It is Christmas now and everybody is crazy about it, exactly like when we were kids and just before the new year, Shab e Eid. One thing that our kids miss for sure here (abroad, out of Iran) is the notion of extended family and the related new year celebrations, They neither belong to the mainstream Americans or Canadians nor to Iran. Something in between, as a parent it is too difficult to manage that, since we are not offering our kid a proper and adequate excitement for Norouz (it won't be the same anyways since you won't have the holidays and the big family), I am giving in to Christmas, at least he will have some excitement every year, same time as anybody else.

I don’t believe in any religion as they are presently around, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I believe in something, I don’t know what it is yet; I won’t try to explain it, I’ll wait till the understanding comes to me or if not I am just happy to know there is something even though I can not characterize it.

The other day my son came home with an artwork from school, which was the famous sign of Judaism the candleholder, because of Hanukah, which is around Christmas time. There is one Jewish (he is from Iranian background as well) student in his class. I did not like that; I understand the Christmas fever because of its festival value and the fact that the absolute majority of Americans are Christian, but why Hanukah should semi officially be celebrated in a place where people try to mention religions as rarely as possible?

Another strange thing was that because of the presence of a Jewish skater called Sasha Cohen in some school in California, in order to not offend her, kids did not song the Christmas carol!

That does not make sense to me, this way after a few decades you will see Hanukah as the official new year celebration in US and in order not to offend Americans with Jewish background, Christmas will be banned.

Do you wanna piece of me?

I was watching a program about a new book by Jimmie Carter the ex president of the United States. He has written a book about middle east and the present political turmoil in the region. The impression I got from the interview was that in his book he has put more responsibility on the shoulder of Israeli government and instead of pointing finger to Palestinians, as is traditionally the case in America regarding the middle east conflict. In the book he talks about what concessions and compromises Israelis should go for if they want peace . He has guts, this is very different from what is norm and almost everybody says in US, this is specially very unusual given the fact that Carter has been a president of the States.

We have a little bit of push pull with my son Danial these days,

He is a first grader; he is a good reader but not so good with arithmetic ( addition and subtraction). I am telling my wife that we should not force him to get into a box that is smaller than him or not his shape, just because it is considered to be the norm. Another thing is that mathematics is not just the arithmetic operations, not the same thing at all.
The school he is attending reminds me of the style we had in Iran, very demanding even for grade one, not as relaxed as Canada.

In Canadian system they give kids time to discover themselves, no rush to achieve or over achieve the ambitious goals set by the school.

I always thought a stricter educational system, something between what we had in Iran and the Canadian Style, would be just right, but I am not so sur any more, I think in Canada, kids have the opportunity to enjoy the childhood and grow in peace, on the other hand the Canadian achievements in terms of industry and other fields are no less than any other country.

I read in BBC that the UN secretary general Kofi Annan had said that the situation in Iraq is worse than when Saddam was in power, for Iraqi people of course.
I believe that, beside this fact, Alqaidah was restricted to Afghanistan now they are in Iraq as well.

Some presidential something (advisor or angry guy) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6206480.stm in Iraq did not like that statement and has responded angrily to Annan, not that I like Annan or I believe he has performed as he should in his post, but that the reasoning and the statements of the Iraqi official is baseless and somehow funny.

One of his remarks reminds me of the jokes we had for some of funny Iranian political figures.

The Iraqi official has said that the condition for Iraqi people has improved seven times compared to the Saddam era. God knows where the number seven is coming from.

Is the relationship between Israel and Palestine the same as Iran or Turkey and Kurds? I can not make the one to one correspondence, it looks like the Israelis are under this impression, and they feel like that!

This morning we were watching Sesami Street, before my son went to school, the subject of the show was the family and what families do together. One thing that I like about Sesami Street is the multi racial and multi cultural approach they have got by showing people from different backgrounds involved in American life, not just the blonds. This morning when they were showing kids and families they showed a gay couple with their kid as well. I don’t like that; I don’t know how you could explain it to your kid, what is normal and what is not? It all depends on who you are and how you think about certain things; a gay family is not a fact unlike "brushing your teeth is good for you", which is a fact.

