Alone night trip to mountain

It's sharp 9 in the pm. I'm going to do something different from routines. Going to calm mountains in the night alone without anything, just with my cellphone(to take some photos) and a pocket of cigarettes. Anything may happen to me, maybe I didn't come back because there are lots of threats at this time on the dark mountains, bad guys or maybe I became a greasy bit of a wolf or crazy wild dog. That's also thunder storming, maybe one of that lightnings killed me. BUT this is not the passion of a depressed one who is thinking on to commit a suicide. I just want to challenge myself, maybe I found what's I'm looking for on my life in the dark mountain.
I'm going to come back at 12, and then I will write what's happened to me with the photos.
Until that...
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An awkward silence in the mountain

I’m back at 11:30, everything was well and actually there was no threat. I’m just feeling fresh with a lot of energy and also a stuffed head! because of the climate. The only bad thing was the heavy storm, especially at the peak.
On the way of mountain, there are two railways and after that there is a hill which leads to the city ring road. Near the hill I noticed that some junkies are in action along a flame. I just passed them and arrived the mountain. On the mount I followed the blind roads, passed one mount after another. Finally I reached the sixth peak, where it was the highest spot in the area and there was no higher mount in the radius of one kilometer. At first, I expected to see guys especially junkies on the way, but after climbing two months, I was sure that there is no one on the month but me, actually there was no one as crazy as me to do that! And there was amazing bits of time there, an awkward silence in the mount with the only sound of wind reverberating through the stones and the beautiful view of the city at night from the mountain.
I really enjoyed sitting for some moments there on rocks below the moonlight which was shining faintly behind the clouds and thinking lonely for myself.
On the way back I lost the blind road for a while and I had to go through the rocks and stones in darkness, and the bad point to me was that I didn’t have sneakers to run easily on slopes. I need to buy new shoes tomorrow.

Photographs:

A view of the city from the mountain


My flag at the highest point of the mount peak!


A view of the city ring road on the way back.

Feeds for practicing mnemonics

If you are new to the term “mnemonics”, in shorthand, mnemonic is a device, such as a formula or rhyme, used as an aid in remembering. You may have used this many times in school or college without even hearing the term, but the fact is that mnemonics is a good and reliable memory aid, people who have super-power memories they all have use of a kind of mnemonics. According to wikipedia “Mnemonics rely not only on repetition to remember facts, but also on associations between easy-to-remember information and to be remembered lists of data, based on the principle that the human mind much more easily remembers data attached to spatial, personal, or otherwise meaningful information than that occurring in meaningless sequences.”
If you are a newbie in mnemonics (like me) you need a lot of feeds everyday to get through. The best feed for practicing mnemonics in first levels is the random list of items. I searched on the net for these lists and navigated through several websites, but I was unable to find a becoming source; so I came up with a new way using Google Sets and Shuffler tool to generate unlimited lists of different items. Suppose that you want to generate a list, containing names of animals, vehicles, foods, clothes, countries, shapes and music instruments. First you need to go to Google Sets and create sets of items from animals, vehicles, foods, clothes, countries and shapes. Then just copy and paste sets from your browser window to shuffler tool and click the “Shuffle Items”. That’s it! You have the long list in less than two minutes. I strongly recommend that you do not try to make the lists just using your mind, because words coming from your mind are usually words that your mind considers several times everyday and they are very common words including objects around you and this is not a good challenge. That’s why it’s strongly recommended to always use an external source to make lists of items for practicing mnemonics.
Mnemonics are brain boosters, consider memorizing list of items as exercises to your brain and a good challenge. While physical exercises develop muscular strength and agility, mental exercises develop your brain performance. Don’t let neurons being idle! Strength and use up these workhorses in right way and continue smoking!
By the way, I’ve memorized two lists of fifty items today, who wants to challenge me?

What’s up with me? I love more bandwidth!

Downloader loves more bandwidth!

OK guys! My new job is downloading. I’ve called my new office “My Download Center”! Cause I usually keep trying to make the computers do better downloading from the net. Optimizing TCP/IP and network settings to reach the best performance of downloading, prioritize and scheduling downloads are needed to use up 100% of total 24x7 network bandwidth. I’m not a download greedy but it’s a part of my business to have need to large amount of data from the world’s most recent academic publishers. I’m going to feed Iranian people(especially higher education students) with worthful information and it seems to be a very profitable business as I see they are thirst of new information. To do the best in business, my co-workers will join me in two months.

An screenshot of my computer desktop while downloading

Back to English Classes at Pishro
I’m back to English classes at Pishro language academy after near two months. The classes are good and funny and I learn a lot every session though my level of English seems to be much better than the rest of class. The good point is that the teachers (Mrs. Ehsanzadeh / Mr. Moosazadeh) let me more to talk.
The English classes are very considerable in this blog and even in my life since they were as my starting point to write in English and this blogging. When my previous term teacher miss Hadjilou asked us to bring a writing each session, it gave me more confidence to do that in a broader area and publish my writings on internet. She was a very good, honorable teacher, thanks to him.
Please excuse my bad English, I’m still learning.

