Adventures of Mr.Behi

Dance with the sand

Tripoli weather  is very notorious during first half of spring for its unpredicted behavior and for the dust. Any wind coming from south or west, blows sand upon us. Yesterday I was going to the parking to drive home, the western winds were coming strong. I stood there and looked at waves of sand hovering on the surface of the paved road, a mysterious fractal pattern....if I was believing in these things I would have said like ghosts running around. Then I would wonder how the wind could happily do the cha cha with the palm trees, chase the sand to where it destined and at the same time spare time to make me miserable by blowing dust in my eyes :)

Flight to The Flat Land

It has been utterly quiet in this blog but so much noise is going on in my life. It turned out that the noise  has made my mind so confusingly plain and distracted. I just crossed the first phase and will see how things will roll out.

During this period, I had an extremely short visit to the flat land! where windmills, canals and farms fill the horizon. I went to the Netherlands for something a little longer than a single day.

Flying from Tripoli to Amsterdam was not that long. I flew KLM and was impressed with the way that flight was handled. It was the first flight I have been to in which the crew exclusively and personally trained the passengers who were sitting by the emergency exits on how to operate the door rather than just referring them to the "safety sheet in front of you". They also handed an infant life jacket to anyone with a baby rather than just announcing "life jacket for infants are available in the plane" :) There was no TV but it was for sure better than Alitalia that shows fashion shows and cheap magic trick circuses on the TV over and over. No wonder they had to be sold off!
I had a Libyan couple beside me who were heading to the states for their studies. Soon after the flight, the guy started to act impatient...delayed smoke...he kept asking for glasses of water one after another till the stewardess finally guessed what was going on. He was not at all impressed when she told him that Amsterdam airport is a non-smoking airport....he was on to a couple of hours of transit before an even longer non-smoking flight to the US mid-west!

New Year

It is officially the new Persian year now. I have taken today off and with Mrs.Behi we are celebrating together.  The year we passed, was a remarkable year for us! full of adventures! We got to see many different places, met lots of new people and enjoyed it. Had a new phase in our lives settling in a new country and we made through it well. It was a great year at work too.

The year ahead will also be very unexpected. Some new plans in the list...Some of those can completely revolve our lives and our place in the world... many new adventures for sure. Hope to look back next year this time and say...it was a wonderful year...the first year of the forth decade of my life :) Happy new year.

Cleaning Friday

The last weekend before Iranian new year and we are trying to put ourselves in new year atmosphere. Election is on inside Iran and I am sure I could see people shopping and I could go out and buy stuff for our "haft-seen" collection if I was there (look at the one we had once in our apartment in Tehran). Outside where we are in a place where there is no significant number of Iranians, instead of getting a ready to use green plate, we had to grow the seeds ourselves. After trying a couple of different types of seeds in the market, Mrs.Behi has been so passionately watching and caring for the seeds to grow and there are some signs of growth (see her wishing for the best). Read more about Iranian new year

One of the most important customs is the cleanup that we Iranians do every year before the new year arrives. Many in Iran are probably finished doing that or are doing this now. Likewise, the Islamic system of Iran has apparently done some significant cleanup in the list of parliamentary candidates and like all previous elections, many were disqualified. This is not something new in the system so I shall stop talking loud about the limitations and lack of freedom in Iran. Like all previous rounds of elections, this one is far from perfect and for sure there is no chance is given to people to elect someone against the system. Yet, at least there is an election and because parliament seats are dedicated to states and counties, down to districts and small cities, there is a chance of having at least a bunch who are critiques of current government slogans especially some who can question the government in what it claims in reaching for people in remote areas and its populist propaganda. There is little choice here and people shall choose between a complete pro-ahmadinejad parliament and a little less complete pro-ahmadinejad parliament with a reformist fraction. In the last presidential election many did not vote for reformists and pragmatists with the argument that  "Anyway! there are all the same and with the leader on top, it will not make any difference"...I had a lard time convincing those people that leaving the field will just make it easier for the opponent to score...and they did...