I believe that it is very important to make kids understand that not everything, which is shown on TV or told in school, is right and kids always should be critical and use different resources to deal with different concepts and especially new ideas,

Meanwhile in case my son asks about the kind of reunion we saw on TV this morning, I will tell him that a gay family is fake, is not true.

At the same time we continue to watch Sesami Street that is a great program.

Unlike Canada, here I am not feeling I can write about all my reflections, just like good old times in Iran. I self-censored some part of the last post I did, then I felt bad about it, here you go:

One thing that bothers me is that all the antiwar campaign even from the leftists, is focusing on the American army casualties and the war expenses for the tax payers, to some extent that makes sense, it is the natural way you can connect to American public opinion, at the same time the Iraqi civilians are suffering as well, as a result of a war that is not their choice. I would mention that as well.

Last night I was watching a TV documentary on PBS about the brain injuries that American soldiers sustain as a result of a nearby explosion, and the fact that almost always such conditions are not paid enough attention to. I remember the same phenomena during the Iran/Iraq war and we had lots of these people coming back from the fronts and even though they looked alright they behaved strange and screwed-up, we used to call them Mouji (translates into Wavy, referring to the explosion wave), there was so many jokes and funny stories about them, after lost night I admit I feel very bad and I don’t feel it is funny anymore (a few days ago in Tehran, one of these guys took hostage all the students of a girls' school, including his own daughter! ).

My son Danial is in grade one, there was a great deal of medical and language proficiency tests that he had to pass before he could start school in California. His Iranian background (non english speaker) and the fact that prior to coming to US he was in a French school were the reasons for the language test, fortunately he passed it. One thing that I am seeing here is that the educational system in this specific district is very similar to what we went through in Iran. Very strict and lots of tests and work are administered even for first graders. That was not the case at all in Canada, even though Danial was going to a French school in an English dominated region, and they are known to be stricter than the English schools, the curriculum was relatively relaxed, specifically for the first graders the stress was on the development of social skills and the interest in school and learning.

In contrary, here they are doing serious math stuff and reading, I would categorize the American system (where we are living) more traditional and the Canadian system is more liberal.

I really don’t know which system is better, I did not like too much pressure back in my school years,

Long live MIT!!

I have been looking for an opportunity to study a little bit; taking a course may be or study books…

Yesterday I found out that MIT has an online service called open courseware (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html) and the course materials of many of the officially offered courses in MIT are available on this website. I picked up a few and am planning to follow through…

That is a good Idea, why the rest of Universities don’t do that?

We had a two-day holiday last week, including the weekend it added up to 4 days which was nice. Thanks giving is much more serious here than Canada, I am not sure why that is so, it might be because of the religious aspects of thanks giving and the fact that the Canadians in general are less religious than Americans.

Another interesting thing to see was that even the Iranians are into it, we were invited to a thanks giving lunch which had turkey on the table and so on and so forth. Not a bad Idea.
One good thing about southern California is that you can feel you are at home because of the all Iranian stuff you have there and the land itself, it looks more like what we had in Shiraz and most parts of Iran.

I was watching a documentary on World War II and of course the role of Americans in all that, especially to bring it to an end. When you look at the events and military operations there, specially the last two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you see how in American style the goal justifies the mean, whatever the mean is. I cannot deny the concrete achievements of the US industry and military, I admit that I admire the resilience and hard work of American people and the well designed industrial and social systems in US, but something that bothers me is the pretentious moral appearances and justifications behind the most cruel and inhumane acts of all history of human kind.

Having said that what was the alternative solution in World War II?

I don’t know.

I think Iranian nation should be very cautious dealing with US. Not to give up their rights but to try to think as the Americans, Iranian common sense is quiet different from American’s.
I think the whole issue is to act rational instead of emotional.

I follow the recent discussions between Hoder and Nikan, as far as it concerns me Nikan is really crazy and nonlinear, and frankly I don’t care what he stands for or he is talking about. But Hoder is a guy with lots of positive and negative attributes who in my regard has an overall positive score. The problem with him is that he has put himself in such a weak position that anybody with any kind of background can effectively accuse him of anything the most people hate.

