Adventures of Mr.Behi

We Will Vote!

Ding Ding! Mahmoud is done!

Iran is all excited. We are being overwhelmed with swarm of videos, pictures and analysis, coming first hand from the streets of Tehran and other cities. The atmosphere is so fresh and everyone is aiming for one ultimate goal (I hope); getting rid of the greatest lair in the written history of the country. These nights, back to back presidential debates revealed more and more of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and how he -according to one of the other candidates- "looks straight in the camera and claims the white is black".

We are hoping for a very big turnout. One that all prepared cheating plans could be baffled. One that would show how ashamed Iran is for her current president and how determined she is to send him back to his own little world of delusion and deception. Low turnout will eventually pave the way for the hardliners to secure their minimalistic votes and claim victory.

P.S: This "plant life" attitude is apparently spreading. Europe should be ashamed of itself with such low turnout in the EU parliamentary elections. I can not believe they could just sit and see the right wing parties win the election. Having the right to vote freely and deny yourself of the opportunity is something I can not explain.

A "non-president" unleashed

The Iranian presidential election is around the corner and everyone was waiting for tonight when Ahmadinejad faced his main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi in the second of what is becoming the most revealing and provocative debates that could ever be even imagined in the Islamic republic.

Ahmadinejd kept his ugly style of populist excuses and blamed his predecessors as corrupts and cowards towards the west in nuclear issues. He defended his attack policy towards international regulations and claimed that all the rest of the power circle in the Islamic republic are ganging against him in his economic decisions. He tried his best to connect his opponent with all the black pages of the Islamic system.

Mousavi on the other hand, kept calm and quiet and mostly received the unfair punches. He gave the president some good blows on foreign policy and economy while Ahmadinejad was bubbling on and on using a language that was more suitable for a street fight that a presidential debate. (Just imagined! This guy asked Obama for a debate).

In final minutes however, Mousavi really brought it home when he slammed back -he reminded me of Rocky movies :)- and made a complete fool of the president, unveiling his non-presidential character, his delusional foreign policy and self-centred economical agenda.

It is close of 1:00 a.m here in The Hague. With Mrs.Behi we are sitting here after watching the debates on YouTube minutes after it ended. Now reading reactions on Face book and our network on blogs and watching mobile videos from after the debate from the streets of Tehran. We are waiting for the rest of the debates and hope dearly that people would vote this delusional idiot out of the office.

And the race begins

The Iranian presidential race is in full swing and my wishful imagination is for it to end with Ahmadinejad kicked out of the prime position. He certainly should go through many sessions of rehabilitation and psychiatric therapy to become free from the his self-respecting delusion. Either this or we would need his appointments to see how we shall endure four more years of this guy.

And so it ended...

It is almost a month since my last post which was about imprisonment of Iranian-American reporter Roxana Saberi. I am selfishly amused that it came out as I predicted and she is finally released (as if It happened because of that :)
The Iranian government always becomes very mellow close to elections!

Yet another mess

Great! yet another mess is made in the case of Roxana Saberi! A prison sentence of eight years after one day of closed trial. It seems as if someone well inside the Iranian pool of power has an allergy for peace or rather "less tension" between Iran and the US. Whenever there is a slight sign of relief, there it comes, another messy situation. I wonder how a foreign journalist can be called a spy? They can only come with valid visas and can only report with valid permits and can only enter places that they are supposed to. How can someone who reports for public broadcasting service be a secrete agent? Hard for me to buy it! oh, I remember a while ago there were some Iranian reporters who were jailed by US forces in Iraq with the same spying charges. US was saying they were not really journalists! I don't know what eventually happened to them! Some people are just more equal than others when it comes to media coverage.

The funny thing now is the letter from president Ahmadinejad on her behalf, asking for "necessary measures to ensure that the process of examining the charges against the aforementioned individuals are being carried out carefully and fairness, justice and regulations are observed". Oh, That is nice! and equally means that having a fair trial has become such a scarcity in Iran that you may only have it if the president writes a letter for you! I thought it was a default process for any judicial system to observe fairness in trials(?) Imagine all those poor Iranians with only "one nationality" who won't have all these letters backing their cases.

