The Blue Talkz...

LabVIEW Package for Robotics Design

2010-02-07T14:56:00.001-05:00

This is something that I'm very much looking forwards to getting my hands on. It could very well be a life saver for me.

"On Monday, National Instruments announced one such platform. It's called LabView Robotics. In addition to LabView, the popular data-acquisition application, the package includes a bunch of tools specific to robotics. It can import codes in various formats (C, C++, Matlab, VHDL), offers a library of drivers for a wide variety of sensors and actuators, and has modules for implementation of real-time and embedded hardware. NI says engineers could use the package to both design and run their robotic systems."

IEEE Spectrum: National Instruments Introduces LabVIEW Package for Robotics Design

Office 2010 :: The Movie

2010-02-05T14:25:00.001-05:00

Hahaha.. look what I just found on Channel 9 forums. This is pretty amusing. =D And, well, self explanatory.

LOST Seaon 6 Premiere, and Sayid's IRANIAN passport!!

2010-02-04T23:27:00.001-05:00

So I just watched Lost season 6 premiere on Space channel, and it was simply mind blowing. =) LOOOOVVVEED IT! As I expected, it caused much more questions than giving any answers... and that's exactly what we love about Lost, isn't it? ;)

At the end of season 5, after Ben's trial, I knew with a 100% certainty that John Locke the new, the smoke monster, and the black dude were all the same. It was very clear given how he manipulated Ben to kill Jacob. But I'm wondering, what the heck is his name? =D And where's "home" that he wants to go to? And what happens no that Jacob's dead? And what did Juliet mean by "it worked"? And .. and... and... and... I could go on forever.

But you know what? I also have another really BIG question that I really have to bring up here... Sayid Jarrah is supposed to be Iraqi right? Then can somebody tell me, why on earth he has an IRANIAN PASSPORT????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm half Persian. I was born in Iran. I have an Iranian passport. I know what an Iranian passport looks like. Below is a screenshot of the scene showing Sayid's passport [thanks to YouTube!], right beside a photo of the first page of my Iranian passport. As you can see, it's exactly the same. [Click to see the full size.]

Something tells me that this is not a part of the Lost mystery plot. So I'd say... it's a rather sad mistake. Iraq and Iran are 2 different countries.. a fact that SOOOO many people seem to not realize.

Anyhow... aside from the above booboo, I really enjoyed the first episode, and I can't wait for more.... ah... please... moooorrre.... moooorrrrrrr Lost... MOOOORRRRE... =))))))))))

Google Code Blog: A proposal to extend the DNS protocol

2010-02-01T18:33:00.001-05:00

On one hand, I find the ideas here extremely interesting. On the other hand, I'm not feeling to well about the kind of information Google can have on a user's every single move. Hmmmmm..... still a very intriguing proposal.

"Today a group of DNS and content providers, including Neustar/UltraDNS and Google are publishing a proposal to extend the DNS protocol. DNS is the system that translates an easy-to-remember name like www.google.com to a numeric address like 74.125.45.104. These are the IP addresses that computers use to communicate with one another on the Internet. By returning different addresses to requests coming from different places, DNS can be used to load balance traffic and send users to a nearby server. For example, if you look up www.google.com from a computer in New York, it may resolve to an IP address pointing to a server in New York City. If you look up www.google.com from the Netherlands, the result could be an IP address pointing to a server in the Netherlands. Sending you to a nearby server improves speed, latency, and network utilization."

Google Code Blog: A proposal to extend the DNS protocol

Grammy Awards 2010

2010-02-01T18:22:00.001-05:00

Oh... boy oh boy.... I'm about to make myself a few enemies....

Given the kind of relationship that I have with music, I often get asked a lot of music related question... "How do you like this singer? How do you like that album? What do you think of blabla's latest track? What's your current favourite?" and... you get the picture. So in the past couple of days, quite a few people asked me what I thought of this year's Grammy Awards. And I said... "let me think about it a bit, I'll tell you...". Mainly because I just wanted to have enough time to "defuse" first, before saying something that would possibly offend anyone. But it looks like no matter how much time passes, my opinion on this does not, at all, change. So I may as well say it... I'm sorry if I'm offending anyone's opinions, I absolutely do not mean to... this is JUST my personal opinion.