I hope he gets into some serious business, finish school or get some relevant experience, right now he looks more like a canon without of ammunition.

There is something with arid desertic/mountainous areas that makes you wander, something unique is there. In extreme cold, you play mouse and cat with death, in nice weather with lots of green, you just have fun, a bit superficial, that is life, but in huge dry mountains as well as deserts, there is something that makes you think about mystery of life, no wonder almost all prophets as we knew them are from these kind of geographical areas.
I think the mystery of life has been so huge that the human being could not handle it raw and pure, as it was, there was something in the air, he was so confused by the immensity of the Divine secret that he decided to explain it, or even better justify it, in another words he modeled it into a simple, familiar and understandable system.

Belief
One of the most difficult things for me is to discuss my religious beliefs with a guy who is traditionally religious. I have gone through that difficult experience many times with fellow Muslims, you get to the point that you have to deny certain things or say something which is considered blasphemy and at the same time you don't want to offend or upset people as well, since beliefs are the most irrational and personal part of each individual,
A week ago I went to get a Californian driver's license and I was 1 hour early, there was a talkative guy who was early too, and he started to talk to me and asking questions, he turned out to be a traditional christian believer, I would call him and people like him (Bush) christian Hezbollah. We got to the point that I started to talk about my beliefs and his and, guess what? it was as difficult as if I wanted to talk to a traditional Muslim. At some point I just backed off and nodded yeah, yeah ....
He used to be an alcoholic and drug addict and now he was rehabilitating, and religion was a big help.

Finally my wife and my son joined me yesterday. Danial wanted to go to an outside open pool which we have in the complex we live, I originally thought that the whole big outside pool is warm even during the winter time, not true, the real estate agent did not specify which pool is warmed up all year long, it happened to be the small wading pool for kids, worked for Danial, so full of shame and happy about the fact that nobody was there to see a big hairy guy in the kids wading pool I got in and we had some fun. I am happy about the fact that he and Rosie like the place, I really don’t like the concept of the California, specially what it is in LA and nearby, there are lots of snub and wealthy Iranians around in Orange County, you could say there are lots of rich or quasi-rich middle-easterns around from the number of the Mercedes Benz vehicles circulating.

Big city!
There is a big difference between people of smaller low pace places compared to big out of size cities. I realized the same difference when I was in Iran as well. We moved from Shiraz to Tehran. The first thing you find out is that you should be careful or people would rip you up fast and without hesitation. The same thing is visible here in US, as I was driving through the States, I could see that people in smaller cities are more polite and friendly, unbelievably different from California.
My first bad experience was with a bank teller over the phone, a young girl who had a strong accent (sounded like black people in movies!), when I saw I am not getting anything off the phone I politely ask her If she could talk a bit slower and louder, she did not like that and started to talk even faster, since I was not getting what she was telling me, I repeatedly asked her to say stuff again which she did not like at all, at some point she was so annoyed that when she was confirming my long two part, unfamiliar family name, she said "G as in Garbage", I have had similar experiences in Iran, but never in Canada,
Second one, my wife hired 3 movers over the phone to help me move our stuff down the truc into the apartment. Du to my past experiences with the movers I already knew what kind of people these mover companies are but I had no choice. To make the story short: they screw up and dropped one wooden furniture and damaged it, even though I was covered by he insurance he is not paying for the damage, another negative stuff is that when he knew that the move has went wrong and I am really upset with that, he filed a positive feed back giving himself a 5 star rating (that is another story how he got the login information out of me, a simple country man coming to LA).
third one, I went to the LA customs head office which is close to LA international airport, I was doing the paper work for importing my car from Canada to US, the officer told me to go and have a seat waiting for my documents to get ready, while I was sitting two guys where talking Spanish and I realized they are looking at me. One of them asked me if I have forgotten my wallet at the counter where I submitted my documents, first I said no but then I realized my wallet is not on me and he told me some guy took it and quickly walked away, I ran out and luckily spotted the guy who just got in his truck, I ran to him yelling and before he got away I caught his jacket, since there was a lot of cops around he did not risk it and through out wallet out of window and speeded away. I got my wallet, but if I was 5 seconds late, I could not have it back!
the scary thing is that all these happened in a period of about 10 days, am I going to have more surprises?

