This evening at 17:57:07 Zurich time, the new Persian new year 2573 [1393] begins. I wish everyone who does and does not celebrate Norooz a lovely start of the spring, and a great year to come. Happy Norooz everyone. =)

[Thanks to my friend Michael for the image.]

Labels: Culture, Friends, Iran, Norooz, Persian

Fair warning: I'm angry and therefore quite possibly offensive. Also, you'll need to speak Persian for this one....

Of all the misogynistic idiotic mindless hogwash that _some_ of my beloved Iranians are nowadays spreading around social networks such as Facebook, every once in a while something really gets on my last nerve. Here's one. I guess what really boils my blood is that this was shared by a WOMAN. Mind you, I'm not a feminist by any definition, but sometimes I just run out of patience with these things....

So I'm saying to the "man" who created this and whomever's spreading it: I dare you to compare my IQ, my credentials, my accomplishments, my technical skills, my general wisdom and etc with YOUR OWN. Lets create a chart and publish the results. I dare you. Lets see which one of us is doing better in this life, and then lets talk about your work of art here....

I double dare you.

Labels: Anger, Iran, Life, Thoughts

Happy Norooz everyone! =) Tomorrow night is the beginning of year 2570 [1390] of the Persian solar calendar. Winter is officially over, and Monday is the first day of spring, even though Zürich was freezing cold today. =P So make sure to have as much sweets and cookies as you can in the next few days, visit your friends and family and pass around some gifts. ;)

My 7sin is pretty much ready, even though some of the items are impossible to get around here due to the lack of a Persian community of any sort. My mom sent me most of what I couldn't find here from Toronto. But I wasn't able to get my hands on Samanoo at the end so we're going to make some chocolate cream and imagine it's Samanoo. =P

I have to admit though, I have all sorts of mixed feelings right now. The "situation" in Iran has made it very difficult for many people over there to celebrate anything, and I feel the weight of that inside of me.... and of course my mom's not where I am this year, which really totally sucks. But I'm trying to make the best out of a ... well... very complicated situation, and hope for the best in 2570.

Labels: Culture, Holidays, Iran, Life, Norooz, Persian, Weeee =D

Let me start this by bringing an example. I'm not Chinese, Korean or Japanese. I've never been to either one of the countries. I've had my share of superficial contact with the languages and the cultures, but just that. I've never made any serious attempts at learning either one of these languages. And yet, if you write in all three on a piece of paper and show it to me, I can tell you which is which. I think most of you probably could... it's 2010 after all. It's the age of information, and with a tiniest bit of interest or curiosity, and 10 minutes [or possibly much less] of free time, you can gain yourself a general knowledge of just about anything.

So, why is it that the movie/TV producers of the current era seem to have so much trouble gathering a very general idea of what the Persian language is, and what it's supposed to look like, before using it in their productions in the most messed up way they could possibly manage? How difficult is it to get a correct and real piece of text to use?

I was recently watching the latest episode of Chuck, in which the heroes of the story are supposedly stuck in an underground bunker in Iran, and the mistakes that were made in this episode regarding the Persian [aka Farsi] language made me think of a rather lengthy list of similar mistakes in other motion picture productions. So, here I'm going to write up a a few tips / common follies that you could pay attention to, if you're going to use Farsi in your production...

1 - Persian is not Arabic or Ordoo. [Well Duh!] Even though these languages have a similar font and some shared words, they're completely separate languages. Just like English, German, Italian and Spanish are not the same language. So if you have people stuck in a bunker in Iran, please make sure that the stuff written on the walls is in Persian, NOT ARABIC! That includes you, Chuck producers! =P

2 - The Persian font has capital letters and small letters. Every word consists of small letters that can stick together in most cases, and capital letters that come at the very end of the word, separating the word from the next one in the sentence. You can't just throw a bunch of disconnected capital letters sticking back to back in a line and call it Persian text. I've seen so many examples of this exact mistake recently, what's up with that? One example would be this German movie I recently watched, called "Auch Lügen will gelernt sein". A friend of mine sent me this movie as a part of my German practice homework package. Orrrrr maybe it was just because René Steinke is in it... ehm... *cough* *cough* ;) Either way, the DVD came with a warning attached. Apparently my very much German friend who's never had anything to do with Persian [except for the existence of me] could actually tell that there was something severely wrong with that supposed Persian text used in the movie. So how come the producers of the movie can't figure as much? =P Come on!

