I m in Karachi people. I’ve been here since the 19th of Feb’10. I apologize for not letting a lot of you know that, honestly I wanted to surprise :P

From the day I landed everything has been pretty energetic+super busy. Friday when I landed was the day I shocked my family, that was pretty neat I tell you

From then onwards things got pretty busy. We’re working on a new design for our main website www.xuqa.com, which is due out soon. The current design I think has taken away all the user experience, I plan to put that experience back in, so obviously alot of thought is being put into that.

But most of the problems+major improvements will come in once the new design is out.

Our Game Ventures office is officially open in Karachi now, and we have quite a team I tell you, for me a major addition is Arif Kamal, whose work I immensely admire.

On a personal level I’ve got some more work for myself, I m working on the new design of my blog, which is due for quite some time, and also another project which will be revealed in due time.

I also happen to meet alot of my dost, which was refreshing, had been wanting to catch up for quite some time, though one thing that I do miss are my drums. I miss those like anything, and offcourse the chocolate balls!

The rest is the usual.. getting into the Awesome Karachi spirit for a few months.

A very Merry Happy New Year to everyone.

Let’s see the the last year was ok, kind of lost so little, gained so much, still living, surviving, enjoying ! Wohoo

I got myself a brand new Drum kit, now I m looking for a proper tutor. Another thing I wanted for quite some time, let me thank Zulfiqar Ali Faisal for paying for the loan for Drums, thanks much mate

[Pictures at the end of the Post]

I’ve been in Singapore for a quite a while now, and I’ve had friends over from Pakistan about 2 or 3 times, yet I still hadn’t managed to discover as many places as I did when one of my friend’s sister was over. Maybe because she had quite an amount of energy to drag me about everywhere she could. This obviously is a great experience for me, and I hope it was better for her.

About a day before Christmas, Zohra reached Singapore at about 8pm, I thought I’d go and catch her at the airport, turns out she had already left for her hotel in a cab, and there I was standing at the Airport cursing at myself.

Anyways I called her up and told her I’d meet her at the hotel, and then I took the MRT and went over to her hotel, which by the way wasn’t very familiar to me, maybe because I was lucky enough to have a place to live when I came crashing to Singapore, so obviously being an owner of an iPhone 3G, I flipped out my phone and navigated to that place using the super awesome Google Maps, I just wished I had a 3GS, would’ve made finding the hotel a breeze, oh and did I mention it was right next to “The Cathay” but since I didn’t know I got off a station away and walked to that place.

Anyways, once I was there, and I met her, we decided to hit the streets and catch a movie, since Christmas was next day I thought it’d be better to catch Orchard Road later and see some other stuff instead. So I took her to “The Cathay” to book our tickets to ‘Avatar’, and it was about 45 minutes before the movie would start we headed for Plaza Singapura, where I bought Paras her gift. When we headed out of the mall, Zohra seemed to have seen lights for the first time in her life obvioulsy she has seen Eid Milad-un-Nabi before.. Jokes aside these lights were kind of pretty and alot of things nicer from the back than from the front. They were lighted up from both sides.

Anyways after quite an amount of snapping and begging I finally got her on her feet and dragged her to the MRT since she wanted to expereince that too, so I took her two stations ahead and back so that we don’t miss the movie, oh and about the movie, we saw it in 3d which was a different experience for her.

So the movie wasn’t a short one and we kind of got off late from there, and we were hungry like anything, and she thought I would like some pickle with the food and I thought the same about her. Truth is neither of us were really concerned about it but I didn’t know that and neither did she, so we walked from “The Cathay” to Mustafa Centre at about 3 am.. yes 3 am.. got the pickles and some other stuff, and then got a cab back to her hotel and had some food. At about 6 am I left her to head home and snooze..

Then it was Christmas, even though our plan was to meet early and head off for Sentosa wagera and then see some other stuff before hitting Orchard, turns out we met at around 4pm, and then headed off for Orchard after a little lunch. I realized how much she enjoyed lights here. Kind of snapped everything she could, a sales girl selling some tiny clip caps, which I bought for her, a kid who wanted to take her picture, me as I borrowed a Santa cap from girl near by and pretended to do the yoga thing. The performances there for the Christmas was awesomely amazing, had one been there, they would’ve loved it

Since we were hungry I thought I’ll take her to Al-ameen, which is a funny thing in itself.. I ordered Palak Paneer, which she ordered ‘Nasi Lemak Ayam’ which is basically Plain Rice with chicken, but when it’s served they come with some nuts, a sauce and anchovies.. Now any sane person usually stays away from Anchovies atleast in the desi land, and after these are fried they look more like golden brown fried onions, and thats what she thought until she discovered the fish’s eyes… Yes these things are super tiny Anyways after the food we bid farewell till the next day.