So here's what I think... I think that the day this year's Grammy winners [with the exception of perhaps 1 or 2] win the Grammy Award, is the day I stop watching Grammy. Permanently. Good music has officially left the world's popular music scene. [Again, with a few exceptions... too few I'm afraid.] And that about sums it up.

Of course good music still very much exists... but you have to dig pretty deep and pretty hard to find it. And for the larger part, it's NOT on the shelves of the music stores. And even if it is, it nearly never wins any awards. Can anyone tell me, when the last time was that Mike Oldfield won any awards? [Well as far as I know it was 1975 Grammies. He has released a gazillion albums since then.] And how about Amethystium? And how about Craig Armstrong? And how about all the ingenious "Creative Commons" musicians? Who's supporting those?

Would it have been up to me, this year's Grammy Awards would have gone to: Sleepthief, SinQ, Brian Culbertson, aMUSiC, Röyksopp, Massive Attack, Keiko Matsui, Mosaik, Brian Tyler, Schiller, and may more....

So now I'm going to go and enjoy listening to SinQ's "Hyperism" series... ingenious electronic music....

New LOST Trailer! <3

2010-01-29T21:54:00.001-05:00

Oh my GOD I looooooooooove the new LOST trailer for season 6! It's ingenious....

USB Floppy Drive! =P

2010-01-27T20:11:00.001-05:00

Yes, you may laugh at me all you want... but here's my latest eBay adventure. =P I incidentally came across possibly one of the last survivors of the floppy disk era, a 9 year old external [USB] Microtech floppy drive that has somehow been sitting in it's box somewhere waiting.. getting bored... not being used...! =P

Well you see, I still have a load of my old floppy drives in some really nice colours [ ;) ], containing old games, a heck of a lot of code [yeah like code I wrote when I was 9!], graphics, and all sorts of other odd and even things. And obviously none of my notebooks have a floppy drive. And somehow, I have this nostalgic feeling towards floppy disks / drives... =D Well, lets just say that I really had to have it. ;) Here it is:

My Microtech floppy drive connected to my notebook.. [and those are the different colours that the lead can have [there's like 15 or so of them.. =))))] ...

IEEE Spectrum: Augmented Reality Robots Take Flight

2010-01-26T22:45:00.001-05:00

Ok, I want one of these.... =P

"The AR Drone is one of the first consumer products to combine robotics with augmented reality. The quad-rotor vehicle carries two cameras and can stream video to an iPhone via Wi-Fi. On the phone, the live video is overlaid with flight controls and additional graphics for a variety of games."

IEEE Spectrum: Augmented Reality Robots Take Flight

Iranian Hackers & Baidu??!

2010-01-26T02:31:00.001-05:00

So this is pretty bizarre to me! How exactly does this make any sense? At first, these folks disabled Twitter which has turned into a major communication tool in Iran [and so it's understandable why they want it gone!], and then they mess with Baidu, which is a major Chinese search engine. And of course the Iranian government has no problems with China. So what? Are these guys are just going about it randomly now??

"Hackers calling themselves the "Iranian Cyber Army" paralysed China's biggest search engine this morning, sparking a bizarre online battle as Chinese hackers apparently retaliated by targeting Iranian sites. Last month the group attacked Twitter, which has been used by Iranian opposition supporters. But Beijing and Tehran are allies and it was not immediately obvious why hackers targeted Baidu, which commands over 60% of the search market in China."

Iranian' hackers paralyse Chinese search engine Baidu | Technology | guardian.co.uk

LUVED Sherlock Holmes! =D

2010-01-23T01:35:00.001-05:00

Can't believe I forgot to write about this! Last week I finally went to see the Sherlock Holmes movie, in Burlington with my cuz. I have to mention here first that I've read every single Holmes book out there, and I've seen the TV series. To be honest, I wasn't the biggest fan of the older movies / TV series, because the way Holmes was pictured in those, was not really much like the image that the books gave me. The details in the books that is, very small details.

