A pleasant Sunday at the Ibne Qasim Park (Bagh)in Clifton, Karachi's biggest public park. We are placed near the the end of at the stone Lady Lloyd Pier which ends in pavilion in the centre of the park. The coast has been landfilled developed and is at the opposite end of the park. There were quite a few new chance acquaintances made through the pinhole, between Karachi and Linz.

what usually happens in the sort of thing we 've tried so far is that its people on the street who just want to peek. then a crowd gathers. while we volunteer the headphone to talk to austria with picture.

its been male 95 %

usually there is one or two people who can speak english and nwho are eager to talk. sometimes there are kids on both sides. the whole things is quite humorous and surprising at the same time, and yet its random street corner stuff at the same time.

one boy even told us that anybody can do this: he can skype from home, obviously missing missing the point of people around the box, who have never used the internet or seen what it is and those who use netcafe's when they need to.

in his attempt to communicate despite different languages, one guy tried sveral inclusding pushto, pounjabi, and urdu, and soon enough one indian guy joined in the conversation, as curiously piqued as these guys... the guy in karachi had started by saying : wo aagaya kaala, kalay !! apna bhaai, "there he is, a black brother here !!".

another introduced himself by saying he had worked for agerman company for 10 years in abudhabi !

so there were mochis (cobblners), a/c repairmen, passers by, waiters, rikshawala, children selling flowers, and unknown others. one guy wanted to do commercial venture with us at his space near baloch colony.

others practised their english. girls in linz evoked general enthusiasm in the hattempt to communicate, in a general urgency bordering on desperation to communicate.

the conversation and utterances sometimes veered of polite discourse, but usually brought back by others there or one of us. they were telling them about the city and country :)

so we could make up scenarios., because we have themes also. this time its inside outside i think? atteqa?

so we can brief the person at this end, while also showing the new person in linz the theme on a paper 'inside outside'. also we could keep the pace fast, by asking people to use the headphone for 5 min only ...(for example) then pass on to the next person

i think we can be a bit organized to document better also and/or play a game or two

the background environment is also important. market, beach, street, landscape ....

A very interesting day in many respects

we were at an office where working Karachiites got a chance to look into the pinhole. On the other side from Austria we were first visited by some young men who had a little too much to drink.

They introduced themselves as being from Iraq and then went on to make a lot of other unsavory remarks generally and some directed at the women who were with us.

It was funny because due to the culture difference and a little bit of delay on the audio were not picked up by the people who were with me (or they were and we all just ignored it for the sake of the fun experience)

then I got a text from one of the people working in hall in Linz apologizing for the rude gentlemen. What surprised me that while it was all going on I did not have the presence of mind to just turn off the call. It was like I was frozen in the attempt to communicate and did not realize that this particular communication was not worth it.

any way, after this a very intelligent young boy around 12 came on and proceeded to display immense amounts of knowledge not just about Pakistan and 20/20 cricket but the world in general. He was Austrian but lived in London. I asked him about racism in London schools against Pakistanis. He said it did exist but school administrations tended to take the issue very seriously resulting in suspensions. I was happy to hear that. I asked him what we should about the whole problem of racism and the young man replied that there should be a Global treaty on racism. I was very impressed and asked him to write to the UN about it!

Shot of live skype session from Karachi to Linz
We had a fabulous time today!!!!were joined on the street by a really entertaining group of young men
Yasir in grey shirt taking photo of session

Some of my memorable moments are when the AC technician said "Chus " into the microphone and said that he had worked with a german air conditioning company for 10 years

And the other was the monologue/dialogue that another young man came up with in spurts of Urdu, Pashto which was so hilarious that we were all in fits, typical Karachi Humour!!

For those of you in the Linz area pls. check out live broadcasts from Mauj in Karachi to the pinhole in the box project at Ars Electronica


http://www.80plus1.org/blog/801-%E2%80%9Cbasecamp%E2%80%9D-plans-announced-for-building-on-the-linz-main-square


we will be starting probably by next weekend, every Friday Saturday Sunday, uptil mid August
14.00 Austria time for 2 hrs
and we will hook up our camera to public places in Karachi
given that Karachi is a VERY unpredictable megacity, we are prepared for surprises and a few rude shocks!!!! but not too many I hope