At last I am back, after driving 4800km which is about 3000miles. it took me 4 days, a bit longer it could be better if I did not have an accident with the auto transporter. Any ways it is over now and I am going to airport to pick up my wife and my son now.

YouTube Rocks!

That You tube thing is great, I was searching for Fereydoon Foroughi's videos, I watched a few of them and then I noticed there are some political stuff there as well, Shah and Nojeh Coup and the interview with General Rahimi with Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi as the spokesman of the revolutionaries,
I remember all these as a kid, but last night was too sad for me. General Rahimi and General Mohagheghi who was leading the Nojeh coup d'etat, even the guys who where interviewing them after their capture where different from now, very polite and with character's and culture, the guy talking to Rahimi was addressing him as Timsar. I was feeling bad for all of them, the only crap was a Akhond which during the talks with Rahimi, He was jumping in and from the way he was talking you could say he was a akhond.

General Ayat Mohagheghi
General Mehdi Rahimi

And this is Neeyaaz from Fereydoun Froughi:
Fereydoun Froughi

Around August, a very sportive colleague of mine, the kind of people who would do better if born gorilla rather than human, told me that he and a few other friends all from Saskatoon, are going for one of their annual wild all male camping. He asked me if me and Daniel (my son 6 years old) would like to join them. The camping site was in a crown park north of Quebec, a lake with many little tiny islands, We had to walk and portage the canoe and our stuff for about 3 hours and then paddle for another 2 hours to get to one of the available islands. Imagine me a guy who might die if too far from home and afraid of all living things, what should I say? I said yes, just because of Danial who believes Travis is either Superman himself or some sort of god, and that was a big dream of his to go on a camping trip with Travis.
Anyways finally we arrived in one of the rocky islands and set up the camp...
The following day we went for exploring the area and other islands. There was a beautiful scene out there, a very big rock about 15 to 20 meters high so vertical and sharp at the edge of a tiny island. I noticed Travis is paddling that way, I asked what he was cooking and he said he wanted to jump off that cliff, I looked at him and asked if he had lost his mind, "Of course not that is fun!". We got the ca to the shore so he got off and started to climb the cliff, meanwhile me and Danial paddled off the shore below the cliff to see the jump as close as possible. He got edge and then with a wild and excited scream he jumped off, I admit that was great, reminded me of when I was the same age (under 30 years old) and the crazy stuff we used to do.
Danial turned to me, I was still clapping and cheering for Travis' bravery, as soon as I looked into Danial's eyes I knew what he was going to say,
Dad now it is your turn,
I just froze and I did not want to tell him that I was a scardy cat, that I was afraid of jumping off, that I am not a good swimmer and I am 40 years old and ...
His look was begging me to go up and jump,
I got to the shore, and started to climb the cliff, Travis and Danial paddled to the middle to see me jump, I got there, Oh my God, I even could not look down!!
I started to shake and to back off, but Danial started to sing: Go Daddy, Go Daddy,
It was easy to back off because he was so tiny from up there that I could not see his eyes and easy to refuse his will.
But I am a man of my words, a crappy one, but still ...
It took me 10 minutes out there before I knew I was jumping, it felt less than a moment before it was over,
My body jumped while my mind was still struggling, I screamed all way down and so scared that I was looking into water when I touched down,
Danial was crazy and excited, he could not believe his eyes, he showed me Bilakh (thumbs up!) and said he was proud of me,
Travis told me that it was a silent jump! I told him I was screaming all way down, but he said he heard nothing!
Since I got into the water with my face down, my gum got injured and my mouth was bleeding, With the slap I got in the face (from water) I got black eyes as well, But all that was worth, If it was not for that jump, how the hell on earth I could possibly have got Danial to tell me that he was proud of me?

Is Uhaul the worst Moving Truck renting company?

