Adventures of Mr.Behi

The Regulars

I got this cool program on my iphone called "iwakeup" that tries its best to wake us up in the morning with a selection of sounds from nature from which I normally use a calming noise of a forest as a main theme. Getting up is difficult considering the latitude of Holland and the time of year. The sound of the woodpecker from my iphone says it is time but the eyes can not believe the dark of the outside as a true morning.
I know a few people here who are deeply into photography and they were telling me how much they love the scattered light caused by the ever cloudy sky here. Going out is like walking into a big hall with a dimmed florescent lamp. Not bright nor dark, no shadows but something tells you that there must be a sun somewhere.
If I manage to leave on time, I normally meet a bunch of regular people in the station and or along the way when I watch them boarding the bus. There is almost everyday a man cycling very fast just before the bus comes. On a speed bike and with a blue windproof coat and amber cycling glasses, he passes  like wind yet you hear him breathing fast and feel him sweating heavily under the jacket. Maybe he is one of those CEOs who have a shower in their offices!

Apart from some irregulars like the boy de ear piercing and the the guy van red hat, there are others that I may call the regulars like the guy with two newspapers or the girl with the heavy hardback book. After one station, a family of three board the bus. A mother with two boys, one hand pulling one boy and another pushing the stroller in which the other looks at his surroundings ever surprised no matter how similar the bus looks from the day before. The mom has to stamp the ticket so the older boy find his hand free from the mom and runs inside the bus. She pushes the stroller in, puts the foot break on, calls for the older boy and rests her back on the side of the bus. She looks exhausted already.

Sometimes if I am early, there I see another family of three boarding the bus. Again a mom, a boy and a little girl. They speak English and the kids speak loudly all along the trip and I can hear their plans for the day and after school. The girl is spectacled and wears an eye patch on one of her eyes that each day, has a different colour and patter. A blue flower or a pink one. The three of them cramp on the single seat in front of the bus and the talks go on. I get to the office and normally head to a coffee stand in the ground floor. I am becoming a regular and they start preparing the medium latte that will take me through the morning...just another regular day.

The Italians I Know...Part One: The Philosopher

It was September 2007 and with Mrs.Behi we were in our nine-day drive through Italy. A few days remaining to finish, we had already been to Milan, Sirmione, Verona, Venice, Florence and Pizza. That nice September afternoon, after hovering around some beautiful hill towns in Tuscany we headed towards Rome, the final destination of the trip. I was driving this little hatchback Ford that seemed a bit odd in character since a week earlier when we got it from Milan airport but yet moved us around nicely along. We were heading to Rome to give it back to the rental company the next day. The hills in Tuscany absorbed us so nicely with their spiraling narrow roads and medieval castles and farms and vineyards stretching all across the land and I guess I might have taken it too hard to the little car and it started gasping when we reached Volterra, high on top of a steep hill.
As we descended from Volterra and headed south, I realized that the oil alarm was blinking, not a sharp intentional blink that looked programmed but like a half burned lamp struggling to show some light but you couldn't tell if it was really on. We were on the belt road of Siena where I pulled over in a gas station and checked the oil. We had enough!
In a phone booth:
Me: Hi sir, I rented this car from you there and then and I am here now (on a Sunday) and the oil lamp is blinking
The car rental guy: Oh, yes sir I see that you are going to return the car tomorrow in Rome
Me: Yes!
The guy: So I say you carry on, you know this might be an electric malfunction of the lamp! It happened before!
Me: You sure?
The guy: Yeah all Right! enjoy your trip...

And we did...It was almost sunset and we moved away from Siena heading to Rome. Then after 10 Kms and luckily with with us on the slow lane of the highway close to a parking corner, the engine stopped and didn't breath again. We were living in Libya back then and my cell phone was not working in Europe. There we were, helpless!

With the blinking flashes and the red triangle installed plus me gesticulating by the road wearing the yellow night jacket, I could see many cars slowing down but speeding up again. A young guy stopped and I asked him to call the rental agent. He could not speak English that well but promised to do something in the next gas station. No sign afterward. We waited for another half hour and Mrs.Behi was already starting to convince herself that she would spend the night in the car! Many passed us with rush to catch their dinner plans...

