Illusion!

O' my goodness, I watched the entire movie, the illusionist, with the illusion that its main actress was Scarlet Johansen, and kept wondering howcome she looked so different in this movie!!!

From an offline message

Life is short,
Break the rules,
Forgive quickly,
Kiss slowly,
Love truly,
Laugh uncontrollably,
And never regret anything that made you smile.

Music of the rain

Sleeping to the music of the rain,
yet one more of the life's simple pleasures.

Dreaming movies

I watched the two Kill Bills back to back on my laptop in my bed last night, then collapsed to sleep at 5 in the morning. And thus began the special features, the deleted scenes, the alternative endings, the sequal, even new characters in the plot. All in like 15 minute dream installments. I would dream a piece, wake up only to go back to sleep where another part was awaiting me. Not that pleasing, but quite an experience.

"What'll you do when you get lonely ?"

Tonight I'm thinking, why should this particular song, among all the songs in the world, start with this verse?

Cherries

With summer comes cherries, and we like it! Funny thing that anywhere in this country I have to be super careful not to buy anything with cherry flavor, and God knows lots of stuff are cherry flavored here! What's the irony: the cherries i like are Bing Cherries and the ones i hate are the american bright red ones which taste like cough syrup. Well the causality possibly is the other way around, cough syrups are cherry flavored!

You know what, one good thing about visiting California in June is the Bing cherry harvest season. Lots of good cherries for cheap:)
Talking about cherries listen to this song, i liked it. It's called "Black Horse & The Cherry Tree".

Summer Jazz

The magic bus ate my doughnut!
This was the title of a piece in the Jazz concert I went to tonight. I take off my hat not to the composer of the piece but to the person who came up with this name for it ;-)

I left my heart in San Francisco

Alas, only if it wasn't that bitterly cold even in June, San Francisco was my favorite city to live in:-)

P.S. A statue of Tony Bennett's "heart" is in San Francisco's Union Square.

West Express diaries, season finale!

I want to finish these diaries before I go back home. So let's see if we can finish it in this post...
We passed four national parks: Zion, Grand Canyon, Death valley, and Yosemite. Each spectacular in its own way.

Red, red, red, Zion National Park

Zion made a big impression on me, perhaps because it was the first national park we visited, or perhaps because of the color red, I like red :) But seriously it was beautiful. Imagine a road passing along a valley surrounded by red stone mountains with green dots on them, add to the view a beautiful blue sky with some happy white cloads in it. Here are some pictures. The funny thing was that the asphalt on the road was also red!









The grand Grand Canyon
After the Zion park, we drove along the road in the middle of the Indians' land to get to the grand canyon national park. The Grand Canyon truly deserves the word "grand". Standing on the top looking at it, you can't help but wonder how Grand is the nature, and how small the man who claims himself its master.
Picking a photo to post here is a challenging task cause none of my shots could capture the grandness i'm talking about, so I'll pass.

Las Vegas
Well, what do i say about Las Vegas? You know it all! The things I didn't know about before was that you're allowed to drink in public. At nights the whole city sidewalks are like a big pub. People walk freely with bottle of beers in their hands. The other weird thing was the men distributing nude flyers in the street, and so so many of them. the funny thing is that these people also offer the pictures to the men walking hand in hand with their significant others! Would you dare taking one, if you are a man in such situation?;-)

And we drove along the Hoover dam past midnight in our way to Vegas, I regret that I didn't get a chance to go back in daylight to take a better look.

Dipping in Death Valley!
Dip was a new word to me when I first come to US. The first time the word came to my attention was with the expression "double dipping" in a Seinfeld episode. Just recently when I adopted dancing I came across with the other meaning of "dipping": when a couple dance, the dip is when the lady bends backwards, with the gentleman's hand supporting her move. Death valley national park added one more meaning to "dip". Death valley is a dessert surrounded by mountains on the far. the road passes in the middle of the sandy dessert, and so often there are inward bumps in the road. In the places the layers of sand beneath the road has gone down making dips in the road. It's like driving your car along a roller coaster kinda road. It was a fun drive!

The delish Macaroons of the Mammoth lake
I can't go on to Yosemite without mentioning this. On our way to Yosemite we stopped for the night in Mammoth lake. It's a popular sky resort, so in the off season the business was slow and the town looked empty, but no regrets, cause we discovered a very good European style bakery in town with the most decedents pastries and the absolute best macaroons i had ever had. Here's the picture of the place. If you ever got to go there, check that out and bring me some too!





And finally the Yosemite, and me!

West Express diaries, part 2

Colorado, Or how much mountains are enough montains?:)
I liked this state. It kinda looks like Iran. Mountainous with dry weather.The road from Denver towards west very much resembles the Chaloos road in Iran which passes the Alborz mountains in the North. Only the road was cleaner and safer and there were less shaggy venders cabins alongside the road.


Another interesting thing in Colorado: this is the picture I took from the window of the giftshop in the hotel we stayed at in Denver. what do you think about the line on the t-shirt? Who is fighting the terrorism? Indians? Or are they the ones Coloradoans flighted against? ;)


Loveland, Colorado
How many of you would consider changing your trip route across States to pass by a certain icecream shop?:-) I would in general, though I couldn't do it for practical reasons this time we were badly behind our schedule for the day, and we could have missed our hotel reservation for the night. But anyway, there is a small town in Colorado called Loveland. It surprisingly has a branch of my favorite Italian gelato shop, while some big cities like Chicago for instance don't. Btw, isn't Loveland an interesting name for a town? :) So here's some more about it:

It's a town of 50,000 population, about 30 miles east of the Rocky Montains National Park. Each year hundreds of thousands of Valenites from across the world are sent to Loveland to be remailed in Feb, handstamped by volunteers with the town's postmark and a special poem that changes each year. Aren't you tempted to send a letter to Loveland this year?:-) I am. I might as well ask for a special overnight icecream delivery. In February it might get to Champaign unmelted!

