Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Asian Disaster

First of all, so that you know, I am spending my holidays with my uncle and his family in Norway. I was expecting to see more articles about the terrible disaster in southeast Asia in Iranian web logs but nothing has been written in important Iranian web logs as far as I know! And that is a real pity. Exactly it was these days last year when our country experienced a similar tragedy and everybody around the world gathered to help and now it could be our turn to return part of that help. Always when you think nothing can be worse reality shows itself and reminds you that it can. I still can't imagine this. I am now in Norway and there are a few things to say in here. First, today I saw the Norway TV channel NRK's reporter in TV. He was the one who interviewed me in Bam last year and now he is in Sri Lanka and just as last year he is going to miss his son's birthday and new year's eve! He is admirable, I think. Second thing is that today my uncle received an SMS from one of his friend telling that she is alright and she is now trying to leave Thailand! It is amazing that when a friend of yours or one you know is inside a disaster, it becomes more real and sensible to you. And lastly and most importantly is knowing the fact that a country like Norway which claims that it defends humanity everywhere, helps 1 billion Norwegian Kron to war in Iraq but only few millions of Kron to countries damaged in earthquake and Tsunami, isn't this ironic?

Saturday, December 25, 2004

Bam, one year later

Today is the first anniversary of the terrible tragedy in Bam. Last year, two days after the earthquake I managed to go to Bam and now I want to tell some of the things I saw without getting too sentimental! But I don't think !i can do this without getting emotionally involved with the disaster. The news was short and quick! An earthquake has occurred and the scale of it is yet unknown. It was probably the once in a life time chance to help others who needed help in this scale and when I found out that there was a rare opportunity to use this chance I had no doubt that I would do it and so were more than 100 other students who probably had thought the same thought! We left Tehran without knowing whether we could get there or not and whether we could be of any help. We had absolutely no idea about what we were going to face. So we were trying to consider the worst case but the problem was that we didn't even know what the worst case was. We got on the bus and we got there two days after the earthquake and the night before me and one other student went to several drugstores in Tehran and bought whatever we thought would be helpful whether to us or to the people of Bam. In the early morning of the first day they divided us into several groups, about ten groups of search and rescue and only one group which had to do the worst and hardest part: bury the dead. Working in this last group was voluntary but we were warned that it would require doing very horrible things and amazingly I found myself going with this group to Bam's cemetery which had grown to 10 times of its size before the earthquake just in two days.

Monday, December 20, 2004

Internet

Now, I am on an airplane going to Norway to spend the Christmas holidays with my uncle and his family.
This morning before going to the French class and before leaving Toulouse, I found a link to Hoder's interview with VOA. Of 1:30 program I watched almost an hour of it, and then I had to go to class, in the way to the class, I told to my friend Behzad about this. The interesting fact that hit me in this interview was the very low and near zero knowledge of average people of Internet! Even in USA itself, but of course this is more severe in Iran. And we are talking about the great impact Internet has made in Iranian community! Considering it from statistical point of view, we can say that it is nothing compared to the whole nation. Internet is a very new concept and it is the same everywhere, but as others are making progress in developing its own culture and obliging everyone to have at least an e-mail, our university professors are having hotmail and yahoo emails and sometimes it is very shameful! I will write more on this.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Upcomings!

About two weeks after the Persian gulf fever I wrote an article about Iranian anti-Arab racism and posted it in my Persian blog but unfortunately I haven't got time to write a similar article about the same subject in English. Now that I'm going to stay in my uncle's for two weeks probably I will have plenty of time to write this and also about the Bam earthquake one year after the tragedy and write what I saw and tell my experience about it.

Friday, November 26, 2004

After one year!

Okay! Let's just sum up all the events of the last month and maybe last few months because of my weblog's first anniversary! In the last month, as I recall, my sister gave up writing her weblog about football and George Bush got elected as the president of United States again for the next four years. And let's face it! Everything suits everything in this world just fine. But for me, the most interesting thing among all these might be facing with the fact that two very opponent countries in the world which have had lots of trouble with each other for the past quarter of the century are getting more and more similar to each other. Well, the truth is US is the powerful version of Islamic Republic of Iran! Forget what you see, don't always believe your eyes. Both of them claim to have a very perfect kind of democracy, but in both of their democracies there are some great flaws. The most serious one other than the funny and stupid way of electing a president in both countries is limitation of freedom of speech in both of them. Again the ironic thing is they both have strong terms about freedom of speech in their constitution. Anything else? Oh ya! Both countries have enough stupid people to support their leaders and in both cases those people are among the most religious people of the nation. Both parties claim that they are acting as the will of god. To be honest I always thought god was a really old nice friendly kind person who always helps his people, but now…!! I might reconsider, or do I have any other choice? Regretfully right now I have to go and sleep but I leave this task up to you to continue this list of similarities between two countries, maybe forever. I'm sure there are a lot of these ironic facts out there, maybe next year I do a thorough research on this, if there was ay time left for me in this world.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Arabian Gulf

