somewhere over the rainbow

We were driving home with A in the car. It was raining. Obviously we could not go to the park because all of the playing structures were wet. So we tried to focus on the rain and suddenly the sky opened up very narrowly just in front of the orange late afternoon sun. I looked in the mirror and as predicted found A staring at the orange ball in the sky. I warned him not to for the health of his eyes and promised him a rainbow, I thought there should be a rainbow when it rained and there was the sun in the sky at the same time. A did not budge though; he was determined to look at the sun. I started looking around frantically in the range of my front view but could not spot any sign of a rainbow for the next seven or ten minutes of the ride; well of course I could not, because we were driving towards the sun and no way there could be rainbow in that direction! Then suddenly, after turning a bend, there was the rainbow. I signaled and stopped by the curb right away to make sure A saw the rainbow. His face was as colorful as the rainbow. And God! What a spectacular phenomenon the rainbow truly is!

a break

We are having a break from meetings and I am jumping to my blog sitting in the meeting room. Feels good, especially because I have a protective screen on my monintor and my neighbors wont know what I am typing.

We are watching The Sopranos. M just finished the last episode of the fifth season last night. I could not tolerate the violence again and I skept the last episode of this season. I liked the fourth season a lot I guess because the focus was the Soprano family. This fifth season was also interesting with new people getting introduced and new problems ...

I need a good English fiction. Any suggestion any one? The last book I read was "Runaway" by Alice Munro. Loved it.

Resuming the meeting ...

It has been a week of fanfare for me so far. Meetings after meetings and discussions after discussions. I feel I need a vacation already so I can rest away from all these and spend more time with my family. I have become the responsible for two major subjects in our project which is nice and scary at the same time. Great thing is that we have a great team work so every thing is going to be done after consultations and when a consensus is made.

I tuned my guitar again last night and played a few chords. I needed that, so soothing!

This morning the clouds were very beautiful. Early in the morning I was driving and the dawn sky was pink with purple lines of scattered clouds.

I am going to pick up Arman early today. I am going to just relax with him. By that I mean taking care of a shopping, taking care of a dinner (I am thinking of chicken baked in oven) and taking care of Arman. That is the new definition of relaxation! ;)

2008

I am guilty of writing so infrequently, and in English I know... Yet here I am, writing in my beloved blog.
I love the spirit these days. I came to work this morning finding a present from my new manager for the new year. It is a chocolate box with a small note. Some thing I would have never expected from him. And a card from a colleague. And a lunch gathering with a dozen other colleagues.
Tomorrow is going to be the last working day in 2008...
This is the year end and and yet I like the fact that this is a semi-end of the year for me. There is still months left of 1387.
Yalda night was memorable for me this year, Hafiz talked to us so nicely I feel the joy every time I remember our verse; Ours, my family's.
It is cloudy today... The other day, on the way to work, just when I turned a bend on a bridge to head north, there was a rainbow so pure and radiant you could feel God.
One thing I learnt: just to be, and to be grateful. Tough stuff I warn you, but so liberating, may be the ultimate destiny...
Happy Holidays!
Merry Christmas!
And Happy New Year!

there is beauty

calm
smile
ocean
nature
leaf
breeze
blue
kind
future
breathe
content
eyes
friendship
love
hour glass
orange
fragrance
shine
strong
beat
proud
God
truth
colors
walking
tender
present
...

پاییز

روز‌های آخر پاییز، برگ‌های صد رنگ، هوای ابری
یک حضور بارز در زمان هست

I have to!

I have to write, even if to write that I have to write.

My A has grown very affectionate and very moody. His mood swings from very happy to very angry in a blink of an eye. But he is mostly sweet and he talks like an angle with his head tilted and his black eyes looking into yours with a sincere love.

We walked with M yesterday morning. It was great just to walk in an autumnal breeze.

I got an A- in my 40% midterm and I just submitted another 40% assignment on Thursday, a few minutes before dead line. Some how it is very important for me.

