Adventures of Mr.Behi

Pride and Persian

I remembered last year when I wrote about Everlasting Persian Pride and now I am wondering if this pride is kind of associated with prejudice or not. Are we too pride or this country as one of my non-Iranian friends said "is the country of kings and queens?". I am kind of realising that we have an overall culture of "not showing that we are satisfied" even if we are somehow are. You can rarely find someone that when you ask "How is your job?" does not actually complain in his/her response and it does not look like to be related to the kind of the job, it's status or the salary. People always try to show you that they are "killing themselves" and deserve more even when their job is like heaven compared to a great deal of the population. the definition of good job to many is "the one that is easy and pays like tons". I am wondering if all the developed countries could get to this stage with such attitude. Is that because people believe what they do does not change anything and it is all set to be bad by the decision makers? I do not know. I just know that no one gets any close to a better place without pushing the abilities to the edge. This might not be just  

Ahmadi-jacket loves to be seen!

I am going mad for everything he does, from his one post blog, to the denial of holocaust, to his suggestion for debate with Bush, to his claims about being protected by hidden forces and the lies that he gives people about the rate of inflation, freedom of speech and rights of people. He is a little ignored individual that loves to be seen no matter positive or negative, he does not care. How small some people can think...

When Behi plans...

When I look at the pathway of my life since 10 years ago till now, I realize that I have  been busy planning for everything but the best things that heppened to me in this period were the things that I had no idea about, and had no planning ahead in my wildest dreams. That is kind of strange but I keep planning. Now after many years in scince, I am starting to think about changing my direction a little. In this stage (I mean starting to think about doing something..) I start with first, day dreaming and second, web surfing (I guess even early humans were doing this, imagining a tasty food and starting to think about a sharp stone as tool for hunting :-) just found this podcast...which is very informative for the moment (Link: MBA Podcaster )

Nuclear deal in the bargain capital of the world!

Tomorrow in Iran is a religious holiday. Whenever there is a closed Tuesday, people do not hesitate to get the Wednesday off and flee for vacation (Weekend in Iran is Thursday and Friday). In such short weeks, things in government organisations get into hibernation.

Coincidentally, the due date for Iran's answer to western package in also tomorrow! so I wonder if there will be anyone from the media to debate the decision if they make any but I am very much sure that there will be yet again another vage answer like "well, we agree in general but there are some parts that we need to negotiate ...". If you doubt about the fact that Iranians are tough negotiators, try to sell them something :-) We (Iranians) bargain for everything we buy or sell and the first chance we get, we bamboozle the other end of negotiation so bad that he/she will not be able to think logical about the whole thing anymore. The default for many people in any deal is that the one you face is "stealing from you". I am not a good one myself and just disagree with the price twice before I give up and pay whatever the seller says :-)

Cool day out...

Summer for Tehran residents is a perfect chance to go to higher hills of east and west of Alborz mountains. The route to these areas will eventually take many to the ever green northern region (south of Caspian sea). The hills of Alborz are so refreshing and pure...streams and springs and great gardens and green hills stretching from east to west.
All you want to do is to escape from the heat and spend some quality time in a nice garden, walk into cool streams, pick fruit and get some heavy lunch. Watermelon is one of the key parts after you get up form the afternoon nap. This one above we had left for a couple of hours down into a cool water well and if was cool and fresh when we attacked.

Will you ever ask me what I like?

“One day a TV program was asking a question from people in different parts of the world. The question was: What is your opinion about shortage of proper food in the world?. They asked a Swiss and he replied: “What is shortage? They asked an African and he said: What is proper food? And finally it was turn for the Iranian and his reply was: What is opinion?”

These days, the parliament in Iran is busy legislating a rule that indicated “National dress code” for ladies. Today, the headline of a major newspaper was about the recent crackdown on satellite receivers. When I was a kid, video cassette players were not legal so I remember my parents so cautiously bought one from the black market to watch their favorite movies. And now the satellite receivers! one of the PMs suggested that they should make a central satellite receiver and will make a cable TV to give “appropriate” satellite channels to people (and what will be! How manipulative!). People here are always escaping the rules because many of them just do not make sense and the bad thing is that it goes on to the level that people get the habit of circumventing all the rules even those that make sense! Because in their brain something tells them “It is impossible to have a law around you with nothing wrong with it! It is just so much control from outside.