These last few days has been very interesting as the iranian weblog movement point of view. Where for years there has been nothing done to stop using the term Arabian Gulf now it seems that a real thing is going on. Actually I have something to say about this and I don't agree with the whole thing and idea but it is not the right time to say it now, and besides, this is a good chance to show that we exist. It is not everyday when you find a chance to say that you are an Iranian!

Monday, November 22, 2004

Sunrise, sunrise, looks like morning in your eyes...

This song "Sunrise" by Norah Jones is really superb! It was a long time since I hadn't heard such a nice, simple and beautiful song! And the video is as nice as the track itself! I'm a fan already!

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Election 2004

Today is a great day, it is Tuesday and specially it's November 2, 2004! US will decide the destiny of the world for next 4 years.
But, is it really like this? Does it really make a difference? Republicans and Democrats look so alike in their foreign policy (not the one we observe but the behind the scenes version) that it doesn't really matter who wins! It is a shame that the world sits and waits to see what Americans will decide for them! And even if we suppose it really makes a difference, what could Kerry possibly do? Iraq is already in a mess and the rest will be taken care of whether we like it or not.
But to have extra fun let's just hope that Kerry wins, let's just agree with the rest of the world. As they say, everybody can't be wrong!

Friday, October 15, 2004

France

Thank god it is not yet one month, that way I would have been completely ashamed of my self!
I'm now in France and trying to adapt the living in here. And I can tell you, it is not easy at all! For example right now, I have a very difficult time typing with these french keyboards. It's completely upsidedown. Well! I'm now outside Iran and trying to remotely control it! Maybe I can be able to write more easily from now on, as I'm not in Iran any more. Things seem to get worse day by day in my country. In my last days in Iran, everybody was looking at me with special looks on their faces. Most of them were congratulating me for getting away from Iran and freeing myself. Actually I don't see it that way at all. But this shows a fact about my country, that either the condition is awful, or the people have unreasonable expectations. In fact, as I am thinking of it right now, and compare things in Iran with here in France, I come to only one conclusion. That whatever people in Iran say about the things they dislike about living there and trying to get out, the only thing they want is a little freedom!(daaaa! everybody knows that!)as simple as that! For example I can even say that some standards of life in Iran (that I have seen people of Iran complain about them) are higher than France (ofcourse there are many things in France with higher standards comparing with Iran). But as you see, they just try to empty themselves in other ways when they don't find any way to have more freedom of speech or any other kind of freedom, so what do they do? They complain about everything!
And what does the regime do? It spends all the natural resources and everything that it can sell to bring more money to country and satisfy the people. And obviously this is not right and it doesn't work. In fact it makes the people more angry!
Actually I'm not sure about this last part at all!Becuase although the price of oil(the first source of income for Iran) is very high right now it doesn't seem to make any difference. I have been thinking about this recently and I couldn't make any decision about how the government spends this much money!(Somebody has to teach them the right ways to rule a country!)

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Protest

Today I have only a link...Hoder is a wellknown figure in persian blog community( actually in the whole blog community). This one is from his english weblog and... well read it and you'll see, it is worth it.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

2 in the morning and very tired!

The competition of the two major parties’ campaign for US election is getting tenser and tenser day by day. Few days ago the democrat party’s campaign officially began its work.

The above lines were written about a month ago. Now even the Republican Party’s campaign has begun too. But I think all elections all around the world in all countries are somehow nonsense, because the power always turns in hands of some particular groups and even in United States, land of the free- home of the brave there is no chance for an ordinary person to become president. To become a governor is one thing but becoming a president is almost impossible.
In our case, in Iran, the matter is completely ironic. Our country is one of the youngest countries of the world at the moment, a fact which repeated everyday by the government, the government whose members along with other members of the ruling class of Iran became the leaders of this country when they were very young, most of them less than thirty years old, a chance which was given to them by the revolution. But today they don’t accept anyone from outside their own circle of trust and all the positions and ministries are given to them in turn!
But let go the policy and diplomacy! I am going to continue my studies in abroad. I’ll leave my country in two weeks and I don’t know when again will I have the chance to see my friends and my home town! Yesterday my most dear friend held a goodbye party for me in which we had a lot of fun. Tomorrow all my family, my aunts and uncles will come to my house to hold another party for me and to wish me good luck in my journey, so tomorrow is a very busy day for me, we’ll have more than fifty guests!!!

