Amazing pictures of amazing stuff
Check out this blog. Each post has images of an interesting thing. Some of them are amazing.
Here are a few of them:
Frozen Wave Phenomenon on Lake Huron
Have you ever seen a frozen sea? Besides “Day after tommorow” movie?
Languages and relationships
A friend of mine, a Canadian guy who has recently broken up with his Persian girlfriend, came to me today and asked me to translate a Persian sentence that had come to his mind from nowhere. He asked:” What does “doostet daram” mean?” I told him that it means “I love you.” He didn’t really tell me how he knew that sentence, but I can imagine that his girlfriend might have said it to him so many times that it is now stuck in his mind forever. How romantic!!
I have always been fascinated by the couples that are not from the same country and have different native languages.
In the simple cases, one of them can speak the other one’s language and that’s how they communicate, such as my friend who speaks Persian and English and is seeing another friend of mine who speaks English.
In the most extreme cases, they can only communicate in a third language. For example, my uncle is a Persian man who lives in Spain and can speak Persian, Spanish and English. He has a Finnish wife, who speaks Finnish, English and Spanish. They have a 3 year old boy who can speak Finnish and English and understands Persian! How messed up is that?!
What is the role of language in a relationship? Is it harder for these couples to understand each other? There can be a lot of misunderstandings between couples who speak the same language, let alone speaking different languages. I get frustrated sometimes, when I can’t find the right word to express myself in school or anywhere else. Can they express themselves and their needs easily enough?
Or maybe it’s just a lot easier for them. Anything that comes up, any misunderstanding or problem that happens, they blame it on language issues, ignore it and move on.
What do you think?
Our new bikes
So we bought two new bikes during the weekend. After a week of searching online and a day of walking around with our friend who knows a lot about bikes, we finally found them. My bike is a cyan woman style bike. My husband’s bike is gray and green.
We have been on our bikes almost all weekend. It’s so much fun. It’s a little hard though, especially because there are lots of hills here and I am not really used to it. There are lots of parks and trails that we can ride our bikes in. Besides being fun, we are doing some much needed exercise too, which is great.
Here are pictures of our bikes. (Courtesy of SportCheck and Norco Performance Bikes websites)
There are just a few sore hands and butts in ForeverInSchool residence, which will eventually go away. But I’m telling you, it’s so worth the pain.
I am neurotic
I was surfing the web the other day when I saw this website, in which you are asked to write about your neuroses. Normal people wrote about their craziness and weirdness. For example, someone wrote that when she comes out of the shower, she has to turn the webcam around, because she thinks someone might be watching. Or the other one wrote about his fear of toilet flush sucking him in, so he has to open the door and be ready to leave before he can flush the toilet.
Well, I realized that I am not the only person who is neurotic about some things, so I decided to write about them here. You can also write about your neuroses in the comments. It’s gonna be fun reading each others’ craziness!!
Here it goes:
- I have to apply moisturizer to my feet before going to bed. If I don’t do that, I can’t sleep. I can’t. I would get up after 1 hour of struggling and use moisturizer and then go to sleep!
- I have to have some control over the room temperature, whether a thermostat or a window or something. If I feel that the room is getting too warm, and I can’t change the temperature or can’t get out, I feel like I am suffocating. If I know that I have control, I might not even do anything. Just knowing that is enough!
- When I am wearing socks and shoes, I have to be able to move all my toes. I’ll go crazy if I think my toes are stuck behind each other and can’t move.
- I am always afraid of forgetting something at home when I am going out. Sometimes I have a sense that I have forgotten something. In those times, I think and think until I remember something that I have really left at home. I would be relieved just knowing what it is, even if it’s too late to go back and get it.
Am I crazy? Maybe a little bit…?!
Biking in the city brought back memories
Last weekend we went out to get some food for lunch, when we accidentally ran into three of our friends from school who were going to eat at the same place. They had come with their bikes. After lunch, we went to waterfront for an afternoon walk. (Well, we walked, but those poor guys had to carry their bikes all the way!!) My friend offered me her bike for a short ride. At first I hesitated, but then I went for it.
I hadn’t ridden a bike for about 5 years. Oh, my goodness! I had forgotten how good it felt. The feeling of floating in the air, with a breeze on my face, …. It was awesome.
And it brought back memories… lots of memories.
