Petit Robert

One of the special things about here is that there are so many squirrels in the campus and in the first days you just want to stop and look at them chasing each other or eating nut on top of the trees(This one I love!). When I first saw one in New York in University of Columbia campus I excitedly told Rasta "look! Squirrel!" and he just went "yeah, whatever!" And now after less than two weeks these creatures that my french friends have renamed them "Robert"(!!!) are just part of life and there is no scape from them. Every five steps you'll bump to one of them. But I just found my favorite which I would call "Le petit Robert" or "MiniRobert"! And why is it my favorite? Because it is hard to see and rare. It is much faster which makes it less cute because you don't have time to admire its cuteness and it has a shorter tail and dark stripes in its back. but the problem is the probability (is it obvious that I have probability course this semester AGAIN?) of seeing one of them to the other ones is in the order of 1 to 500.

oh! sorry! the hell with squirrles, I'm here for much more serious things, (let it go man!...)

Stay tuned!

French Fever

Remember the Blog Fever that ran through the iranian youth a few years ago and everybody eventually started to write a weblog and started whining about the world? wll, it seems that something similar is happening in France. While I was there I kept writing my blog but I didn't hear anybody talk about blogs. Now in here I see my new friends from France have started to write weblogs and they do a much better job in writing about every detail and taking pictures to show what they write about. I just wish you knew French to understand what Nicco and Alice and others have written. I don't have all the blog addresses yet but I'll try to get them and put them here. I might even start writing my own french blog soon if I find the courage. It's been in my mind for a while but I didn't think I could write it without so many errors. But now, despite that, I might reconsider and start writing my fourth blog. We'll see!

One week before the unleashing of hell

Life has started. Two days ago I finally found a place in an apartment where two other bedrooms are already occupied by some other guys that seem a little weird but I hope (I just sincerely hope) that nothing serious comes up in the following year. It's a bit far from campus but it is a nice place, except the buses which this morning I had to wait an hour and 15 minutes in order to get on a bus. That photo is the entrance to my place.

And then on last saturday with some very cool and friendly french exchange students I went sightseeing in Washington. Additional photos are in Flickr.
And life begins...



I'll have a hell of a difficult job this semester with 20 hours of Reseach Assistanship and preparing for the Candidacy exam by the end of this semester in one of the most horrible areas of electrical engineering(advanced electromagnetics) I just don't know what awaits me in the coming months.

Here fromPenn State

It is now more than a week that I'm in the States. I spent four days with my family in Istanbul before coming here which was a very enjoyable and beautiful trip. Then on friday, August 18th I flied directly to New York which took almost 11 hours. Surprisingly there was an Iranian in my right seat whom I had a mutual friend with and in my left seat there was a turkish man living in US and as I knew enough to speak both languages,persian and turkish I didn't have a hard time keeping my self busy. Then I spent three days in New York with a childhood friend of mine, Rasta and fortunately he had enough time to show me around which was very helpful in seeing the city efficiently and I covered most of the places in Manhattan. And finally last monday, I went on a bus trip to come to State College in Pennsylvania where I'll be living for the coming four years.
I've found quite some friends in here, including a very cool guy from Sharif University, Tehran in the same year I was, a classmate from the same days in Sharif, a cool group of exchange students from France and a few very friendly Indian students. So I guess other than having to study hard I won't have a hard time starting the life here. The only thing which remains to be solved is a place to live! As it seems, most(almost all) of the places in town are full and even finding a roommate doesn't seem as easy as it seems.
So stay tuned for more news from State College,Pennsylvania. I'll also try to put some photos in here or in my flickr account as soon as I can.