I have been reading all kind of crap about the Uhaul trucks and how shitty they are and how bad Uhaul customer service is.
I am going to drive one of these on a 4700km trip pulling my car behind.
For some reason I don't feel too bad about that, when I read the complaints about Uhaul(they are a lot!) many of those comments are made by ladies and some are talking about stuff that does not make too much sense to me. But there are enough genuine negative feedbacks posted on the internet to give you a chill in the back, anyways next week, middle of the week, I will know what is with Uhaul!

Big Move
Next week, I will be back to Ottawa, We have decided to drive with a Uhaul truck pulling my car behind with an auto transporter. It is more than 4000km driving, 4 to 5 days depending on how good the truck is, the altiltude in Ottawa is around 300ft and I have to go up to 7000ft and come down to almost see level. My colleagus say it is a bit crazy doing that, but I am going for it, wish me luck.

This is a story I have recounted to my son when he has been asking for one before going to sleep.
It is the true story of Tarzan, different from the one made up by Hollywood and Disney.
Long time ago when I was a kid, in Khorramshahr, a city in south of Iran, the very first major city that Saddam captured during Iran-Iraq war, in our neighborhood, Posht-e Gomrok, there was a huge gorilla living with his family. He was the only gorilla in our neighborhood. The rest of his clan where either captured and moved to the zoo or deported to parts of Africa. His name was Zaboor (Disney claims that Zaboor is the name of the leopard which killed the human parents of Tarzan, which is obviously a lie). He had a son which was a human, name Tarzan, Unlike the rest of the neighborhood Tarzan and his family lived on a tree, that made perfect sense given the fact that his dad was a gorilla. Tarzan and I were playmates, I was the fastest and strongest kid in Khorramshahr, unlike me Tarzan was the clumsiest. I was like his bodyguard taking care of him. He was myop and his dad used to shave his hair down to scalp. One favorite thing we loved to do was wrestling. One day we were playing with about 20 other kids and trying to kick butts as much as possible. Zaboor was myop as well and because of his huge gorilla head, he could not find a big pair of glasses to wear. To give Tarzan some credit, I pretend that I was really fighting with him and he was pushing me down to ground (which was totally fake). Zaboor who was up on the tree and was not able to see what was going on, thought humans have attacked and they are taking Tarzan away from him (nobody knew why the hell he was thinking like that in first place!), His gorilla blood started to boil, as a result he could neither see or hear anything, next thing he knew was that he had attacked me and other 20 kids to save Tarzan, the result of this stupid and unnecessary intervention was 42 broken hands, 40 broken legs and 21 bruised eyes. My dad who was home and heard me screaming (the first and last time in my life, I swear to God!) knew right away that something was wrong, he came out and stopped Zaboor, he tied him down and called the cops. First he wanted to let Zaboor and his family to stay in Khorramshahr, since all the fuss was a stupid misunderstanding, but then he convinced Zaboor to leave for Africa fear of stupid humans trying to retaliate. Zaboor and his family left for Africa. In the same ship they were on, there was an American reporter (Christian Amanpoor from CNN) who heard their story and promised him to help and let everybody else know the truth about him and his difficult life. Something that never happened.
You know the rest of it.

Home Alone!
I had to move to the new place before my wife and son, now I am here without family and it is not so fun. I always thought if I got alone for a while I would do lots of stuff that usually when I am with family I don't do and I nag about it on a daily basis.
Now I am alone and my life so boring that ...
I am so used to them that sometimes I feel I even don't exist without my family. I know when we get together again I will start nagging about the hardship and restrictions of family life but that is bullshit.
I like Koroush Aliani, there is no specific reason, but the texts he writes are nice, they are different, I don't know him and I don't know how he is in his personal life, but his writings are something I like,
Lately he is writing a bit weird, Is he alright? I hope so.
I like Kameran's writings from Israel as well. He is so Iranian,
Beside these guys I like Hoder's blog as well with all his ups and downs and his opinions, he is not fake, that is great. He needs to get his ass together and do something serious, go in hiding finish his school and come back, what he is doing is like working in a fast food store, you can't do it for good.