The first Italian that we know was also going to dinner. He was driving a car as small as ours and swiftly pulled over and stopped when met him and his friend. They were heading to have Pizza in a nearby town. There in the chill of the night and under a remarkably beautiful night sky full of stars, we met Michele, a professor at university of Siena who was and I guess still is teaching philosophy and medieval art. We were so happy and thankful that they stopped yet he was negatively surprised that we waited as long as we did and no one stopped. "Don't mention it, I was also helped before similarly", he replied.
He was so kind to call the rental company to explain the situation and followed up to coordinate the towing car to drag us back to Siena. While waiting, we got to talking and realized that the city that we were about to miss and had no plan to visit, was a real attraction for itself and it would be a pity not to see it. Siena became the unplanned destination and a positive side of the car breakdown.
Michele was a special person. Expert in medieval art and philosophy, I felt that he had a corner of comfort for himself departed from the noise of modern days.

We followed the towing car riding with Michele and left him and his friend in Siena to give them a chance to have dinner while their original plan had already ruined. All that with a promise of having them for lunch in Siena the day after.

It was all but regretful. Siena had a wonderful atmosphere. We met Michele again after getting a new car from the rental company and toured the town with him. He showed us his book on the shelf of a bookshop. He was a critique of Kant philosophy and the book was about that, in Italian.
The best part of the tour was lunch. He suggested that we eat in a restaurant in Siena run by a family for generations. It was a very humble place below one of the arches in a corner where you wouldn't see it unless you knew it was there. It was named "Grattacielo", Skyscraper in Italian. The place was a very small but I bet the taste of the food could indeed rival many rotating restaurants. Tuscan home made food was one of the best we had in the trip and we owe this to Michele and his favorite skyscraper.

We left Siena all refreshed and very happy by the experince. Our trip to Italy was a well planned one yet the deviation from the plan was the part that is greatly remembered. Thanks Michele :)

And Change Prevailed

Last night as many put it, turned a new page of history in US and perhaps who knows in world politics. Me, keeping myself awake on our living room couch, watching data and analysis on CNN found myself delighted not only through high tech performance and glittering hologram show but also by watching the enthusiasm and joy shared by many in America (By the way, would someone please ask Wolf Plitzer of situation room not to tell us ten times per hour that his team is best political team on television?). 

It may seem incomparable but to me as an outsider, the atmosphere is so similar to the time when we in Iran elected reformist Khatami to office. Apart from the shear and obvious difference between these two elections in many aspects, I can see two major drivers that worked similarly to help change prevail. The young and first time voters and their enthusiasm was the major player in both elections who seek and admire change.  One can also say that the high turnout in both cases was a reflection of the disgust from the past. People in distress choking of terrible experience of past governments could embrace any strong hand tapping on their shoulders, opening the path for fresh air.

One thing I am hoping is that a rationale and structure of thoughts that we have seen from Obama could defeat the language of dogma that shadowed White house for eight years and resonated into the safe havens of all the other dogmatic power beholders, creating a cascade of hate that polluted our minds and still itches our senses. Maybe the first thing Obama should do is to release some emergency oxygen masks. After all, two engines are burning on war fire and the economy is plunging hard. By the way, seems that the previous pilot forgot to turn on the fasten seat belt sign!

Collecting Thoughts

I could not answer Mrs.Behi the other day when she asked what happened to me that my writings have become so random and infrequent that the blog is loosing its touch as being a real diary. To be honest, I have no idea! Despite the great volume of things going on in my head, the sense of belonging is still not there and by that I am not talking about place of residence. It seems that your mind sometimes needs to reside and get comfortable to produce thoughts or otherwise the footprints would result in a scrapbook of searching patterns. Or perhaps that scrapbook would be an interesting and intriguing thing to preserve and write about.

- It is been a while that I started following the works of a person who I can at least describe as a devoted man to logic. A one who is so soaked into science that can freshen the mind by his sequential way of thinking. I find listening to Richard Dawkins very thought provoking and fascinating. I am now busy reading two of his books "The God Delusion" and "The Ancestor's Tale" and I strongly recommend them. Regardless of the degree of religious belief that one may have, the beauty of the way natural selection and the story of life is presented in his works is by far more delightful than any other alternative supernatural interpretation of the world around us. Also recently found the audio of his interview at New Yorker festival that is a great listen for those who don't have time to read the books.

