Qasim Virjee

Check out this screenshot I just took when I logged into Facebook - asking 'Are you being tracked?' Duh! Of course yaar.

Last year was soooo busy with all the stuff I was doing for my Indian Electronica project - from compiling a 2-disc record release on the imprint featuring over 20 artists around the world, to planning and producing 4 installments of the Indian Electronica Festival - which took me to India for the first time in my life!!!

As it happens, through the mad rush of activity I kept plugging away and its fantastic to now stretch out my arms and say, wow, I did it!  Indian Electronica has a larger reach than ever before and the website is growing steadily through podcasts, an online radio station, the festivals and more.

Check out the latest email newsletter for all the deets on what is going on with that project and what happened last year:
http://www.indianelectronica.com/mailers/030708/index.html

Also, I've uploaded photos from my trip to India here @ qasim.ca - which you might enjoy perusing. 

Some of you may not be familiar with my audio-visual artist face; that of a one mister Abdul Smooth... well, for some time I've been neglecting his website as I took time out from performances after the Indian Electronica Festival in Bombay last xmass and reflected on my new style and method of performing.

Well, the new site is now live and I'll be throwing some audio and video up there soon - mixed down a new Survey Series mix last week and I know you're gonna dig it, fear not; the site will host a podcast to check out on your iPod.

Check out http://www.abdulsmooth.com and let me know what you think of the design y'all...

Okay - so yesterday I was up on Toronto's College Street at lunch looking for a replacement Nokia charger for my phone - because, ahem, the replacement I bought a couple of weeks back in Mumbai well, stopped working suddenly.

Anyway, I had heard rumor that the Asus eee pc was in stock throughout the many computer shops in the hood so I stopped in at Canada Computers and played with one. My god, they're fantastic! So small, light and well, exciting! I found out that their RAM is upgradable to 2gb and comes in pretty cheap as its standard memory (2 gb would cost around $60CAD).

For anyone reading this looking for a new tiny laptop to carry with them anywhere to do work or jump on the net via wifi at whim, this is definitely the machine. Here's the best review I've seen of it so far:

Though this is a topic which I'd love to dwell on further, and will do so over the next few months over on the new blog I'll be launching @ Design Guru to explore topics around which my firm works, I wanted to blabber on here for a sec about something cool I noticed before heading to India this past December - a development that will mark major for '08 when history books are written.  Sort of. :)

In 2007 the One Laptop Per Child project, launched - with aim of giving tools to the world's children that would help them learn, communicate and express themselves.  How they did this is to create a cheap, small and light laptop that, if founder Nicholas Negroponte gets his way, would cost just about $100.  The whole project captured the public in North America's imaginations - small children in impoverished countries without books or electricity still being able to learn with these nifty laptops that you could power by turning a crank and so on; and that momentum was also spurred by the device raising questions of why the industy hadn't promoted production of such devices so far.

One acronym used for other small mini-computers is the UMPC - or Ultra Mobile Personal Computer.  Manufactured by cellphone and other electronics firms, this 'range of products' has been aimed at business users who need to stay connected whilst on the go - wherever they might be.  Because of this, prices have remained high and these devices have typically run proprietary OS' like Windows Mobile...

In 2008 the whole picture changed; possibly spurred by the One Laptop Per Child directive... Leading motherboard and computer component manufacturer ASUStek released just before xmass a super-cool little laptop called the EEE pc that busted into shops mainly in North America in December 07 for $300+  Now, compared to UMPCs on the market aimed at business users - this is a super powerful little machine that anyone can use; its 900Mhz (clocked at 600Mhz out of box though), god solid state memory (no hard disk that can break, deteriorate over time), a sturdy Linux based free OS (can load Windows XP or Ubuntu if you wish) and much much more - plus the thing is like 3 pounds and runs skype!!!!!

Now, the EEE pc isn't the only such laptop already being sold - a company called Everex will be hitting Walmart, yes Walmart (!!!) with a tiny computer priced similarily called the Cloudbook - in just a few days!  This one actually comes with a 30gb HD and some other bells and whistles.

I won't go into specifics about the EEE pc or Cloudbook's hardware etc because my point is that in 2008 such devices are going to be readily available for prices as low as $200 at the end of the year, possibly cheaper.

Imagine, the full weight of Taiwan and China pumping out little powerful low-cost laptops to the world that aren't locked into particular Operating Systems and software like the One Laptop Per Child....  Pre-loaded with Open Source software, these computers are going to introduce millions of people this year first-hand to 'free' software and the fact that non-commercial alternatives for everyday computing tasks exist - like OpenOffice (instead of MS Word), for example.

This year we turn our attention from the machines to what we can do with them and where we can use them.

I expect computer users to increase in numbers exponentially across the globe this year at an unprecedented rate.  People will now increasingly have the tools at their disposal to relate computing to their everyday lives with very little monetary cost and huge amounts of physical freedom as computers get smaller, lighter and cheaper.

So it seems this whole blogging-whilst-travelling business is somewhat of a bust; haven't really been doing it have I?  Ha!

