The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

With all the stuff that Qasim Virjee  does, the question isn’t “What does Qasim do?”, but “What doesn’t Qasim do?”

He’s into technology and hobnobs with the tech and social media scene here in Accordion City. Look at all the stuff he does:

• Design Guru, his digital communication agency for online communities
• GetFilmi, the premier site for watching Indian cinema online
• The Masala Chai Company, the place to get masala chai blends
• Indian Electronica and Globetronica: the former is an organization showcasing South Asian electronic music; the latter is a magazine that showcases music from all over the globe

…and he’s got a great new series called Motion on his podcast, Eclectic Aural Adventures with Qasim featuring his DJ mixes.

I’ve been enjoying the January edition of Motion at work — I find the smooth 4/4 groove keeps me going, even through the afternoon doldrums, and his selections are impeccably good. Here’s a track listing:

1. Aviator (Album Mix)    – Photek
2. Relapse (Original Mix) – OVERWERK
3. Blue Bell Knoll (Nick Warren Bootleg) – The Cocteau Twins
4. Out Of Reach (Andre Sobota Remix) –    Jody Wisternoff, Jonathan Mendelsohn
5. Don’t Take Your Love Away (92 mix) – Groove Armada
6. Another Night – Claptone
7. Tobago (Original Mix) – Jonas Rathsman
8. What It’s Like (Daniel Wanrooy & Mark Green Remix) – Andain
9. The Healing (Clubroot Remix) – James Zabiela
10. What the Water Gave Me (Dibby Dougherty & David Young’s ‘DhARMA Edit’) – Florence & The Machine
11. Daydream (Andrea Roma Remix) – Moonbeam

Best of all, it’s free! You can either listen to it online (just click on the player on that page) or grab it via iTunes (it’s free there too).

…and if you do this with a raincoat, you can eat cereal.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Misery loves company, but misery loves getting a thousand bucks even more! These posters have been all over Accordion City’s subways, promoting Virgin Radio’s “Bad Boyfriend Poker” call-in contest. Players are supposed to call in with not one but three stories about a bad boyfriend they had — what they call a “hand”, with the best story being the “ace” — and the caller with the “best” hand (that is, worst stories) — wins $1000, which presumably will be spent on therapy.

Of all the example bad boyfriend stories that they’ve posted, this one’s my favourite. I have just one question: which version of God Save the Queen? The British national anthem, or the Sex Pistols song?

I saw this and ROR’d.

How bad is the smog in China right now? Bad enough to make it difficult to land planes. This bad…

But there is a bright side to all this. We’ll be able to tell this glorious story to future generations:

Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy’s chart showing the psychogeography of Finnegan’s Wake.

It took eight years to translate James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake — a book that barely qualifies as being written in English — into Chinese, but the task is complete and the book is now available in China. Shanghai’s News and Publishing Bureau says that it’s now the number two book in terms of sales of the “good books” category (their term for “serious reads” — no Fifty Shades of Grey here), beaten only a new biography of Deng Xiaoping.

A Chinese billboard promoting Finnegan’s Wake.

My favourite quote about the book comes from Jiang Xiaoyuan, a professor of Shanghai’s Jiaotong University, who was quoted in Xinhua (China’s state-run news agency) as saying:

“Joyce must have been mentally ill to create such a novel.”

Nope, he was just drunk.

Life of Pi certainly brings out the comedian in a lot of people….

Update

Doug Savage, creator of the webcomic Savage Chickens, just posted Life of Fry:

Thanks to Daryl for the heads-up!