Feel a bit dreadful not posting for days on end. Can see Ejaz’s finger wagging in contempt

Am in Chicago – just finished attending User Experience 2003. Met my heroes – died and went to heaven – and am just about heading back. Of the three gods, Jakob Nielsen was basic and boring. Donald Norman was extremely intellectually stimulating and stirred a number of brain cells and sent them running in all directions. The Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design were great fun. It was refreshing to take a step back from sitemaps, wireframes, project plans, and deadlines, and think about the work we do a little tangentially – but certainly very relevant.

Ejaz, in case you are wondering … Peter Morville’s Information Architecture 1 was not bad – but nothing great that we don’t already know.

Tog! Now, what can I say without sounding like an unabashed groupie. Meeting him made my entire trip worthwhile within 10 minutes. He was everything I had imagined and much much more. To him we owe everything that’s human(e) about the Mac OS. He’s so anally INTO interface design that it excited every pore of my being. Attended a full day class with him and was shattered when it ended. The last day was with Jakob but I was bored to tears and jumped ship and landed in Tog’s Visioneering (Vision + Engineering) class and I felt whole again. He really made us work and think and work and think.

All in all – Tog and Donald Norman + meeting a whole bunch of other conference attendees was a blast and a half. Mac users ruled! We were everywhere! The hotel had WiFi hotspots so Airport cards were being tested to the hilt. Worked really well – seamless.

Post-conference – am just chilling … it’s great not to have to do anything in particular. Got a new Po Bronson and Doug Coupland books, in addition to a whole bunch of others. Should never go into Borders.

Peace!

Rumi sukhanay-e-kufr na guftast na goyed
Kas dar hama aalam
Kafir shavad aan kas ba inkaar baraamad
Mardood-e-jahaan shud

Rumi has spoken in denial,
And none in the wide world speaks or spoke thus,
Those who came out in denial are cast out,
And become rejects, world-wide.

Kudos to Sadruddin Hashwani for organizing a series of qavvalis in memory of Munshi Raziuddin. Recently attended the Karachi event which rocked! Farid and Abu were great and the troupe had obviously practised. The only minor issue was the lack of Farsi but anyway … no big deal. Some chap in Islamabad had done a wonderful painting of Munshi Jee – captured the essence of the man – impish, inquiring, intense, intelligent …

The Karachi Arts Council is hosting a memorial qavvali on the 9th of September at 9:00 p.m.

Today has been a roller-coaster: fun, irritating, exhilarating, stressful, uplifting, tiring … yesterday, I listened to a tape from the KGS days – Age 13. Bon Jovi before they became lame, Electric Dreams, Candy’s Room. Shed a couple of tears for those days and actually missed school for the first time since I left in a huff at 16.

I met this random dude and he was like, you know, whatever …

Do we really sound like this?

hehe …

Nothing is sacred.

It’s one of those days when one sits around waiting for something to go wrong and nothing does and then you’re like, why is everything going so well? Am beginning to realize that I thrive on a life fraught with chaos, stress, and tension. Anyway, let’s not mock the peacefulness of this day and instead, use this time to stop and smell the flowers and not take ourselves so seriously.