Paying attention to the hints here and there in the books about Holmes' personal characteristics, I always had the feeling that he should be this bad-arse character somehow, and somewhat melancholy. So, obviously I enjoyed seeing a lot of just that in the movie. I think that's how Holmes should be "made"! LUUUVVVEEDDD IT! =D

Also, for obvious reasons, I really think that there will be sequels. ;)

I Think I'm In Luv # 2

2010-01-23T01:08:00.001-05:00

After months and months and even more months of waiting, I finally found the perfect little companion for my beloved blue VAIO notebook. So I introduce to you, the royal indigo VAIO, from Sony's signature collection [yet again!]. =D

A combination of an 8GB SDRAM, a 3.06GHz processor, a 500 GB HDD, the NVIDIA GeForce GT230M GPU [512MB VRAM], HDMI output, Blur-ray read and write drive & etc, makes this little dude exactly what I need. There are tons and tons of really kool features to play with, including the "web button". It's basically a quick web access button. When the system is shut down, if you want to quickly access the web without booting Windows, you just press this web button and a stand alone web browser boots. It's pretty darn awesome, and very useful to me. What's very interesting is that it's very thin and light. Oh, and it looks great sitting beside my blue VAIO. =P

And then of course there's Win7. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I LUUUUVVVV it! Microsoft has finally created an OS which makes me not think about switching to Apple anymore, and I'm not saying that lightly. It works, and it looks great. YAAAAY! =D

I also have to mention that I really like the new Sony notebook backpacks... ;)

VAIOz Luv Me! =)) [& No, this is not a a set up.... it actually happened. The blues are mine, the pink is my mom's, the black is my cousin's.]

TED Video: Eric Lewis

2010-01-21T22:13:00.001-05:00

This, truly blew my mind. I'll post more on Verse.

Winduino II

2010-01-21T21:44:00.001-05:00

This is really kool. I mean REALLY REALLY. Based on the ancient Aeolian harp, and made out of Adruino BT Bluetooth board, this little instrument plays with wind. Oh, and it's solar powered. More info can be found here.

Microsoft: Courier? HP Slate?

2010-01-20T22:59:00.001-05:00

So a few months ago, I saw this article on Gizmodo about Microsoft supposed new and fancy tablet, and I have to admit I really liked what I saw. Then recently, at CES 2010, Steve Ballmer went on the stage to display the HP Slate with Win7 on it. Very cool, but certainly nothing like the Courier, or at least the Courier idea.

Looking around the web, I've seen a lot of disappointment articles and comments saying that MS just killed Courier with the HP Slate... on the other hand, as I said, they 2 have nothing to do with each other, and I've read / heard a lot of people saying that Courier is still going to happen. So now the question is, who's right? Did MS kill courier, or not? Ideas anyone? Info anyone? =P

Fringe: Charlie Francis - UNDEAD?? HELLO???!!!

2010-01-13T01:38:00.001-05:00

Ok... ummm... is it just me imagining things, or did Charlie Francis actually just come back from the dead??? Huh??

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Charlie get killed by a shape-shifter? And wasn't this shape-shifter later shot by Olivia Dunham, causing her to go through a rough psycho period, which hopefully ended with help of Sam Weiss? So... if all of that isn't just a fragment of my imagination, then how on earth did Charlie Francis just show up on the 11th episode of season 2, following a case, just like nothing has happened?

In fact this episode looked like a lot of things haven't happened... I get the feeling that we're simply not looking at the same universe! There were other inconsistencies in the past too, for instance how Olivia ended up in the middle of a car crash after she came back from the other universe... a crash that had never even started. She parked her car, went to see Nina Sharp, Nina didn't show up, and then Olivia was led to the elevator to the other universe... there simply never was an accident, so how did she end up in the middle of an accident that never started???

Given all the inconsistencies, I think that we're seeing events from different universes, like that episode where Olivia was seeing pieces and parts of events from different universes. In any case, something really weird is happening.... and that's the whole fun about Fringe, isn't it? =D

I have to say unlike SGU, Fringe is going on strong... very interesting, very very kool. =) Can't wait to see what happens next... and how Charlie just reappeared out of thin air....

Sepeed - Verse

2010-01-12T18:44:00.001-05:00

Just created a page for the art works of a good friend of mine. Check it out! =)

Bye Bye Twine =(((( [Hello Diigo?]

