Adventures of Mr.Behi

Internet outage (but happy new year)

The fiber optic connection that Iran is using is having a problem so all the Internet connections and outside phone calls are affected. I am using an alternative satellite connection (Thanks to the company :-) Now it is officially 2006 by the way, happy new year. This is going to be a hell of a year with so many adventures, You bet! Tomorrow we are going to have a very important meeting in the company for the objectives of 2006 and for me, this is a new beginning...so many challenges ahead...cheers for a good year :-)

Little thing, something

There is a Persian proverb that says: "People won't say something unless there is in fact a little thing!". Rumours are going on about the possible military attack against Iran by either Israel or the US. I am trying to compare the tones with the initial talks around attacking Iraq when all the world leaders were saying it would seldom happen.

I just know that militarism is a crap business especially when there are so many people in the world that can be fed with the spent money for making bombs. At the same time, I do not believe as always that nuclear technology should stay in Iran's top priority while there are people in this country with very little amenities and those people can simply crash in case of sanctions and wars. I do not believe that nations can get to war that easy like little kids. Yeah, yeah I know, there should be armed people to defend you. All right, kill others and make yourself happy that you defended yourself but for how long that can last?

Ladies first

Today, I went to visit a friend who works for a company that is owned by the government. By the gate, I saw a young lady being stopped by the guard because her dressing (according to the guard) was not covering enough of her legs! She was frustrated and was arguing with the guard that “ I have a university degree and know the morals of the society, I know what is appropriate to wear and what you are doing is humiliating!” and the guard simply nodded and said:  “That is the new order!”.

The surprising point is that her dress was all black and she was wearing a pair of black trousers too that is normally accepted by NORMAL conservatives! The new order apparently wants the dressing to cover down to the ankle! In fact the rule is not new but the way it is started to be re-implemented is.

Within the past years, the authorities became a little bit more tolerant towards applying the Islamic covering to ladies. Of course the change in mood was not applicable to government employees for whom the rule of no tight dress and no makeup was always there but nevertheless the number of such warnings were decreasing. Now with the new government, the ideology of strict obligations is back again and of course ladies are first to commit.

Will those who ordered the guard to do this, think once that this will increase the number of young people who loose the motivation to live and work here? It is now clear why Iran is the record-breaking country in exporting educated human resources to the rest of the world!

Christmas in Tehran

It is Christmas and inspiration of this event can even be sensed here in Tehran, although Iran is dominantly a Muslim country. Near where I live there are areas where many Christian families are living and you can see Christmas trees in most of the shop windows. The nice thing is that other shops whose owners are not necessarily Christian, find the tree attractive enough for decoration. We shall wait for around three month till our own new year when we can celebrate the freshness of the new year with the all new celebration of nature when spring begins.

We all owe the beauty of seasons to that little angle that the earth has on its rotation axis. Thanks to her, Mr.Behi will be able to feel the softness of snow, freshness of spring breeze, taste of cherry and the chill of autumn evening hopefully many times in his life to come.

Ban on western Music!

“WOW!” This is what you always hear if you take a foreigner to an Iranian private party. This was exactly happened to one of my friends who had already spent a month in Iran for his business and we were all invited to the wedding of our colleague. My friend used to see Iranian ladies in his office in Tehran and in the streets but he was not expecting the dramatic change in the way ladies were looking like when he saw them in that party! No lady was wearing the headscarf and he could see them all in their fashionable night dresses. All gentlemen were wearing ties and bows. Seeing all that, he told me something nice and I quote “ Here, all men wear more and ladies wear less than what they have to do in their public life…” ;-)

The amazement continued when we got into the small building located in the corner of the garden where a music band was on with and with all the special light and smoke effects, it was just like a night club anywhere in the world. Dancing was going on with the collection of all sorts of music from western rock and roll, to Iranian pop and folklore.

That is the true face of Iranians that normally no reporter gets to know. That was the main reason why my friend had no idea about that having the media as his resource. Knowing all the governmental prohibition, the idea of having such parties seems not easy but people are so vigilant in going their own way, that they easily doom the opposition.

Knowing all these, the new ban on western music in the Iranian media, which is ordered recently by the president, has no end but turning into jokes. The national TV is already in the hand of the leader and they even do not show the musical instruments when they play music! And there is not much western music anyway! After acting as a real estate agent, busy with finding new home for the Israelis, showing his historical talent in denying holocaust, here is his decision for what we can listen to. What is next? A new ban for the brand of my T-Shirt? 

Protect my nation...

Around 2500 years ago, one of the rulers of the ancient persia prayed for the GOD of his time and said: "Please protect my nation from drought, enemy and lie".

Today, while the current rulers are doing their best making new enemies for their country and lie day after day to everyone, Mr.Behi as an indivdual living in capital, Tehran, prays: "Please protect my nation from air pollution, air crashes and car accidents, save them from being hated by the rest of the world and protect them from their foolish rulers".