Nokia N72 was supposed to bring new life!
After getting rid of that tiny SE k310, I arranged to get a new Nokia N72 to more digitalize my life. But after just a few days, it turned to be the most amazing portable game console I’ve ever had. There are hundreds of games on my phone and I’m still involved to make better records and discover new levels. LOL.

At the end of this post, I'd like to appreciate Blogs by Iranians and Jerusalem Post newspaper for linking my weblog.

Homecast radio broadcasts world radio stations

Experts say that if you want to improve yourself in a matter in a short time, it’s better to surround yourself with that stuff. English is one of those matters to me nowadays, so I try to surround myself with English as much as possible in any way from air, earth, environment, radio waves and etc.
Yesterday when I was relaxing in my spare time listening to local radio with my small mp3 player, I found that there isn’t any reason to restrict myself to that boring radio stations or a few song tracks in my player memory. Then I thought about thousands of radio stations through world wide currently streaming on the internet.
With a few small changes to an old 10$ portable-sound headphone, I converted it to a short range FM radio transmitter, just setting its frequency to standard FM radio range and connecting it to my PCs audio output. . The results are wonderful; I have world radio stations broadcasting to my home with the range of near 100 meters, I can tune my player or home stereo to listen to favorite English stations in the home range. In this way my ADSL connection will be used to access the world radio stations and will not idle while I’m not working with the computer.
Although most of the radio stations are devoted to music, there are too many great English news and talk show stations that I haven’t discovered them yet; but currently my favorite ones are V.O.A, Air America, NPR and a little CNN.
My next step is to share the internet connection with mobile devices via Bluetooth, but unfortunately my damned K310i cell phone doesn’t have Bluetooth!

Beautiful Yalda is falling out my time

Tonight is a special one because of a special guest; Yalda night has brought joy and happiness to Iranian homes. Yalda is the longest night of the year that Iranian people celebrates it together with happiness and traditional customs from ancient. However I’m not going to write about Yalda (Shabe Chelle in casual language) as you can find much about that by just a googling on it, but in addition, just know that Yalda is also a girl’s name in Persian. I don’t know who made all the beautiful things feminine or putted all the beautiful names to girls. [They were instinctively right!]
At 7 pm in Yalda night, my sister called me:
Sister: We are in grandpa’s home, come here, we are waiting for you.
Me: I’m in short of time, you know, I’ve already told you that I don’t go anywhere.
Sister: Grandpa and Grandma are asking about you, they’re gonna to be unhappy if you don’t come. Come for dinner and go back early.
Me: Give my deep apologizes to them and explain my situation. I would lose in my exams if I miss these hours.
Sister: How can you tell this while you were asleep all the morning!?
Me: I was asleep all the morning because I stayed up all the night studying. Now I’m in the mood of studying and I want to keep it. I’ll go home when I was tired, maybe at midnight. So, tell me, do you know what is the limit of an n-gon when n approaches infinity?
Sister: I USED TO KNOW, BE HERE IN 30 MINUTES OR….
Me: YES MUM.
Customs are very good, but sometimes they come in awkwardly, especially when you can not avoid them. Some customs are very strong here, like Yalda and holiday of Nowrooz. I have never could benefit these times to do something productive because if you try to do you have to swim against the river flow.
Lets come back again to Yalda, one of the customs is to eat some watermelons in this night, it’s used to believe that if you eat watermelon in Yalda, you don’t get thirsty in next summer, so still people buy and eat Yaldamelons. Look what message one of my friends sent me: “You are so handsome, you are so attractive. This is your watermelon for Yalda!!”
If you havn’t got it, just consider the old Persian proverb “Putting watermelon to somebody’s armpit (Hendevane zire baghale kasi gozashtan)”. You put watermelon to somebody’s armpit when you cheat or lie him.
The oldest Yalda I can remember comes back to when I was 5 years old. I remember when my mother told me it’s the time to go to bed, I replied: “Mother, tonight is the longest one, we have too much time tonight enough to stay up more.” I used to believe that the night is as long as a week or maybe a month! And when my mother told me that it may be longer just for a minute, I thought foolish.
It would be great if the Yalda could be the night that I could study same as I study in a week or month if it cannot be as long as a week or month!

Independent Ahmad: Under Pressure

What I am feeling like these days can be best described by this picture:

Yes, that’s me. But of course there are much more burden on me. It is killing me. It is hard to me to stand this massive burden any more. But I think I should keep them on me or lose all of them. I don’t want to lose all of them because they are too worthful to me and are the only things I have got in my life.