LA and Cold

Sleeping all the way when passing California road One,
Walking with a runny nose in Hollywood boulevard,
Breaking your camera while shooting the Chinese theater,
Wearing a jacket when everybody else is in bikini in Santa Monica beach,

LA was not nice to me!


P.S. I forgot to mention the terrible smell of the Hallywood blvd. Who is the mayer there? He better make some public restrooms there!

West Express diaries, part 1

Okay, here we go, the diaries of my road trip to california. I will write about the things I found interesting along the way. The other thing is I usually like to keep my posts as short as possible in this blog, but I don't think it's gonna happen with these diaries.

We started off on the commencement day in our campus. The streets of our tini-tiny twin cities were irregularly traffic-jammed with an unusual number of cars in campus town. It took us like 20 minutes to get to the interstate, which was kind of funny cause usually it take like 5 minutes to get there. I thought to myself if that was how the trip is supposed to be, we might need an additional week to get to our destination! But luckily the road was smooth enough and we made it to Kansas City for the night stay.

Do you know which state Kansas City is in? .... Wrong answer! It's not Kansas, it's Missouri. The city is close to the border of Kansas though. There was a museum of Oz there. Bewitched by the Wicked show, I like to see it but they close on Mondays, boo! The other significant happening of this day was the hail storm that hit us in the road somewhere in Utah. I was driving with my mom next to me and the sky got cloudy. Pretty dark clouds lower in the sky and the wired thing was that in the horizon there were two dark color (same color as the clouds themselves) vertical columns coming down of the sky to the ground. From distance the view ahead of us look pretty much like a giant pi. And I was driving right into it. Spooky, nah?;)

So as we approached to one of the legs of the giant pi, the rain began. Light in the beginning, but quickly in turned into a shower. A shower so intense that i could see nothing in front of me. And when I say nothing, i mean "nothing". The wipers were on full force and still no visibility. Wooyee, it was a scary 3 minutes. I continued to drive ahead, cause i couldn't distinguish the road shoulder to pull over, and even if i would, no other car could see me stopped there and they could hit us. Now add to this situation a telephone call from a family friend :))) Okay, lets not make it more dramatic. The whole thing was just a couple of minutes and then the shower turned into a hail storm, pretty big size hails, but yet we were happy that we could see in front of us. So did you see the thing? The leg of that weird pi cloud was the hail and rain storm! So I guess somewhere in the right hand side, some other poor drivers in the road were struggling with the other leg of the storm!

I wish I had a picture of the pi storm, but you tell me, could you take time to shoot in the middle of that ciaos?;)

P.S. something else about Utah, in the walmarts there, they have the book of mormons on the racks in the register isle. No wonder, hah? :D

P.S.2 In the ladies room in a gas station in Utah, the tampon despenser, also dispensed condoms! Isn't that strange? What's it with Utah?;-)

I'm back!

Think for a moment and answer this question: Could you let go of your internet connection for a week? If someone asked me this question two weeks ago, I would have answered with a strong No, being aware of my addiction to my 3 email accounts, my two weblogs, and my feed reader. But things went on such that I lost my internet for a whole 9 days, and I'm still breathing!

I recall some years back I heard about a program that had American families live a week of no-TV, helping them find other family activities. My case was kinda differnt cause I was (still am) on a trip and other new things easily fill in your free time automatically. But yet it was an interesting (though irretating in the beginning) experience.

Anyway, I'll start writting about my road trip from Champaign to Santa Clara soon. We passed 6-7 states and visited 4 National parks along the way which were amazing. But for now have this picture of Simpsons family cauch. You have to imagine me sitting right next to Homer. I do have a picture like that, but I'll send it out by individula requests, hahah!

Stay cool whereever you are, cause California's weather is joyfully pleasant these days:)

"Ingredients for life"

This was such a deep post, and i liked it. I have known the guy who wrote it as a not-too-close friend. This gives another dimension to these words, kinda separates them from the usual words of wisdom you could find everywhere; what i often find hard to relate to, beacuse the people who say them seems so inhumanely wise. I thought I'd share it with you here.


P.S. I often find people become conscience and wise when its close to their birthdays! Have you experienced this?

"Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity !

... And no one is gonna ever bring me down! "

Well, from where we were sitting, she literally was flying over our heads :-) Chicago's Elphaba is not Idina Menzel, but Dee Rosciolli. She actually did a very good job. She too could get into the Toni's I say.

Did you know that the actors in a musical wear a very tiny microphone on their foreheads? It's barely visible, but we could see each and every detail of each and everything on the stage, except for the red shoes the wicked witch of the east had on when Dorothy's house hit her!

Luckiest day of my life !

