The princess who asked for fire

Armineh said, "Poor willow tree."
Arsineh said, "Poor butterflies."

-I'll turn off the lights, Zoya Pirzad

Joshua Radin- Brand New Day

Some kind of magic, happens late at night
When the moon smiles down at me, and bathes me in it's light
I fell asleep beneath you, in the tall blades of grass
When I woke the world was new, I never had to ask

It's a brand new day; The sun is shining...

Beautiful music, even more beautiful lyrics. It's so in harmony with my vision of life: that Sun always shines even after the darkest and longest night. It doesn't matter if you messed up the day before, if life was harsh on you, if it didn't happen. Now it's a new day. All new and shining. A new gift of life.

Gilan

National Acrobats of China

I went to a performance of National Acrobats of China.Their performance was fascinating. You think watching gymnastics in olympics is fun? i suggest you once go to a Chinese acrobat performance to see what human body can do. One of the girls there, i swear, had no skeleton in her body! And the men too: from now on, i will totally believe whatever unbelievable move i see in an asian martial arts movie!It was a magnificent show of the beauty and perfection of human body and skill.

Tonight' performance reminded me of an old fainted memory. I was 7 or 8 years old, a Chinese acrobat team came to Tehran for a performance, and my mom took me and my brother to watch them. This was a huge thing to the kid that i was, in those gray days of war and rigidity. I remember their performance included a human pyramid, the cyclists, and the dragon dance. After the show, we were waiting alongside the street for my dad to come and take us home. It took a while, and the Chinese acrobat team members packed up and got into their charter bus that was waiting right there. I started to wave for them, and they waved back! I was happy that i can have a somewhat closer encounter with those magnificent men (no female performers of course, in the islamic revolutionary environment at that time!) Anyways, the exchange of wavings and smiles went on for a while and then one of the Chinese acrobats got out of the bus and came to me, and gave me a small medallion/pin of their team. It was a green and gold Dragon head. Oh God, i was on clouds! I kept that pin for long, it was among one of my most precious possessions that i kept in my small collectors box. It should still be somewhere in my stuff, back home.

Rape Aggression Defense Systems (R.A.D.)

Today i went to the first session of the R.A.D class offered in our school. R.A.D is a program of realistic self-defense tactics and techniques for women to defend themselves against sexual assaults. It involves both informational, and practical lessons. I found the class very interesting and informative. For instance did you know that when you are facing an offender you have to stand in a way that your left side (weaker side) is closer to him? This will let you have your right arm free and ready to punch if you have to. Or if someone asks you the time, don't look down on your wrist, pull your arm up and maintain the eye contact. Or another thing she mentioned to me when i was practicing one-to-one with her was not to pull back the punch (which is what you tend to do especially if you do turbo-kickboxing!), let your fist stay there for a millisecond to deliver the maximum power, don't pull it back too quickly.

Anyways, there are still 3 more session of this to go, but i highly recommend you make time to take this class. If you are in US or Canada (check their website here).