Saturday, August 07, 2004

...and I am going and going and going...

I am going. To where? It will be only a matter of time before even myself realize that where am I going. To France or to military service? To heaven or hell! But one thing is for sure and that is my return. I will come back, maybe tomorrow, maybe a decade later. Right now I am in Tehran, sitting in computer site of elec. eng. dept. of Sharif University of Tech and waiting for the destiny to take me with it! I will write more about this, maybe in my persian blog. I don't usually write my personal things in my english weblog but our computer site in this university doesn't support UTF8 which is nessesary for persian pages. Also I haven't written anything here for a month! It is hard to find something worthy to write about these days, when everything seems the same each day and nothing seems to disturb this silence. Maybe it is a silence before the storm.
Yesterday Iran football national team defeated Bahrain to stand on the third place of the asian football games. This could have been an interesting topic to write about specially considering the huge interest there is for football in Iran. But even football doesn't seem to excite us anymore. As Mozaffareddin-Shah, the king of Iran in about hundred years ago, said, everything in our country suits everything else!

Saturday, July 03, 2004

Title?! What Title?

Before I get to my main point I must mention some facts! Probably you will get a clue on what I’m going to write after you read these facts.
1. Last night I saw a movie called “A Blast from the Past”. I don’t know which year it has been produced but probably it’s not long. There are three main characters in it. Two of them are a boy and a girl which are home-mates and the boy is gay.
2. Recently I read an article in Cappuccino Magazine which is a conversation with a sexologist. He mentions that homosexuality is no more considered as a mental illness and it has been so for the last thirty years.
3. Every day we only have to glance a little at people in Iran and make attention to their clothes and their makeup. It’s so strange if we only compare it with some years ago. There is similarity in the way boys and girls wear their clothes and this similarity gets bigger and bigger day by day. We can already see boys who use makeup on their face, just like the girls. The only thing which is still unseen is earring which I think that won’t take long to be seen too. The only reason for it to come in last is families which are still conservative and can’t accept these changes. But the wind of change is blowing hard! This makes the situation paradoxical. Because although part of young majority of country support these changes and are to make new ones, but historically people of this country are conservative, even the left wing and reformists.
4. For the previous generation and before those, some signs were considered as a signature for manhood and womanhood. For example for men it was mustache and in some areas of the country, beard! The revolution in Iran specially delayed the change in the latter sign(beard) but the new generation is changing everything and putting an end to all of the traditions it could change. Like what Topol said in the movie “Fiddler on the Roof”: TRADITION!!! Our parents would not accept this fast change in everything, however they were the beginners of this movement. Actually it is the nature of humanity: New comes, Old goes!
5. Still want to know what is my main point by saying these things? Ahhhh! Forget it! Probably I’m not sure about my main point either! But don’t forget, this list can go on and on…

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11

Last night I saw this article about Michael Moore's new movie Fahrenheit 9/11. Although I must say that I agree with it in some parts but most of it sounds very "American Imperialistic". Just look at the end if it where he concludes that if U.S. hadn't attacked Serbia or Afghanistan or Iraq people in those countries would be starving and dying! First of all why!? Why should people of a country suffer and not find enough supplies to feed? Isn't it just because of hard prohibitions of U.S. and a "UN under dominance of U.S."? Isn't it true that the effect of those kinds of prohibitions is just on the lower class of a country and from the main body of regime nobody gets hurt! Secondly, why would U.S. think that he would allow himself to attack a country whenever he feels he can! Just for a minute get out of your American personality and put yourself in the place of a third-world citizen. Why would he/she like U.S.? Probably there would be a lot of reasons, but again there would be a lot of reasons to hate America, too. Get real! This is a real world and everybody is trying to survive. This is an unfair war between U.S. and the rest of the world and both of the sides are using machiavellianistic ways to pursue their goals. Probably most of today's civilizations won't survive America's extortion, but "I have a dream", a dream of the world after all of this where countries respect other countries and no one feels he can force others just because he has the power to do so.

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Let's ROCK, baby!

I've begun a complete and thorough research on rock history. I'll soon begin writing articles on this topic. And I might try to publish them in a newspaper or something! Every day I read pages which I save from Internet and along with it, I listen to most of those masterpieces which are mentioned in these pages and it happens to be that I have most of them on CD or in my computer. It is a completely exciting journey through time. I feel close to the youth in those days of beginning of an amazing era and invention of a whole new kind of music. Today with every kind of strange music genres, when we look back we don’t exactly understand the people before us, we have some kind of sensation that tells us it has been like this before for ages and it will remain like this for ages. But exactly at this time Rock music comes in and tells us we are wrong, even about the rock music it self. When reading about it we see it has come a strangely and miraculous long way in less than half a century!

