Pearl Jam - Milano Forum - 17/09/2006

I was working as every other day on my computer when that mail arrived. It reached my screen on wednesday september the 6th at 10:06:32 am with the following subject: Pearl Jam Tickets.

One of my colleagues, from another division and so far totally unknown for me had this couple of tickets and because of a wedding he wasn't able to go to the concert.
For a couple of seconds I wasn't sure about what to do but I knew that I had to be fast. The clock was ticking and for sure I don't get paid for making personal decisions about going or not to a concert.

My hands started to get sweaty. My heart beat was increasing. I asked myself: Should I use the company mail for such a personal matter? I thought about all the messages that has been arriving explaining how important it is to follow the recently updated "Electronic Mail, documents, information and internet management policy". The idea that this thing about the concert tickets was all a set up came into my mind.

Usually in this situations the best thing to do is to "anticipate" some kind of "manicure" with your teeth. Normal people call it "eating" your nails. I don't like the name as I never swallow the nails. As soon as my right forefinger reached my mouth i realized that it was nonsense. I broke my right maxillary central incisor during the last vacation, and I'm not good at cutting my forefinger nail with my left maxillary central incisor.

Maybe is one of the "Help Desk" agents that is sending me this message in order to nail me. In fact it's impossible that anybody with a Pearl Jam ticket gives it away just a week before.

Especially because of a wedding. Weddings are those kind of things that are organized with several weeks of anticipation. Like concerts indeed.
It's impossible that he just got the news about the wedding. Only logic explanation that I see is that it is his own wedding so he asked his future wife something absolutely rational for any man but completely irrational for every woman like: Can we get married next week? Mmmm. No. The fact that he is still alive and healthy enough to write emails takes this theory out of the way.

Ok. Screw the "Electronic Mail, documents, information and internet management policy". In any case, the faster I answer, the sooner I get back to work and start producing...

After 37 seconds of getting paid for "nothing" I decided that if I really cared about the "Electronic mail, documents, information and internet management policy" I should start by deleting all the PPTs full of naked women on my hard disk, then delete also the 5 GB of illegaly downloaded music that i have on the company intranet, stop downloading films from the internet during work, and maybe unsubscribe my mail from a couple of pornographic mailing lists. I also decided that I could take the risk of writing a personal email with personal matters during my coffee break so I replied to that mail telling the guy that I was interested on his tickets.

Even if it was unbeliavable it was real. Usually you would have to look for this kind of tickets for a while, with your friends and their friends, and sometimes you don't even make it. This time it was fate. Those tickets had a name on them since they were printed...

Here you can see the set list for that night.

I managed to take my camera into the concert and took this picture. If you want to see a couple more click on it.

Let's keep on rocking in the free world.