The new restaurant we found in Tehran

A few days ago, The Behi couple were driving by in one of the streets of northern Tehran during evening rush hour. We were desperate to find a good place to eat and we were far from our frequent places. So, to avoid the heavy traffic, I finally turned into one of these small streets and after a few hundred meters, we noticed a restaurant and pulled over. I was already starting to think about my order when we entered the place and guess what was written on the board: "Iranian vegetarian society" and there was a cosy place with all veggie food. We were giggling all the way to our seats remembering our initial decisions in the car (all meat food). The food turned out very good in fact. We ordered this which is normally has some meat but this one had a sort of thing they called "veggie meat" that looked just like a piece of meat but without the taste. I should admit that the veggie soup was great and the flavoured yogurt with the spacial herb that they put in, was so special.

The fun part was when we started talking about being vegetarian. All of a sudden, we thought: "huumm, maybe we should try to be like these guys for a while"...but before we finish the food, I realised that I can not ever give up liking the chicken Kabab and Mrs.Behi will never ever give up liking fish. So we decided to be as we were and ended up leaving the place still making jokes about this...The food was not expensive compared to many other restaurant..around 10 USD for two people.

The war of stereotypes

With the cloud of war gradually casting it’s shadow eastwards from where it showers Lebanon and Iraq, it is no longer possible to keep my head under the snow pretending the avalanche is not happening. Iran is now under the shadow of an approaching conflict while its people can do very little to stop it. Seems that the “Shiite Crescent” in dream of Iranian Mullas, is finally crossing the “Great Israel from Nile to Euphrates” idea of radical Jews of Jerusalem. The sad part of the story will begin when the tanks start rolling and bombs start falling and the first victims will be just decent human beings who were stereotyped but the opponent media as either “terrorist nation” or “Zionist occupier”.

We have been hearing such stereotypes over and over again. We are just like a company whose acronyms are so obvious to the employees but so strange to anyone from outside. We have forgotten what the word “Human” meant to us before our political corporation used it as “How you may attack a nation” or Peace as “proactive envoy attacking to control the east “. In Iran, there is a generation that is grown up to adults and every day of life heard about Israel as an occupier, US as great Stan and west as a godless land of lawless drunks where ethics are falling apart. It is sad for me to feel that the same thing is happening with people under the influence of another sort of illusive stereotypes: Terrorists, radical Islamists, fundamentalists, extremists and all those unbearable terms that I know well that my people are not.

My body trembles imagining B-52s over the sky of Tehran. I am sure the first bomb will not kill any of those who pressure Iranian people now, that falling objects will continue doing so. It is so sad to see some reactions about Lebanon war, looking at people who just close their eyes trusting their stereotypes, happy that terrorists are being hunted.

Now with so many slogans about Iran from both Iranian leaders and world leaders, it will come a day when people look at explosions in Tehran, eating their breakfast, hoping for a better world without nuclear Iran while the world of children without their parents will never be better. Either the world should stop calling us “terrorists” or we should stand up and shout that we are not. If we can not change the way Iran is introduced to the world by our president, we should change the way we introduce ourselves to the world. The true Iran should be blogged and it is the time to break the fake mask.

A few thousand years earlier...

For some days, I tried to listen to radio while driving to work and back instead of the music. When it comes to news in Iranian media, the way the war in Lebanon is pictured makes you wonder if it is Iran in fact one side of the war. They talk about demonstrations in other parts of the world in support of Hezbollah! Seems that Iran is the only country that such supporting demonstration are not organised by the body of the people. You look at them and it is easy to realise that they are member of government-fed organisations. We had an independent gathering of student in Tehran though but that was for "Stopping war" not supporting one part. I was thinking, when people get upset about other getting killed, how supporting one part of the war can help the peace? For ordinary Iranians, this is the way the government escapes from domestic flaws.

Yesterday in BBC world website, I saw a section called Israelis voices and it was just hopeless to see people calling for more war, sending more troops. The most shocking part was the final guy who says: "But I think many of the Lebanese people – the Druze and the Christians – want peace and will be happy that we’re fighting Hezbollah". This is unbelievable that some people do such discrimination based on religion and race.

I was talking to a friend the other day and he said something sad yet nice that "we humans climbed down the trees a few thousand years earlier than we should. We needed more time to understand the basics"