2010-01-11T21:53:00.001-05:00

Since I seem to be on a roll with writing disappointment logs, I may as well write about my biggest online disappointment of late. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it really is the end of Twine. =( And this time it's for good....

Since the April of last year, I pretty much disconnected myself from Twine. I still used certain aspects of Twine for storing my data, but just that. Unfortunately at that point not only the most important features of Twine were no longer working, but the RN had officially terminated all our feedback channels, showing clearly how much they no longer cared about improving on the original idea of what Twine.com was supposed to be. I think it was obvious... from that time that things were not going to go the way they originally were supposed to, that Twine was never going to become what it was promised to be. I just didn't want to believe it.... I was waiting and hoping for Twine 2.0 to actually work!

Well guess what. During the 2.5 months that I was in Iran, the news has been published that Twine 2.0 is going to be just a semantic search engine. Everything else is gone. The social / interest network, bookmarking, twines..... everything is going to be GONE. Just... just like that. Well, you can imagine my disappointment.... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. x(

I'm still not a 100% sure what they're going to be doing with our content stored on Twine. There's talk of APIs.... ah well. Honestly, I don't believe there's any hopes of Twine.com every becoming something successful anymore. Why? Well... when Twine started to come to existence, it had a few points going for it. It was a new and great idea, and there weren't all these competitors doing a better job of it out there. It hadn't yet disappointed the entire www, and it had a bunch of people like "us" willing to spend that kind of time, effort and energy for making it better. And now, well, it has neither. Between Google, Bing and a gzillion other search engines many of them pretty interesting, Twine is going to be lost.

Hmmmm... I don't care anymore anyway. The way I see it, Twine was simply never about what I thought it was about anyway.....

Well cheers to us though. =) I mean the friends I've been lucky enough to gain through this whole Twine deal. This is the only thing that makes it all worth. Twine can disappear for all I care. I have kept my connections.... And of course there's always other means of collecting and sharing our interests. And right now, it's called Diigo. I've started giving Diigo a try now... and so far I'm VERY impressed. I'm going to wait and see how things go with that.... I'll write more about it once I develop a more thorough view of it. =)

And now, lets forget about Twine.... =P

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. =))

SGU? Hmmmmmmm

2010-01-10T20:08:00.001-05:00

Umm... no. Yeah. I have to start by saying NOOO. Big NOOOO. God, just what are these folks doing? We're so used to Stargate being this larger than life complex intriguing epic plots, and that's what we like about it! Now of course there needs to be evolution, there needs to be change... but then there's "change" and there's "mess up". And so far, SGU has been the ladder. None of my big time Stargate fan friends seem to like this one at all up to now.

So far, SGU has only been a bunch of extremely shallow people doing extremely useless things. All the time. What bothers me even more, is that the general plot and the big picture is in fact VERY interesting. People who are not supposed to be doing this, further from home than any human has every been... this could be SOO full of events. But it's NOT! And I think it's mainly due to how un-interesting the characters are. So far, I only find 3 of the main character interesting [sometimes!]:
- Dr. Rush - Cause he uses his brain
- Eli Wallace - Cause he sometimes uses his brain
- Camiile Wray - Cause she started drawing the boat

As for the rest of them, I find them completely and utterly vain.

So that's all I have to say, so far it's been a big disappointment. The 9th episode is the last one I've seen so far, and now they've left my favorite character, Dr. Rush, on the surface of some planet and left him there to die.... but he's alive, and that may go to interesting places. It would be "nice" to see my favorite character turning into the big anti-hero....we'll just have to wait and see. I really hope things start picking up....

The KLM Nightmare!

2010-01-10T01:13:00.001-05:00

The Royal Dutch Airline. Supposed to be a good one. If like me, you travel from the North America to the Middle East [or even Europe] a lot, you’re probably quite familiar with the airline, given that it’s usually easy to find tickets for any time of the year. But honestly, I think my trip to Iran and back, was probably my last KLM experience EVER. I’ve had it with them. The flights always end up nightmare-ish, and there hasn’t been a single time when I’ve been in and out of the Shiphol Airport [Amsterdam] without some sort of a horror story.

