Destined to be Silent

Sometimes, I miss looking at my two syllable name written in Farsi letters. Funny, seems it has a different character when it's written in English letters but not a familiar one when others assume two of its letters - each belonging to one syllable -aren't necessary to pronounce so they forget to take them into account in writing as well. The second syllable has the same meaning and pronunciation as a word in Dutch, an interesting coincident which helps one of the forgotten letters come back to the vocal life but still the other letter stays silent ;-)

Reality

"... of the major disadvantages of reality: from up close, it looks very different from any "picture", a difference which no theory can explain".
-Bertrand Russel from Logicomix
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I realize why I have this great tendency to live in my imagination sometimes.

The Scientist

Francis Crick was of two scientists who discovered the structure of the DNA molecule. The cognitive psychologist Vilayanur Ramachandran, a friend and colleague of Crick's, described him the last time they talked only three weeks prior to his death:
"I visited him in his home in La Jolla. He was eighty-eight, had terminal cancer, was in pain, and was on chemotherapy; yet he had obviously been working away nonstop on his latest project. His very large desk- occupying half of the room- was covered by articles, correspondence, envelops, recent issues of Nature, a laptop (despite his dislike of computers), and recent books in neuroanatomy. During the whole two hours that I was there, there was no mention of his illness- only a flight of ideas on the neural basis of consciousness..." He was still correcting his last paper on his way to the hospital a few hours before he died, on July 28, 2004.
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Just noticed tomorrow will be the 6-years anniversary of his death!

Not for Granted

Well, it's been one month since my accident, and I've been able to move inside home with the help of a wheelchair and less often by my crutches since my other leg also had a little injury so it's not strong enough to bear my little steps. The pain is fading away day by day and I must be able to walk in two weeks. Except for the x-rays I've been staying at home most of the times trying to spend days as if I am in a vacation. And like always you start to appreciate something when you do not have it anymore. In my case loosing my freedom of mobility is going to last only for a short while but it's been warning me of the time that there will be no way to take back something that you lost for good and you had always taken that for granted.

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction | Video on TED.com

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction | Video on TED.com

So I have a brain... Pheww ;-)

I participated fMRI as a subject for a project and now I received my brain image (from the side) today.
I cannot help looking at its parts thinking God this defines the whole me!!

I miss home

We used to live in an old small apartment in the center of Tehran, on the forth floor with water pumping problem. In different periods of the apartment's life different residents including us came out with different solutions to fix the problem but none worked completely.
The problem was compensated for the lively atmosphere of the street it was located, the fact that it was so close to Tehran university and the book stores nearby, unforgettable memories from the past the time I was very young and the decoration of the place itself with a lot of thoughts that we put into it to make it cozy which it was and the bonus that it was for free.
I left the place that early morning to Libya with tearful eyes knowing that I would miss living there and that was true...

What is risk?

When I was in elementary school I heard a story once about one of the high school students in my hometown. The story always amazed me for two reasons; first for the student himself and what he dared to do and second for the reaction of the teacher whom I though should have been a bright person.
Apparently, it was the exam season and in the essay exam the subject was: "what is risk?" Our story's student wrote at the beginning of his paper: "Risk means..." And then he delivered back his paper just like that.
He got the full score at the end.