- I guess everyone is watching closely to see what happens in US election. We have seen many aspects of wired politics of American through the debates and appearances and some I will never forget. One very disturbing one was that in which a woman in a McCain rally grabbed a microphone and said "I don't trust Obama because he is an Arab" and it was so disturbing to see the GOP candidate to respond "No Mam, He is a decent man!". Imagine yourself an American with Arab heritage! This is utterly disgusting to see that being decent is considered by a presidential candidate as being not part of a minority group. Seems that America can never overcome the problem of making peace with minorities. The colour and language of these minorities change but the nature of the problem remains. I am sure the Japanese-American fellows had the same problem during WWII (?). On other side, Barack Obama talking on supporting main street against Wall Street. Till now, it looks nice...at least much better than the stupid Joe the Plumber argument (although it seems that plumbing is what America needs after 8 years of what Bush has been busy with...we may need Akbar the plumber next year when Ahmadinejad debates for his second term) yet I was surprised to hear Obama calling for gasoline sanction against Iran which will be the biggest slam to main street economy in the country and can hit the poor very bad when at the same time, he talks about talks with no pre-conditions! We should wait and see what happens in this election but I hope Obama wins as he appears (indeed) more decent compared to his rival.

- I finally got my iphone yesterday. It is really a piece of art like many other adorable Mac products. I am already in love with a crisp touch and the variety of applications. Typepad has a free blogging app for iphone so maybe this way I get convinced to move my lazy fingers and post more here.

- BTW, things have got very nasty in Congo and it is a shame to talk about fancy electronics and not think of people in crisis. Help these people by filling a cup! You can find the link on the left column. Cheers. Behi

The honest kid is still a kid

After all those trips to New York, I would say it was collectively better than what we heard from Ahmadinejad. At least with an acceptable level of embarrassment. As one of my dearest friends always puts it in real funny way, the guy tries hard to float a pink elephant in the air and he always comes back with a great deal of self induced happiness (ear to ear). However, I think many can agree that this time, he correctly pointed to the elephant in the room when he talked about bullying governments with double standards. He literally was like the little boy shouting "The king is naked". The only problem is why Iran chose the boy to replace the king! He could well become an honest man with some exaggerating sense in his speeches, good for a podium in a street political debate. Yet as it happend, this boy is now in a position where you are just worried that he wouldn't tell everyone on the planet, the next bad word he learns in the street.

I watched most of his interview with Larry King and some highlights of his press conference. King asked him all the stuff Mahmoud rehearsed over and over. I liked some of the remarks as a person but as always, was disgusted as an Iranian. The double standard that Ahmadinejad complains about when it is about nuclear issue, is vividly visible in much broader scale on many domestic social and political matters that he openly denies when he goes outside.

Bush/Ahmadinjad did/(hopefully did) their final UN speeche of their presidency. They both rocked the world with their controversial ideas during their years and brought the economy of their respective countries to the knees. Two religious man who think they know better than others how the world should be ruled. We have heard their shouting and our windows are broken by the stones they have thrown. Know a good kindergarten?

I am off to Spain for a little field trip. I will wander around a little village in the Pyrenees. Till later...

And The Dutch Class

The Dutch beginner course that I signed up for, finally started last week. It is held in this small but cozy building near work and I am with six other expats in the class. To be honest, I am taken by surprise by the Dutch language. There is something especially heavy about it that gives a very pushy first impression. It is supposedly the closest language to English but you discover this only when you start looking at written words and find about the meaning. Just like what happens to your sense of taste after eating a very spicy sauce - you know the fact that it overwhelms you and you can not taste anything else much- The "kheee" sound is so repetitive and abundant in Dutch that when they speak, you feel like hearing people clearing their throats by short coughs and the ear just gives up capturing what else that is in between :)

I just learned how to say "eighty-eight beautiful canals" in Dutch: "achtentachtig prachtige grachten" (you got to say pronouce "khee" for each "g" and "ch" you can see). You got to repeat this a couple of times if your mobile rings in the class, our teacher joked the other day.

Unpacked and Assembled

Holland Handbook is a good publication to hold on to as an expat here in Holland that comes straight to the point explaining the hinges that can open doors or get you stuck in life in here. In its introduction, it explains a general path of an expat, entering a new country through a sort of phasing in psychological evolution: The tourist phase, the `'I love this country" phase, the "I hate this country phase" and finally the phase where your anxieties disappear and you become part of the system. Speaking of ourselves, we have not fully enjoyed the starter in the tourist phase, yet we are managing ourselves within "the I love this country phase" while sometimes lingering towards the one after.