Coming back from Iran, as I wrote in the last post, I was in pretty rough shape. I was really hoping for a painless trip, which unfortunately is exactly the opposite of what I had. The flight from Tehran to Amsterdam wasn’t “that” bad, just the usual hassle with the terribly tightly placed seats of KLM. In the Shiphol Airport [aka the bane of my existence] as usual we checked the info boards for our flight time and gate a few times, last of which was about 30 minutes before we headed to the gate.

When we arrived to the gate, the check in line was pretty huge, as expected for that time of the year. SO we stood in the line. First the security checked our boarding passes and passports, and then we entered the 2 kilometer line for having our hand luggage checked. As usual for this bloody airport, they had us empty our backpacks on their checking tables, take off our jackets, earphones, …, all the way down to my boots. The point is, we were in that bloody line for nearly an hour and a half. So then came the final security check before boarding… and that’s when the officer gives us this weird look:
- “Oh uhmm… says here you’re going to Toronto?”
- “Well yes?!”
- “But… but that’s not possible, we’re going to Washington!!”
- “Exactly WHAT are you talking about??”
- “The gate was changed!”

So, well, my eyes went round. Apparently the gate had changed while we were standing in the bloody line [we have a habit of going early!] and NO ONE had made an announcement. Worse than that, the bloody security had CHECKED OUR BOARDING PASSES AND LET US IN!!!!! We ran back to the new gate, but the flight had already left, and NO ONE HAD CALLED OUR NAMES OUT. Imagine that. I mean how incompetent can people be??

Given my past experiences with the bloody airport and the sodding airline, I knew what we needed to do then. We went to the transfer desk, and I had to explain to the less than smart people in charge how they had messed up. They said that there was another plane leaving for TO about 4 hours later, and they’re going to put us on the waiting list for that flight. Of course since it was holidays time, it was quite possible we’d not be able to get on that plane. So then I asked them what we were supposed to do if we can’t get in that plane, and they said we may have to think about a hotel.. ah well, my tiredness mixed with full annoyance and the gas poisoning left me no patience for staying at a hotel for God knows how long… we really had to get on that plane. I was thinking to myself, that quite possibly, I’ll have to start shouting at them like the last time [about which I will write next!], for them to understand the mess they’ve made and put us on the next plane….

Anyway… we were in that airport for nearly 7 hours, after which we finally did get on that next plane. That is of course, after repeating the bloody irritating process of getting checked. The entire trip was about a good 20 hours. When we arrived to Toronto, I was only 10% conscious. Ah well, at least we arrived…

But hey, the back to Iran trip wasn’t even my worst experience with KLM. I had one even worse than that. =P A couple of years ago, when I was going to Switzerland for the Christmas holidays, my plane from Toronto to Zurich was stuck on the ground for more than 7 hours, with the passengers actually sitting in it! Supposedly it was due to the bad weather, except all other flights from other airlines left with no trouble… The 7 hour delay of course resulted in me missing my flight from Amsterdam to Zurich. Me, and everyone else on the plane! So it was a real mess. First I had to walk the length of the Shiphol Airport 50 times back and forth to find out where I should go and who I should talk to, in order to get myself on another plane. And once I got there, it looked like they had NO idea what they were going to do with the crowd of irritated people standing in front of them. What’s funny is that there was NO talk of putting us in a hotel or something, and since again it was crowded and all seats in all planes were fully booked, they seemed to not even have any hopes of getting us to hour destinations any time soon.

Finally I lost it. I was tired, irritated and annoyed as hell. And of course worried about what was going to happen to my luggage. So the next person who gave me the impression that they simply didn’t know what they were talking about, got me shouting. Yeah, that doesn’t happen very often…. I had to scream at them, in order to get them to put me in the next flight and send me to Zurich. My entire trip was more than 24 hours… yeah, fun!

A rather odd coincidence was that there was this old Polish lady with me on the plane to Amsterdam, and when I was flying back from Amsterdam to Toronto I saw her again, she was on the same plane… again! What are the chances of that anyway? Well, she told me that there were people from the Toronto to Amsterdam flight that I was on, who actually got stuck in the bloody Shiphol airport for days, before they were put on a plane to anywhere or given a hotel room to. Very uncool eh?

