Lab memoirs (?)

I try to avoid turning here to a lab memoirs and it's worked only via the not writing approach so far. I guess after a while when I feel more settled, I can see the whole me and not only me at the lab. Or maybe I let it go and start writing about my work, after all this chapter is new and truly exciting.
PS: Painting is amusing

To catch up

The second weekend after starting my work and I don't know from where I should start. I've been learning various techniques. I need to know the basic experimental and theoretical aspects of my own research. I'm expected to be creative with new suggestions and ideas and I'm overwhelmed with loads of skills I need to acquire and things I should learn. Every night I sleep so quickly or almost faint. People ask me how are you? I say I'm great and I literally mean that. I have my own concerns though, can I meet all the requirements that I'm tilted to accomplish?

And I report!

Next week my work will start. My research topic + my future boss + knowing almost all my lab-mates were enough of the reasons to make my mind on joining the lab and at the time I thought: "No shocking surprises perhaps". I hope if I was not totally right I'd be able to deal and think like a grown up confident person.
And one lesson from the last two years would be getting involved in more than one activity. I'm finally going to take a painting course once a week, it's time I think (need).

Photo for fun

Now that I look it gets more clear that we could be good friends! ;D

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.

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!!

High speed + bad luck

Yesterday, we went kart racing, I had an accident and now here I am laying down with a broken ankle, a few bruises in different places and my right leg is in a plaster cast. I'm just happy nothing worse happened.

New beginning

looking at the frequency of my previous posts I realize why it's a bit challenging to write again. Different things are on top of my head and it takes time to write on one for a start. To say in a nutshell, I'm happy! It's as the same as the feeling I had when I passed summer school and got permitted 2 years ago only a month and half after our arrival to Holland. I was well aware of the fact that it was only the beginning and I had a lot to do for the following two years. I'm not gonna lie to you, the first year and its all difficulties many times made me forget the sweetness of that starting point. The fear of not being good at the area I entered, the fear of running with no promise to reach and I did not believe it was only the journey that mattered. I needed a sign to make sure I made a right decision, that I was smart enough and not stupid. I needed to know I was making a progress and I knew that urge, that need to making sure partly was coming from my not very patient personality so I would blame that personality every now and then as well.
Last Tuesday and Wednesday I was standing talking to my current and future supervisors hearing their comments on what I did and thinking to myself it was worth it but I have the very same feeling that I had when I passed summer school; happy while I certainly know that it's only another beginning. Hope this time I'll be patient and as kind as the man who's been walking side by side me all these years ... to myself.

Memory and nothing more!

My memory is not as cooperative as used to be or maybe the problem is my concentration I don't know, but something has been working like a clock as long as I can remember: my visual memory. If I see you once tomorrow I'll remember your face years after if I see you again. I've been sometimes thinking what this could be good for, the answer? Nothing! And the funny thing is that I'm going to work in a lab with a major focus on the mechanism of memory for a year after my graduation.

Reminder

LIGHT & RESPECT

One day

One day I'll pick what I dropped when I was a little girl. I'll start painting on a paper with drawing pencils or on a really big canvas and I'll do that with all the colors that I admire.
One day I'll start reading the poems that I liked and I forgot, the ones that I started and never finished and the ones that I never started.

List to live

Think longer, quicker and twice before you talk,
You don't have to satisfy every body,
Look at what you've achieved when you've started or are getting started to question what you did and please! Don't expect people to do so when they're looking at you,
Take yourself and life less seriously,
Ask questions that start with "why" less than now,
Ask questions that start with "why" more than now,
You don't have to satisfy every body,
Satisfy those whom you should and you can recognize them, do it in its own time/quicker,
Be organized,
Have fun!

