What the hell are they thinking?

Well, my expectations from the readers of my weblog -if there is any - is not much because I update very randomly but when after a long time I see a comment in my blog I really enjoy. Then it gets totally disappointing to see a comment which has nothing to do with the things I write here.
This time it was the referendum which made me write this. Someone has written a comment and has suggested an anti-filtering technique to enter this website. Then I thought what the hell are they thinking? Have all the intellectuals of my country gone mad? Do they really think this is going to change anything?
I don't mean to be pessimistic but the truth is this time if anything is supposed to happen it won't be anything which has been seen before. This time no one will be able to predict it. There will be a completely young generation with ideas to blow minds and without a leader in an old fashion way. This is what I think and might happen just when nobody is expecting it.

New lights of hope...

Few minutes ago, I opened the first page of Shargh, the only Iranian newspaper which is still worth reading, on the internet...
After starting the university, I always had doubt about my field of study. This wasn't quite my first option! Well I have a great passion for art, in all sorts of it but how could possibly be any relation between art and electrical engineering!? Well, yeah! Ok..., I know that some methods in electrical engineering are very artistic and blah blah! But you know what I mean... And in scientific field my lifetime passion was space, stars and planets! Just looking at them made my heart pound and jump from its place to grab them! But just as most of the others, I ended up studying this field, well, because it was almost the only option which was guaranteed for the future in Iran. So in the upcoming years I felt very uncertain about my option. At last, when I finished my BS, I came to France to continue this and luckily hope to find something more related to my interests. Today I opened the first page of Shargh...
Last year, among the universities in Europe, US and Canada which I applied was University of Michigan and there it was professor Mahta Moghaddam which I felt very interested in working as a student under her supervision. Just few minutes ago I opened the first page of Shargh...
Unfortunately my application was not qualified for University of Michigan. This year I want to try my chance again. Today I opened the Shargh Newspaper and there it was on the fisrt page: Huygens Landed On Titan, One of the Moons of Saturn And Prof.Moghaddam was the person responsible for the radars of this voyager. So there it is! My very studies along with my first passion.
And yeah! I know! It is a dream. But what are we other than our dreams. This time I dare to dream. Believe me, "It is easy if you try..."

French-US relations

The problem about the relation between French and Americans is more serious than I thought! Recently I am getting more and more signs about this.
I wa curious how serious this was and Rasta in his weblog discussed some of the topics related to this mater. For example the French fries which is changed to freedom fries and French toast to freedom toast. Or the google bombing for "French military victories". It's just amazing how a good relation based on 200 years of very close relations, such as their help to each other in their revolutions, the statue of liberty given by the people of France as a gift and now a symbol to USA is getting to change into a not very friendly relationship!
Today in French class one of the students made an error about the conjunction before the word Paris which made it sound like a country and the teacher laughingly said only Americans might see Paris as a country! And before that, nearly a month ago, gain in French class, our teacher discussed the relation with the US very shortly saying that this relation is very weird and they both like each other and need each other and in the same time hate each other!

Juicing!

Unlike my Persian and Azeri weblogs, my English weblog seems to be too much serious! So I have to juice it a little bit! Well, where to start? Should I write about the night club I went in Oslo? Or the "Friends" episodes which I am going to finish watching them today and boy, I will miss them!! Or about the movies I've been seeing in theater or in TV or in my computer! If I decide to write about all of these it will take more than a life time! Isn't it strange that the time needed to describe life is more than life itself?! It's strange but true!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!)

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.

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!!!