New year is here and there will be many days of holidays...people will be busy with their new year affairs and the hard-line party has already done a good cleanup to make the next parliament suited to its purpose. That is supposed to be the house of the people...they might have cleaned it up with an odorous sweep but shall we let them to re-decorate it as well with the owners of the house watching them stand still? Physics tell us that with doing nothing, no mechanical work will be done...and to be honest, at least there are elections...do we like it better to be like a sheikhdom or kingdom as some countries around us?
I shall get back to cleaning...   

The Dutch that I know

[seems that I am keeping on breaking my record for putting big gaps between my posts. Nothing intentional.. for the record to remember my life in future I should note that it has been a rather stressful and restless period of my life..stress is not new but I would say that I have been rather restless more than often]

but after all this...

For a particular reason, I had my attention attracted to Netherlands during the past weeks and I got curious to know more than just the flowers, the sea dams and the international court. The land of the free as they may say so, appeared to have irregular and non-homogeneous details and maybe that is about the cheese :)

I know a couple of Dutch guys who live in Tripoli. I have known particularly one of them since a year ago when I started here and he soon appeared to be one of the greatest friends. The charming and amiable person with a constant smile on his face who always flattered me with all his kind gestures. I still could not make my peace with the language though as it sounds very far from the sounds that my ears can relate to. You always hear that Northern Europeans are strict and straight with low flexibility and less amiable character compared to other nations. Well, all the Dutch, Norwegians and Swedish fellows that I know are among the most fun people I ever known.

Browsing the news, I found the story about this Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a far right wing nationalist who they say has made a bad movie about the Quran. I searched him on YouTube and found a couple of his videos especially his interview with Fox News and to me he looked like just a blond version of Taliban who shaves. Taliban says there is no moderate Islam, extreme Islam is the right Islam and Wilders says exactly the same. Seems that the trap of dogma is not only in the religious schools of the Middle-East. Grown up in Iran and living now in Libya and despite the fact that I don't really connect with any aspects of any sort of religion as a whole, I should say that I have seen many moderate Muslims indeed. I have no idea why this guy wants to air such a movie. Does he think he discovered something really new there? I am sure he can find more bitter remain of bad religion in dark halls of Medieval castles in his own neighborhood.

I know that to many Muslims, Quran is special because it encourages thinking and learning the world and fights dogma in some aspects. To me, there are many detailed instructions there that do not make any sense after these years to so many people when it comes to what to wear and what to eat. Many moderate Muslims that I know consider the book as sort of a big picture and follow their everyday logic in life based on their common sense. Extreme Muslims on the other hand tend to focus on verses and paragraphs and they are indeed those who think of themselves as the true followers of the book. Same as in other religions...we still need to convince many religious people of the west that Earth is older than a couple of thousand years and evolution indeed happened.

I do not understand the aim of Wilders on this..if he wants to fight the extremism then he should stop being one and not to provoke people who are so into their own dogma already. Everyone laughed at Ahmadinejad when he said "there are no homosexuals in Iran" how about "there is no moderate Islam" of Geert Wilders?

And to the moderate Muslims, if you believe you really exist on the contrary of our Dutch politician, try to be like one and make another movie to respond. Make many movies and write many books. Condemnation ,demonstration and death threats don't go anywhere.

Just to finish, It was sad to see people were worried about reaction of Iranians to the movie...see this video a fun report from the blog of a Dutch in Iran.

Time and Deadline

I have collected the entire set of this podcast (The Manager Tools) finally after listening to their new episodes here and there but now I bought this FM transmitter for the ipod and can listen to things in the car so decided I would rather start listening to the whole collection. Not that I am a manager and I am not even close and I honestly don't want to be any close but this show is a good one no matter what your position is...(BTW, the ipod transmitter, it is fun but damn it all this mobile phone noise you get as you drive! they should put an ipod stand in the cars from now on, right?)

Distracted...the very first show of the series is recorded back in 2006 and is about time management. It has this exercise to help you find your priorities and fill your calendar with them before it gets filled with rubbish. Truth be told, it happens very often.  Starting the exercise, I became a little more cautious or lets say aware of the passage of time during working hours...normally I get to work and after finishing the morning e-mail part and a couple of phone discussions, boom it is 1100 hours.

