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.