Also this picture is very descriptive about me.

I have to read all of these papers bud I don’t know how and from which one should I start.

I sometimes have to do something similar to this:

These days I feel stressed out, full of anxiety and worry. Especially when thinking about future in nights when I’m not doing something. But I’m funny, hopeful and do not take things so hard. I do my best(worst) everyday.
Something else: kill you Araki guys. If I don’t leave this hell city shortly, I’m going to kill myself.

Independent Ahmad: Life is changing

I do not like to write too much about myself, as I think you do not like read such things too much. But I feel I need to write somewhat about what is going on with me. It makes me peaceful.
I’m going on to make a big difference in my life and leaving my father’s house in two months after 21 years living with them. Hmmm… really amazing, total independence by living by myself. I’m really looking forward for that day.
From now on I’ll keep myself busy with studying. I have some important and vital examinations in January. I’m looking at them as barriers because they always been as impediments in my mind and life whenever I had to make up my mind for an important change in life. I just decided to face the problems and dominate them. So I have to study at least 12 hours each day in two coming months. I’ll also have a little time everyday to spend on the net as I used to have. And the same for my English learning, because the time is limited and I’m doubtful about participating to the class for the next term but I’ll probably do it in spite of the fact that I’ll don’t have to work in home for that.
Beside the fact that studying hard like this for examinations causes missing of very things but I think it saves the time, because you have to restrict yourself in a specific template and give up some awkward habits such as spending much for leisure and unnecessary activities. It also makes you more productive as you discover the worthfulness of time. In other hands I really enjoy studying materials such as mathematics, geometry and logics as they really cause your mind working and thinking deeply and take you to challenges.
That’s why I would like to have exams everyday to stay productive.

Independent Ahmad: feeling sad is not a sin

Tonight is a cold one, really cold. Frosty and blue at 10:45. I brought myself home as fast as possible after language class finished at 7:30. today my cell phone rung more than everyday. It was showing 15 missed calls since I haven’t like to answer a call today. As I stepped home, it rung once more and I decided to answer; Mrs. Khalaj, are you still looking for an office? I replied: thank you, but I’m not on a budget right now.
I hated being busy, being busy is seductive. It grabs you most of the fun. That’s why I always was being tried to be independent in my life. I sacrificed everything for being independent, my work, my school, my time, my future and even my life. I didn’t get anything major, but I can make up my mind to travel to north or south of the country at the moment.
I’m really feeling sad, something is killing me. Duality, I always was being wrestling with dualities in my life, duality in everything, beliefs, chores, choosing people, jobs, ways and etc but I always used to try missing nothing.
I’m a sad one, because I have tasted the flavor of a deep failure once more in my life. Several failures in things which are tied to your being, one after another, in years; you feel the paradise as a hell, maybe Tartarus.
Yesterday I was in Tehran. Showing up in a friendly meeting with my friends who mostly been website owners. The meeting was holden on to talk about problems and issues about Iranian websites and to take a unique approach to handle hard situations. After the meeting, I stayed behind with some of my colleague friends and had some chats. I resigned from all of my positions and affairs. I told them that I’ll be very busy in coming year and my life is changed as I applied for some abroad universities.
But there isn’t so much chance for a man like me who lives on a shoestring to do something major in short time but I have hopes.
It is crystal clear to me for what to do. But I’m doing nothing or at least the right thing and this is what annoying me.

This blog is not just belonged to class activities as it did. The language classes are almost finished and we are approaching to the end of the term. It was my second term studying English at Pishro Language Academy and also the best one. I feel massive improvements in my English but not still content with it at all. After this term I don’t like to stay in my home city Arak any more and loving to go abroad.
From now on, the posts titled with “Independent Ahmad” are about myself. I call my new personality and attitude “Independent Ahmad” which is the third Ahmad. The first Ahmad died after 18 years living and the second one died after 2 years at age 21. Now the third Ahmad is formed since three months ago and still improving.

The leaning tower of Pisa

Language Class Activity 5

I chose the leaning tower of Pisa to write about. What a good choice, since it caused me to know everything about Pisa, Italy. I wish someday to be there.

