While Incredible !ndia” has a nice ring to it, “never say never,” would be a more fitting slogan for a country that never fails to catch me with a left hook. Flying metaphors aside, I was stunned this weekend, but what a great time I had in a city known for its disciplined and hard working citizenry.

It’s been nearly three months since I arrived and I still have much to see of this city. In a strange, unsettling way, Bangalore inspires simultaneous feelings of claustrophobia and extreme isolation. In Bangalore, there is no such thing as personal space. People, cows, cars and motorcycles all fight over the same scant breathing room and any flat surface may be used by one or more of the above at any time.

It is because transportation is such a headache that I have confined myself to a small but growing corner of Bangalore. While not located in central Bangalore, the village of Challaghatta is easily accessible to MG Road, UB City and a smattering of bars and restaurants. This is partly to blame for my unwillingness to explore on my own–everything I need is near at hand.

This weekend I went to two rockin’ concerts, Kailash Kher and Octoberfest, both at the Palace Grounds. While the family-friendly vibe of the Kailash Kher show was stifling at first, with some provocation from the VIP guest, the audience was on its feet and jamming the aisles to get a  better view of the tiny man with the giant voice. At Saturday’s show I also something I’ve never witnessed before, a warmup band so bad they were practically booed off the stage.

It’s no secret that Indian mass culture is highly commercialized. There’s nothing cute or subtle about the way brands here put themselves in front of potential consumers, and everything has the potential to be a marketing vehicle. Some lame band had been selected by a talent scouting agency Desi Tara, to entertain the crowd before Kher’s arrival. This made-to-be-famous quintet was fronted by a lead singer so devoid of charisma he had to plead with the audience to sing his next songs. Each time they stalled for time–Kher was stuck in traffic–the crowd grew bolder, telling the group they couldn’t bear to listen to another of their tunes. As much as I agreed, I was embarrassed to see performers treated with such disrespect, but to be honest, they were super lame. After the concert, we finished the night with a belly full of delicious kebabs and rice from some dingy joints in Frazier Town, Bangalore’s predominantly Muslim Quarter.

Sunday night was Octoberfest, perhpaps a deliberate mis-spelling, but a great reason to rock out. Kingfisher Beer, a heavy favorite to be India’s most aggressive marketer, was the main sponsor of the music festival and, I was hard pressed to find an empty inch where their logo was not plastered. (Part of the invasion of personal space has to do with the omnipresence of advertiser’s messages)

With cheap beer flowing and a pervasive carnival atmosphere, Octoberfest closely resembled Bumbershoot, Folklife and the many outdoor music events of my youth. The familiar scene was punctuated by a short eruption of fireworks at the beginning of Indian Ocean’s set. It could have been a coincidence having to do with a nearby wedding, but as the legendary Indian rock band took the stage, the electricity in the crowd, the bombs bursting in air and the mood of the night made my hair stand on end.

As if this weren’t enough, a cabal of five DJs was waiting for us in the nearby pavilion once the show ended, determined to keep the crowd writhing until the last drop of sweat escaped from my pores. As my blue wig (a very handy prop on sale for $8) bobbed up and down, I caught a glimpse of my watch; nearly 12:30am and not a cop in sight. Had we suddenly been transported to an alternate universe? I wondered as the trance music brought me closer and closer to an epileptic fit. No, somehow this was still stodgy Bangalore whipping out one of the many trump cards tucked in its sleeve.

(Kingfisher Beer, Kingfisher Force India Racing, Kingfisher Air, United Breweries and their affiliates were in no way responsible for the content of this blog post–though I’m sure they wouldn’t a little free promotion)

Today  The Atlantic announced the full release of The Atlantic Wire, a slick compedium of political news and opinion from around the Web. It’s actually rather brilliant.

