Commence

Knowledge of French language is helping me a lot this time in GRE. If last time I knew this much french I would have definitely got much higher in my verbal. A simple example might clarify what I have in mind: one of the words is Arboreal which means "of connection with trees". Now how should I guess this might be the meaning? But knowing that tree in french is "arbre" the rest seems so obvious.

Glass

I don't know if you know or have ever heard of Philip Glass. He is a contemporary music artist whom I heard one of his compositions in an Iranian film called the Pear Tree. At the time I had no idea who the composer of that soft magical music was. But the music was one of the best parts of that movie which is among my favorite Iranian films. Then about three months ago, while watching a documentary on Pop Art, I heard it in the background. Has it happened to you too? ofcourse it has, when you want something so bad you would do anything including a lot of crazy stuff to get it. So there I was spending several hours in the public library, checking the film again and again, looking in the names of music used in the film and searching for them in the same library. The investigation probably didn't exactly payed off as expected, because I couldn't find the exact piece, but I found out that the name of the artist is Philip Glass and during these last weeks every week I have got one of his CDs from the library. His music seems very simple, described best as minimalistic, although he himself doesn't like the term. It consists of a few simple rhythms which iterates, repeats and transforms gently. There aren't any events in it and it is more like an ever changing and at the same time unchanging sound of a breeze of wind or a flow of water. Among them there are some pieces called glasspieces and also some dance pieces which are all great!

Many Thanks!

A-Lumpen-Proteriat and Tilotamma, Thank you both, for your great advices. It seems that talking about Times was a very stupid thing to do. To be honest, at that time I just took a shut. I had know idea what to read. And by the way, I totally agree that New Yorker is much better than Times but I haven't been around any New Yorker magazine, ever! However I have always wanted to read one. I have to go find one very soon very fast.
And Princeton Review is great! Both links are very useful. Now the only problem is the time. A month: enough or not enough, that is the question.

Fear of GRE

Last night I spent an almost crazy night! With an evening gathering which they call it a "soirée" or "pot basket" for the basketball team, both boys and girls. We were about fifteen people sitting aroung a big table and trying to hit each other's glasses with everything we could like a real basketball player does!!
But other than that I must say I have to start working on this GRE thing! and specially the analytical part. I think I must start to read some professional articles, but I'm not sure from which magazines or newspapers. I think I might start with New York Times and Time. I've also got a book and some list of words to begin study for the verbal part and the rest is a piece of cake or else I hope it would be. Anyone, any advices?

Almost Fallen

This Saturday night it was SUPAERO Gala night again and unlike last year where I was lonely for most of my time in school, this time I arranged to go with my newly found friends from this year's master program. One of them is a Lebanese girl from a Japanese and Syrian origin. She had invited some of her other Lebanese friends from Paris to come to gala. And just like last year among the 12 bar-theme which they had in Gala there was a bar-theme of Oriental music with Indian and Arabic music and Arabic belly dancing that was beautifully performed by a girl. So we sat down and began enjoying the Arabic music and dance the way they enjoy it in Beirut, and soon three other Arab students joined us, two boys and a girl from Morroco. Although sometimes I almost could feel a little tension between the Frenchs in that room with our group but I learned to ignore it. But I must confess that in the beginning it was not at all that easy. First when I saw a woman watching at our group with a not-very-nice look on her face I wanted to show them that I'm not Arab and even though I'm sitting here with my friends this is not we used to do when playing our music but then I realized I'm being shameful! The very thing I hate is happening to me. This is a room of orietal music and these people are part of this world and all those who are here are here by their own choice and we are providing them the real atmosphere that the whole thing is about; so the hell with whoever dislikes it and still sits there!

filling the Gap

It has been a long time, hasn’t it ? I don’t know the reason why it took so long to come and write in here again but instead, right now I have a few good reasons to continue writing regularly for a while and I mean only the english weblog. I may start to write my other two weblogs too but I have to look for other reasons to start them.
Well ! let me fill you in with what has happened in here for me during the last two months or so. Life has gotten much more complicated for me in here, I can say ! The internship which I have started in this two months in the Signal Processing Lab in here doesn’t seem to go very well and I really need to increase my efforts. But the good news is that the proposal which I did during the summer as part of my internship and most of its technical part was done by me has been accepted by Eurpean Space Agency. We are going to celebrate it some time in the end of this month. I have involved myself in a lot of school activities mainly sports, so all my evenings are full now and another result of this involvement has been to get to know a lot of new people through these activities. I have also made some new friends among the new master students. Other than these my relationship with my friends from the last year, my Iranian friends has grown and thus has made it more complicated to manage. This caused in lesser time which I spend with them but it is good time anyway.
Also there was an eliptical eclipse in 3rd of october. Toulouse had a good position with 78% of sun covered but Madrid in Spain had the best position which I missed to go with our astronomy club. And it was completely cloudy that day in Toulouse although I managed to take two to three pictures from instantaneous gaps between the clouds.
I have started sending letters to a list of professors which I’ve made from US universities asking them to see if they accept any new graduate PhD students for the next year. Fortunately today I got two very positive responces but one of them has asked if I can take GRE test again and improve my results in analytical part. That seemed a good idea but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to manage to be ready for it or not. I have to start memorizing words and writing essays so I would be ready for the next month. I’ll have to work hard ! And writing in my weblog will be a possible practice for my english writing. I’ll have to choose some hot topics in the news these days and discuss them in here !
As a result of these things going on around me I missed an opportunity to interview with a german reporter about blogs. It was supposed to be a program in german radio. I couldn’t respond to him in time and when I responded it was already late. It seems that I keep loosing my chances to interview with the reporters. I don’t know if it is even an important thing to mention it in here or not.