You are not gonna believe what I'm about to say...
Just in my last post I said how much I like musicals, and before I had told you how I long to see Wicked in Chicago. And how the tickets are above my budget. Now guess what? :)


I WON the 25$ lottery for first row Wicked tickets! Yeah baby, isn't that ...well, i can't find a word for it :D

Okay, so the story from the beginning:
Yesterday my friend and I had a girls day out in Chicago. These days are the tulip festival in Michigan Avenue and I'm a sucker for colors and tulips. Also in Chicago there is shopping, and there is chelokabab and we spotted a middle-eastern party also for our late evening adventure. So we hopped in our brand new rental toyota, and headed north. We were in H&M's fitting room, when I looked at my watch and it was 5:50. The lottery happens at 6. So I grabbed my friend's ID, and made a run for it to the Borders store 2 blocks away. I put 2 entries in my name and hers, and a couple of minutes later she came just in time for the drawing. There were more than a 100 people there, and they call 10 names. Just two weeks ago when I was in chicago on a school trip I entered into the draw but didn't win. So this time I didn't have my hopes up that much, i thought we would just try our chances one more time. They started to call the names. I was looking at the cards the woman was pulling out of the witch hat. The ones she was taking out were all folded ones. I was thinking to myself that I should have folded the entry cards, when she draw a new one and read "from Urbana, Illinois, a name she can't pronounce! My friend's name. I think I screamed before she did! And started jumping up and down. Wow, what a moment. What a moment. Your heartbeat will reach to 200 in a matter of a second, and all your blood will rush to your face. I'll write more about the Wicked in another post. It was a GREAT show. But the story didn't finish here. Luck was with us all the time yesterday. Did i mention that earlier we got a free off street parking spot right next to sears towers? We did. We also could get our cover money back from that mideastern party we didn't like (well, poor grad students!). Then we got into our favorite "Howl at the moon", without cover and lines, courtesy of a guy who offered us his Chicago's W card! We got back in town by dawn. April 28th, you were such a lucky day, please come back and see us again soon!

Every story is a love story

Aida, the musical was on our campus tonight. I enjoyed it much. Boy, I'm so much into musicals! This was my third, and I still long to see one on a real theater. (The ones on campus don't count, they are simplified versions!) Anyway, you could really hear Elton John in the solos, even his voice's ups and downs. My favorite song was "Fortune favors the brave". Here's a version on youtube. And the dances were good too.

Now the funny thing about the show was that the Radames that came down to Champaign was too blond for an egyption warrior, i couldn't stop smiling even in the most tragic scenes whenever i looked at his cotten blond hair!

Celestine Prophecy

I watched this movies a friend recommended. Celestine Prophecy. It was a good one. It is based on a bestseller book by James Redfield. I'm not gonna talk about the story not to make any spoilers, but i found some similarities between its plot and that of Paolo Coelho's Alchemist. Apparently this idea of life flow and mystical coincidences is strong in Latin America.

Side note, the story takes place in Peru. The movie is filled with the amazing scenes of Peru's wild nature. Beautiful country indeed. I was doing a research on some Latin American countries last year and Peru was among the ones that gave me such hard time finding data for. Celestine prophecy, changed my perception of the word Peru!

My new top

Can one fall in love with a piece of apparel? I can:-) Today I've bought the most gourgous brown satin top one can ever imagine. It has this beautiful pleeted v-neck colar. It's tight around the waist and the shoulders are made just to fit mine. And it's sleeves, oh my goodness, the 3/4 beautiful puffy ones. Recall the 19th century men's puffy sleeves, this is twice as pretty. If you have read "Anne of Green Gables" you'd understand when i say right now I feel like Anne when she got her puffy sleeves dress.

And you guys out there, don't you dare thinking what a vein vanity, cause you can't imagine what you're missing!

Just like that

It could have been me, teaching an early morning class, being shut in face by a mad man carrying a gun, raging into my classroom. I could criticize the law that legalizes firearms in US, but I don't feel like arguing right now. Today's incident in Virginia Tech campus awoke some old feeling in me. What I thoughts I had overcame for quite some years now. Feeling insecure. Knowing that your life or your loved ones' life could come to an end at any second. The insecurity that roots from growing up as a kid in mid 80's under the terror of Iraqis bombardments of Iranian cities.

AP photo : As light fades behind Norris Hall where much of the shootings took place, Virginia Tech students gather in front of the War Memorial Chapel to mourn their fellow students.

It's not all your attitude

What makes a day happy or sad? I believe it's mainly your attitude. Most of the times, if you we wake up in the morning with a happy spirit, the day turns to be smiling back at you as well. But not always. Some days seems destined to be "sad" no matter how happy you started them.

It was a shinny day today, the weather had warmed up a bit, and I was almost recovered from my cold. Then I went to campus and BAM the first news, our 5 month pregnant secretary has lost her baby. BAM, a friend's folks are denied a US visa to come visit their kid. BAM, another friend has lost an uncle back home without getting a chance to say goodbye to him.

Turned out to be not a smiling day after all.

Meltyblend

Today I went to a student's home to proctor an exam. The poor girl has fractured her spine while ice-skating. She has to be immobile in a cast for 6 months. Just imagine they force you to lie in bed wearing a plastic cast and stare into the ceiling for 6 hours, let alone months; unbearable. She can move her limbs, so she had a special table with some hangers that would fix the paper up above her face so that she can write the answers to the test. Yet she was in good spirit and was trying to graduate in May.

It's just a matter of seconds to have an accident, and it could happen to anybody. The next time that I begin feeling low, I'm gonna remember today and remind myself that I'm blessed with many many good things that I often take for granted.


P.S.1. Her mother had come from Taiwan to take care of her, so she was in good hands.
P.S.2. The mother kept serving me tea and fruits and goodies. It seems Taiwanese have the same hospitality codes as Iranians.
P.S.3. (back to the title) She offered me such a magnificent chocolate. It is a Japanese Chocolate called Meltyblend. Truly good. A soft bitter-sweet melty cube chocolate covered in cocoa dust. Yummmy. I totally recommend it. If you found a store that carries it, let me know too!

Smile, it's raining !

It's raining today. Sometimes in nice sunny days, the buses that run in the streets of our town here have a sign on : "Smile, it's sunny". It's interesting, the excitement people feel in a sunny day here, we would get from a rainy day back home.