Herein lies a problem, however. While I just found a new content site that combines a beautiful interface with a stimulating blend of opinion, I have to access articles from on their site which is a huge problem. This morning I read an article in The Globe and Mail  called ‘Information-Rich, Attention-Poor,’ that sums up the situation very succinctly. The quantity of information I have readily available is almost infinite, however, my attention is scarce. All the multitasking and browser tabs in the world isn’t going to make me more thoughtful or well read when I can only devote a minute or two to any particular news item.

The Atlantic just made this problem even worse by creating a site I want to visit, but probably won’t because I don’t have time. Adding a new content source to my daily routine has zero transaction costs, but takes effort and some repetition to become a habit. What’s needed is a new delivery system that takes any work out of the process.

Earlier this week I had an article published in VentureBeat about Busk, a startup I encountered while I was in São Paulo this July. Busk uses real-time search technology to deliver news content based on tagged keywords and topics. Any mention of the word cricket, for instance, would search a database of 15,000 manually-added news sources and 100,000,000 articles to bring back every mention of the word cricket. Not too bad.

While this solves one problem, it doesn’t fully address the addition of a single source to my daily reading diet. One solution would be to change my home page,  but in doing so, I lose the page that I used to have there. Similarly, with an RSS reader, such as Google Reader or Feedly, I have to check them whenever I want to know about the latest articles posted. As it turns out, Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages are becoming my preferred method of receiving news. I filter most of what I know about the world through these two sites. Anything worth knowing finds its way to me. To put it another way, I’ve become accustomed to the news seeking me out, instead of going to it.

While Facebook and Twitter are good at presenting information in a ‘river of news’ format, it’s far from perfect. For instance, I have to be logged in to either site and separate hard news from social fact. While I don’t have much of a problem with it now, this is due to the scarcity of news sources I receive on Facebook and the sheer volume of duplicated news on Twitter. If I was more serious about it, I would need a more robust solution and so far I’m not aware of one that does the job. I’m sure there is a product out there that stays on top of interesting news sources–preserving the user interface without commodifying the information–and adds new sources without pain. If you’re out there somewhere, I hope we meet soon!

My hearty thanks and praise are due to satellite television, which, since I arrived in Bangalore, have made me into a born again sports fan. I haven’t been much of a TV watcher over the past several years–except to pass time when eating a meal, however, I now follow Formula 1 racing, cricket and English Premier League Football with a passion. While I have loved soccer (football), since early in my childhood, our TATA Sky setup at home allows me to watch five or more of the weeks best games on an awesome surround sound system.

Beyond the technology, I think there are many aspects that contribute to my newfound zeal for sports. It was my younger brother, Ejike, who first told me that sports are the ultimate human drama. To a large extent, he is right, though there is something about the hype, salaries and intrigue of professional athletics that makes it a drama that is almost impossible to tune out. Even a cricket test match only lasts for five days, but the pageantry spans entire generations.

There is also the sense of community that comes from watching the same game or race as people all across the globe. The isolation of living in Bangalore is unlike that I have ever experienced. If I lived in Los Angeles or Atlanta, my life might be similar. Here I spend significant portions of a typical day being chaufeurred to and from meetings, though contact with outsiders is limited to purchases or the occasional roadside beggar. However, with sports, I have an instant point of contact with friends back home and my social media community that spans South America, The U.S., Europe and Southeast Asia. A simple status update about the match I’m watching on ESPN can be enough to trigger a flurry of responses. It’s both a gratifying and unifying feeling.

Additionally, there is the thrill of learning something new. When it comes to Formula 1, or international cricket, I know almost nothing. Learning the backstory on Dhoni, or how and why a race track is set up expands my knowledge and gives me more reasons to look forward to the weekend.

While I wouldn’t expect to come to India to experience life through a television screen, it has been an ideal way to learn more about local tastes and also stay wired in. That said, one of my professors at the journalism school said the only real reporting is sports reporting. While so much in the media is staged, it’s nice to see that the eternal human struggle is played out fresh each and every day on the field of play.