Where the hell are we going?

We pretend we’re rowing in a river while we are sitting on a stupid machine in the gym!
We eat our lunch in the office in front of the monitor!
We listen to our stupid MP3 player instead of interacting with people in public places!

But GOD! This is too much…



I don’t blame the manufacturer. I even think the idea is brilliant! But the concept is soooooooo sad and depressing!

Where the hell are we going?

Quote of the day

Woody Allen in Anything else (as David Dobel):
Since the beginning of time people have been, you know, frightened and, and unhappy, and they're scared of death, and they're scared of getting old, and there's always been priests around, and shamans, and now shrinks, to tell 'em, "Look, I know you're frightened, but I can help you. Of course, it is going to cost you a few bucks..." But they can't help you, Falk, because life is what it is.

Job security and the political trilemma

Protests continued in Paris over the new controversial employment law that facilitates both hiring and firing young new job-seekers for employers. Students and workers, angry about the new law which will eventually put France’s famous and long-established “job security*” in jeopardy, were marching in the streets, blocking rail-roads, traffics and services to force the government of Dominique de Villepin to back off. But do they really have any chance? Does the government of France, have the authority not to make these reforms in today world’s economy?

Well, economists say No! According to Harvard professor, Dani Rodrik, The new rule of the game called “Political trilemma”, states that, out of “Global economic integration, Nation states and mass politics”, no country in the world has the luxury to choose more than two at once.

It means, so simply, people can no longer affect the government’s economical decisions by protest or even strike, since the governments themselves do not have enough room to maneuver due to the necessities of the global economy.
The good! news is, this is just the beginning of a package of comprehensive reforms, France has to make, if she wants to be a part of the global economy in the 21st century and there is no way the government could back down in the first step of the reforms.

So the job security is the first, and certainly not the last, in the series of precious luxuries that French people are going lose. Working 35 hours a week, 5 weeks of vacation and lot more are in the waiting list!

It hurts to have something precious and then lose it, but people of France should realize they are going to have to choose between Job security and No job at all! Like it or not, that’s the harsh reality of the globalization

So, my dear French friends,
Welcome to the new world…I know it sucks, but that’s the way it is...Bon appetit!



* Clarification for my North American readers: Job security is a European term like Vacation, Culture and history that has nothing to do with us, North Americans. It means that you are somehow more precious than a piece of toilet paper! and nobody can throw you away after wiping his ass with! but since from now on, we are all going to be the same, there is no reason to be jealous or worry about!

These British Gentlemen

You can sleep on the bed! Apparently that’s what US’s foreign secretary, Condoleezza Rice offers to her British counterpart Jack Straw, during a seven hours flight to Baghdad. Well, Mr. Straw takes the offer and sleeps on the one and only bed in the plane but as he wakes up, he finds Dr. Rice, sleeping on the floor!
While a story of this kind could be hardly taken seriously anywhere in the world to be even qualified as news, in the land of “Gentlemen” they’ve made quite a big fuss out of it! “Diplomatic ethics aside, How on earth a gentleman could take the bed and let a lady sleep on the floor?!” they say!

In his defense, maybe Dr. Rice has offered the bed to her sleepy colleague insisting that she wanted to keep working and didn’t feel like sleeping at all. But eventually, she felt exhausted and slept on the floor. Considering my deep respect for Jack Straw, I have the tendency to believe my version of the story! :)

And although , it’s more like “much ado about nothing”, considering what’s going on in the world right now, it’s still nice to see there’re people in the world who so profoundly care about these kinds of social etiquettes which are considered by the main stream, obsolete!

Question: How come there are people in the world who demand their leaders not to be less than a gentlemen, on top of all leadership and political skills, and there are others who can’t get their leaders just to shut the hell up!?

P.S. An advice to Mr. Straw: Next time you were in the same situation, you’d better say (read with a posh British accent like that of Mr. Straw!) “I suppose the bed is big enough to hold both of us my dear!” :)

Keep your breath!

Every time you take a breath,
Keep that breath,
just a bit more.

I hope someday,
This extra dose of
Green-house gas,

Makes your heart,
Globally warm!

13 Beh dar!

Some people say, this place has the best ice cream in town. Well I don’t know about that, but I can confidently say, It was good enough!
One double ice cream from this cute ice cream café in Bernard street, was a delicious ending to a very pleasing “13 beh dar” and a perfect desert for Pop Soly’s (Sanam's Father!) first but successful attempt to make “Ash Reshteh”.

ByeBye dear Spring...at least for now!

Well, forget about everything I wrote in the past few days. It’s snowing right now, and although it could have been beautiful in November, it’s certainly not in April! Laughing at fucked up seagulls who're trying to figure out what’s happening, is the only laughable matter today alongside with Jon Stewart’s funny remark, “if you see a Hedgehog, punch him in the face!”
And poor trees, they’d prepared themselves to celebrate the spring! It’s damn hard to be a tree in Canada!