By the book, one should do things by schedule to prevent staying up all night to finish a presentation or working late for a report or working from home in the weekend. Maybe many other people are like that but I get absolutely and fabulously efficient just before the deadlines. I stay amazed how fast I get things done just before they are due or when they are a little over due. The next day when I am a little relaxed I just freeze finding out which next task is the best to start and that will be the last relax day at work again before another storm kicks in. I keep telling myself that this is all right...boss is happy metrics are up (they were in 2007. so far the first two months of this year were kind of barren).
Compared to many others, I might say I am damn organized (I never say that to people..this post is just my mirror talk :) Let me tell you: digital calendar and task list from outlook always up to date with deadlines sync with my on-line calendar and PDA for other people to know where and when I would be available. Excel sheets and mindmaps of tasks and priorities...Just a little more focus would do...

Something funny to confess: Since high school I have been known as the guy with the big bag..this continued in my university times and in all through career years. I could not just pass two hours in the library reading only two text books and call it the day...and now, the 4 Kg laptop and accessories+ papers and books as usual and you see me jumping from one to another at work. People see me in the lift and say: Hey are you traveling today? or, oh straight from the airport! where have you been? :)

Finishing the 30th....

I have something else to celebrate valentines day for and that is my birthday. I finished my 30th year  this year with a little birthday surprise from Mrs.Behi. I could not believe that she had all those planned since our time in Barcelona in January. As usual, a beautiful setup of candles, card with nice words and the birthday gift. What surprised me most was the home-made cake in front of me, knowing that it was indeed the first time she tried making one. Our little celebration continued with both of us bursting into laughter when she started telling me the story of the cake :) Read her story here.

We had already bought our new means of fun the day before. Two new bicycles! It was almost sunset when we left our place for a relaxing ride along Tripoli port, a place that is yet to be discovered although we drive by it every day. Wide and nicely paved, it is a perfect place for jugging, running and biking or even for a relaxing walk, resting on numerous benches here and there. Valentines day, calm of the sea, nice breeze and the chill of late evening invited many Libyan couples to the safe haven of the port side. Hiding behind the bridge, swirling around street lamps or just face to face with hand crawling in the back on the benches, boys and girls were celebrating the romantic night as we passed them cycling and we all had a smile on our faces.

The Orbiting Dream

The news was a real surprise: Iran launched a rocket to space to add yet another surprising stride to the basket of its advanced science collection. After active stem cell research and a really noisy nuclear program, I guess we shall now be happy about having something up there rotating! Oh we already had an Iranian lady who became the first woman space tourist. I remember when I was a graduate student, I spent some time as an intern in a government-owned agency in Tehran and our job was to analyze satellite images for environmental and meteorological studies. Many of these satellite were and still are out there with their images publicly available for purchase. That was well before the age of GoogleEarth and what we were doing was very classy and Hi-Tech. This agency later got transformed and merged into Iranian Space Agency. I remember seeing a couple of graduate students of IT and Telecom in one of the rooms spending a multi-million dollar grant to design a communication satellite together with the Chinese :)

When the agency started before the revolution, we were the big friend of the Americans and were the first in the region into which US started transferring space imaging technology. Near Tehran there was a huge imaging factory with a monster satellite receiver. The receiver had the serial number ending to 001, the first of its kind to be built for the purpose of receiving images from a new earth observing satellite for civilian applications. The station soon hibernated after the revolution. And now we sent a rocket!. I would be happy though if we really could have achieved the domestic potential to carry something that far but I hope it is really true and not like another thing bought from the Russians and the Chinese. Russia is practically sweeping its soviet warehouses to sell to Iran and China with its garbage quality exports, cheap labor and the VETO power has been busy waving its spider web for the Iranian cash.

Barcelona, Top Deck Tour

The gap between my posts are getting bigger and bigger. Some days during the big rush of work I just open the blog page not to forget how it looks like and try to remember what happened in life that I did not write. Again it is Friday and a chance to blog.

The week in Barcelona had a fun start. We had some good suggestions from visitors of the blog for places to go but we literally had only less than a day to explore the city and during winter that means very little chance. We tried to explore the city on top of a double decker tour bus. Barcelona has three routes of tour buses, the blue and green covering the southern and the red covering the northern part of town. We had no idea so just by keeping the finger up in the air and looking at the number of stops in the blue route, it became the choice.