We were kind of quick in getting new stuff for our apartment. Thanks to the huge IKEA concept center that is in the outskirt of the city of Delft, a train and a bus ride from The Hague. As a child, I used to hate assembling and disassembling things. I could read fictions and biographies over and over and over but opening the toys was not my thing...this was delegated to my little brother who had a real passion with the screw driver who in which had it after my father that as far as I remember, could fix broken thing (or it was very hard for him to give up and surrender if he couldn't). Now I thing after all these years, I kind of enjoyed a little assembling and you had better to anyway if you shop from IKEA. It is funny to consider this a big thing to do because there is a simple rule with IKEA furniture: "If you are trying too hard, you are doing something wrong" and to be honest, this was not a free lesson to learn hence you can see some screw holes in our bed where they don't belong, proving that I am in fact the same kid as I always was.

Now things are finally unpacked and assembled. My new job is showing the benefits of its nature very quickly. I used to work for a huge organization with thousands of employees, lots of initiatives and "stuff" hovering around my head. I am now enjoying the fact that I have only three things to do per working day, dive deep and stay focused. You wouldn't believe how much I enjoy the fact that I receive and reply to only 10 e-mails per day tops, five to ten times less than what I used to do.

There is a real luck that everyone speaks English very well in Holland but I still feel like an illiterate outsider being among the Dutch and the worst case is when we receive something by mail. I once asked one of the collegues for help but well, you can't do that forever...so I came with this temporary solution(yeah right!) of I re-typing the letter into google translator! If Google translator and GoogleEarth were not around, this could become a lousy start for us to get to the know how of the place. Now I am thinking of buying an OCR enabled scanner to convert the pages into text and then use Google to Translate. But anyway this Dutch illitracy is bothering me so much that I have signed up for a Dutch class and hopefully start in a while. This is a difficult language, those who make fun of Dutch language say like : "it is like eating a mouthfull of chips and speaking a mixture of English and German" :) 

More coming up...

The Fake

President Ahmadinejad performed yet another miracle: He selected someone as  interior minister who claimed to have a Ph.D. degree in law from The University of Oxford! When questions rose on the authenticity of the degree, the guy outraged, threatened the media and produced this to shut them up. A degree so suspicious that is feared to be faked, with grammar mistakes and with names signing it who are not even member of the Faculty of Law!
Iranian blogsphere is now full of articles quoting the response from The University of Oxford, confirming that no degree has ever been given to the guy. Such an outrageous act from somone who is supposed to bring law and order and protect the votes of people in elections! If Ahmadinejad wants to fake the next election, he'd better to employ someone who does it less obviously. What a shame!

The City of Peace and Justice

Maybe it is the work of the little peace dove of my blog that we ended up in The Hague, city of peace, justice and security. Everyday that I go to work, I witness press vans and TV cameras lined up -or I would better say camped- in front of the UN detention center, waiting to sweep any news about the new prisoner, Radovan Karadzic. It is at least a good thing that there is a place in the world for war criminals to end up! but the hope remains that the ideology behind such genocides would also be imprisoned, something that is proven wrong over and over through the course of history.

I remember the Bosnia ethnic war vividly. Inside Iran, the government was passionately acting for the Muslim side. TV was full of documentaries about the war and as we heard, the Iranian revolutionary guard was actually involved in supplying aids. The government just ignored to cover the fact that Russia was backing the other side of the war. Perhaps as Iran is the enemy of the US, Russia should be kept happy! Politicians have indeed an unfair/biased account of world conflicts which is very irritating.

Apart from a little bottle-neck in traffic made by the news vans, it is good to see the international criminal court doing its job. Although there would be no news crew if it had not been a genocide to trial someone for. One could feel much better then but for now, it is good that the bus passes through natural woods after the prison for some peace.

Tripoli to The Hague via Tehran

It is a couple of days now since we finally arrived to The Hague in The Netherlands after a short stay in Iran. We went through an overwhelming amount of work and extremely busy planning to get over the two movements back to back and it is not over at all. Almost one and a half years living in Tripoli is now only a memory with all the sweet and swore moments and we are very happy for the change we unleashed in our lives, both the time when we went there and now that we left it.