Good stories for good kids

Only by looking at one of the photos of the books titled "Good stories for good kids" I could feel one summer day that I had lay down on the carpet of our guest room at my parents' place reading one of the books.
I was happy that I had a book with pink cover beside the very colorful covers of the collection. I liked that they came with different colors, maybe one of the reasons was the colors could a little bit compensate for black and white pages of the books then.
Today, I could see a little girl who believed that kids and stories both were good, remembered that little girl once again, she's all grown up now...deep inside she secretly wishes to be a good little kid.

The author passed away today.

Memory

I remember some years ago it was the anniversary of that terrible crackdown of Tehran university's students. Like the previous years we held a gathering in memory of the students who were killed inside the university. As always there were riot police lined up outside in the streets watching carefully every thing around. People were walking or standing curiously outside the university. I came out of the university and started to look around walking close to the riot police back and forth. After a while, one of the police officers told me not in a very polite way more like a threat that: " I've been watching you, if you walk through here one more time don't be surprised if something bad happens to you". I looked at him with a look of a very surprised person and told him: "Sir, you need to examine your eyes, you may need to wear glasses, I just arrived here!" and I kept going away. That was the end of my wandering on that day. This recent happening in Iran made me remember and think of some of my old memories. I wonder if I were in the streets of Tehran these days, would I have a chance to give some medical advice before getting beaten up by the police or not.

Photo

And that's how I laughed when I was little! ;)
Thanks to my mom that sent this to me.

Writing

Two days from now will be 2 years since I started writing in this blog. I cannot really say that it passed so fast that I did not feel it. A lot happened during this time, we left Iran almost 3 years ago to Libya and after a while I started writing in here. It's not exactly as personal as I used to write in notebooks, with a different flavor and not even with the same language as it used be for years. I used to write in notebooks that I still carry wherever I go as if they are my babies. Every note of those notebooks is the story of who I was, my concerns and the old me. Writing has always been a very important part of my life. I survived through many things with the help of seeing myself in words. I did not do the best but I did what I really could do and that writing helped me big time to do so. Now that I look back I see I stopped collecting very personal notes long time ago. I have my special someone to listen to my scattered words. I need to have new notebooks, to see my-very-self in words and to share my little babies with my someone. He wouldn't mind adopting them, I know...

Announcment

Pushover is what it is...

....

I'm mad, I'm literally and specifically mad. I'm mad when I still don't know when I should NOT compromise and yet I do because I think it's better to be good than to be right and the result ironically is not feeling good but only being stupid! I hate it when I see unfairness and I don't say anything because I don't want to be one of those seeking aggressively for their rights because then I would feel I'm a pushy unkind person and not descent, nice and collaborative but I feel nothing then but stupid.
I cannot learn my lesson, seems it's mentally impossible for me.

Sorry for this post, I have something nice to write, will do it next time.

I know...

These days I'm taking a break from exams and am more focusing on the project related works. I have this feeling that I should take a deep breath for the next diving which is going to be months of classes and frequent exams before I can talk about having a break again.
On my way from where I study, there is a constant review of what or how I've been doing since starting my program and I don't feel great when the review reaches its ending point which would be the time when I reach my destination.
I enjoy what I've been learning so far and to people around me and my works I've been doing just fine but I myself know well that I should be faster and smart to keep up the progress.
I've been unforgiving to my mistakes and I'm aware that I should not have.
In fact, I can give a perfectly fair lecture to myself on how friendly I should be with myself...I do that, I hear myself, I agree with me and I get back to mood of a teacher not long after and let me tell you she's not that friendly.

This Room

I like coming to this page and most of the time I've been trying to write myself in a way that as time passes and I get back to these posts, I can see the old days or that very moment which I was typing all these words through my at-the- time- younger- eyes-and- fingers all over again.
There is not much left to start my first semester and also the research project at university and I know me... My mind would be busy learning so many new information and I'm guessing I will miss writing in here, unless I turn to a really really organized person with an organized mind which I've been neither of them so far. So, where would I meet my younger eyes and fingers after passing the next 2 years is the question that I hope the answer of that would be "right here" ;).