I have been off the blogging scene for the past few weeks for various personal reasons but this was one opportunity that I would not have missed for anything in this world – a chance to listen and interact with one of my musical idols, A. R. Rahman. Thanks to SAJA, I had a chance not only to listen to him talk, but to actually ask him questions and then participate in a discussion later.

After mulling over different things in my head, I asked him about his experimenting with different genres in his compositions, particularly in reference to Gangsta Blues [ITunes], from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack and the reggaton influence in one of my recent favorites, the Taxi Taxi number from Sakkarakatti. I also used the occasion for a shout out to his catchy collaboration with Apache Indian for the Lovebirds soundtrack from 1996.

The verdict on my contribution has overwhelmingly been that I sounded EXCITED. Yes, I was excited and if I had been speaking to him in person, I’d have been even more excited and tongue tied. So, there!

You can listen to the webcast (I come and ask my question at about 50:00 into the discussion) by clicking on the embedded player below, or go to the SAJA page on Blogtalkradio (link).

Looks like you are one of our regular visitors. Here is our RSS feed, just another way to keep up with the new posts.

Our indomitable blogger, Anantha, represented Über Desi on a veritable who’s who panel on a webcast organized by SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association) about the powder keg of a situation in Mumbai. [SAJA webcast]

Anantha had some interesting thoughts on the Indian media’s coverage of this situation and also on how online social media is helping maintain contact between those affected and the rest of the world. Feel free to listen to the thought provoking discussion on the SAJA webcast].

About a month ago, I was on the SAJA panel discussing The South Asian Blogosphere and How it is Changing the Media. Embedded below is the episode of the podcast, feel free to leave your comments below.

When you do get a chance visit the SAJA blog, they do a great job of keeping us in the loop about Desi events happening here in the US. They also analyze and discuss events from a Desi angle.

Today SAJA is having a webcast on the state of the South Asian blogosphere.

Sabahat Ashraf of iFaqeer.com, Anil Dash of AnilDash.com, Maria Giovanna of Filmiholic.com, Arun Venugopal of SAJAforum.org and yours truly representing UD will be on the panel.

Make sure you tune in.

No this is not Über Desi taking a hard right turn and embarking on a Sarah Palin lovefest. Our regular readers are probably aware of this – Über Desi was down for almost 120 hours over the Labor Day weekend !!!! The reason, GOP Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.

This former mayor of a small town in Alaska takes Über Desi a hearbeat away from oblivion

We @ Über Desi seem to have developed this knack of talking about news makers before they make news, big-time news. Case in point, this post of the “Hottest Female Politicians” from last year. Cristina Fernandez and Yulia Tymoshenko, from afore mentioned list made an appearance in the Forbes 100 most powerful women in the world list.

It appears the Forbes list was premature, at least at this point for as soon as that list was published, there was a major development in the US Presidential race – Sarah Palin, was selected as running mate by John McCain. There was one minor caveat to this announcement however, the world knew very little about this lady and so naturally, they turned to that fountain of eternal knowledge.

Another little fact about the “Hottest Female Politicians” post is that since it was posted last year, this post has been one of the most popular posts on Über Desi, again thanks to a high ranking of certain keywords for this humble blog at that fountain of eternal knowledge. All elements were aligned correctly, or incorrectly, depending on your perspective.

The sequence of events goes something like this:
-John McCain declared Sarah Palin as his running mate
-Media, and more specifically, bloggers, get whiff of this news
-Media, and more specifically, bloggers, dive headlong into that fountain of eternal knowledge
-Our “Hottest Female Politicians” post and specifically Palin’s picture is returned on the first page of results of major search engines
-Major blogs including Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008 blog link to us.
-Über Desi traffic spikes. Total hits in 1 hour far exceed our monthly averages. So far so good, correct? Wrong.
-Über Desi was hosted on shared hosting, more specifically, Total Choice Hosting (TCH). The morons at TCH, see the spike and attribute it to a DDOS attack, the kind that takes place when you piss of Chinese or Russian netizens and in their infinite wisdom shut Über Desi down.
-By that time, the bloggers are either flying or driving cross-country on their Labor Day weekend vacations.

Long story short, we changed hosting providers and here we are. We do have a small favor to ask of our readers, lurkers and fellow bloggers, please spread the word that your friendly neighborhood desi blog, Über Desi, is back online. After all, it is through us that, at times, you get to hear about the soon-to-be-news-makers