Way down Louisiana close to New Orleans,
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens...
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood,
Where lived a country boy name of Johnny B. Goode...
He never ever learned to read or write so well,
But he could play the guitar like ringing a bell.

Go Go
Go Johnny Go
Go Go
Johnny B. Goode
(Chuck Berry, 1958)

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Blog Festival

Friday I will have a short trip to Tehran. Unfortunately I won’t be able to leave earlier and I will miss the Weblogs Festival and I’m sure I’ll regret it. Tomorrow is going to be the last day of festival. I hope they add a few days more but I don’t think this would happen.

Nudity

Recently in one of the persian weblogs, I don’t mean you, there was some nude pictures published, belonging to the first years of invention of photography. Most of them were taken in Paris and both the photographer and the subject were anonymous. This anonymity was because taking those kinds of pictures in those days was illegal, although they were very popular specially among the higher class of society. The interesting thing was that in the same time “drawing” nudity was an acceptable form of art. Now, after so many years things have completely changed. Today, showing open sexy scenes consisting of scenes showing the sexual organs of men and women in movies is getting completely usual, however some years ago you could only see these kinds of things in pornographic films. “Dreamers” is a clear example of this phenomenon, a film by Bernardo Bertulochi. The thing is, I like the movie but I think it has overacted in showing sexual relations. But this can be a part of art, specially art of cinema with its progress in defining itself as a very powerful art.
I just think that what next? When we have reached this level what else will we find to surpass even this level? It’s hard to find anything normal. But we like it or not, it will happen. And sooner or later we will have to face it, just like we faced this one.

Saturday, June 05, 2004

Kristof Explains

Nocholas Kristof has explained why isn't the subtitles in the report of Iran exactly matched with the Persian speakers' comments in this link
A link to the main report exists in the same page.

Le Monde

In its last issue, The Lemonde Diplomatique, had an article on how U.S is driving
our world toward a never-ending hell. I think I agree with it in some parts. Ofcourse
we don't see a clear result of what U.S is doing around the world and like a great
dictator making everyone obey his rules. But it is enough to think of the main problems
we face today in our world. They are all in some way related to the way United States
deals with its friends and foes. On the other hand, when I think of it, I think why not?!
Why not take the control of all the world when it has the power to rule it? Most
of other countries would probably do the same way if they were in this position. But then I think
more and realize that this kind of behaviour questions all of the long history of
human civilization. What do you recall when you think of United States and the rest of
the world? It reminds me of jungle, where the strong eats the weak. Is it a coincidence?
why would everyone let this happen? is there any explanation to it? I'm sure that there
is a way and it is for us to find it. This is a situation as many others throughout the
history and like all of them we will pass this too.

Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of "15th of Khordad movement". It's a celebration of the
beginning of Ayatollah Khomeini's uprising against the previous regime. He is still
a mystery to us, the young majority of population. When he died in 1989 I was 9
years old but his charisma even thouched me as a child. Our emotions about him, now,
is a complex of anger and gratitude. Well! he lead a revolution which most of Iranians
agreed upon. But his next movements disappointed a lot of people too. Many people
see him as the origin of our many problems today. I often compare him with china's
Mao. He, in his time, did some silly things too, as the founder of new china. but after
him, his successors tried to correct his mistakes but kept him as a symbol of new
China. In our case, things appear to be a little different. Not only we don't see
any corrections in the old and wrong ways but also the number of mistakes is getting
bigger and bigger. But... we have hope, what else can we have?

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

"My Immortal"

Suddenly I found this in my computer. Probably my sister has put it there but it appeared to me all of a sudden and I read it. I found it very close to me specially these days, so here it is:

I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

[Chorus:]
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me

You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I'm bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

[Chorus]

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along

[Chorus]

Evanescence

Sunday, May 30, 2004

6 VI Questions

Two days ago I clicked on a link which Hoder had mentioned it in his
weblog. It was a report for NewYork Times newspaper by their reporter Nicholas Kristof.
It was about six important questions regarding Iran in today's world and
many different people from all over Iran had answered to these questions and
Mr. Kristof himself had added some comments to it. The truth is although I
found it rather interesting in many parts it didn't have anything new for me
(which is normal) and it was somehow unprofessional in some parts. First of
all I must mention the subtitles for persian dialogues. They weren't very exact
specially in the first two questions which were the most important ones from the
political point of view. Some of the translations weren't even close to being
correct and the things the person speaking told differed completely with the
translated sentence. And secondly the comments which Mr. Krostof had added were
unreasonably against the government and the islamic clerics of Iran. It's true
that nobody likes them and they aren't so popular among Iranians but this kind
of judgment in a report like this undermines its neutrality. Also in
some parts he sounded like this is a report for government of US and President
Bush. I know this may not be true but its effect on Iranians, at least on me,
is somehow like this.

