مناجات

پروردگارا، به تو پناه می آورم از نفسی که سیر نمی شود، از دلی که خاشع نمی گردد، از دانشی که سود نمی دهد، از نمازی که بالا نمی رود و از دعائی که به اچابت نرسد...

Happy birthday to my love!

My terrific wonderful special husband, you mean a world to me.Thank you for all you are doing for me , and thank God for giving you to me on such a special day.
Happy birthday!

I was thinking...

Yesterday I was thinking: last year at these days, my mind was just filled with one issue: Parsa's little surgery (that all the boys pass ,at least in Iran!)! oh.. there were also some other important issues: How many times did he asked for milk today? When was his last colic attack? How many times did he wake up during the night? Is everything ok? Does he feel cold in his room? Am I a good mother?...........

and now..!!!!!!!!!! where am I standing now? and what are my concerns right now?!!!

P.S: All of you who are expecting your babies, will feel like me just in a year!

Why I adore mother Thresa

I love this prayer from this great woman.Just wanted to share it with you:
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centred; forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ultierior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough; give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.

I feel sad!

When you are thousand miles far from home, when nobody feels any obligation and is free to choose you or not (Because you are too far to blame them!) , when there is 12 hours jet lag, and different weekends, and you are unavailable most of the day, you can easily diffrentiate between the real friends and too busy! ones.
I don't know how God makes some people so nice; they know how great you may feel by hearing their kind voices through the phone or reading their encouraging messages in your mailbox, although, they have never been in a similar situation.
These are the lessons I'm learning gradualy from this journey. However, facing the realities I never doubt in them before, seems to be the most difficut part.Sometimes we lie to ourselves about the quality of a relationship, but we're not ready to change it.Why we spend several hours for choosing our clothing, furniture, foods,..., but not the people we communicate with them? Why we don't respect ourselves by avoiding people who make us feel bad about ourselves?Or Why have we used to see people, spend several hours with them, and just restricting ourselves to the common greetings; if someone doesn't like to know what are you doing in your life, or how do you feel about it, why we are wasting our times this much? ( However i beleive in that sometimes we can be the one who starts a good relationship)
Even if we are afraid of getting alone, we already are! with these types of relationships!

Look at my beautiful son!

Our home is very close to the Golden Gate Park.Father and son often spend a nice time there together.Parsa would be proud of you, my dear Mahmoud, for being so attentive about him.

A piece of paper I'll need in future

During the last weeks before leaving Iran, I had a hard time challenging with myself.I was questioning everything, and I'd lost my confidence about our decision. In one of the darkest days, my mother gave me a piece of paper she chose from an old calendar for me.It meant a world to me at that time, specially because she gave it to me while she was extremely worried about our travel, and I hadn't seen her this sad before.

Now, I look at it everyday before leaving home.Here it comes:

One day Parsa will ask me: why did we come here? and, I will need this piece of paper for reasoning.

Thank you Maman, for always knowing what I need before myself.

My adventures at Kalmanovitz library!

If you'll come to study abroad, please remember the followings regarding the library:

1- You can burrow the journals and bring them home, so don't carry 7 heavy volumes on your hands to the copy room!

2-If you even decided to take copies of them, please remember there is always a trolly to carry them, don't carry them yourself!

3- Please notice that there is not an old kind man who does the copy for you in price of 2.5 cents, the price is much higher , and of course! plus taxes! so please re-evaluate the journal to see do you realy! still want the article? Also you should copy them yourself. Don't surprise everyone by trying to put the journals back in their shelves, you should just leave them in the copy room.


4- You can burrow up to 24 books for a month, so don't hurt yourself with thinking and choosing!

5- If you found out that a book is checked out, don't forget about the book: you can ask the librarian to hold the circulation and the person can't make a renewal!

6- Don't try to check email or update your weblog on the library's computer, it's planned just for search, so you will hear an awful beep!

7-After a general confusion in the library, don't move so quickly towards th exit door, the device beeps and you should prove you haven't taken anything!

Surge

Surge is the name of our building: our lab is also located inside it.When I first met there, at the top of the hill, sourrended by eucalyptus trees, I was wondering how does it taste to work in such a beautiful forest, and it's really wonderful. Our professor prefered to stay here, while the whole university labs were transfering to the official buidings at another side of the city.It realy helps, when you have the chance of breathing in fresh air and nurturing your mind with beautiful scenec of the nature, specially at the middle of hard work in lab.

I couldn't imagine that I will be this much busy just in a month! I'm working on a paper and also I have many things to do in lab.(But don't worry, I have enough time for all of my friends!!!)

An interesting point about our lab is that all of us are asian, except my professor.We have 2 chineese PhDs, which are lab supervisors; the kind,funny and lovely secretary from Philipines and 2 other fellows.

It's also intersting that here everyone works hard; you can't even let yourself check emails during work hours, and I don't know how, but you can't waste your time anyway.This is the first period of my life in which, when I want to go back home, I just feel I've done enough! everything is ready for you for acting 100% of your potential, and there is no excuse! Automatically you will be ommited from the system if you don't work enough.

Here, I can actually see how an invention comes out to the world: most of the time there are clients, mostly top producers,who want the lab to test their newly developed products, and you can't imagine how exciting it is to be the first one to know about it , rather than seeing it in the patent website after years! It's also fantastic when you meet somebody from US patents office who has come to qualify your professor's invention!

Beleive it or not, all these things happen in this small building!

We are too busy.why?

During this special period of my life, I'm thinking about many things.I'm trying to feel the moments deeply, and figure out how my life is being affected by the changes around me.

Sometimes, I need an ear to hear, specially a friend's one! I try to feel sorry about missing them here;but suddenly I remember that even in Iran I was almost missing them!
It was enough just to think about them one by one and imagine how busy they are! some with the baby, some with job, some with householding, some with classes, some with cooking!, and some with nothing!but it's a routine to say: oh...sorry I was too busy to call you!

Honestly, I was really annoyed, and then hurt, and finally there were many times that I was really dissapointed.

(Maybe, there are some friends who have the same feeling about me, and that could be true!)

The only positive side of the issue for me is that most of the time I don't feel too homesick!the days of loneliness have made me strong!

Anyways, I just wanted to triger a re-think about how we manage our days of lives, with/without thinking about the priorities,with/without thinking about our decision of how to live and considering how it can affect everyone's life.

Feeling indifferent about our environment is becoming a part of us.Let's resist it.