Long time no blog !! – yes yes i know…
erm… what can i say ?? just been busy trying to keep my hair from falling off my head lately. i mean that literally too;(

I feel the urge to just write about what ive been upto lately (as many bloggers do) so this post is totally blogus and is all about one thing – ME … so quit now or forever hold your peace ;P

01. MY fun night at the PAUL VAN DYK gig (Grand Hyatt Ballroom)
OMG !!!!! what a bash !! worth every friggin dhiram but the drinks were too expensive .. i mean 40Dhs a Beer !!!! 40Dhs for Mexican Piss Corona !!?? – not my flavour .. so i pretty much sipped on my beers and danced away like mmmmmad for four hours.

Girls ?? (i.e Waad, Nada, Noor ) if you are reading this – it was grrreat seeing you all after so long. Dint think we’d be dancing crazy to PVD much after graduation .. did we ? so for old times sake – let them readers know what a fun night it was ( apart from that tall freako who kept dancing with his fingers next to y’all all night long ;P )

02. MY fun weekend at Pash’s new pad (Meadows)
What an aweeesome place he’s got.. swimming pool and everything – absolutely lovedddd it dude! Twas great cooling off in that pool of yours ..well almost cool until you kept insisting on showing me what a big splash your jumpin could make in the water ;P

03. MY Dubai Writers Meetup (Mamzar Beach Park)
AAh… yess… hmmm… two missing members … rehan claimed that adnans carrying…esperanza named me hans solo … and sophie and katie were probably just concerned that adnan and i know where they live now… mwahaha (evil grin).

04. MY Fun Fun Fun Project at work (Golf and Shooting Club Identity Designs)
OMG! the first time in the past three months i actually felt that familiar buzzzzzzzzzz i get out of out of playing with logo designs.. i love it – came up with some options so far ( but just not sure whether the emirate of Sharjah is ready for my neo-modernist approach . Tony – the project leader seems like a talented man and he has quite an impressive portfolio to prove it too .. guess its going to be quite an experience working with him on this.

05. MY Epiphaneous Moment (Nether regions of my subconciousness)
A recent epiphany about life and death got me thinking about the fragility of the human body – i realized the fact that if we could accept death as normality then… life will be understood as such a privillege…..and with the numerous things that could go wrong with this body of ours, to have lived as long as we have is nothing less of an achievment itself. Vikas’s mum passed away yesterday and although i dint know her, i couldn’t help but feel sad and insecure of losing the sight of my loved ones… May her soul rest in peace.

06. MY shocking experience (Zulekha Hospital)
Decided i should stay away from the computer for a while given the recent diagnosis that the neurolgist gave me – carpal tunnel sydrome and what not. She freaked me out quite a bit when she called me in for a nerve conduction test and strapped me up with wires and tested my nerves by passing an electric current through my hand. It dint hurt.. but it was just very very very annoying to have a current continously pass through the neath of your skin. Everytime she would reach for the dial… id squint in anticipation and then fzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzz zzzzzzz zzzzttttt… arrrgh. Anyway she stold me my nerves were fine but i had a mild reduction in the gap between two discs on my upper spine YIKES !! She said this from the x-ray i got done and YES ! ladies and gentlemen – that is what i look like underneath my human covering

07. MY Muse Musem (On my desktop)
Random materials/objects that i came across over the past few days that amused me.

a. A Dolphin-Ish Affair

b. Christine’s Pack of Bidis

c. Inanimating Life ( check out my flickr album for more pics from the series –> click here )

d. The Kissntell Bridge ( oh yeaa ??? you come up with a better name then ;P )

08. MY Newest Art Project (more on this when i get atleast one piece finished)
Here is an image of my latest art project called ‘Talking Heads’ .. the idea seems to be floating a little in my head at the moment ( as it does ) so am not quite ready to write about it intelligently enough

ok ok enough about ME… what have you been upto then ??

Oh!! oops times up ;PPPPPP

Damn!! i just need to discipline myself and write more often – but ive been happily distracted by a certain somebody ;P – so am excused…. kinda ?

Getting back to the promised series of posts on ‘the urban flavour’ -

Over the weekend i spotted a unique example of the previously mentioned ‘chutnification’ concept. One of the most striking evidence of this concept is apparent in the presentation and decor of tiny gas station restaurants that are popularly owned and managed by south indians living here. No other subculture has so successfully established itself in this market as restaurant owners and alongside established a unique sense of decor and design.

Located within residential colonies and on highways, these joints are notoriously well known for serving the most cheapest and appetizing sandwiches you could ever sink your teeth into ….. but ..whats more interesting is that over time they have established a rather hilarious practice of ‘naming’ in their menus…..observe –>

Computer, Club Nokia, Burj Al Arab, Hollywood, Internet are amonst the names that are well liked by these restaurants and you see them appearing over and over again on the menus of other such restaurants. I believe it was a few weeks back
when i spotted ‘ BUY TWO COMPUTER SANDWICHES AND GET ONE INTERNET FREE ‘ —– what a riot !! no ?