Barcelona was very nicely built and maintained. Alive and with refreshing scenes. Maybe it was only Sunday morning but the calm and comfort of Barcelona attracted our attention. The second interesting thing was the great initiative of bicycle rent and go stations and the city was filled with those. You could see many people on those red and white bikes picked up from stations and apparently they could put them back in any other stations when they wanted to drop them. We eagerly wanted to do the same only we later discovered that the rental was not by credit card but via special cards and through a registration in the city hall. Mrs.Behi loves bikes and she was really looking forward to this. I had to distract her after this not-so pleasant discovery with a scoop of her favorite chocolate ice cream:).

From the explanations of the audio tour it was easy to understand that Barcelona got her fresh new look from the Olympics, renovated neighborhoods and the area near the port only became popular after the  event when the new residential blocks of the Olympics were on for sale and only the rich could buy. It was Sunday and people were out for refreshing their body and mind in a mild winter day. Flag of Catalonia with red and yellow strips on air everywhere and Catalonians on the bike, on the run or just walking the dogs  left us with a a very harmonic impression of the city.   

I could take a couple of good photos but I am not putting them here for one reason. I am shutting down the photo albums in my typepad blog and try to avoid putting pictures in the text any more. Instead, I have opened a brand new photo sharing account and I am uploading selected pictures from all my travelings into it.

After that one day of fun with Mrs.Behi I spent all the rest of the week in meetings. We had this company-wide gathering and many people from Africa, Europe and former Soviet states attended. It was fun meeting all those people but not easy to bare those many hours sitting and thinking about business. Good news, I won a prize! it is called the President's Club and 22 of us from Europe and Africa got it in a nice ceremony on a rotting restaurant on top of the Olympic village. Our company president was calling each person to the front with a little introduction and humor with information from our employee page. Mine was: Behi like to learn from other cultures, he likes digital photography and the Mac computer and he wishes to put our company products on Mac :) It is a great prize to be won in what I do and I think I am supposed to be more motivated now in fact I should really think if I am enough. Some heavy thinking is ahead. All I know is that I shall not settle till I find something that I believe is great work!   

Smile! You are in Spain

We arrived late last night here in Barcelona for a week long meeting. Today is the only free day and we are hopeful to be able to use it for the best and see some interesting stuff in the city :)

The Hotel we are staying has an extremely overprices internet service charge. If we get connection for the two of us for seven days it will cost like getting the room for an extra night!!

The Desert Sensation

The past week was enormously crowded. I had to travel to two cities far from Tripoli and right after that, had a surprise training course to teach for which I had to study all night long to prepare for the days.

Benghazi is the second biggest city in Libya, somehow the rival for Tripoli. The two cities are right on the two corners of the coastal saddle where Libya meets the Mediterranean sea, more than a thousand Kms away from each other, almost an hour by air. Boraq air is apparently the best airline to take you there and I would say it was a convenient flight.

The trip plan was to stay one day in Benghazi and then ride to Bregha the next day. Benghazi left a better first impression on me compared to Tripoli. The structure and design of the city felt more natural and harmonized at least in the part of town that I passed through. This city is the fist stop for those tourists who want to go for the sightseeings of Libyan east end, the green mountain and the Greek ruins. I was told that the best season would be the start of spring so we will wait till then.

The next day, we departed from Benghazi very early in the morning, well before sunset. Our carrier was a mini van and we were four in it heading south to south west into the desert toward an industrial area and port camp of Bragha. It was familiar to me to ride in desert roads as I had done so many times but this time, I was there to watch a sensational down and dusk in the desert in my round trip (more below)

Smiling

I hope like me, you have found or will find someone in your life to discover it with. Some one so close that you forget the time prior than the moment you first met. Someone with the same vision in life as yours and a way of picturing it that is out of your reach. Someone with whom you remember the places you have been when you play the music you heard there...especially if you are like me who does not have this ability. Someone with whom you revisit the past, watch the present and grow old in future. I hope like me, you have someone like Mrs.Behi. she is just about to enter a new decade of her life and while the only thing I can think of is where we will be by the dawn of the next decade for me, I am joyfully being touched by what Mrs.Behi imaged in her birthday. Happy birthday love...