It was nice to get back to Tehran after a couple of months. The lively city as we always knew it, was and still is experiencing a new level of heat this summer. We were there to watch the pictures of the new Iranian missile test filling the front page in all the news stands. The nuclear issue, although brings new waves of fear and rays of hope every now and then, it feels as if it is becoming like so many slogans the system has been broadcasting for years, so much heard. Like the background noise of Tehran highways.

I had some fun this time with the Iranian customs: We had like 200 kgs of stuff that we shipped by air from Libya. One day I went with the shipping agent to clear the goods and bring them home. The airport customs was the circus of financial corruption and perhaps the most corruption I had ever seen all in one place. The shipping agent already knew his way and I could see him slipping money to: The front gate keeper, the second gate keeper, the third gate keeper, the worker who opened the box, the agent who checked the box, the lifter driver who lifted the box, the truck driver who carried the box, the shipment supervisor who certified the box, the agent who released the box and then again on the way out, the third gate keeper, the second gate keeper and the first gate keeper! 

Those of you who know me from this blog for a while must have read so many stories of mine applying for visas. As if there is no way for me to get one without a little clinch. Our visas to the Netherlands were already issued when we got to Iran but we had to wait for another two weeks to get the stickers. On the due date and after waiting in line for like 8 hours, I discovered that I was given a nine days visa instead of a 90 days! That resulted in another day of 8 hours waiting to get it corrected. It kept us in anxiety till the last working day before the flight.

Now we are in The Hague. I have already started in my new job and in the past couple of days, we had the paper work with the immigration. We are living in a temporary place in Scheveningen which is a very neat district near the beach. Our search for a place to rent has started but not with much luck yet. The city has so many good things to like. It is very well maintained with a great public transport working round the clock. Bikes are so widespread and we can not wait to get ours. Let's see first when we can get our place to say.

Big News

We are moving to The Netherlands. I am changing company after wonderful five years in Iran and Libya and joining another one in The Hague. I think this now explains my very silent one-day trip to the city a while ago. My visit to The Hague came after a few phone conversations with my future company. It all looked very well and made me curious to visit their office. I should admit that the whole idea of leaving my current employer seemed a little awkward to start with. It is certainly looks like deviation from well worn path by many bystanders. I have also been so soaked into the organizational culture and feel so much like a domestic residence with my current company...after all everyone is concerned of change. But it came to me very strongly, the conclusion that I am also very passionate in storming out of my comfort zone and perhaps it was the reason for all that happened to me in the past five years with good outcomes in my career. So the big decision was made!

From Amsterdam to The Hague, I had a nice train ride with my eyes open to see things. What I could see was a classic image of The Netherlands: Grasslands stretching to the Horizon with water canals dividing them, deep roaring gray clouds in the sky stitched to green of the flat land. I managed to see one windmill to complete the image. By the edge of a farm with its barnyard animals calmly grazing and the farmer with his boat by the canal. His shoes though, were not made of woods :)

I did not get time to discover The Hague but I indeed liked what I saw. With Mrs.Behi though, we have been digging the web for information and found out a lot about things in our future city. We know for example that buying two reliable bicycles will be among the first to be done :) This is the country of bikes!

Time is now very short for us to pack and go to Iran, get our visas to the Netherlands and fly over. A lot of logistics to take care of and lots of good byes to give.

Memories of India

Recently my boss made a plan for me to go to India for a week to teach a course that finally got canceled and didn't happen. However, it brought back all memories from fall of 2003 when I spent around six weeks in India for my first competency training. It was only a few month after joining my current company. India was an unforgettable adventure in all levels. I need to squeeze my brain and remember.

I was with two other colleagues from Iran joining a diversity of others, mostly from east Asia. Arriving to New Delhi, we had a taxi waiting for us from the Hotel that took us through the most bizarre street of the entire stay. It was a crowded mingle of all barnyard animals, people with all shapes and faces and simple shops selling nearly everything. The five star hotel that hosted us, was located in the south western skirt of the town, kind of in the middle of nothing. It was very comfortable but very far from anywhere, leaving us with few options for pass time after full days of class room sessions.
India is so famous for its contrasting scenes and the way rich and poor are mixed. Each morning, we had a taxi taking us to our company office, heading out from the fabulous hotel, we used to ride along this road towards the town, watching primitive rows of tents that were home to people and of course the famous man who was showering every morning in a water barrel by the road.... read the rest below...