Adventures of Mr.Behi

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StarBucks in Iran is The Box of Stars!

I enjoy the taste and atmosphere of The Starbucks Coffee whenever I travel outside of Iran. Being an American company, StarBucks cannot open any branch in Iran due to the current US embargo regulations (I am wondering because the Coca-Cola company has a factory under it’s license in Mashhad, East of Iran). Anyway, It was while ago when my wife discovered a fun news in one of the Persian blogs and that was nothing but the news of the opening of a new coffee shop called “Box of Stars” or StarBox!

Last week, Mrs.behi and me drove towards the place in Africa Boulevard, North of Tehran. The design of the logo was meant to refer to StarBucks but without completely immitating it. The name “Box of stars” in Persian together with the English Translation – Star Box!- (See The pictures) The shop was located in a quiet street in an even more quiet shopping complex. The owner of the shop was a senior gentleman with a very positive customer support attitude and the shop itself was a very relaxing spot probably because we were the only customers at that ime of the evening.

I could not hide my curiosity and asked about the reason for using the logo and name and why it was faken like that. His answers were interesting. It appeared that he was recently back from the United States where he used to manage three of the StarBucks stores in LA. He was proudly saying that the recipes were the same as StarBucks itself although I found it’s Vanilla latte a little bit extra flavored than the original ones. About the logo he added that he was afraid of the government officials not to blame him as he had heard that StarBucks is believed here as a Zionist company! (I never heard of it before and he would probably be safe anyway but he wanted not to give any chance to police to close down his shop).

If you are in Tehran, give it a try; It is located in Eastern Nahid St, Africa Boulevard. You will notice the logo.

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.

Seat belt

I was reading through a presentation that was about safety instructions while traveling. If you are lazy in fastening your seatbelt, read this:
 •Imagine running as fast as you can - into a wall. You'd expect to get pretty banged up. Do you think you could stop yourself if the wall suddenly loomed up when you were two feet away from it? This is exactly the situation you face when the front of your car hits something at only 25 kph an hour. The car stops in the first tenth of a second, but you keep on at the same rate you were going in the car until something stops you - the steering wheel, dashboard or windshield - if you're not wearing your safety belt.. Bad enough at 25kph, but a  50kph you hit "the wall" four times as hard as you would at 25. Or to put it another way, wth the same impact you'd feel as if you fell three storiesi   

 

Do you want your kid to fall from a three story building? Do you want to jump from such height? fasten your seatbelt then.

Independent Guess!

I was organising my photos from Malaysia and I remembered that tomorrow (Aug 31) is their Independence day. These are my last pictures from Malaysia (Click on them to enlarge). The first one if for you to "guess" and the second was a common scene in Kuala-Lumpur because of the independence day. I will post more photos from my trip there.

A lesson Mr. Behi Learnt today!

I noticed these nice words in a freind's office. Did not hesitate to take a picture. Let's apply them then.

Thank you for comments :-)

Today, I was checking my blog control panel and realised that the number of comments in this blog is actually two times the number of posts. This is not too big compared to some giant Iranian blogs but it tells me that I had more opportunity to listen than to talk. I take this chance to thank all of you who took your time commenting in this blog. I appreciate what you are doing in helping me and other readers to become aware of your views of different issues I raise here. Please keep up the great thing you are doing fellows. 
Cheers
Behi

Anniversary

Today Mr. and Mrs. Behi are celebrating their wedding anniversary. Very happy day it is just like our life together. I want to thanks her here for the joy and happiness she brought into my life. Her support and understanding is always one of my greatest belongings. Our little family is just started it's journey in life and it shall continue happily for the years to come. We always share our adventures here, both happy and sad ones. Nice, now this blog is becoming a little personal :-)

Eyes!

Today, something funny happened to me when I went to wash my face before breakfast and I looked at the mirror to see if I am wearing my glasses before pouring water on my face! This was funny that I could not tell the difference instantly! I thought about this on my way to work that hey! your thoughts and ideas that you have adopted (that could be away from true) are sometimes so attached to you that you can not see them as a mask over your eyes. Have a mirror for that?

Iran, the origin of beer?

Did you know this cool thing? I was listening to one of the previous feeds of "This week of in Science" via their podcast feed. This is a truly nice show and they are doing just great. Anyway, that story about the origin of beer I heard from them is funny! They say Iran is known to be home for the first known evidence of human made beer! Being in a country that was the origin of sth and yet that thing is banned is also kind of funny! what a world.