So that’s what KLM is like. Their security people often shout and scream at you if you so much as look at them wrong, their stewards and stewardesses often won’t bring you a sodding glass of water even after you ask for it 5 times, their seats are soooo tightly arranged that won’t let you an easy breath, and their food is just… well… I’m not even going to start with that….

Even though I don’t like bashing and badmouthing… I had to write this. Actually a couple of my friends suggested I should do so too.. I guess I’m hoping it’ll save someone some trouble, if they read this and not go for KLM. =)

Back From Iran….

2010-01-02T18:37:00.002-05:00

So I've been back from Iran for a few days now... and I'm already missing everyone and everything. I've taken more than 6000 photos during the whole trip, and I'm currently busy with selecting the best of them to post to my gallery. So hopefully you'll start seeing the first groups of it appear over there soon enough...

My trip back was a horrible one, and that's putting it very very lightly. =)) The bloody KLM airline put me in a world of trouble again [I'll write the whole story in my next post, about KLM! =P], and that was only after I was already gas poisoned on my trip to Tehran's I.K. Airport. The cab I was on, together with another 50 cars or so, were stuck for nearly 3 hours in between 2 groups of people going the religious "Moharram" mourning demonstrations… at least that's what it was supposed to be [but it was in face everything BUT!]. So now imagine Tehran's level of air pollution that nowadays is enough to give you some serous headache and nausea if you're not used to it, combined with the smoke of burnt "stuff", and other sorts of "unknown" gasses…. for 3 straight hours. I was nearly dead when I finally got to the airport, and the exact same way when I finally arrived to Toronto after a trip that was much longer than it was supposed to be thanks to the horrible KLM. Oh well… had some Vodka, fell asleep and was all better the morning after. Though it took a few days for me to feel like myself again….

On the good side of things, well, New Year is always fun! =D

@ Iran: Kish Island

2009-12-28T00:31:00.001-05:00

Well, given I don’t have any sort of access to the internet at the moment, I just write this now and hopefully post it later… =P

So we spent 7 days on the Kish island, and I think I could have spent another 2 or 3 weeks in there and still would not have had enough time to do all I wanted to do… Kish is a small island, but there’s a lot of nice places to see and fun things to do in it. Just walking around the island on the shore is something that I never get enough of. And the sea shells there have the most amazing colours…

The last time I was on this island it was about 10 years ago. Much has changed since then. There’s been a lot of improvement in terms of living conditions, and tourist attractions both. Some of the more unknown parts of the island including the historical sights and the natural beauties are being paid much more attention to, and that has had some positive and negative results both. It’s good that more people are getting to really know the island, but then the government has unfortunately done a very efficient job completely destroying the natural beauty of some of these parts. For instance, the part of the shore called "The Greek Ship” [because of the ancient Greek Ship that’s been stuck in there for hundreds of years now!], used to be an amazingly beautiful spot to watch the sunset of the island from. And that was all due to the natural formation of the rocks on there, and the whole ancient feeling about the place. Except none of that remains now. The government has made a “park” in there… something completely fake… horrible, ugly!

Another instance of a really shameful destruction of the island attractions, is what they’ve done to the “Green Tree”. This tall and huge tree is a few hundred years old, and it’s braches used to come down from the top all the way to the ground around it.. beautiful scene it was. Well guess what…. they’ve cut off all of those old tall branches, leaving the tree completely naked. I mean, how low on IQ can some people possibly be? This has been a true crime in my opinion….

There’s a ton of new shopping malls on the island, as well as new hotels and sports centers. The air is fresh and clean, which is the exact opposite of what you get in Tehran, and there’s no traffic. Well, I guess I better leave the rest of the describing to be done through my rather large collection of photos that I’ve taken there. Will upload soon…. ;)

@ Iran: Shiraz

2009-11-17T10:30:00.001-05:00

From November 10th to 14th, we had a short trip to Shiraz. Yeah yeah, I know, it’s ridiculous number of days for a city that marvelous, but.. well… it’s complicated. I couldn’t stay there any more than that.. mainly due to the fact that I still have much more to do in Tehran, and I also want to spend a week in the Kish island…

It was a nice, complicated and eventful 4.5 days. I finally had the chance to meet my aunt [father’s sister] and my cousin [Katy] for the fist time. We had a nice time with them.. and my aunt showed me a large load of old family photos that I had never seen the like of, before. It felt as if I was getting to know a part of myself that I had never known anything about… a family I never actually had.