His recent talks and the negative reactions of some people reminds me of a personal experience with a member of my own family. I came to Canada as an immigrant, that is, as a professional engineer I applied for immigration to Canada and that was with my own money. I came over here and since I could not find a suitable job I ended up doing my masters degree for better career opportunities afterwards. Anyways, one day I was talking politics with this guy who had become family after my sister married his brother in Law. It was the first time Khatami was around and the first time after so many years there was a real hope in him and what he was talking about. It was the second time in my whole life that I was going to vote, and I talked about that openly and talked about the hope and that this time it was different (was it?). After a while my sister told me that now that guy is referring to you as the Hezbollah and the agent of the Islamic republic in Canada and how these agents come to study in Canada and so forth.
That is sad, anybody might or might not be the agent of any intelligence agency, but for god's sake if he is, is he so stupid to show it up?
We enjoy calling people names and by labeling people we make our life a hell easier and fun, others' life a hell harder, who cares HAH?!!!.

I have moved to a warmer place, I really had got used to Ottawa and people, the only thing was the winter, my wife and chili winter are just like the middle east crisis, that is why I moved.
They will join me in a while, a month or so, I have got an apartment and a job, sounds enough.

Bush is an asshole!
Ahmadi nejad is an asshole!

They are pushing Iran to the point that you feel you like to say: Everybody go to hell, shut up and we will do what ever is appropriate for us,
I think all the pressure in the nuclear issue is the result of the stupid behavior and general neglect of Ahmadi Nejad, I wonder when he starts to think about diplonacy and benefits of that,

I have been in a constant state of forgetfulness for sometime, forgetting about all the good that god has given me. My boys, my wife,
I should never have forgotten the pain of losing them,
Thank you God,

I am still thinking about derivation of a formula to calculate the population of the assholes in a given nation using the official statistics published by the government.
... Meanwhile, most of the politicians are assholes, genuine assholes, I don't believe anybody (Specially bastards, I mean American politicians) based on what they say, but what they do and what is the outcome of their actions, like Iranian politicians (they are not as hypocrite though!), the most honest ones are Israelis who openly say fuck Palestine and they do so.
Americans, Do they care about democracy in Middle East? Bullshit, by far they have been supporting the most undemocratic tyrannies in Middle East and directly they have been engaged in the most undemocratic behavior a country can by invading Iraq. What they have achieved? is anybody stupid enough to say they did not know the consequence?What counts is the US national interest before anything else, if necessary they can drop atomic bombs and kill more than 200000 people in a blink of eye, and no shame!! That is fucking unbelievable!!!

I want to talk about the Assholes. My motivation? A program on BBC world channel about the hypothetical new borders of Palestine with Israel, the reporter was walking around and asking Israeli people about how the new official Israeli Palestine border should look like, with the map and a marker to draw the new frontier, I don't want to talk about all the suggestions but just to say that the best one (in Palestinians favor) was in TelAviv when a few young people reconfirmed the present official border line plus the settlements in occupied territories. The Asshole, the one that inspired me to write this post, he drew a careless border line way over the official border line into the Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, of course with no Palestinian state.
How many Assholes are there per nation, I know they are everywhere, we have bunch of them right in Iran, USA and even in Canada.
I am making up a theory to find out the percentile of assholes in different nations.

At the bottom of my heart I really badly want to kick the Americans' butts. You know it is a desire, it is something that would make me a bit relieved because of all their interventionist behaviors, but it is not the solution to anything. The problem is that why should any asshole like America be able to piss us off? Why during the contemporary history we have been manipulated so easy? Instead of working on our historical weaknesses we started to point at people and accusing them of being the root cause which is completely wrong, USA is not the cause of all the misfortunes we are dealing with, they are taking advantage of it, they are riding the wave, they don't create it. I am not saying they can't or they have not conspired at all, they have but in smaller scales. Our case, the Iranian case is different. We have to have a look at ourselves, why an asshole like USA should be able to piss us off at all?
We are not working wisely, we don't have democracy, we don't have any respect for our national interests, unlike Americans our national interests come after bunch of other unattainable and virtual stuff that in long run just destroy our limited resources and own people, we don't have any long term plan, we don't know who can be a friend (I am talking about Arab countries that are bunch of cowards not worth to be trusted at all).
Behaving emotional rather than rational is what has made our politics so destructive and dysfunctional.