The chocolate cloak

This is a very special kind of blog. The blog of someone who has not even started it but for a single entry received more than 300 comments (at the moment). “A man with chocolate cloak” is a weblog that is yet to the blogging point of former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami. I am not sure who created this for him but the first post says that the blog shall be a surprise for him to start blogging. I think that is a very brilliant idea. I remember my university time when I deeply supported his idea of Iran for all Iranians. Despite the cease of reformists by the hardliners these days, just compare him with this new freak president and you see the difference. Many of those who commented for the first entry are feeling the same as I read them.

While Khatami was praised by the world for the idea of dialogue among civilisations, Ahmadinejad is busy planning to move nations and making problems for the people internationally. Khatami was full of mistakes and after all was very in favour of the Iranian system of power while trying to reform it. Many criticised him for his negligence towards the clamp down of reform but anyway, as someone who believes in reform and hates revolution; I very much miss him and his style. At least you would not be ashamed to call him the president of your country at this is the exact feeling I have seeing Ahmadinejad who has no idea of his position and is making a fool of himself in the international community.

Disaster time in Tehran

I was in Ahwaz looking forward to have my flight back to Tehran when I heard the news of the crash of a military air plane in a residential district in the city. (Link from the BBC). More than 100 people got killed mostly reporters from media and news agencies. Tehran is mourning today, city is almost closed because the level of air pollution had raised so much in the past few days that the government was forced to dismiss all the government employees and student from work till the end of the week. Now, Tehran, the once beautiful mountain side city, is like a dirty monster where it is hard to breath. With this air crash, we added another championship title in the history of disasters; "The most deadly event for reporters in one time"! This is happening in Iran, the biggest prison for reporters in a city that is one of the ten worst capitals of the world!

The level of negligence of the authorities is so ridiculous that no one except Iranians would believe that. You should be born here to be able to bare this and even for us this is not bearable any more. Iranian bloggers are as usual full of questions and criticism after this incident. Journalist bloggers like this (link in Persian) are so embarrassed that they are planning a demonstration against this neglegence. These two reporters (one-Two) were supposed to be there and are shocked, They do not know to be happy or angry. Bad news about this tragedy is moving so fast, voices are raised against those who ignored the danger but we all know that these will be ignored as usual.

Because of US embargo, all of the Iranian air fleet is damn old. Even the new air planes that are complaint for purchase and we can buy are second hand. It happens many times that you wait in the airport for hours because they say that the plane is having a problem and after that when you walk up the stairs of the plane, you always whisper "Please put me down safe big bird!" and you wish the aluminium alloy could listen.

We are now near Tehran, I am flying on board in an Airbus 300 aircraft approaching the city that even after sunset you see the pollution is holding it captive. The plane rotates and I have to turn off my laptop, the pilot is welcoming me back to this exhausted city. As the plane lands, I can hear the Earth screaming, the air shouting as it disturbs them. I think of those who used to take pictures from this world and write about it professionaly who took off from the same piece of land today and departed for the everlasting float...

Which one is too much?

I am wondering which one of these is too mich? Working for 12 hours per day or sleeping for more than seven hours a night. I am almost doing both of these and after I finish each, I think a little bit and plan to shorten them both, but it seems too difficult.

Now it is 8:00 P.M here and I am about to leave my office, today I worked for 11 hours which is an improvement :-). So much to learn and life is short, I always feel guilty that I have to spend those precious hours sleeping!

These were the crazy wispers of a workaholic after work, for the record!

You make the difference!

I was looking in some old documents yesterday and found a small book about quality managment that was given to me in one of my initial career trainings. There was one article on that book that I enjoyed most. Amazingly written, it gives a lesson for life that why we should always seek making a positive difference in our surroundings. For the answer, there is a story:

A very hot summer day you are walking on the beach, the sun is shining brightly which has made the sand burning hot. It is now low tide, and you discover that not all living creatures have made it back into the ocean when the tide went out. Left on the beach in the hot sand you find a lot of starfish.

By now the sun has been burning down on the starfish for quite some time and they have started to dry out. You know that if you do not do something, the starfish will soon all be dead.

So you decide to pick up every starfish you see and throw it back into the water, because you know that only by doing so you give it the opportunity to survive.

After you have been doing this for some time, a man on the beach asks you what you are up to. You explain to him that the starfish will survive in the ocean, if you make the effort to throw them back in.

The other man says to you: “Isn’t that just a waste of time? I mean this beach is 100 miles long. Do you think it will make any difference what you are doing here?”

You then pick up another starfish from the beach and throw it into the ocean, while you
say to the man: “To the starfish I just threw into the water, it makes all the difference in the world”.
Of course the message here is: You make the difference!