We stayed at Pooneh’s place [other side cousin] like the old days… and we had some good fun with her and Golnar and Kaveh [her kids]. We paid a visit to the Vakil Bazaar where I took another really large load of photos, had a picnic in Chaasorkh, had very original Persian Kabab in a classic Persian restaurant called “Sharzeh”, and had a great little party with friends too [dancing… dancing… dancing… ;)]. Oh, and I did some shopping too….. ;)

And now I’m back to Tehran. =) Yesterday evening I was out with TanTan again, did some souvenir shopping and had a great shrimp pasta in a pizza place called “Aared”. And today… today was fantastic, I met my great old friend Jinous after 6 bloody years. It was fantastic seeing her again… we had a lovely evening. =) She’s just marvelous… <3

@ Iran: Took more than a 1100 pictures so far! =)

2009-11-09T13:45:00.001-05:00

Due to all sorts of lacks of access, including the lack of access to the web and lack of access to a stationary chair [ =P ], I didn’t get the chance to post about what I’ve been up to in the past week or so… now I’m going to give you a general overview. And by the way, this is all aside from the 4th of November events… since I did already manage to post enough about that on Facebook…..

As I mentioned before, we were planning on seeing Lynn’s short film that was featured in the Roshd international film festival… and we did manage that, with a bit of adventure that is. The movie theatre showing this specific movie was “on the other side of” Tehran… non of my friends knew how to drive us there and even the driver of the cab we called was semi-uncertain about the location… so it was a bit funny, driving around and asking people where we were supposed to go. But we did get there at the end, and Lynn’s film was definitely worth the trip. =) Some very nice films were shown this year, and we managed to see a number of them in various movie theatres.

Unfortunately none of my favorite movies this year were from Iranian artists. With all the talent and intelligence that clearly exists in the Iranian youth, it was quite a bit sad to see that most of their movies were rather weak. Once upon a time, a couple of really amazing Iranian movie directors made some fantastic movies that were showing the pain and the hardship in the lives of the people living in small villages of Iran. Since then, it is as if a large number of Iranian artists think that if they just pick up their cameras and go take some movies from Iran’s small villages, that’ll make a great movie. Excuse me, NOT SO!

On my quest to see as much as I possibly can of the new developments in Tehran’s exterior and interior, my friends have been taking me to some interesting spots. TanTan took me to see a number of shopping malls and restaurants and such… One of the more interesting places she took me to, was this mall called “Milaade No”. Now the mall itself was rather good looking, but that’s not the interesting part of it. On the 3rd floor of the mall, there are 2 face to face shops that have some very cute decoration and jewelry stuff. The 2 stores are ran by 2 gentlemen and 1 lady, and all 3 are deaf. And guess what, in my entire shopping experience in Tehran in this trip, I hadn’t been treated so nicely and politely in ANY stores anywhere. With all the unfortunate behavior you keep running into these days, in the truly damaged society of Tehran [which I will write more about, later], this was a breath of fresh air. WAY TO GO FOLKS, LOVED YOU! I’m planning on going back there again for some serious shopping…. ;)

Mahyar finally took us to this café that he’s constantly talking about. It’s called the “Gramaphon” café, and I can see now why he’s so into this place! It’s this tiny little café that hardly has enough room for a few tables, and it has one of the neatest decoration I’ve ever seen. It gives you this really warm feeling of being in a very old and very familiar place… it’s difficult to describe, so I’ll just upload the photos I took. ;) I guess the nicest part of it all is the company…

Pehgah and her dad showed us around this shopping mall called “Tirajheh”. Another very nice looking new shopping mall in Tehran… but this one I really don’t recommend going to! Why? Because…. uh…. how do I explain this. Let me give you an instance of what may happen in there. My mom was with us that day… and the very first shop she went into, she nearly got into a fight with one of the attendants. Here’s what it was like… it was this perfume shop, and the first thing about it that took my attention was that one of the attendants was standing there behind the cash, shaving his arm!!! Yeah. No kidding. I mean… ewww!? Then my mom went in to ask about a couple of perfumes she’s into, and before she finished her sentence, the other attendant was already packing up the perfume to give it to her… no mention of the price, no question as to whether she actually wants to buy it or not… and my mom was a bit surprised, so she mentioned to the guy that she’s asking a question… and the guy goes “Oh, so you’re just asking questions? You’re just here to ask questions then??” SOOOO BLOOODY RUDE! I’ve not seen behavior like that anywhere in this world before… and heck I’ve been to a few places! Well you can imagine how my mom reacted… and the only thing I could do was to go in, and pull her out using all my bloody might.

