All coming back to me

It is all fourth grade again and the teacher is favoring a student over the others but this time that student is not me. And because of that I fail the candidacy exam. But even before that I have decided to do something. This can't continue for three years. I will have to change this situation.

Why I'm against the new french law

The french parliament yesterday, finally approved a billing, making it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide.
First of all, I must say the whole idea seems stupid to me. I even have problem with denying holocaust being a crime. For me it is very simple. It is as if somebody comes and tells you that earth doesn't exist and you put him in jail for saying that loud. It is just like a Galileo situation except the inverse. somebody says earth is flat and it is the center of the universe and you put him in jail. Denying a certain fact, even if it is a hundred percent proved is just a stupidity not a crime!
And in the case of Armenians, it is not as if they haven't done similar things on the other side of the border in the very city where I was born. It is a complicated historical event which should be studied and further studies may very well prove that Armenians are right but passing laws like this will only worsen the problem. People should be free to talk about their thoughts even if it means it hurts the feelings of others. Is it now a crime in a western country to deny god, so say someone is gay, to ridicule somebody else, even if it is the president of United States?
It is opposed to the very idea of freedom of speech. When there are unquestionable evidents to a historical fact those evidents should be enough to prove somebody is speaking nonsense. Why making him the center of attention by putting him in jail. Then this would even validate Khomeini's Fatwa to condemn Salman Rushdie to death. Then they can say that according to their laws Rushdie has made a crime and he should be penalized and the penalty for his crime is death!
In every sense that I'm thinking about it, it just makes me wonder why and how could they do this! And you know what the funny thing is? This law potentially makes all the people of Turkey criminals. How weird is that! I've had a lot of Armenian friends in my hometown. This town is a good example of how the people from different ethnicity and religions can live along in peace, Kurds, Azeris, Asyrians, and Armenians and then suddenly somebody from outside comes and tries to defend the right of one of these groups against the others and every thing is ruined.
I'm sure I must be missing a point. Else, how is it possible that they are neglecting all these simple similarities and analogies with similar situations which now are just seem strange to us to just think about them.

Friends

So, now, I can say I'm a bit free after three rather tough exams. Specially the last one which was a Probability and Stochastic Processes exam. It was such a long time that I hadn't really been challenged myself in an exam. It was either too hard or too easy but this one really felt good, specially the last question which really felt intelligent.
I'm now sitting in HUB! yeah, that is right, there is a building(the nicest building in campus) in Penn State called HUB. And I'm enjoying the wireless connection to chat with friends and write this.
Now life is going more smooth. I finally bought a laptop, although it came with an almost disaster: my external hard disk crashed with all the music and files and movies I had inside. But now I can have some amount of entertainment in my room while I'm alone.
Now, my group of friends are divided into five groups. Other than my Iranian friends and French friends, I have made a new group of friends:Chinese! And I've already asked them to teach me some Chinese, but it is the hardest thing I've yet experienced. The fourth group comes from the fact that I can speack turkish and there are a lot of them here so it is really good to be able to communicate with them in their own language and it is a good practice for me too. The fifth group is again my very good, very friendly group of Indian friends which I find very nice people. Today, just an hour ago I made a new Indian friend. He got so friendly with me, at the end he even invited me to his apartment for a round of poker with his friends.

without title

I have really started studying, a thing I didn't believe I could do! But fortunately with the exams here being amazingly easy I don't have a hard time. And as I haven't bought a computer and I'm busy studying I don't really feel writing anything in here but I have a lot of things to write about.
So soon, after I buy my new laptop I'll begin to write them I hope.

Is it getting better or do you feel the same?

I haven't been able to write a post with a political theme recently. As I can't find enough time to write in all my blogs I have transferred my more personal posts to here so my posts about trying to criticize our world have been overshadowed.
But yesterday, after Bush and Ahmadinejad gave their speeches in UN general assembly and after reading an article in our campus's newspaper in today's issue I thought to go back to what this weblog used to be.
I'm thinking about writing an answer to this article. Unfortunately I started by reading it with a prejudice. I can bring excuses that I don't see any other views other than attacks on Muslims but that doesn't make me to lose my independence of mind and judging every thing by what it really is.
Anyway, I'll try to put up something related to that opinion but as I'm simply an engineering student and I don't have any real journalistic experience specially in writing in English so I would just write some babblings in here.

Eternal sunshine of a ...

It is weird how a simple email can change your day thoroughly.
This morning for me began with checking my emails in the main library of campus( I don't yet have a computer of my own and as I said before for the time being I'm broke ). An email kept me smiling for two hours, then that changed to thoughts and worries on how to reply to it and then excitement on how the outcome will be.
It is weird.

Newyork, Newyork

Start spreadin' the news, I'm leavin' today










I want to be a part of it, New York, New York










These vagabond shoes are longing to stray











Right through the very heart of it, New York, New York














I wanna wake up in a city that doesn't sleep










And find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap











These little town blues are melting away

I'll make a brand new start of it, in old New York

If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere

It's up to you , New York, New York

Fallaci

This morning while browsing the news, the first thing that hit ny eyes was the news of the death of Fallaci.
Oriana Fallaci in my opinion was one of the greatest journalists of the last half a century and her interviews with famous political figures had brought her world fame.
But for me, she was more known by her book "A letter to a child never born" although I never read the whole book. The only copy of this book in our library in our house was a very old book with papers so old and yellow that it was hard to read the book without damaging it. But my mom was a big fan so I got to hear a few of her quotes in this book and later came to read some others. Although, due to the recent images of Islam she was criticizing Islam in a very radical way but her intentions to make a world a better place should be appreciated.
The surprising thing is I don't see anyone so conserned with her death and the her news of death is just one among the usual daily news which come and go without anyone noticing them.