The leaning tower of Pisa is one of the glittering masterworks of Romanesque style architecture in Europe. The tower is originally a campanile adjacent to three buildings, but its bell never rung. During the construction of the structure an unexpected problem caused it to stretch for more than 200 years with some long-term interruptions/halts. It started to sink into the soft soil from one side and the tower began to tilt more and more every year. It is said that the lean to be increasing at a rate of about 1mm per year and at its summit it was about 5 meters tilts from the vertical.
Although the structure is glorious, but it is mostly renowned for its marked tilt. It is known to the most of the people in the world as a leaning tower and maybe it’s tended to be obscure the fact that it is also a magnificent Romanesque style architecture. In the past it was widely believed that the inclination of the Tower was part of the project ever since it’s beginning, but now we know that it is not so.
The eight story round tower is 55 meters tall consisting of a ground floor and six additional stairs with open galleries with round arches supported on columns. At the top of the tower there is the bell chamber which is somewhat smaller in diameter to other stories. 294 spiral staircases are leading to the bell chamber. The famous physicist Galileo did his experiments about gravity and relative speed of falling objects from this chamber. The exterior is adorned by fine marbles and excellent carved work. The doorway which is especially ornate, featured with grotesque carving of animals.
In a process of conservation in 1992 the tower closed to the public. City officials have initiated a bold plan to attempt to counter the lean of the structure and prevent the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling with very advanced methodologies.

List of resources:
Encarta Encyclopedia
CNN Travel
Pisa.it

Friends forever

Language Class Activity 4

Today class activity is a short story. Writing this story took me more than 4 hours. I hadn't ever to write a story and this is the first one. I have tried my best, hope you enjoy it.

It was the dawn of the fall, the first day of school at the most beautiful school of the city. The first year students were coming to school with their parents, some were happy, some were amazed and some were crying while trying to not separate from their parents. But between the mass of the students there were three students which later, this day became their first day of their life-long friendship relation. Majid, Said and Ashkan were the students of class C grade one.
One day Majid noticed that Said and Ashkan are contesting outside of the school, because Ashkan was thinking that Said inkied his notebook. Majid tried to make peace between them and this adventure was as a starting point of their deep friendship.
After finishing the years in elementary school, they went to the talent’s school, where they were the most successful students and also the closest students in the school. Finally, the years of high school were elapsed and it was the day of graduation. They were feeling astonished, one side there were feeling happy because of their graduation ceremony and on the other side, they were feeling grief when recalling the happy days they had been spent together in the school which were finished.
After ceremony finished, they decided to have their last walk in the beautiful, green campus of the school. But this time unlike always, they had a feel of amazement. Said was telling nothing, and just had to stare everywhere his eyes turn, resembling if the point by point of the corpus is familiar to him. Majid broke the silence and said: I’m thinking to the future like you, a future which everything can be possible to happen. It may be each one of us has to choose a different way, completely different from the others. It may be each one of us has to go to a far off point in the world and couldn’t have chance to meet each other for the years.
Ashkan suddenly interrupted Majid and said: Let’s have a pledge in this beautiful corpus filled with lots of unforgettable memories to stay friends forever. Said continued: good idea, ever it is worthy if we set aside a specific day of year to our friendship, so all ever at anywhere, at that day we would have an appointment to meet each other.
Ashkan warmly pleased with this proposal and said: wonderful, this way we never forget each other.
Said suddenly noticed to Majid, which was staring at a point, thinking hardly. “What do you think of that Majid?” asked Said.
Majid suddenly shocked, looks like waking up from a heavy profound sleep. He mumbled: you know…, good idea…, that’s right but…, but you know… in my viewpoint it’s not necessary to meet each other every year, we can stay friends from afar. Even it is not at all related to being far or not. Saying “being far, being close”. Just our hearts should be close to. Tell me, how many years do you think we can stay friends from afar?
Said said: as deeper of our friendship as longer we stay friends. Forever, I’m sure, Ashkan shouted.
Three friends fell into thinking for a few moments, after a while Majid broke into unexpectedly and said: “How do you think if we give it a try?” after gazing for some moments, Majid and Said shook their hands as a sign of confirmation.
Majid continued: “How about 20 years?”
“20 years later, at this day, at this time and at this place.” Ashkan confirmed.
*****
Twenty years spent and three friends as they were vowed, kept afar from each other on their own way. It was the appointment day; they were keeping counting seconds to that moment from months ago, when they first looked each other, teardrops were pouring from their eyes. It was a wonderful, indescribable feeling that was dominating them. They were not able to believe that they are the same friends as 20 years ago. They were feeling full of pride and delighting.
Now Majid was one of the best university professors at Harvard, Said was a co-founder and manager of a big communication company and Ashkan was an outstanding chemist.
Three friends were in the campus, resting on the trees which were reminders of their years at school.
Ashkan said: we were not away from each other over these years, I hadn’t a feel of missing you even for a moment, but I always had keeping a passion to meet you again.
Said continued: I beholden all of my prosperities to this friendship. Over these years, everything that I was achieving and each stair I was gaining, you unexpectedly were resembling to me and it always was giving me motivations.
Majid said: we are friends forever; an experience of these years showed us that while our hearts are close, nothing can make us divided. We each other went to a separate way and maybe if we were just three strangers who incidentally came together, we couldn’t find any similar points to keep us together. But our hearts are close and we will stay together forever.