So well, above was an example of what I mean when I say that the society here is sick. Due to all the pressure that the people here have undergone in the past few years, they have changed. Not that things like this didn’t exist in the past, but in the 6 years that I hadn’t been to Iran, the change has been HUGE. A large part of the society have became rude, uncaring and extremely indecent [so sorry to say…]. There needs to be some sort of a change… and that’s what people were shouting for, on November 4th….

Anyway…. tomorrow evening I’m flying to Shiraz for a short visit. Haven’t been there in nearly 12 years or so. Will take tons of photos…. =) I’ve taken a large load of photos so far, and I’ll do my best to upload them soon.

And something else… I’m searching for my dad.

@ Iran: Shouts On The Rooftops….

2009-10-31T16:03:00.001-04:00

Tonight I heard people shouting “death to the dictator” and “the political prisoners must be freed” on the rooftops around our building. It was the first time I was hearing it for myself… up close… And from what I hear, on the 4th of November [students day], people are going to be in the streets again….

On the other news, today I paid a visit to the “Tajrish” marketplace to shop for Persian stuff… and noticed that the place has been prettified and renovated…. but the mud on the ground is still the same… darn… somebody please do something about that! =P

Oh, I forgot to mention before…. last week we went to the new and fabulous Azadi movie theatres compound, and watched this VERY Persian movie called “The Rule Book”. I have to mention that the compound itself is worth making a movie out of. Pretty. Darn good architecture possibly the prettiest theatres compound I’ve ever seen. And I’m not putting that lightly!! As for the the movie… well… let just say that me, my mom and TanTan managed to drop more water than the Niagara Falls while watching it. Not that it’s a truly sad movie or anything… but it’s showing some of the bigger scars on the face of this society… and that’s why you end up crying…

@ Iran: Ice Cream & Pizza!

2009-10-29T08:05:00.001-04:00

Reporting from Iran again, have to start by saying that I’m still having loads of fun. ;) I’ve so far had a chance to see around the city a bit, eat some very fine food and pack up some of my childhood stuff.

Something very special that I’ve had in the past few days [a large amount of it that is ;)], is Persian ice-cream. Well I’m not even going to try to describe what that is and what it tastes like… because there’s only 2 options: either you have or you will try it for yourself at some point, or you’ll miss out big time. =P Those huge pieces of frozen high concentration cream are just… heavenly.

I also had another very original Persian food called “Kabab Loghme”. Basically it’s bread wrapped kebab of a special sort, with some onion and herbs. And it tastes fantastic, I can tell you that. ;)

Also… we finally had a chance to have a dinner at Pantry pizzeria/restaurant. This would be Tehran’s oldest pizza place, and it serves very fine Italian pizza. Love it. I’m only somewhat disappointed to know that their Mexican food is no longer that great… But anyway it was a great night with TanTan, Mahyar, Yazdan, my cuz Pooneh and my mom. =)

Thanks to TanTan and Yazdan I’ve had a rather extensive tour of Tehran streets up to now, specially since Yazdan managed to give us a nice evening ride around some of the more central + old areas of the city. I also spent a very delightful + fun evening with TanTan’s family, they’re just amazing! =)

Tomorrow the Roshd international short film festival starts.. and fortunately I already have a number of guest tickets for me and a bunch of friends. We’re planning to see Lynn’s short animation film which is being shown in the International films category. The only problem is, I have no idea when they’re going to show it as of yet! The festival is a week long, it’s starting tomorrow and the people in charge haven’t released the schedule yet. Amazing eh? Hopefully we’ll figure it out in time…

And I swear, I have indeed taken a large load of pictures. I simply haven’t had the time to select the best and upload them as of yet… but I will, soon, promise! =)