I remember the radio used to play songs and read poetry's about rain when it began to shower in Tehran. In my old dry polluted city, rain meant a lot. A short moment of relief for the poor carbon covered Plane trees, some water for the dried out grass in parks and gardens, and above all fresher air to breathe for people, even if for a short while. As for me, i so much liked looking at the city when wet. It was like "color" was back to the streets from beneath the gray layer of dust.

Eidetoon Mobarak

How wise our forefathers were to set our New year's day on the start of the Spring. There is something about Spring. You see how right in front of your eyes the nature renovates itself with such joy that's hard to put into words. A colorful celebration of a new era.

This New Year's day, I'm in Washington city. The Magnolia trees are in flower. The gorgeous white and pink flower buds ready for a magnificent bloom. Amazed by their beauty, I make a wish. That the new year, does to me and to you, what it does to the nature in the bloom of a new Spring.

Happy New Year.

Packing

Packing. It is one of the things I very much dislike. I like to travel. I like airports and plane rides. I like the roads and to drive, I like staying in hotels, ... I even don't mind the delays or hassles often involved with travelling, the only part of it I hate is packing my suitcases. It's such a classic problem, limited resources (i.e. luggage space) and insatiable wants (what you want to take with you).
Or hold on, perhaps it's this: having to make several choices between the stuff you want to carry with you in a short span of time. And decision-making is an energy-consuming process.

Creepy!

Following on my Sabzeh post earlier, this year I had made more wheat spouts than I needed for sabzeh. So I put half of it in a container in the fridge to eat later. Today I took it out to put some on my salad, and guess what? The spouts had kept growing in the fridge, they had developed those green stems. Creepy, it was like eating something alive

The movie 300

There are two sides to any story. Often there are two very different narrations depending on which side the storyteller is standing by. This is more pronounced when you look back at the events in the history, as there are fewer unaffiliated narrators. Ancient civilizations, Persians, Greeks, Romans,... had lots of conflicts. Depending on who's telling the story the villains change to heroes and heroes to villains. It's very difficult to remain neutral in here.

Now, I as a Persian, with an obvious biased opinion, find the movies 300 a story told extremely biased. A group of Persian bloggers have started an attempt to provide an insight from another point of view to the ancient Persia. I support their effort. 300 the movie

My goofy story of the day!

This afternoon, when I got to my office I found my PC was dead:-( It actually would come up and show the login window and then froze in there, no ctrl-alt-del, no mouse movement, no nothing. So I restarted the thing a couple of times, and it didn't help. I called the office, they said that I had to fill up a computer maintenance request form ONLINE! Isn't that funny?

Add to this situation, a busy busy office hour, cause my kids have their midterm on Friday. Anyways, I started filling up the form on my officemates' machine, but he just then showed up to print out something, and when he left, i was logged out of the system, pooh! Who needs a secure system for maintenance request anyway? So long story short, I sent the request. There they said it might take 1-2 days if it is not a case of emergency. I was debating with my conscience to declare it an emergency (which wasn't) or not, and at last like an angel decided not to slip to the dark side of the force, yet!

An hour later, I had 4 students over, and I was going over a proof on the small white broad we have in office. I should mention that our office is a tini-tiny room, with 3 desks in it. So having 5 people in the room is actually a full house, the 6th person has to stand in the hall! Then the computer guy came in. He could barely fit in the room anyway, but add to the fact that he was a pretty big guy too. He actually offered to come back in a less crowded time, but I was so excited that he was there that soon that I said i wouldn't mind him fixing it right then. Perhaps the students would mind, but hey, TAs rule!

So, could you guess the ending by now?
...
The problem was both keyboard and mouse plugs were loose!

Norouz is coming

Yesterday I went to the whole food store and got some wheat to grow for my haft-seen. In the picture you see my last year's lentis Sabzeh. This year I'm growing wheat for a change:-)
The New Year spirit is in the air.

P.S. How to grow Sabzeh
-Soak the wheat in water for 24 hours
-Wrap it in a wet cloth for 2-3 days. Make sure that the wheat and the cloth is damp at all time, but there is no excess water in the bowl.
-tranfer the young sprouts to the plate you want your sabze in, and give them sunshine and water and sing to them!!!

Ellen

I'd say, Ellen DeGeneres did a nice job hosting the Oscars.
See the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfeZibn3vmU&NR

She cries in the studio after seeing the comments those celebrities made about her before the show. It is one of the most superb feeling anyone could ever feel. That you see people truly believe in you, no matter what.

Red, Fraternity, and Compassion

Seeing the good in people...
Compassion will pay off, even in a weird, serendipity like way.

Blue, Liberty, and Pain

The thing is
in a fight with pain
you're never the winner,
until you gave in. 

Snow-Out!

Was it I who was cheering for the snow? Well, no thank you, we've had enough now! We had a total snow-out situation last week in our twin city. The university had to shut down for 2 days- for the first time in its history- to be able to showel the snow to enable people to walk on campus.

And the funny part of the story: my car is totally stuck in snow and I can't dig it out. I was parked off-street when the blizzard started and when I got out of my apartment the day after, the city snow plows had cleaned the middle of our street, making a 3 feet snow wall between my poor car and the street! Any of you have a snow showel I could borrow? ;-)

White, Equality and Revenge

"Equality", a word with a positive association. "Revenge", one with often a negative one. But as you look at them closer, you'll see the relationship: Equal pain.

Die Slowly

by Pablo Neruda

He who becomes the slave of habit,
who follows the same routes every day,
who never changes pace,
who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,
who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly.

He or she who shuns passion,
who prefers black on white,
dotting ones “i’s” rather than a bundle of emotions,
the kind that make your eyes glimmer,
that turn a yawn into a smile,
that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, dies slowly.

