t take notes of my parking space anymore… I take pictures.
Doomish:
Brave, Courageous and bold.
Long live his fame,
and long live his glory.
Long may his worthless posts be told.