It is just a few month to election and I expect anything from this president who loves his chair so much although his feet can not reach the floor when he sits on it. Either this or it is just an old game of good cop/bad cop that the Iranian government is playing. Do you also hope it would end like this:

...and then the merciful, beloved leader came out from behind the blue curtain and pardoned the sinner. The president smiling from ear to ear, taking picture with the freed reporter who holds a bucket of flower and is escorted to the plane. She lands in the US surrounded by camera flashes, settles back and publishes her book with an extra chapter on jails in Iran. The books becomes the best seller and everyone lives happily ever after... and no one would ask the government of Iran: "Don't you have anything better to do?"

The Meltdown in The Hague

The spring has announced itself conspicuously here in The Hague. Steady sunshine for some days in a row has awakened the trees and all across town, flowers of all kind are in blossom. For this Iranian couple, this is the first spring in The Netherlands and as it turns out, we just witnessed another kind of meltdown in our neighborhood and this is not an ordinary frost but a thick ice of over 30 years of age that has just cracked between Iran and the US.

Today, just a few streets above us, the Afghanistan summit provided a chance for an ice-breaking meeting between the two countries. Although this is not the first time they collaborated over Afghanistan but this can be considered a strong message -in a positive way- that Obama administration is willing to change the game. I hope Iran and the US to cut the crap and instead of only talking about Iraq and Afghanistan, sit and talk about their own issues. Ironically, The Hague is also home to an everlasting tribunal that is supposed to resolve disputes over Iranian investments in the US before the revolution. Hope to see The Hague as a starting point for an end to all this. (Update: and here: it just blew out)

The weather changes very fast here and it may become gray and wet in no time again....lets enjoy the Sun for the moment.

Persian New Year 1388

We are done cleaning or better say what we call in Iran "House shake" and are waiting so that about an hour and 40 minutes, we reach the equinox in local time and start the new Persian year. It is a sunny day here in The Hague and flowers have already been appearing in sidewalks.
The schedule is booked for the weekend. We are invited to a Dutch wedding tonight and I will also be part of a writing workshop in Amsterdam. A Persian concert is also awaiting us....
While we are here in the land of the Dutch, check out this Dutch man traveling in Iran. He enthusiastically went through a Farsi language training and is going through a wonderful spring route in the south and the center of Iran. 

Moving Right

It was a while ago when I stumbled upon an audio book that became my companion for a month and I could not stop talking about it with friends. "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel H. Pink talks about aspects of human intellect that have been under the shadow of ever praised analytical skills.The enthusiastic narration of the author in the audio version was an extra delight for itself.

The book is talking about the emergence of a new age when the skills acquired via classical academic curriculum (left brain skills) will not be enough to give individuals the necessary edge for success. They are only good if merged with right brain skills and what the author calls "High concept and High touch". He encourages us to learn about good design and get acquainted with symphonies or study the art of story telling. I was thinking about this and realized how much these "touchy/feely" stuff (Right brain skills) can leverage the life of people who are mainly involved with hardcore science and engineering tasks.

No matter how much your work is about numbers, the better you can present the results to your boss with a good story, the better the result. I am sure many have seen presentations and reports with terrible designs not only in font selection and typography but also in coloring and composition. No matter how number oriented your client, you still have a better chance of success if you can convey your message with a good story via a well designed presentation that talks about the relationships, the big picture and how they relates to sneaky little details.
I started buying books and magazines that the author recommended and "A Whole New Mind" will remain among my top list of gifts for friends.

When I was one, we moved to an Island

I was only one when Iran revolted in hope for change. Now I look back and wonder about those who made it happen. I can't put myself in their shoes though as my world is very different from theirs. Chanting "No East, No West" is no longer valid for me. I am neither ready to change my life for an ideology. If they wanted Iran to change the world with revolution, I now want it to embrace the world with open arms.

I was one when my people had a dream and went for it fiercely. They paddled hard in hope for a better place but reached an island of isolation. It was a land after all but they always threw messages in bottles and cried to get out and never to actually live there. It came out to be very different from the dream, yet after thirty years, people still dream about change. Some dream about making this a better Island, some about leaving or even sinking it and no one seem to really know why and how. We are Iranians and we dream. We write poetry, sing sad songs and dream, each in our own individual island.