He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,
who is unhappy at work,
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,
to thus follow a dream,
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly.

He who does not travel,
who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself, dies slowly.

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped,
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck,
about the rain that never stops, dies slowly.

He or she who abandon a project before starting it,
who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn’t know,
he or she who don’t reply when they are asked something they do know, die slowly.

Let’s try and avoid death in small doses,
always reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort by far greater than the simple fact of breathing.
Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

Officially old...er

Once a year, you get an opportunity to be reminded of the love and the care of the people around you. I'm thankful to them all.

We Didn't Start the Fire

They say "Any publicity is good publicity". I kind of disagree. I'd rather stay anonymous than being recognized for 'Ayatollahs' in the song.
The song also names Toscanini. I recently went to a concert in his honor. He died 50 years ago on Jan 16th.

Let it snow

The first Winter snow.
So white,
so calm,
and so beaustiful.

Why we hardly break up with our friends

It might have happened to most of us. That your best friend had said or done something you extremely disliked. Yet you don't usually breakup with your friend. How come we are more compromising towards our friends, and less in our relationships? Perhaps it's because we can give a friend a break; she says something you don't like, you take off for a couple of days and then the issue is cooled down and you both can ignore it. Or maybe because we don't feel the need to change our friends' attitudes, we accept them as they are and are happy with whatever we can get from that friendship, nomatter big or small. Our expections are high in a relationship; I say that's why we tolerate less.

In constant sorrow

The break is over, and I feel blue. The same old kind of feeling you have when you get to the end of some time period and you haven't accomplished what you has considered you would in the beginning. Sometimes you wonder if you could turn back time would you act differently. Well, I know I would handsomely waste my time all over again, if now was Dec 15th again. I'm a lost case.

A man (girl!) of constant sorrow

Audience

I was thinking today, when somebody writes a post in his weblog, does he have a specific audience in mind? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I write something here with the consideration that some people in particular would read it. And this to some extent is normal. After a while you got some returning visitors to your weblog and you automatically consider this in your writing. But what sometimes slips the mind is that potentially 'anybody' can be reading your posts. Even the people you had not have accounted for.

Wicked

Wicked

If I were living in Chicago, I would defenitly have kept going to those first row seats draws, till I could get my tickets:-)

A good cook!

I had some guests over for a small dinner party tonight. And here you see my apple pie. Looks good, doesn't it?:-)
Such a pity that I didn't make a picture of the main dish, but that was even more delicious than the pie. Saffron chicken over orange peel rice. Although I don't like bragging, but I guess it would be fair to say : I am a good cook. (No exclamation mark!)

Here's to 2007

One year passed. With all its ups and downs.
Lights and darks.
Smiles and tears.

Here's to 2007,
May it bring more smiles and less tears,
May it have more friendship and less lonesome.
May it bring more success and less devastation.
May it fulfill your dreams (well, at least some of them)
and
May it be filled with love.

And you know what, I have the sneaky feeling that it will be. Odd years are noble:-)
Happy 2007.

Never gonna stop the rain by complaining!

I very much like this song. I remember when I was a kid watching "Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid" and my mom singing along with the song.

Does anybody know what he means by "sleeping on the job"?

Five things you didn't know about me...

There is this game that started among some blogger friends on the Yalda night, as an after-shake of an older game here. The rules are -if you get tagged- you have to say five things about yourself, and tag 5 other people to continue the game. And my dear magician has tagged me. So here we go.

Five things you didn't know about me:

1. One of my dreams was to be a choir singer, and tonight I actually sang with one :-)
2. When 8 years old, I was involved in a serious rebel against the teacher in our after school day care who didn't let us play more. We successfully put her into tears and escaped to the playground!
3. I used to wear men's perfume when in 10th grade. It was a segregated school, and no, I'm not gay.
4. The cold weather gives me an uncontrollable shiver. Funny enough that I have to live my days in Midwest.
5. I have a uni-brow! (well, some of you knew this one)

Five bloggers I tag:
1- A primary school friend whom I met virtually after 15 years.
2- A old schoolmate who flies on the wall.
3- The best bro ever. The smarter side of me.
4- A great master in the west coast.
5- I still read here.

This Year On

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
This year on,
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

Ms Dewey

What do you think about this search engine?
http://msdewey.com/

I guess it is supposed to be funny, but I couldn't relate with the idea at all. I found Ms Dewey discourteous and annoying but perhaps men find her sexy. If besides her there was another receptionist at the desk I would walk to that other one.

Hello holidays

I graded nonstop for hours today and I am DONE. All Exams, homeworks, computer assignments, all are DEAD. I dare any Stats assignment to show up here and I'll kill it with my red pen that btw deserves a graceful retirement too. I'm now officially done, and the nice lazy winter break is here at last. Isn't it great? :-)

Risk

Ding, ding, ding, ... , it strikes December 18th and I'm thinking of exactly this moment last year. You don't necessarily remember all your history, but for some reason I remeber this one.

Will I take the same risk today? I think I will. Did i learn anything from the loss then? I did, but if you don't bet, you don't win. I'm happy that I didn't lose my ability to risk.

The American Dream

The American Dream. The commonly used phrase was first used by James Truslow Adams in his book "The Epic of America", 1931.

"It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

Rainin'

It may be raining, but there's a rainbow above you...

Desperado...

Amazing and Beautiful Mime

jerome murat
Video sent by segalier

(Thanks to Gelareh for sharing. )

Sometimes don't you just feel like you want to get rid of your own head and get a merrier one instead?

