Hi, my name is Shaji and yes I would like to change the name of my spellings if I could but so far I haven’t had the opportunity to do so. And even if I do I’d have to change in so many places that the task itself seems daunting. So for the time being I am ‘Shaji’ offline and ‘schajee‘ online.
I was born at 9:05am (so I have been told) on November 15th, 1978 in Islamabad. I am a born and bred Islooite and have spent at least half of my life on one particular road, i.e. the Bazaar Road in G-6/3. I went to school and college at Islamabad College for Boys, and later attended the then newly established FAST ICS at 4 Bazaar Road.
Went to work a stone’s throw from there at NADRA Headquarters, which thankfully had a slightly different address. After having spent 4 good years there I have now moved to Malaysia to study Animation and Visual Effects. The plan being that after I’m done with this I go back to Pakistan and revive the already dead film industry.
I have been around computers for most of my life since before hitting the teens, starting from my father‘s lab in the Physics Department at Quaid-i-Azam University. There I used to program animations in GW-Basic while my brother was busy playing games. Now he’s doing his PhD and i’m still stuck trying to graduate.
Anyway, over time I learned a lot about computers and now I fondly call whichever computer I have at any given time, my life partner; I name them after ships though. I have programmed, designed, animated and played games on them and now I use them to earn my living.
My interests are quite varied as a result and I can say I do almost everything that can be done with a computer. Mostly I do web design and development, but other than that I do 3d modeling, animations and visual effects though I’m not every good at it right now.
What do I want to be when I grow up? Well for starters, I want to make films in Lollywood, and not the crap that is currently or has been produced for the last couple of decades. Good stuff! Films worth watching. Films with a good story, cinematography and visual effects and above all… good sound. No more dubbing!!! Anyway, that’s the plan, so whenever I’m done here, I’m coming back.