Broke

Nothing much to say.
Most of the days because of the internet I remain on Campus until late at night. For the past two days, I got home at 1am. But the reason wasn't studying at all! Wednesdays is the European Students Club nights and we gather in a bar and just try to have a drink and have a good time. And yesterday while shopping at 9pm with my very dear friend in Penn State, we were invited to join some other iranian friends, again in a bar. It was really fun. Although I love hanging out with my french friends but my level of connection is limited due to my lack in French language, but with my iranian friends every thing is much simpler and so having fun gets much easier too.
And the last bus going from downtown(where all these bars and the campus is) to my apartment leaves at 00:30, so now the last bus driver knows me as I am his only passenger and it is just like having a personal ride. He even drops me just in front of my apartment as the last stop.
I was a bit frustrated with the way things work in here, comparing for example with France. I haven't been able to get a cell phone yet because first they were saying they need SSN otherwise I must put a 500$ deposit and now that I have my SSN it is the same thing with my credit history. What do they expect from a newcomer?!
And even worse is the fact that I won't be payed until the last of this month. So when somebody like me comes here who has to find an apartment and buy a lot of essential daily needs and has to stay on his own for almos 45 days, he has to be like a millionaire! What do they think? Am I sitting on a gold mine? I just hope(fingers crossed badly!:D:P) that I can manage it somehow until the end of the month.

Karaoke

Now I'm settled in a three bedroom apartment with two other guys occupying the other two bedrooms. We hardly see each other( in the order of once every few days) but the guy whose room is just opposite mine is a bit weird. In this two weeks he has hardly come home sooner than 4 in the morning. During the first week he was bringing his friends too making a lot of noise at that time early in the morning(or late in the night?). He has placed one of his friends' stuff in the kitchen making it virtually unusable. But I'm a person who can live with all this and never even mention it(and I really don't know even mentioning it here might be a good idea, but I do it just for shere fun of it! so see it as a funny situation). I can sleep while someone else is listening to the music, or doing a noisy job, or working with the lights on. Even being untidy can be bearable until a certain point, as long as he is aware of the situation.
But how about this? To wake up by your roommate's sound, singing along a Karaoke, loudly in Chinese, 5 in the morning might sound amusing but adding it to the fact that it is not an even voice so that I can tune my self to it and go back to sleep and this happening twice during this week can make it a little annoying. Maybe I'm getting old, who knows!

For now...

For now, I'll just put some photos of my current surroundings. When I find time and get out of excuses for not writing anything, I'm going to tell you about my new Electromagnetics course and how it is with the new professor.


French Friends:


Persian Friends:


Unfortunately my Indian, Chinese, Turkish and some other french and Iranian friends are missing in these photos. So that is it for now!

Start the engine

The classes have finally and officially started. Today, I decided to write my observations from the somewhat strange experiences I've had in these three days, beginning with the most strange and craziest of them, the Advanced Engineering Electromagnetic which there is no escape from.
I believe that Electromagnetic is the toughest course in the whole EE courses. It is so vast and deep that it should be put in several course(which it has been actually) but still, looks scary. The teacher is an Indian professor with a very thick nice accent and an strange sense of humour. Just in the first class he called us a brave lad to have taken this course with him(I already was scared, guess how I felt afterwards). The Digital Communication course has also a very humorous teacher. I always get a good laugh in his class. He is an American professor which makes fun of every one in the class but in a very pleasant way. The third one is the most crowded one. The stochastic processes course is every one's either major or minor in the coming candidacy exam. And the candidacy exam which is supposed to be in the end of this semester seems a bit frightening. I have to be well prepared.
And just like the good old undergrad days where we used to do a tough homework for every course every week, this has started again for me in my PhD studies! Actually it felt really good when I sat down on Sunday and managed to solve the electromagnetic problems.
Another good thing which has happened to me is that for the first time during my long period of studies I managed to make it for the very first day of schedules (most importantly the orientation). I remember going two days late to school in the first year of elementary. Then showing up two weeks late for the registration in the university. And three weeks late in my masters because of visa delays. But this time everything went well and I got here on the first day of orientation and did most of the paper work done in the first week, got acquainted with the campus and most importantly met lots of good people and made friends with them, specifically among them my french friends, and some Indian and Chinese students I met. And the fact is as they are in different areas of study I would have never met them or even walked pass them in this huge campus if I had missed the orientation.
But the only thing which made me a little worried was the housing problem during the first week. As it seems a huge number of students have applied for Penn State and they have accepted a great number comparing to previous years, so almost everywhere on campus and off campus was full by the time I got here, and as I didn't know anyone it took me a few days to realize that the situation is harsh. Fortunately on the fourth day by the help of Orkut(which can actually be of a great help some of the times) I found a familiar face which was in the same year with me in university in Iran but in a different major, so we only had a physical education course with each other during which didn't quite get to know each other. But as soon as I sent him a message he treated me like an old friend and saved my a.. by helping me find an apartment using his car.

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.