Adventures of Mr.Behi

Winds

You work overseas and try to find out how to transfer money to your country. You wonder how to do this as your country is embargoed by many European banks. You search google to find a way and this is the result page...my fingers resisted typing again as if they sensed the bitterness of the answer.

It is a very windy night in Tripoli, there has been a big storm since evening...the sound of the wind that sneaks through the window hinge is more mysterious than the noise of the storm outside. From where these strong winds are coming...have they passed through Iran? Are they so frustrated and restless by the things they saw? Are they also showing that good days of that land are blowing away? Why they rush so much to go to the south? Are they escaping the sea in search for a  dream of a better place? Do they know that they are moving to an endless desert? or maybe they are already aiming for the lush of the equator. Stronger winds are coming from the east, will they stop smelling like blood?

Tripoli Rising

It was a few months ago when a sudden blast attracted the attention of everyone around the north-east tip of Tripoli. It was a demolition on an old multistory building by dynamite. Soon after, the area was filled with bulldozers, quickly cleaning up the wreckage to prepare the land for another construction project according to the banners and ads around the place. Around the same area there are other pieces of land currently left alone but they are also receiving visits by construction machines these days. There are at least 4 or 5 of them around our office area.

Other things are opening up too. Since two weeks ago, you can buy Time magazine, Newsweek, The Economist, Herald Tribune and Financial Times in news stands :) Previously, the only English language paper was the weekly "Tripoli Post". The 16 page post reports what it considers as "good news" for Libya collected from around the world. The reaction towards foreign politics though still shows remarkable defiance against the west choosing the language of pride and victory against them. Apart from the commercial ads and sport pages, th final page is always about historical and cultural treasures of Libya that worths reading.

The nobel peace price

Pleased to hear the news and the fact that this much attention is given to the environment. Sure it will take a while till the world really realizes that protect the environment is the biggest challenge facing all of us. I have wrote here before how I believe in democracy as a culture and why it can not be imposed by war or by negotiation, yet it shall be thought from within families. In the same way for protecting the environment, the accountability is the key and it shall be felt by everyone. When I started this blog back in 2004, amongst one of the first posts was one about the Kyoto treaty and the fact that some powerful industrial nations had not signed for it. I had some commentator who were still doubtful about the fact that human activity could have caused global warming. I hope they have changed their minds by now.

I read once in a Persian blog, a translated quote from Leo Tolstoy that said: "From all those people who go to the hills to pray for rain, only those who take their umbrellas truly believe in their words"

off track

My memoirs of Italy is still to be re-written and posted and I am just being lazy about them. You ask me any time in my life and I have a list of all the good things I have to do and a bigger list of things that I have half-done. Since my high school times, I have always been known as the guy with the heavy bag...still I am and the reason is that I carry so many books around and lately, so many computer gadgets! I get board of things I do very quickly.Back in our college library, I needed study material for four different topics to make a day. It is also very hard for me to concentrate in what I am doing without flying to future in a couple of instances! What is this rushing to get to future? I heard this saying "Life is what goes on when we are busy making better plans". It is funny, I had a friend in Iran who used to claim that his plans were only 3-months into the future as he believed that in Iran, nothing beyond that time limit was predictable!!

It is 1:30 in the morning, I am using my personal Apple and my heavy Dell M90 laptop is calculating a big chain of processes that I am preparing to show my clients tomorrow. I am just waiting for this to finish to call it a day. On my ears, I have a Violin concert from Mozart and before I was listening to an audio book about myths of the Mediterranean region and before that, another audiobook about the second world war and before than was watching the Lord of the Rings for like the hundredth time! (I realized I am obsessed with this story after buying the extended DVDs and the extended soundtrack CDs and the book) :) In a few hours, another working week begins, I have plans for it but see what happens in life!

Notes from Italy- Part II: Sirmione

Approximately 140 Km eastwards from Milan, we found ourselves by the gates of Sirmione (see the route). Only those who have a hotel booked inside the city are allowed to take the car inside the walls and the medieval flavour of the city takes you as soon as you pass the security and find yourself driving through a very narrow entrance, on a bridge, below stony guarding posts. Driving in Sirmione is slow and you sometimes feel guilty to force all those walking people to move around and give way in those tiny streets. The city is kept so original and is very clean despite all the tourist rush. We hit there Saturday night and the place was filled with Italians who were cooling off for the weekend.

Sirmione is a narrow peninsula stretching into lake Garda in northern Italy and it is the lake that gives an additional specialty to the city. From a few streets that pass through the city, you need a few minutes walk in any direction  to find yourself by the shores of the lake and all your way you see restaurants, art and souvenir shops, hotels and villas.

We booked a hotel near the tip of the peninsula in a less crowded area and on top of a hill with a very pleasant view of the lake.

One aspect of Italy which is very popular is indeed "food". We spent two nights in Sirmione and around and hit the ice cream stands a couple of times :)

The boat ride: It was after a light lunch plus a bowl of cool watermelon and fruit and we were sitting outside the walls of Sirmione looking at the lake that one of the small boat riders offered us a ride around the peninsula and we hopped in...the fun part started when he tried to guess our nationality....:"Israeli??"...the old man asked and laughed with us when we told him that we were Iranians. It was a nice boat ride especially because we could see an ancient Roman villa on the tip of the peninsula (great taste, hats off to the Romans) and could enter the castle from the lake side.

The next morning, the rain was pouring and we headed towards Verona and Venice.

Photos of Sirmione in Italy photo album (+,+,+,+,+,+,+)

Sirmione in Wiki