The brief update reads that my friend Jason Roks met up with us in Mumbai - we had an amazing time  checking out some of the city and holding 2 sessions of the Indian Electronica Festival and then we all (my brother, rhea wong, myself and Jason) flew to Jaipur - where we've stayed at two hotels; including Mandawa Haveli - a townhouse of one of 160 Rajput royal families, and Naila Bagh... an old heritage home/palace that was built by the first Prime Minister of Jaipur! 

Its been a blast so far... I suppose I'll upload a whack of photos and the travel video to a special site I'm making all about the whole trip when I get back next week to Toronto.

From here, its off to Jodhpur tomorrow with Kameel and the two of us are there for 3 nights staying at another palacial hotel (Ajit Bhawan)... then 2 nights in Delhi et voila, back to the tdot!

q./

Exciting stuff... this city's great!  More to post later, that is, if the internet connection stays up at our hotel!  Found this little place right opp the road from Victoria Terminus... in the core of the colonial city as such...  Having a blast, went to Indigo - a scenester resto near the Taj Palace and Tower hotel by the water/India Gate last night with Kameel and Rhea; $100 pp!

Alright, I'm off to the Bandra area to check out some shopping then its to the venue for tonight's Indian Electronica Festival!

Oh, and if you're in India, pick up a copy of the Mumbai Mirror to see a small peice on the Fest in the (was it) entertainment section - I'll have a scan here when I get back to Toronto...

Ciao for now,

q

Damn, New Delhi is soooooooooooo smoggy its nuts; even crazier perhaps is how the local folks always refer to the rampant pollution endearingly as 'fog' ?!

I'll have some photos to share at some point - the last few days, what with cancelling my Delhi gig and all, have been really busy plus the plethora of street sounds assaulting us in our presidential suite on the top of Hotel Ajanta in Paharganj - sleep has been a precious commodity.

Anyway - we're off to Agra just now in a car we've hired from the Ajanta and will hopefully be able to check out Fatehpur Sikri this afty - more to come lads and lasses... including notes on our mandatory Xmass Gala at the Mansingh Palace this evening.

q./

Hey y'all...

Some bad news:

• The second venue for my New Delhi installation of the Indian Electronica Festival pulled out last minute and then, get this, supposedly called this evening and asked us to perform next Thursday! WTF?!?!?!?  Some people are bloody nuts.
• Left my macbook power cable in Toronto apparently... so its picture-less internet cafe posts for a couple of more days (see below.)

Some good news:

• I had a wicked time hanging out with my friends Nitin and Shelly yesterday and shot a nice little film of their installation which i'll post when i get back to Toronto in Jan.
• Oh, and to top it of, my luggage arrived this morning and my hair is feeling silky smooth again thanks to John Frieda. :)
• The brother man is flying into town tommorow morning,
• Rhea Wong is bringing me a new power calbe from the NYC on Saturday! Yeah baby!

Somehow in the midst of a mad snowstorm I was able to catch my Air Canada flight leaving Toronto Sunday evening - the city had pretty much shut down and even calling a cab ended up in being on hold for like 30mins and then repeatedly being told that id have to wait an hour for one!  In the end, a cab took only 20 mins to come and the ride to the airport saw us sliding all over the highway!!

Becuse of the snow, we left Toronto late and that meant i had 20 minutes in Paris to jump onto a bus, head to the right terminal/gate and jump onto my next flight, to New Delhi.  I booted it through Charles de Gaulle and arrived at the gate just in time to be the last to board the plane... which, as I found out in Delhi meant that my bag had stayed behind in Paris! :( It took about 1.5hrs in the middle of the night @ Indira Gandhi int'l to get the appropriate forms, fill em out and effectually report a missing bag - picture a swarm of 40 angry folks all pushing each other, shouting in hindi and truly perplexed at having to wait to fill out a form, get it stamped, fill out something else and then leave the airport, without their luggage.

Anyway, after changing some moolah at the Bank of Punjab (balle balle) with a shitty exchange rate for the Canadian Dollar, I waited again for my hotel pickup to find the driver, who turned out to be the driver liason, who then walked me outside, fulfilling his sole duty, delivered me to a mysterious white saloon car, which i hopped in and then was driven to the Hotel Ajanta in!

Not, the drive was a lttle hectic and one of the funniet things was that the driver kept opening the window sporadically to spit paan juice out! Hahaha, i wondered why he was letting the cold smelly dusty air in especially since he had the heat cranked up to like 5 billion degrees.  So, we sped through a lush tree'd neighbourhood with the Taj Palace hotel and some de luxe Embassies, drove through a quiet Connought Circle and past the bustling Delhi Train Station- which looked 10 times bigger than the airport, turned a corner et voila - a street lined with flashing fourescent signs advertising a plethora of 'hotels' - this was paharganj's Arakshan road and where I'll be sleeping for the next week.  Well, I say 'sleeping'but shit, not much - woke up this morning and felt lke i was riding an elephant straight through the Mahabharata!  Horns honking, people shouting, crying, laughing...Bollywood tunes blasting and all sorts of madness. Va.

My laptop plug is sittin somewhere between Paris and here in my suit bag so i can't plug in and upload photos... (at a sketch internet terminal @ the 'hotel') but i will hpefully start posting with them from tomorrow.

Alright, now its off to eat a thali, head to Connaught Place to by some temp clothes and off to meet up with shelly bahl and nitin mukul for dinner and drinks!  Woohoo.