3 - Persian is written from.... here it comes ...... RIGHT TO LEFT! Yes, most people give me such a surprised look the first time I tell them that.... I rather enjoy it! =)) =P So, if you have a piece of paper with a bunch of Persian stuff written on it and you want to make sure it's the real deal, make sure the empty spaces at the end of the lines are on the LEFT SIDE, not the right side. That includes you, German folks mentioned above! =P

4 - Iran and Iraq are NOT the same country, and they do NOT use the same language! Iraqi people speak Arabic! Iranians speak Farsi! This is also one very common mistake. A rather horrible recent example was the Lost TV series season 6 premiere, where the Iraqi character Sayid had an Iranian passport. Well not everyone can tell that a passport is Iranian just by looking at it, but as a producer you should at least be able to figure out that the writings on the passport are in PERSIAN, not Arabic. I wrote an article and included a picture here.

5 - Persians are a not very small population who have been scattered around the world due to obvious unfortunate reasons. There are Persian communities in most major cities in North America and Europe. There are also lots and lots of online Persian communities, forums and websites. So what I'm trying to say is, finding someone with a proper knowledge of Farsi, is the easiest thing to do. If you want to use Farsi in your production, just get one of us to write you up something proper, rather than throwing a load of letters on a page and calling it Farsi.

Well, this is what I can think of for now. Hope someone finds it useful! =)

P.S.: The above picture is not exactly your example of a normal everyday Persian writing obviously. ;) It's the art of Persian calligraphy, which I'm currently practicing.

Labels: Farsi, Iran, Languages, Motion Picture, Movies, Persian, Thoughts, TV

Norooz.... it's here again. =) Time goes by fast, doesn't it? Well, I have to admit, it's been a very interesting year. A lot of interesting events happened this year, in many various contexts and directions. And from what I see right now, the coming year is probably going to be even more adventurous. Some crazy things are in the making, lets just say that for now. ;)

Tomorrow at 1:35 PM Toronto time, 6:35 PM Zurich time, and 9:05 PM Tehran time, the Persian year 2569 [1389] starts. Happy Norooz everyone, and wish you all a fantastic new year. =) 

Labels: Aasemoon, Iran, Life, Norooz, Persian

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

Labels: Bizarre, Iran, Politics, Technology, Web

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

Labels: Aasemoon, Holidays, Horrible, Iran, Life, Tehran, Travel

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…. ;)

Labels: Aasemoon, Beautiful, Friends, Iran, Travel

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.

Labels: Aasemoon, Art, Friends, Iran, Motion Picture, Tehran, Thoughts, Travel

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…

Labels: Aasemoon, Iran, Movies, Tehran, Thoughts, Travel

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! =)

Labels: Aasemoon, Art, Friends, Iran, Life, Thoughts, Travel

Thanks to my fantastic friend TanTan, I’ve been seeing more of Tehran in the past few days. One of the more “outstanding” places she showed me so far, was the “Tandis” shopping mall in Tajrish street. Wellllll words sort of fail to describe what I saw in there… aside from the fact that it was proven to me that the Iranian government no longer has a problem with foreign brands opening branches in Iran, which was the positive side of things, I also saw a whole load of faces, hairs and make ups that I’m afraid I’d neither call nice nor even remotely stylish. My only description for what I saw would be “too much”. Hey, I’m all for funky fashion [you probably know that ;)], but I have this old school idea that “looking good” should be the operative phrase at the end.

Well, it looks to me like unfortunately due to the insane amount of pressure that the gov has put on people during the past 3 years, the goal has became to simply do something that defies the tight Islamic rules as much as possible, rather than looking good. And for the love of God, can somebody please explain to me the philosophy of the \ / eyebrows? I mean come on people, it’s sodding UGLY! So yeah… that’s what I’ve been seeing in the streets and the shopping malls… expensive brands and pretty ugly looks. =P

I have to mention though… it’s really quite a lot of fun doing the sight-seeing with TanTan and awesome friends. =) And I had quite a bit of laughs with TanTan in this small restaurant in Tandis… since basically everything that they had on their menu, they didn’t have in reality. =P I’ll post pictures soon….. Oh, and I felt near death at some point when I was near Tajrish street… I officially no longer can take Tehran’s polluted air… I was feeling so bloody sick… 

Labels: Aasemoon, Iran, Life, Tehran, Thoughts, Travel

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but flying to Iran and getting through to the IK Airport happened quite smoothly and without any trouble. =) I mean the whole IK Airport experience was quite unusually easy… Our luggage arrived with no delay, and our hand luggage + suitcases where only put through the scanner, all together, and no one opened ANY of our luggage.. they didn’t even tell us to take out our electronics, just the notebooks! And we just simply walked through the sensor thang, and no one checked our clothing… in fact no one even looked us in the face during the whole process! We were out of the Airport in about half an hour after our arrival!!!!! I mean… heck, when was the last time that happened in Iran?? =) Very nice surprise there….