An interesting scientific research

“Gerhard Herzberg” gold medal, Canada’s equivalent to the Nobel prize, which, similar to most of the Canadians equivalents, is only known to Canadians themselves!” was awarded to Professor “David Dolphin”, from UBC, for his amazing research on the unique properties of Porphyrin, a highly colored, donut-shaped chemical with a metallic part in the middle among which, Heme (part of blood’s hemoglobin which is red and has Iron in the middle) and Chlorophyll (which is green and has magnesium in the middle) are two known examples.
What Professor Dolphin discovered was, if the central metallic part is removed from the Porphyrin, it can absorb light and transfer it to a molecule of oxygen and for a very brief period of time, change a normal non-toxic molecule of oxygen to a highly-toxic one, which can be used to destroy unwanted tissues, like tumors. The magical thing is, as soon as the light goes off, the toxicity disappears within 2 milliseconds. A drug which has been made based on this exceptional chemicals, not only can destroy tumor cells, but also the blood vessels who are responsible for feeding the tumor thus it’s much more effective than most of the drugs which are presently being used against cancer.
I found it quite amazing and I just wanted to share this with you.

P.S. The Herzberg's gold medal is being awarded each year by “NSERC”, alongside with one million dollars of research funding.

Five signs of the spring’s arrival

1. Skirts on the march! ( Unlike Bush’s democracy, they are truly on the march!)
2. Fragrance of the grass!
3. Moisture in the air!
4. Tables and chairs sitting outside of the cafés and restaurants
5. Naz’s cute welcome note!

Enjoy the Spring and indulge as much as you can!

A great day to be alive

Unlike Tehran, in Montreal spring does not come on March 20th. It comes when the temperature reaches to a certain level where ladies can comfortably wear short skirts with bare legs! There’s no need to say that their comfort level, which is slightly higher than water’s freezing point! is quite different than that of a normal human being!
I used the word “comfortably” since you can see them, wearing skirts and standing in lines in front of St-Laurent’s clubs on Saturday nights even when the temperature is 30 degrees below zero! (and I always admire them, while shivering, from the inside of my mobile shelter, normally made of twelve layers of clothes, jackets, gloves, hat, scarf and sometimes a stupid face-cover!)
Anyway, today was the day that gorgeous Montrealers were marching in the streets, showing off their beautiful bodies as well as their bold taste in fashion, to celebrate the unofficial annual parade of féminité and spring.

P.S. Item of the day: Hair removal wax! :)

Quote of the day

Ben Gurion: In Middle East, in order to be a realist, you have to believe in miracle!

Trojan horse and public illiteracy

I remember when I went to see the movie “Troy”, I got so frustrated. It wasn’t just because they’d squeezed a ten years war into a less than two weeks combat or they’d totally ignored the whole concept of Achilles’ immortality, or the fact that they’d censored Achilles and Patroclus love affair for the sake of the American homophobic audience. The reason of my frustration was, as the movie went on and the Trojans accepted the horse and etc (as I hope you know the story! :)), when Greeks jumped out of the horse, Paris and his army were not the only individuals who got surprised, but a good portion of the audience were accompanied them with a “Waaaaaaaaoooo” Sound!
And I was like “It’s obvious that you don’t read, but did any of you go to school at the some point or what?!!”
Well, considering the fact that Canadians and specially Montrealers are considered quite knowledgeable in North America, and they really are, you can figure out the rest!

A controversial idea

The procedure that every successfully-tested medicine should undergo, in order to be able to appear on a drugstore’s shelf is, for understandable reasons, excruciatingly time consuming. It’s needless to say that how many patients lose their life or lead a miserable life during this approval period, which may take years even decades. And the most considerable obstacle is, as expected, the possible dangers and consequences of examining new drugs on human beings.

Now, what if we let those criminals who are passing very long term, even life sentences in jail, to introduce themselves as volunteers to be tested with new life-saving drugs, in exchange for paroles, proportional to the risk they are going to take.

Relax! I’m not suggesting a Nazi-style lethal experimentation on human beings. What I’m saying is, it won’t hurt if they are provided with this CHOICE of cutting down their sentences in exchange of serving to humanity and paying back their debts to the society, instead of pouring their years and the people’s tax money into the drain in enormously costly detention facilities. And since nobody is forcing them to do so, they can always ignore the chance and spent the rest of their lives in jail!

Strange maybe, unconventional perhaps, but inhumane, I don’t think so. Just think about all those lives that will be saved if we just could be able to speed up the drug-approval-process by years or even months. By the way, not only it can be helpful tackling the problem of over crowded prisons, but also the money, being used for building new prisons, can be used to prevent crime in the first place.

Just think about it.

Quote of the day

Seinfeld: I love women, I watch women…Men watch women…we don’t understand them so we think we’d better keep an eye on them!

Why our days are getting shorter?

It’s the end of the March already and I still can’t figure out how the hell it passed so quickly! Some people blame it on monotonous and repetitive life we’re leading these days but personally, I’ve never been more active in my entire life. My daily schedule is certainly more fruitful, fun and comprehensive in every possible way compare to, for example, what I was doing in late years of elementary or early years of high school. Yet I still can remember how I could felt the weight and the length of EVERY SINGLE DAY back then whereas I can not feel weeks and even months right now, although I was leading much more monotonous life back then.