Work is crazy and busy. No need to talk about it.

And life is passing. Since I started this piece of writing a few minutes have passed. And every thing else passes to. My birthday is approaching and it is amusing for my heart that I find my mind thinking about it, about my birthday, in a bitter sweet fashion this time for the first time. I know age is only a number, I believe so. Yet I admit that I have this superficial stereo type about age ranges too. I find myself in need to talk with other friends same age as mine, whose birthdays and a few months before or after mine. I need to call Daniela and talk to Pegah and Nafiseh may be. I think it is mainly because of my crazy ideas and sudden changes in direction. May be I am growing more cautious.

There is a wisdom in the world. I trust that being and his/her wisdom.

heaven and earth

This is this time of the year again: orange.
There is orange and gold and red every where, on the trees, on the brownish blue pond, on the green grass.
I love the calm cloudy mornings, and then the cool midday breezes. Fall is lovely, inviting for a hike in the middle of the woods and inhalation of all the autumnal smell in the air. Love the color, love the chill, love the smell, and love the life underneath the dead costume. Thank God for autumn!

costume

I made A's fist Halloween costume tonight. I practically brain stormed with myself inside Walmart in the middle of the isle that stocks handicraft accessories. There were foam cut figures, wooden pieces of pre-cut shapes, small clay statues, feathers, sticks, colorful cotton balls, foam balls, foam cones, ... and a few brands of glue. I really put my brain on the isle and here is my master piece:

Do I need to mention I am proud of it? A was with me during the work handing me the feathers. He can sort based on colors now which is lovely to watch. A looks fabulous in feathery black.
Oh, and my 40% assignment is due in two hours and nineteen minutes.

Au Revoir Houston

It is a cloudy day here in Houston, it should be hot and humid outside. The conference is almost over and I am so ready to get back home.
These past nights I called A every night to tell him his bedtime story and sing him his lullaby. The stories are on demand, the second night he asked for the khale bozi story. I changed the story a bit, in which the mother goat was actually going to a conference instead of going to collect food for her kids. I think he liked it, because except for the first night that he asked for Panirak story (which is about a little mouse who was not sure his mom loved him because she demanded him to be careful all the time), the rest of the nights he asked for khale bozi's story.
Time to check out. I am happy. Only worried about my assignment which is due midnight tonight. I have four hours in the plane to work on it though.

More updates

• I am completely sleepless and awfully tired
• Love the conference and cases
• Met old friends tonight, enjoyed being with them a lot
• A's voice is extremely sweet over the phone
• The body works museum: fabe'ayye aalaa'e rabbekomaa tokazzebaan
• Houston is very wide and flat
• Met a neurosurgeon who works at UHN in Toronto; encourages me to go back; brain drain
• Need to wake up at 6:20 am tomorrow
• It is 1:02 am today
• Revise: need to wake up at 6:20 am today
• Have missed my M awfully
• Chamomile tea does make me calm
• Ice cream makes me even calmer
• A cat walked on my lap tonight
• Good midnight!

A scattered mind in Houston TX

I arrived here last night. It is warm and slightly humid here, which is a nice contrast to the air conditioned conference rooms and cabs. I am here for the LINC conference, mainly focused on neurovascular diseases, case studies, and complications. So far I really liked the first day of the conference.
It is hard though being away from home, i.e. Iran or Canada. Honestly I feel much better and more comfortable in Canada. I know a lot more about the culture, and people are so kind and friendly and welcoming. I feel being tagged on a lot lately, being questioned if I know of a place or of a tradition, and half of the times I don't. It is strange.
Some times I think this is the time I got to be who I want to be. I always have new plans and I always think about sudden changes in direction. However, lately I keep reminding myself that this is all I have got. There is no future to look forward to for being another person. All is present.
One of the sudden changes that cross my mind once in a while is to stay home again, for a year or less, to be with Arman at this age. I am in a deep controversy actually. I am ambitious in my work, I know that, and I like my work. But I love spending more time with Arman too.
I guess my mind is scattered again! But there is a season for every thing. This season is for me to be in Houston, or didn't I choose to be here?