Then Mahyar came after us and drove us [and all our suitcases, oh yeah! ;)] home. It was such a wondrous experience seeing Tehran again after 6 years.. and arriving home broke me into tears. Thanks to our beloved friends, our apartment [yes, we’re actually staying in our own home this time..] actually looked quite livable since the very moment we arrived.

Up to this moment, I’ve mostly been doing 2 things:

- Having fun with our friends who are coming here back to back to see us + going out with TanTan,

- Taking my old “stuff” out of closets, huge packages and storage… making decisions as to what will be kept and what will be thrown away, and re-packing what I’ll be sending to Switzerland… And by “stuff” I mean… all sorts of things…. from drawings of the 2 year old me, to my Nintendo games… to old pictures… to letters… to…. oh God… this part has not been very easy, I can tell you that…..

So I haven’t done a lot of Tehran seeing as of yet, and there’s a large ton of my friends that I haven’t had the chance to visit yet… but will be doing that in the coming days, and possibly after a short visit to Shiraz. =)

Will be posting updates here on regular basis [well, as regular as possible in here!], and photos will follow soon. ;)

Labels: Aasemoon, Friends, Iran, Life, Tehran, Thoughts

With all the noise I’ve been making, I’m sure everyone here already knows what’s happening… yup, 4 days from now [on October 15] I’m taking a rather long trip home. I haven’t been there in so many years… and I miss everyone and everything dearly. This is very dreamy….

I’m already done with 95% of the packing. The only remaining items are ones that will be using till the last minutes… This whole thing happened quite suddenly and without much of a planning, which adds quite a bit to the whole excitement factor.

4 days left… only 4…. can hardly wait…. ahhhhh……..

Labels: Aasemoon, Iran, Life, Travel, Weeee =D

An article I just came across on ReadWriteWeb… very very interesting! 

“The proliferation of real-time search engines and trend monitors (sometimes referred to as "listening platforms") has thus far done little to address problems of this scale and importance. This is because they fail to provide context -- i.e. show how a new piece of information is relevant to what we've seen before and where it fits in the space of possibilities and relationships. For instance, if you are a programming director at CNN trying to discriminate between significant news and Internet memes, simply knowing that #iranelection is a trending topic doesn't tell you its relation to other topics or which communities are driving it -- both critical factors. One promising area is data-oriented user interfaces: data and algorithmic analysis in the back-end and direct visualization and navigation in the front-end. This the next stage of social information, slicing and dicing, mixing and matching, interpreting and analyzing, completely on demand. In this new landscape, the data is the interface. It's not just about sitting back and looking at pretty pictures. It is about setting aside stale UI metaphors and getting as bare-to-the-bone a human interface as possible for computation. The recently launched Wolfram-Alpha applies this principle to structured data. (Disclosure: I was a member of the core Wolfram-Alpha team and may continue to consult with Wolfram Research.) Real-time data streaming offers similar possibilities and opportunities. In this vein, let's outline some basic ideas and methods for giving context to the streams.”

Check out the complete article here: Evolution of a Revolution: Visualizing Millions of Iran Tweets

Labels: Amazing, Interesting, Iran, Math, Technology, Web

A couple of nice cartoons I bumped into a few times today and yesterday.

Labels: Comics, Funny, Iran, Politics, Web

Ideas have been brought to light. Actions have been taken. Words have been said. Covers have been blown. I can’t help the feeling that many people are now beyond the point of no return. If a change doesn’t come now…. well, I don’t even want to imagine the kind of Iran we’ll see after this. It would be a true nightmare.

The threatening speech from the supreme leader today indeed sounded like an ultimatum. I fear the shape of things to come, but I prefer not to think about the fear. I have hope……I still have hope.

I take a great deal of comfort in the fact that we’re not alone……

The Pirate Bay really does rule! =) Check out the current logo!

Labels: Iran, Thoughts, Web

Happy New Year Everyone, with all the best wishes from your little blue friend. =)

Labels: Iran, Life, Norooz, Weeee =D

Labels: Grotesque, Horrible, Iran, Selected Posts, Web

Labels: Horrible, Iran