The next day I woke up with her calling me, and asking for the plan, the plan again was Sentosa and stuff, but turns out she had to move stuff from her hotel to a paying guest place, so I headed over to her hotel, grabbed her stuff and headed to her paying guest place, I can tell you one thing for sure, that aunt probably is a murderer just kidding, I m sure she’s a wonderful woman, just looks angry

Anyways she dumped her stuff there, and we moved and went Vivo city at Harbour Front, where she bought quite a few chocolates, and looked at the other awesome stuff, drooled over clothing and shoes, saw some decoration pieces and fell in love with them. Aarghh I had to drag her again, this time we saw some performers at the mall and she immediately flipped out her DSLR and captured a bunch of stuff. We then headed for some other place… blah blah, and at the end since wanted to use some stuff which one of my house mates had, we were back at my place, where she used my room for the night, and I was kicked out of my room haha.. the couch can be a great savior I tell you.

The next day we finally went for Sentosa, but kindof missed the whole thing, the snow city, the science park, where she went crazy with photographs, sadly we lost some stuff too, which I think was very close to her. Oh and did I mention she did the reverse bungee with her eyes closed.. haha.. who does bungee with eyes closed

She stayed the night to my place again, since she forgot the keys at my place, and it was too late, infact we did go to her place only to realize the keys were missing. So we went back, backed up images, which are uploading for her, damn they account for some 7.5 GB :O and then went to sleep. woke her up at 6am, thats when she left for the guest house, so she could fly to Malaysia.

She’s been calling me since she went to Malaysia to ask for random things, and telling me about the infections she got at Langkavi.. girl take care of your health! Please.

Anyways the Christmas weekend for me was really exhausting, but it’s the best weekend I ever had in Singapore yet. So far nothing has beaten that, and yes I would miss her. Had been a great company.

I just recently posted a print online, if you’re FAT like me and don’t care what people say, get this print and put it up.

Also since alot of things have happened my last post, I’ll just put in some headlines.

Howzat was also recently launched on which we worked some odd 6 months or maybe more, and the response has been fabulous. We’re still making some things even better then what they currently are, obviously this is an on-going iterative process. Click here to play the game.

I’ve also received some really cool response from the last video I did titled ‘Hungry at 1am‘.

I m sure there’s alot more that has happened, but I m too sleepy to think right now, maybe in the next post, I’ll write about the gazillions of other things.

Oh and btw, if you have an iPhone or iPod touch, get the app ‘Whats App inc’ and add me via my phone number as your contact which you can get from my facebook page. Lets talk

Hungry at 1am from Shahzad Khan on Vimeo.

Check it out on deviantart or flickr.

In the last few days we as bloggers, tweeples (and whatever other word you’d like to associate to it) suffered a great loss.

Salman Mehmood who was more commonly known as ’skdev’ online passed away at the age of 24. Personally I hadn’t known him very well, but for his actions online and for the blood drive campaigns that he often organized I respect him from the bottom of my heart.

He was already a Thalassemia major, and the blood drive he organized were for the treatment of the patients suffering from the same, but very recently he had been infected by Meningitis, for which he was admitted to Aga Khan University Hospital.

For about a week he suffered, his brain activity had gone zero and he was put on ventilator, which was finally removed on the 19th of October 2009.

During all this his sister Ayesha Mehmood, who he had always encouraged to move forward with the Blood drive kept us all updated via twitter, which was very kind and brave of her considering what she was going through watching her brother in the hospital.

During these days we saw most of the Pakistani blogger community praying for the better of Salman. We saw some deep emotions surface, since we on some level had interacted with Salman, and needless to say he was one awesome person, friendly, helpful and lively.

I offer my condolences to his family, and yes we will miss him, I want us to move forward with the Thalassemia project so his dream of getting rid of such disease in Pakistan can come true. Ameen.

Please take a moment and say a little prayer for Salman and his family. Thanks.