I miss my mom

123-45-6789

I am a number.
To the market, I am a credit card number.
On the internet, I am an IP number.
To my friends, I am a telephone number.
Somewhere along the way, I forgot my name;
I respond to my social security number.

"Hard for me to say I'm sorry"

These days Michael Richards is the hot topic in the media here. He is a comedian and has insulted some african americans in a comedy club. The video of the incidence is in youtube. I just watched his apology statement. He looked embarrassed and nervous. I think that nervousness is necessary to make the apology more meant. And don't forget that he is an actor.

Apologies; sometimes they are necessary, like in Richards' case. But many times, especially here in US, they seem unnecessary to me, for instance when I ask a grocery store worker if they sell staplers, he or she apologizes to me that they don't carry one. That seems weird to me. It's not the worker's or even the store's fault. But this apparently is a culture much different that mine. And also this is a consumer-based economy, much different than what i was used to. Or maybe it's just the way to be polite.

Or look at this one: a few months back in our university, when some undergrads had a costume party in a fraternity or sorority house (can't remember which) and for some reason some Latino students were offended. That time, not only those kids apologized but also Mr. Herman, our university chancellor sent out a mass apology letter.

Now my own experience. Last semester I was one of the several TAs for a big undergraduate class, and once when posting a file to class discussion board, I accidentally posted some grades. It was there for a very short time, but one student noticed it. It was an honest mistake, but talk about undergrads and grades, he made a big deal out of it. The course instructor made me write an apology letter and send it not only to that student, but to post it on the board. O' it was PAINFUL. I found it quite unfair at the time, but now i think it's just how it works.

A dressed up post

It's a good change in the casual grad student life to dress up and go to a formal reception, every once in a while. Given while>=6 months ;-)

Another interesting thing was that I met the person whoes blog inspired me to start one of my own. Well said "it's a small world after all."

America, mixed-flavored

Americans are fond of mixed flavors. Just step in a grocery store and you see what I mean. Cinnamon popcorn, Pumpkin marshmellow, Vanilla coke, 3-4-flavor icecreams. Even things that does not at all go with each other: like sweet pickles.
The other day, I picked up a box of dried cranberries from Meijer. I usually read the labels carefully, but I was in a rush that day. And see what I got: orange flavored cranberries! Cranberries by themselves are quite flavorful, I don't at all understand why they are needed to be orange-flavored.

Anyway, enjoy your thanksgiving dinner anyway you like it, and don't eat too much :)

Bill Withers: Ain't No Sunshine

I heard this song for the first time in an American Airline flight. It's a nice song by itself, but definitly a bad choice to be played in an airplane. Don't you think?

This time last year I was looking for a laptop carry-on to give out as a present. I looked into many stores but couldn't find one that I like, so I had to buy something else instead. Now that I don't need it anymore, it's all around. Even Sam's grocery store have a nice one.
It makes you wonder if somebody up there is pulling your leg sometimes.

Man and Tree

Flying low in an airplane, what usually captures my eye is the peaceful harmony between the man and the tree in our cities. A harmony you can't easily find between man and other living creatures.

Co-late-nighters

When I'm up late in the night, and receive an email, I have a sense of emphaty with the sender, knowing that he or she is also up and running. A few minutes ago, our university chancellor sent out a massmail, and it's 2 a.m.!
It's late Mr. Chancellor, you gotta get some sleep:-)

All about grrrrrrrading

I'm TAing for a class of fifty grad students. Every other week they have to turn in a long homework (long as in 20 math question and a computer assignment long), plus they have a written quiz once in a while. I've spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of grading this semster.
I'm tired.

Laugh, at any cost?

I saw the movie Borat today. I'm not a big fan of sex humor, so I didn't enjoy the movie in general. But aside from that, I found it extremely unfair. Not all the people in the world are as privileged as say Americans. Many developing countries are still struggling with basic socio-economic problems and are far behind their path to catch up with the developed world standards. Yes, there are cultural differences. Somethings that we laugh at are quite normal in those countries, but so are we, and our customs in their view. I believe it is immoral to exploit these differences to laugh at a nation.

Kind people

I saw this shawl in a store a while ago. It was pretty and I wanted it. But it was kinda expensive for my poor grad student budget. So I was hoping for a day that it goes on sale. Yesterday I went to the mall, and there was none left. I went to the dressing room to try on some other garment and there it was, on hold for another costumer, and half prize. I asked the sales woman and she said that was the last one they had. Oh, I couldn't be more disappointed. I took the store's number to call tomorrow to see if that costomer had come to take her holds or not. I was about to leave the store when store manager came after me and said, if you want it this badly, you can have it. I did want it badly, and it was very kind of her to notice.

Pomegranate

It's pomegranate season again. My favorite fruit. Its skin leaves black marks on my fingertips, which I carry till the end of the season. It might be a lame example but I can't help but wondering: why is it that for every pleasure, you have to go through some sort of pain?

Ankh : Life

The book "Sinouhé l'Égyptien" by Mika Waltari was a big hit when I was a teenager in Iran. This weekend we went to Chicago and visited the Tutankhamun exhibition. It was like that story was live in front of your eyes. The whole experience was just magnificent.

They also had a side exhibition where they displayed the field museum's collection of mummies. Spooky, ha? Well it is Halloween after all !

Simple pleasures of life

Walking across the campus in a chilly morning to get to your early class. You push the heavy door of the building, and enter the Hall. Those first 5 seconds when the warm air caresses your cold cheeks are...
Divine.

Buttermilk

One of the new things for me in America that I fell in love with immediately was Buttermilk! If i want to describe it to someone that has not had it before, i'd say it tastes somewhat like 'doogh', a drink made by mixing yogurt nd water. But buttermilk is far better! It has this mild sour bite and light creamy texture, and not high in fat. You can easily substitute it with your soda for dinner. Moreover it has calcium and other goodies of milk, so it's good for you too.