These fresh juices are more comically unusual… fruit cocktails called BIN LADIN !?? DISCO ??? and ROLEX ???? — omg!!!

From a design perspective, i find it apalling as to how these menu’s conveninetly exhibit the convention of stretching and squashing text to make them fit into limited spaces – whether legible or not…. Seeing something like this makes me want to scratch the wall !!!! eeeeks !!!!! WHAT AN ABOMINATION !!!!!!!!

but woooo-ooo-ssss-aaaaah ………… ive grown tolerant and grown to accept it as a unique characteristic feature of such restaurants, all contributing to the urban flavour.

The interior decor of these restaurants dont fall a measure short of their menu designs and i find this bit quite interesting. Numerous bottles of Ketchup, Mayonnaise and Fresh Fruits display themselves stacked on top of one another against a glass partition that seperate the tiny kitchen space from the dining area.

I asked one of the guys working there as to why they adopted such a peculiar ( yet unique ) signature style of decor… and he thought i was a little mad for enquiring … he’d rather give me a one dhiram discount on a shawarma than entertain my oddball curiosity … hmmpph!

In reality i knew the answer…. very practically put – these joints dont usually enjoy the luxury of space and making the best use of it – is vital. Nonetheless, what grabs me is the signature nature of the arrangement that is very Repetitive – very Warhol.

(image from University of Southern California Library of Images)

Realize this is a tangent here, however i can’t help but point out the uncanny resemblence between Andy Warholesque artforms and such decor. Its highly unlikely that these fellas were reading about Warhols art of mechanical reproduction or were inspired by his Campbell Soup Cans or had even remotely dived into unravelling his repetitive supermarket imagery … .. . .. . .. . ….. … but i’ll be damned !! there is a thought right there… somewhere.

What would have ol Andy said if he dropped in for a shawarma at one of these joints !??

Andy’s reply might have been: ‘ hmmmm….. its ineresting how the heavens can be represented by the repetitive arrangements of fruits and bottles.. the hypnotic rhythm not unlike a rosary suggests the extention to infinity, giving us a glimpse into eternity through everyday reality’ ;P

But on a more serious note .. lets face it, Warhols attempt to convey messages of social egalitarianism through his obsession for mass consumery imagery is a much complex thought that is hardly done any justice when paralleled to the arrangements of fruits and ketchup in a gas station restaurant in a country like UAE ….. or does it ??

*trying really hard to wipe a smirk off my face* but i cant stop thinking about a spoof of one of andy’s screenprinted pieces dedicated to this country .. that is lets say …ermmm not so egalitarian… mmm what would i use !??

*deep thought*

At times i get very disillusioned at the lack of an artsy visual culture in this city…i find myself repeatedly bringing up the point that maybe … just maybe… if this city had more of a ‘pedestrian’ culture than a ‘mall and vehicle’ culture — there would be more opportunities to explore art and design. Then again, every city has its own urban flavour and expecting it to be similar to other cities seems not only unfair but a rather derogatory attempt to homogenize and standardize.

“Every society gets the visual environment it deserves. Doesn’t it?” (from the Preface of David Carson’s ‘End of Print’)

Always liked that question, but also always found myself probing further into the real meaning of the statement…
What did it REALLY mean ??
What would it mean in context to a Dubaian society?
What would it mean in context to an artsy visual culture in Dubai?
What visual environment does Dubai deserve?

To me, the words ‘visual environment’ refers to the environment that one encounters whilst interacting with a city. It is the fabric that gives meaning and substance to an individual who is engaged in a quest to experience his/her environment. In the case of modern city like Dubai, there are two coexisting environments.

On the surface, Dubai’s visual environment would essentially be zing-zing buildings, varooom cars and bigger-brighter billboards all contributing to the even louder ‘kachhhiiiiingggg!!’ of an extremely successful cashregister economy.
The Dubaian society essentially is a very colorful multicultural one and therefore to say that ‘every society gets the visual environment it deserves’ would logically mean that it deserves a visual environment that essentially speaks to many cultures in unison such as the language of business and money perhaps.

Under the surface however lies multiple unique visual environments born out of various cultures that have attempted to settle themselves in this city over the years. It is here, where different cultures have found a niche market and it is here where a ‘chutnification’ takes place on an aesthetic level. (Salman Rushdie popularly used the term ‘chutnification’ to describe this phenomena of modern multiculturalism – i quite like the word)

In the next couple of posts, i’ll try and deal with this idea of chutnification from an aesthetic point of view and see where i go with it. I think this post has drained my brain a little too much – too much theorizing and over analyzing kinda spoils the fun of free blogging…

watch out for ‘the urban flavour (part2)