It’s been a while since I blogged or got in touch with this little beautiful piece of web-ware called Wordpress, but I thought I’d finally put down some words in here about how things are rolling, not that any one would care, but just for heck of it.

I’ve been adding quite some objects to my room, life and otherwise lately, I enjoy some sort of things depending on it’s nature, attention and presentation go side by side, that’s one reason I got mohawk, the other being, that I always wanted one, I knew it would raise eyebrows, and it certainly does. Just the other day I was out and this group of photographers asked me if they could photograph me, now I wouldn’t mind, would I then yesterday I was having dinner with friends, and this Indian family right behind me, their youngest kid, screams “Didi apne peechay dekho” not realizing I understood what he just said, the nest thing that he said is “Oh Shoot!”

And since we’re talking about the Mohawk, just a little note, the mohawk in length has been shorted, but has grown in height

Now about the additions, I recently bought a Guy Fawkes Mask, for those who don’t know what that is, it’s the mask the lead character wears in the movie “V for Vendetta”, yes I bought the mask since I enjoyed the movie quite. I guess some movies have more impact on it’s viewers than the others.

Then I have a lava lamp, which is something I wanted for quite a while, but just got my hands on recently, and it’s one of the most awesome things in my room.

A cheap printer was also added, since I like to print out certain stuff, and I shouldn’t worry where to run for that..

And just very recently I added quite some other random stuff but the one to mention is a Post it board, I m making it work more like a soft board, I wanted to get a soft board but couldn’t get it, so I m going to make do with this instead and it’s not bad really.

And last Friday I got my hands on my iPhone which I had been trying to get for a month, finally did.. cheers and man I m enjoying the applications available, so far I haven’t jail broken it, maybe I might, and maybe not.

I hope Singtel doesn’t screw up things for me though

Good things and bad things happened just about the same time. boinkers..

The good first.. Paras Amir Ali Allana who I know through flickr and Raheel Lakhani was in town recently with here family.. And since she’s a friend how could I not show her around, even though I haven’t seen this place much.

We went to a couple of places, including The Toy Museum, a full ride of MRT line (though it wasn’t intentional), then it was for a 3d movie experience, I took them to see G Force, and then the bungee which was my favourite, and then to round it all up, we ate at Lao Pa Sat. It’s a matter of one’s taste but Paras’s sister didn’t quite like the food there, which obviously made me think I should’ve taken them to some other food place I guess, but anyhow.. the day was fun.

Some days later I find out, my website and blog is being marked bad by google. some malicious links had been reported.. I was like woahh.. hello… bring that thing down.. I looked up, checked properly, verified and then requested a review… which was pretty quick and my website status on google was restored ( ).

Anyhow, it’s about only 2 days to Eid, and some how it doens’t really feel like Eid, but I did make a Eid card to put online. You can leave a comment about it on this page, it’s facebook page or the deviantart page.

Also now that I have my fish eye lens, telephoto lens, wide angle and macro lens I think it’s alot fun to do photography.. Also I m going to attend the GCT in the morning…

Here are some photos I took recently.

I have been really pissed about people ripping off my artworks recently, with the recent patriotism in Pakistan, alot of people had started doing something or the other about our online image.. I m really happy about that, and I wish all these people who start something like that all the best.. where I do draw the line is why the F*** do you have to steal some one else’s artwork to do just that.

I saw a rise in such incidents, where not only mine, but works of other artists were not only ripped off by known websites, but wannabe artists as well.. Whats more at some places it was being used for profit reasons. I count myself as a patriotic person (in a limited way), and I don’t think stealing is one of the things I’d like to do.. and stealing my work is no good thing, infact stealing any one’s stuff is no good.. specially if they make a living out of it.

My artworks have been online for quite some time, and I don’t watermark my images because it takes the beauty away, but if you like one of my works, and want to use it at some place, you know you can just ask for it, I m sure we can come to some terms to work on. But no… some people just take things for granted..

Please people.. respect the effort one puts in their work.. and stop stealing.. and then calling some one else’s work yours… it’s not !

Here are some of the pictures I took with the lenses on, actually these are macros I’ll put up some wide angle shots soon, and I think I m going to order some more lenses

Image link on: Flickr – Deviantart – Facebook

Image link on: Flickr – Deviantart – Facebook

Image link on: Flickr – Deviantart – Facebook

I hope you like the pictures, please comment, and help me make my work even better