This is a difficult time; there will be lots of difficulties for Iranian people. The current nuclear crisis running between Iran and USA could be avoided somehow if the Iranian side was a little bit smarter, thinking a bit more like living on earth rather than in the sky. Fundamentally USA or any other country has no right to impose any kind of nuclear behavior on Iran as long as Iran is abiding to the international protocols and agreements. Iran could be a bit smarter in order to delay or even avoid any irrational international reaction initiated and promoted by USA. I think Ahmadi Nejad did a great job on behalf of USA and Israel. For me the international laws or protocols are all jokes, to find out who has the right for access to nuclear power is as simple as the following:
If you already have nuclear capabilities (military or civil) then having nuclear capabilities is your right, if you don't possess such technology yet it is not your right.

As a result of stupid people governing Iran and their very smart and experienced opponents, we end up loosing more of our sovereignty. What is the difference between Ahmadi Nejad and Ghajariyeh losers? We lost part of Iran at that time and now the whole Iran is on stake!
I like to call Ahmadi Nejad the big FART, He is so annoying.

Yesterday most of the morning at work I was daydreaming about going back to school and pursue the career of teaching. Unbelievable, I was so happy, my colleague was asking me which drug I was on. It was so good, I am getting tired of this dead line driven unfriendly work environment, I wish I could go back to school, just this crap life style with all the expenses and...
for now I keep on dreaming.

I was watching a documentary called "The end of Suburbia". It was about the dependency of the american life style on oil. Warning that before too long we will see the oil reserves depleted and then dramatically we won't be able to live the way we do now. What the film makers are forecasting for that time is war for oil. Actually they are saying that with the war in Iraq The long lasting "war for oil" has already started.

Procrastination,
I just found out that there is a very serious research field in psychology dealing with that. The interesting part of an article I was reading about procrastination was that if it has an internal cause, that is difficult to get rid of. Fear of success and failiur are among the internal causes for procrastinating or avoiding a particular task. We are complicated animals,

It is a very sad situation in Iraq. How emotional they are. How emotional we are. I think one of the most sacred things is human life, no abstraction, real and touchable. The reactions are just not right, I am not saying "who cares what happened to the shrine" if people think that "The Shrine" is sacred so it is sacred, but the reactions are just off the scale, brother kills brother. We blame Israelis and Americans killing Moslems! Nonsense.
I don't know, It is sad.

In our society and culture the nation has lots of attention and respect but the individuals are not as respected and attentioned. Who cares if individuals are in trouble or danger on a daily basis by their own government or compatriots? But if a foreign identity says something against any icon related to "Iran", that is blasphemy, this is in the culture, no good.

This is a bit political, I am a bit pissed off by the recent noises and religious back and forth going on between Europe and Moslems in general. Something so general that there is no fucking way you can say as a Moslem (even a non practicing one like me) that you don't care, something well done to put all Moslems from any political and sectarian background in the same row,
Why do they do that? It reminds me of the kind of psychological tortures that has been designed and performed on male Moslem inmates since a long time in Israel and recently in Abou Gharib in Iraq and Guantanamo bay. I don't believe discussion between civilizations is a genuine thing, this is just a hopeful wish, what is true and is happening right now is the clash between civilizations. That is how it works, how it has been and how it will be. These guys are rushing in to it, they know Moslems are in no good shape right now, that is the best time, the respect and all the other shit is just good to talk about in books, whose fault is that? It is all our fault. I don't blame any American or western country for any of that, we are an easy target, so vulnerable and fragile that even a baby can make us dance.
we did not take life as serious as we should, now we pay for that,

I am a bit messed up. Too busy at work and the same at home. My mood has been going up and down like a yoyo, anyways.
I read frequently the hoder's weblog, for his posts and people's comments. He has gone to Israel for a visit. As he calims to conduct a dialog between civilizations. Looking at him and what he has done in past few years I would give him a positive credit. I am not sure about his personal intentions (I am not him!) but overall the outcome has been constructive.
At least he is doing something,