Saturday, May 29, 2004

Palme D'Or

The hottest news, these days, is perhaps about Michael Moore's film
and winning Palme D'Or in the Cannes film festival. I don't know if
you have seen his last film, Bowling for Colombine which got very famous.
Its fame grew even bigger winnning the Oscar and him giving speech in that
ceremony. That film was amazing. I saw it in cinema twice, I watched it in TV and
still have it in my computer. It totally changed my view on documentary features.
It was completely incomparable with documentary films I had seen before.
But my opinion about the prize he won. This is the second movie in the last one
year which I loved but didn't want them to win these prizes and gain this much
appreciation. The first one was the third part of Lord of The Rings trilogy
and winning eleven oscars seemed sort of extravagance(if this is the correct
word to describe it). I mean I realy like these movies but I can't place them
among the historical masterpieces of cinema.

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Book Fair, Fair Book

This is the sixth day of my visit to Tehran. This is a whole new experience. Being born in Urmia, a somewhat little city, and growing there, then studying in Tehran as a university student for five years and seeing the big potential lying here, I have a new problem to face with. The problem is when I am in Urmia (which is most of the time) I miss Tehran so badly that every day I look for a chance to come to Tehran. Then when I reach here, after just a few days some new problems come to show themselves!
The week which just passed by and went out of our lives for good, had something good in it. Tehran international book fair by itself was a good reason to remember this week. I had the chance to visit the fair for two times. Although I think it doesn’t give a pleasure even close to the one it used to give few years a go in my first years of study in university, it still is a perfect place to satisfy my desire to see as many books as I can. Also it is a perfect place to see other things too!!

Thursday, April 29, 2004

You can run but You can't hide

I am facing a huge problem in the way of writing this site. Everything that I decide to write about, I write it in persian,then some topics which are completely azari cultural topics I write them in azari, But finally when I get to -in a way we can say- my most important weblog, I find myself thoroughly and completely empty of new ideas. This time I will have a chance to run from it by writing these sentences describing the problem itself but sooner or later I'll have to face it. There!...Now I have something to write about. I had kept it reserved to write it in persian but now I realize that there is no point in writing it in persian. Actually it doesn't matter which lanuage I write it in. It is a film called "Irreversible" which I like to talk about it with you now. Its main star is the famous "Monica Belucci". This film is in fact some kind of "Memento" specially the way it has been edited keeps a little doubt about this. But to be frank, I am beginning to be suspicious about art in whole. Somebody please tell me, what kind of movie is this?! A woman is raped in the worst way possible and a man's head is being crunched by another man also in the worst way possible. where is our world heading to?

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Starting the Year Seriously

Today -other than being the first day of the rest of my life- is the last day
of the Norouz holliday. It was quite good. I can't say it was my best Norouz
ever, but I had some good time, specially "13bedar" and "charshanbeh-sury".
The only low point I think was being completely away from the world. No newspaper
and only watching TV when there was a movie or something in it.

Thursday, March 04, 2004

Ten decades later

Hi again,
It's been a while since I had my last post.
I've been busy finishing my applications for admission to a
university in US or Canada. I was also busy trying to study and
prepare for graduate studies entrance test, with only a little
success ofcourse. In the last days before my exam, I totally
gave up and began watching movies which I had in my hands but
didn't have time to see them. There are a lot of films which I have
received from several sources but I haven't got enough time yet to
watch them all.
Movies like Good fells, La Strada, Amores Perros, Dog Ville and
many more which are a total of about hundred movies.
They really have enormous magical power. When you begin watching
a movie, specially if it is a powrful one, suddenly you open your
eyes and you realize that two hours have passed without a sense of
passing time. But you have experienced a journey, probably through
time, and witnessed war, peace, disaster, love, death, romance,
tragedy and life and through a two dimensional screen going into
a tree dimensional world and experiencing along with the heros of
the story. Absolutely (Almost!) nothing can be compared to it.

Friday, January 02, 2004

BAM

I returned from bam yesterday afternoon at 1 o'clock. The experience was unbelievable. It was just like I was watching a disasterous movie. Everything in the city aws upside down. There is no word to describe the scenes I saw in those days which I was there. I think I will need a lot of time to describe my experiences from the earthquake and Bam, a beautiful city all lost in less than a minute.