Real Buttermilk is the liquid left over after producing butter. But the ones you find in supermarkets are "cultured" buttermilk, that is milk to which some bacteria have been added that turn lactose into lactic acid.

Hah, too much Ado about a dairy, but it deserves some attention!

A completely irrelavent BLUE

Blue Music Video


I went to The Blue Men concert tonight, which was fun. I was youtubing to see if I can find one of the songs they performed and I ran into THIS! This used to be in my top10 list when I was in highschool. It was pleasantly nostalgic to hear it again.

In America

Desperado


There's some things you should wish for and some things you shouldn't. That's what my little brother Frankie told me. He told me I only had three wishes, and I looked into his eyes, and I don't know why I believed him.
...


It was as hard for Frankie to smile when the tumor was malignant as it was for my dad to cry after. But they both managed it. I'm going to switch this off now. It's not the way I want to see Frankie any more. Do you still have a picture of me in your head? Well, that's like the picture I want to have of Frankie. One that you can keep in your head forever. So when you go back to reality, I'll ask Frankie to please, please let me go.

- In America, Jim Sheridan

Good hair day

It may sound ridiculous, but it does work! Today I had a good hair afternoon and I believe if you ran a Dif-in-Dif analysis on me (morning vs evening, today vs yesterday), you would have found a significant beta.

The most beautiful colors on earth

I love trees in the Fall. They dress in their most gorgeous gold and red gowns to face the merciless cold with a high spirit.

Adaptation

Today I woke up for an early morning class. I was packing my bag, taking my cellphone, grabbing a pen, tearing a few pages of the notepad to take to class. Looking at the notepad, I froze. Why on earth it has punch holes on the left, I wondered. After a few seconds it came to me: English is written from left to right. I've been here for quite a few years. I guess my subconscience still refuse to adapt to the new environment.

Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK

A friend sent this to me

http://improbable.com/about/

These people administer the Ig Nobel Prizes, given each year for achievements that make people laugh, and then make them think. Look through their webpage and you sure will find many interesting topics of reasearch. Look at this one for example:
What is the number of photographs you must take to (almost) ensure that
nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed?
http://velocity.ansto.gov.au/velocity/ans0011/article_06.asp

Dedicated to all the bored people out there.

Free Hugs

Free Hugs Campaign. Inspiring Story! (music by sick puppies)


Once in a while, you can see Free Hugs guys on the quad of our campus offering to give you a hug.

Fasting and Love

I've always thought that fasting is very romantic. At least there is a great deal of analogy between fasting and Love. When you're in love, you're willing to do anything to show your devotion to your lover. Even some things that doesn't make sense to you. You don't reason with your lover on whether or not what he/she wants is reasonable. You just do it because you want to see her happy, and that gives you even greater happiness.

Certified to heavens

Dear God,

Are you sending me a message?
Would you mind being a tiny bit clearer, cause I don't get it...

Respectfully yours,
me

When is an email conversation over?

This is a serious question. I wanna know.

So you email somebody and ask some question. They reply you back. You send a thank you note. What if they send out a you're-welcome. What then? I guess that;s the endline there.

For this one it was kinda straight forward. But imagin this one: You send an Happy-Birthday email. They send a Thank-you-What's-up. You send a you're-welcome-such-ad-such. They send a keep-in-touch. Do you need to reply to that?

I'm trying to understand. Are there any keywords, hidden signals, in an email saying that it is the endline, and you would look silly if you continue replying to that one?

Natural Highs

Think about them one at a time before going on to the next one . . .
It Does Make You Feel Good

1. Falling in love.
2. Laughing so hard your face hurts
3. A hot shower.
4. No lines at the supermarket.
5. A special glance.
6. Getting mail.
7. Taking a drive on a pretty road.
8. Hearing your favorite song on the radio.
9. Lying in bed listening to the rain outside.
10. Hot towels fresh out of the dryer.
11. Chocolate milkshake (vanilla or strawberry).
12. A bubble bath.
13. Giggling
14. A good conversation.
15. The beach
16. Finding a 20 dollar bill in your coat from last winter.
17. Laughing at yourself.
18. Looking into their eyes and knowing they Love you
19. Midnight phone calls that last for hours.
20. Running through sprinklers.
21. Laughing for absolutely no reason at all.
22. Having someone tell you that you're beautiful.
23. Laughing at an inside joke
24. Friends.
25. Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you!
26. Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to sleep.
27. Your first kiss (either the very first or with a new partner).
28. Making new friends or spending time with old ones.
29. Playing with a new puppy.
30. Having someone play with your hair.
31. Sweet dreams.
32. Hot chocolate.
33. Road trips with friends.
34. Swinging on swings.
35. Making eye contact with a cute stranger
36. Making chocolate chip cookies.
37. Having your friends send you homemade cookies.
38 Holding hands with someone you care about.
39. Running into an old friend and realizing
that some things (good or bad) never change.
40. Watching the _expression on someone's ! face
as they open a much desired present from you.
41. Watching the sunrise.
42. Getting out of bed every morning and
being grateful for another beautiful day.
43 Knowing that somebody misses you.
44. Getting a hug from someone you care about deeply.
45. Knowing you've done the right thing, no matter what other people
think.

Philadelphia

Andrew Beckett: Do you like opera?

Joe Miller: I'm not that familiar with opera.