The only explanation that comes to mind is, as we grow older, the same constant units of time, become a smaller share of our life, meaning that if one year, when I was four, was 25% of my entire life experience, as my only comprehensible perception of time, the same one year is now only 3.33% of my entire life so I feel it 7.5 times smaller in value thus faster in speed! Well, surly it can’t be that mathematical but the idea is, as we grow older, our perception of time expands but those units of time (days, weeks, years) are constant so we naturally feel that they don’t linger any more as much as they did before.

That’s my analogy and I appreciate to hear yours, but whatever the reason is, IT SUCKS BIG TIME!

Bravo Honey!

Bravo Honey!
You won,
And I knew you would.

I tried so damn hard,
To show you,
You’re better than what you think.
And you tried harder,
To prove me I’m wrong,

I ignored, ignored and ignored,
And you tried, tried and tried,

So,
Bravo Honey!
You won,
And I knew you would.

But,
Like checking behind the shower curtain,
Though you know there’s no one there,
Or late at night, when nobody’s watching,
Jumping on a swing
To make sure it’s still fun to play,

Sometimes even when you know,
It’s good to make sure my dear!

So Bravo Honey!
You won,
And now I’m sure you did,
Bravo!

Long live The Capitalism!

First of all, I like the show very much. I think it’s smart, funny and well-executed and unlike these days’s stupid popular shows like “Grey’s Anatomy”, which is nothing but a late night colorful soap opera, it has something to say and something to watch.
It’s amazing that how intelligently; they’ve gathered almost all common interests of an ordinary woman in one series, without compromising its quality. But that’s not what I wanted to write about.
Anybody remembers "Peter Weir's" “The Truman Show”? How they made a live show just to place products inside and to advertise them in a subtle fashion?
Well to me, Sex and the city, is the smartest and yet the most blatant real-case product placement that has ever appeared on TV, from “Swear to Channel!” phrase to unstoppable raving about how wearing Manolo Blahnik’s shoes gives a girl self confidence!. But that’s not all, pay attention to all the places- bars, clubs and restaurants- which are being promoted by Carrie or Samantha, not only uttering their names but also their approximate locations, accompanied by a colorful shot from the insides and some comments about how hip they are or how difficult it is to get a reservation or a membership. To this, add some more subtle ads like the slow movement of camera over the Apple’s logo on Carrie’s Laptop whenever she’s writing something and I think you’ll get the picture.

Next time you watch Sex and the city, try to count how many ads you’re being fed, in a half an hour show! It’s simply amazing!

Imperfections

I adore your imperfections,
They diminish you,
from a goddess,
to a women
and elevate me,
from a worshiper,
to a lover

These crafty politicians!

Most of us, Iranians I mean but it’s not confined only to us, have this idea about how politicians all around the world, and especially in the United States and Western Europe, (England as a famous "Daii-jaan-Napoleon-type" example!) have a broad and comprehensive knowledge about what’s going on around the world. We assume that they know all the little tricks and sophistications of different cultures and civilizations and have meticulous models to predict the events and act accordingly, in the foreseeable future. Well, as much as I go through professional analysis and lectures, done by prominent journalists, politicians, political thinkers and even people deeply in charge of managing the world, I can hardly find any extraordinary point or comment or even analysis that couldn’t come to the mind of any ordinary, non-politician, non-expert, who knows enough about the background of the subject and who is simply following the news on a daily basis as a part-time hobby or enthusiasm and sometimes their decisions, considering massive errors in judgment or overlooking some obvious facts, are also strengthening this suggestion that they really don’t know considerably more than what we, normal people, do.
Final word, it seems they are not blessed with any special tool to see the future more accurately than we do yet they have the power to affect the life of millions of people.
It is Scary isn’t it?

Optimum way for traveling to Toronto

If you want to go to Toronto for a weekend, I think I’ve discovered the optimum way Possible:
Using the “Carpool-daily” service on Friday, you can be picked up at 5:45 PM from Namur station and you will be in Toronto before 11:30 PM, so you can still catch up with the rest of the night. (Total cost: 45$)
Now, for squeezing every little drop out of weekend, Use “Coach Canada” Bus on Sunday at 9:00 PM and you’ll be in Montreal, somewhere around 3:30 AM. If you’ve used all your energy as you were supposed to do, there shouldn’t be any problem sleeping the whole 6 hours and a half in the bus. Go home, try to sleep for 2 more hours, take a shower and go to work. (Cost: 51$ Tax included + Cab fare (if you can find any better way of transportation at 3:30 AM, well! Be my guest))

Don’t forget to bring a pillow! That’s the most essential part of all

*Total hours in Toronto: 45 (out of weekend’s 48! WOW)
*Total Cost: Around 100$
*Why you should treat yourself like this? If you’re not in love or don’t have a long distance relationship, couldn’t think of anything but plain stupidity!