Girls

There is something special with the black girls. I haven't seen any nasty thing from them and every one of them which I have met and I have come to know a little more were kind, intelligent and very understanding and compassionate. Right now, in this place which I work and spend my internship there is a girl who is a first year student doing also her internship, her name is Carole and it seems that she is from Cote d'Ivoire. It maybe just my imagination but she always seems smiling and has a very kind look on her face.

The one I specifically and specially have very good memories of was called Lindi. She was my classmate in 6^th year of elementary school in Canada, in Dalhousie elementary school in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I remember her extreme kindness and compassion for anyone who was around her. She was always smiling and laughing and made everyone around her share this feeling. It requires a great talent to do that. And I also remember her project in Schools science symposium where she got the gold medal and although I had gotten a silver medal myself I was happier for her than myself and I still remember her project's title: upside down… .

Good old memories! It is incredible how human mind tends to forget the bad memories and keep the special selected ones. It gives you a good feeling to look back and see you have lived your life with a lot of good memories to look back to and to enjoy them whenever you need them. And trust me! We sometimes really need them!

Room under the roof

I think now I might have a lot of things to say. I had a very pleasant stay in Paris and enjoyed the company of two of my friends which I knew them from university times in Iran and a new friend which was a really cool guy. The four of us were staying in a room free of charge which I had found and this is itself a whole complete story so may be I would better begin with that. But before: I have added some pictures of my trip to my flickr photos, so take a look if you want.
Two years ago I along with my best friend decided to go to Turkey to take the TOEFL exam. Unfortunately TOEFL is like other American things which are part of American sanctions (since last year they have been taking paper based TOEFL exams in a very limited form in Iran with an agreement with an ETS center in Dubai). This friend of mine is a person that I know since I was an elementary student of 9 years old and since then we have been friends and accepted in the same high school and finally in the same university. But two years ago we knew our paths are becoming more and more distant from each other. So this trip was somehow our last journey together. He is now studying in University of Columbia in New York.
So as our hometown is just an hour from the border of Turkey we decided to pass the border by car to go to the nearest big city and then fly from there to Ankara where we were supposed to take the test and spend a few days in one of my friend's apartment who was studying there.
In Van, the city that we were supposed to take the plane from, when we took the bus going to the Airport we noticed a European old looking man who was asking the help of someone who would both understand English and Turkish, and well, he was lucky! He was about 60 years old or more and he had lost his entire luggage some days before. He was going to retrieve them in the airport and head back to his country. When we further spoke with him in the airport we noticed that he was from France living in Paris and this was a long journey beginning from Armenia, passing through Iran and returning to France. So that was it. We saw him and spoke to him for about 15 minutes and after that in the plane and after landing we didn't see him again although we exchanged email addresses.
So when we came back, there it was in our mailboxes, an email from him inviting us to France. A year after, when I actually came to France he sent us another email asking where we were and what we do and since then we have exchanged several emails but haven't got the opportunity to meet again. This time was no exception since he was going to another country again but he kindly offered us a room in the building where his apartment is and so we had a room under the roof of a nice Parisian building near the Eiffel tower in the center of the city, so what more could we have wanted?
In Iran, we consider ourselves one of the hospitable nations of the world. There are a lot of reasons for that which I'm not sure which one is true and which one is not, but when it comes to real hospitality I haven't heard any Iranian doing the same thing as my friend, Dominique has done for us. Maybe you see this as an exception but frankly, if this is an exception there are a lot of exceptions in France.

Apollo Cheese

Today is the anniversary of the first manned moon landing. So Google has changed its logo and has given its link to the Maps section where they have added some images of the moon surface, the part of it where 5 Apollos landed there. However the interesting thing is if you zoom the image to its maximum level, instead of getting a closer image of the moon, what you will get is a closer image of a yellow swiss cheese. As always the sense of humor of the people working in Google has shown itself in the most unexpected place! The best part is they haven't given a slight hint or explanation anywhere! They are crazy, people down there, and I love crazy people!:))

Writing

Some days writing about something gets really hard. You decide to write but nothing comes to your mind. Then the only thing you can do is to start writing about why you can't write. After three or four lines something will come to mind and also your hand and fingers will warm up to write even more. Some years ago I remember I was reading an interview with Garcia Markez, the famous Colombian writer. I remember him saying that when he wants to start writing a story or something in the beginning of the day he grabs the pen and starts writing whatever is going through his mind on that moment. After a while nothing remains in his mind that he hasn't written about so then he said he could start writing about what he really wants to write. At that time I found this technique extremely interesting. It really works sometimes.
Some times I feel that I got to have a really valuable thing to say in order to come and write here. But you can't expect to be able to always say interesting things. Sometime just talking about everyday experiences is a valuable thing itself.
On the other hand, everyday we experience a lot of things that some of them might not be said or talked about easily. I had written a post some weeks ago in my Persian blog about the human nature and what really makes us human. The actions we do and the things we say or the ones we don't do or say. Or maybe just both?

These Days

Well! I have finished my courses and supposedly I should have more time to write in here, but the truth is it seems that I'm now even more busy and occupied. As part of my studies in here I must complete a six month internship in a company or research lab and it was completely up to me to find somewhere and as usual the main problem remained the same: Nationality. So right now I have found a very small company which is trying to prepare a full proposal which the outline of it has been accepted by European Space Agency. It seems rather an interesting topic but the size of work is very large especially for me who in these previous months have been on my own, mostly in my room doing the projects which I had and managing my time as I like. Now those days are over and I must obey a very strict time table to be able to prepare a proposal in less than two months. Even this weekend, I was quite busy helping one of my friends to move to her new house. So this is the only thing I could write for now but I still remember that I have to translate the post I had written about friendship from Persian to English and also I will probably have plenty of things to write about next weekend after I come back from my three day visit to Paris.

Back to life

Finally my courses are finished and from now on I will do my project in a small company starting this Wednesday. It seems an interesting job. I have to wait and see. I have a lot of plans for the summer but I'm not sure if I'll have a lot of free time to go around and see different places. My new enjoyment is riding my bike along the canal du midi and in the city. It is a really good and new experience for me; Riding with it through town, going to library, to cinema, to any place you want! Now I feel no need for a car. Even if I decide to go to another city I might go by bicycle, surely it is more fun and healthier. In Iran, a third world country rushing to modernize itself, certain things are forgotten because it is getting more and more important to feed the people with a sick economy that even the high price of oil can't help it rather than building backbones for public sport opportunities. When I was in Iran other than some time long ago in my childhood when we were enjoying riding our bikes in front of our houses there hadn't been an opportunity to ride a bike longer than half an our! The streets aren't at all safe for these kinds of things specially with madly driving style of Iranians. And it is even more fun and wildly new experience for girls which haven't felt the wind in their hair while riding a bike in Iran.
But enough of this bicycle rides. It's five in the morning and I have got a bad fever in middle of summer but I hope to have time to write more in the coming days of my delayed writing subjects in here such as Satrapi's Persepolis series and the concept and rules of friendship.