The Religon of Love

"Self-righteousness is a disease of religion". [Living presence by Kabir Edmund Helminski]
I am wondering. I am contemplating ...

Happy Eid

Happy Eid every one! It is a little nostalgic the first day after the fasting month, but there is a sense of accomplishment and God willing enlightenment with it which I adore.

I had my first meeting with my new manager today. I was going there and I had this betrayal feeling I had the day I went to a dentist who was neither of my parents. But by the end of the meeting I had a much better feeling. This new manager seems also like a very good mentor, and he knows what he is doing, direct to the point. I am glad and grateful we had this meeting.

There is this saying of "it is not personal, it is business" which I cannot digest. After all we are human beings and whatever we do is personal. The corporate, the business, is only a means through which we show our personality and hopefully grow to be a better person. I think believing in this slang is similar to believing in "it is ego, it is not morale".

a letter from 20 years ago

It is more than twenty years that I can write!
I read a letter, a piece of writing. It was written by me. I had written it twenty years ago and had read it in the public of my family: aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandparents. I read it again today and I thought I was reading another person's writing.
In the letter I had explained that we had fled our cities to a safe place with the whole family. I had impressed how joyful it was to be with all the loved ones and how painful it was for me to think of other people who had not the luxury of a shelter like I had. I was not even 10 years old when I wrote the letter but I felt the ache even now when I read it. When I read what I had written as if reading another person's writing!

She

She sits on a bench. There are autumn leaves all over the ground. A chilly breeze caresses her hair and blends with her sigh. Her eyes are melting with sorrow. Glimpses of tears at the edge of her eyes become obvious once in a while, tears that never fall down her chick but are welled in her heart.
She looks at the sky. It is blue, autumnal blue.
She gets up the bench and walks to the tall tree in front of her. Puts her two hands on the trunk of the tree. A narrow tall tree, live under her fingers. She follows the tall trunk with her eyes to the sky and roots her feet in the earth. Her tears in her heart becomes the moist inside the branches. The tree is alive. She is alive. That is all that matters. She is.

Restructuring

It has been lovely hearing from concerned friends about my new situation at work. Things are starting to get some form. Our group is restructured with a new manager, and more changes is inevitable.

It was great hearing from my ex-manager after he left that he believed in my abilities to even take leadership role in conducting the tasks, although I am not planning to do so. And it was great revisiting the fact that despite the occasional hardships we had at work we had built a constructive working relationship through which we could conduct efficiently and effectively. I appreciate his mentoring me; like I never forget my experience with the kindest boss I ever had whom I worked with at Canspec.

I have started reviewing some vocabulary work. It is a very nice experience for me, a different hobby, and fun to bring the dusty words from the back of my mind in my daily activities. After all it is words we use to communicate. The thought evolves into words to be told.

Dream

There were three friends at our place. We were having something, may be dinner. One of them was playing guitar. And then another friend called, asked if he could join us and I was very happy to find him wanting to spend a lonely night with us.
Did I tell you that I have missed my old friends?

7 days of work

I have been trying to accept the flow of life and not to impose any resistance to it. I am trying to be.

There is nothing permanent in this life.

The impermanent earthly life includes my manager who resigned a couple days ago. I am just observing the dust after his resignation, the people, the flow of life which seems disturbed profoundly. I accepted his departure, and now I accept the people even if their behavior is inappropriate. At the same time I am telling the truth. And I am confessing it has been a challenge for me so far, I am tired. Yet I am going to work tomorrow.

A Sunday at Work

I was driving to work early this morning. It was foggy. There were only a few cars on the road. I could not tell if they were also going to work, or were driving to meet a loved one, or to reunite with nature, hiking on the neighboring hills. In any case it was a unique drive.
May be though I wished I was driving to another destination.
I had a call from a loved one. It was sweet.