Andrew Beckett: This is my favorite aria. This is Maria Callas. This is "Andrea Chenier", Umberto Giordano. This is Madeleine. She's saying how during the French Revolution, a mob set fire to her house, and her mother died... saving her. "Look, the place that cradled me is burning." Can you hear the heartache in her voice? Can you feel it, Joe? In come the strings, and it changes everything. The music fills with a hope, and that'll change again. Listen... listen..."I bring sorrow to those who love me." Oh, that single cello! "It was during this sorrow that love came to me." A voice filled with harmony. It says, "Live still, I am life. Heaven is in your eyes. Is everything around you just the blood and mud? I am divine. I am oblivion. I am the god... that comes down from the heavens, and makes of the Earth a heaven. I am love!... I am love."

-Quote from the movie Philadelphia, 1993.

good enough

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's content."

Wise word of Abraham Lincoln, carved high on the wall of the Lincoln Hall in our campus. This sentence by itself rules out the religion-based states.

Completely L.O.S.T.

I don't know if you follow the TV serials here. There is this I-guess-popular one called "Lost" on ABC. It's the story of a group of people whoes plane crashes over ocean and they survive into an island. So, I saw a couple of episodes quite a while ago and as I don't have a good signal reception on ABC, I didn't follow the story since then. Now apparently it is close to its season premier and today they had a crash course on what had happened in previous episodes. I watched it. And you can't belive it, out of the theme of some cast-aways in an island, the story has developed into the outer-space powers, cospiract theory, and those nonesense. It was as if they had given it ot a 10 year old boy to write up the story. It was like watching the "x-files" or something.

Apparently you can no longer sell a simple story to American couch-potatos. Have to have some conspiracy involved in any story these days.

Vas-vaas

Vasvaas is the farsi word for being over-obssesed with something. Some people have vasvas for cleaning, they overclean everything in their home over and over again. I have vasvas in writing emails. It may take me the whole morning to write an email to my boss, my adviser, even a friend. I read through it over and over again, change the words, the structure of the sentences, read it again, change again,... eekh. Even when finally i decide to hit the send botton, I immediatlt go to the sent folder and read what i sent. And God forbids when i find something i don't like about it. It kills my spirit for the rest of day.

Do you think I need therapy?;)

Ha! I just found myself re-reading this post before publishing. No! I'm not doing that. 3-2-1 publish!

Sometimes you do

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird,

Suit

My business suit, and the memory.
Banging my head.
Banging
Banging...

Until

How I used to love this song. I still do.


In the moonlight and everything shatters
You feel as if you’ve known her all your life
The world’s oldest lesson in history

Best Friends are old ones

Why are your best friends often the ones you made when you were a kid/adolesent? Sometimes I wonder, as adults we give, in the expectation to take back. Most our relationships are based on this solemn fact. Which, as somebody that was facinated by economic moddeling of human tranasctions, I find this quit good. In a sense that it consits perfectly with the 'rationality' assumption of people.

But how come the childhood relationships, that don't have that much of a tarde sense into them, last better than the ones built on the explainable patterns?

who cares

Who cares?
I try not to ; let it be.

Today one of the blogs i used to check regularly shut down. We're coming back to the question of whether its better to write anonymously or reveal your identity.

Some Important Laws Which NEWTON Forgot to State... !!

LAW OF QUEUE: If you change queues, the one you have
left will start to move faster than the one you are in
now.

LAW OF TELEPHONE: When you dial a wrong number, you
never get an engaged one.

LAW OF MECHANICAL REPAIR:
After your hands become coated with grease, your nose
will begin to itch.

LAW OF THE WORKSHOP: Any tool, when dropped, will roll
to the least accessible corner.

LAW OF THE ALIBI: If you tell the boss you were late
for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning
you will have a flat tire.

LAW OF BATH ROOM: When the body is immersed in water,
the telephone rings.

LAW OF ENCOUNTERS: The probability of meeting someone
you know increases when you are with someone you don't
want

LAW OF THE RESULT: When you try to prove to someone
that a machine won't work, it will!

LAW OF BIOMECHANICS: The severity of the itch is
inversely proportional to the reach.

LAW OF THEATRE : People with the seats at the furthest
from the aisle arrive last.

LAW OF COFFEE: As soon as you sit down for a cup of
hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something
which will last until the coffee is cold.

che ghadr delam gerefte...

The book that is you?

In a literature chatroom, somebody asked me this. A good question. I haven't though about it before.

The Art of Losing

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

Critisizm

Are you afraid of being critisized?
I think I am... How come? Because I immediately start to hate the person who critisizes me, unfairly. So I guess now again, it's the question of who is "fair" and who is not.

No one will know

I decided something right now. I'm not gonna tell ANYbody that i write here, and then i can write anything i want without the fear of having to explain myself to others at some point of time. without feeling obliged to care about the style i write, with no worries of ever being caught. this is my notebook, just mine. onle mine, and it will remain so.

Over

It's over. Over.

How

How would you remind someone of what they used to say, what they used to do, what they used to be?
A sparkle of rememberance.

meant to be

For me it has happened several times. When you want something, and it doesn't happen. Time passed, and now you're happy that it didn't happen at that time. Maybe now is one of those times. Who knows.

ultimatum game

" What has made me write this today was a post in a weblog about the ultimatum game. When a party put an offer on the table, if the second accept, they will both have something if he rejects, both gain zero. Are we in such a game? One can say so. Look at it this way: I'm making an offer and you get to decide. If you accept we both gain, if you reject none of us gain anything, let alone the losses. Looking at it rationally, you should accept any offer that is bigger than zero. But often the second party would reject. Why? One reason is he thinks he is seing the offer unfair, and would rather not be a medium to facilitate any gain to the unjust party, even this would mean an own loss. But,

But..."