Memories of 5,6 years ago, biking with my sisters and my fiance at the time, in Chitgar park…, excited about my relationship with him…, couldn’t wait to start a new life together….
Memories of 15 years ago, biking with my best friend in a square near our houses…. How happy and carefree we were, how curious we were about people, especially boys!! We were looking forward to seeing what future had for us….
Memories of 20 years ago, in a small alley where our house was, biking back and forth in the alley…, my father trying to teach me to take right U-turns. (I was only able to turn left and refused to try otherwise!)
.
.
.
We are going to buy bikes and we are determined to use them this summer.
Thumbs up for the thumb!
I hurt my right thumb yesterday. It’s nothing important at all, but still, it’s very painful. When something like that happens, I start thinking about how important a small, 2 inch finger is.
Think about your thumb. Do you know how many tasks it’s involved in?
I am right-handed. Since this morning, my right thumb has been an important part of these tasks:
Buttoning and zipping my pants
Brushing my teeth
Combing my hair with my fingers (I don’t use a comb)
Squeezing my sun screen tube
Making a pita sandwich
locking and unlocking the door with a key
Typing with 10 fingers
Putting bandage on any other finger, except itself!
.
.
.
And a lot more!
And I know that because each time I did any of them, it hurt.
Now if a thumb is that important, if a painful thumb can cause so much trouble, imagine how important any small body part is…, for everyday life…, for living. Imagine how important a small corner of our lung is, or a small nerve in our eyes, or a small vein in our brain…
Should we start thinking of our precious bodies and taking care of them?
Cooking or not cooking?
I used to enjoy cooking and I usually liked what I cooked. I have always considered myself a good cook. My husband also liked everything that I cooked for him.
During the past couple of months (OK! It has been a little more than that, about 4, 5 months!) I don’t feel that way anymore. Most of the dishes that I cook don’t taste as good as they used to do before. Some of the dishes actually turned out to be failure! Weird, ha?!
How did this happened to me? I don’t know. I use the same ingredients, the same techniques, and I cook the same dishes, but THEY ARE NOT GOOD ANYMORE. As much as my husband tries to make me feel better by complimenting the food, he can’t fool me. I am the best judge for my work. The meat is not cooked well or is overcooked, there is too much tomato paste in the sauce, the rice is too sticky or too dry. Even the saffron doesn’t taste as before. (Saffron is a fancy ingredient in Persian foods and adds a wonderful flavor to the dish, especially rice, if used properly.)
So what is it? Am I losing my touch? Or my tongue is losing its tasting ability? Should I quit cooking altogether? Somebody help me please!!!!!
Funny and weird!
I found this cool website that lists weird things. I haven’t read all of it, but these two categories are very funny. Here are some of them:
“The following are actual stories provided by travel agents:
- A client called in inquiring about a package to Hawaii. After going over all the cost info, she asked, “Would it be cheaper to fly to California and then take the train to Hawaii?”
- Another man called and asked if he could rent a car in Dallas. When I pulled up the reservation, I noticed he had a 1-hour lay over in Dallas. When I asked him why he wanted to rent a car, he said, “I heard Dallas was a big airport, and I need a car to drive between the gates to save time.”
- A nice lady just called. She needed to know how it was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8:20am and got into Chicago at 8:33am. I tried to explain that Michigan was an hour ahead of Illinois, but she could not understand the concept of time zones. Finally I told her the plane went very fast, and she bought that!
- A woman called and said, “I need to fly to Pepsi-cola on one of those computer planes.” I asked if she meant to fly to Pensacola on a commuter plane. She said, “Yeah, whatever.“
Read more here.
“The following quotes were taken from actual medical records as dictated by physicians:
- The patient has been depressed ever since she began seeing me in 1983.
- The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be Depressed.
- The patient refused an autopsy.
- She slipped on the ice and apparently her legs went in separate directions in early December.
- The patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch.
- She is numb from her toes down.”
Read more here.
Nightmares of a TA
Here in school, we get to do some work to earn our living such as research assistantship and teacher assistantship. I have been a TA once. It was my first semester in this school and my first time teaching anything. Back in architectural school, we didn’t really had that kind of opportunity. The course was related to my background, plus some new things that I had to learn myself. It was the first time the course was being offered. With four instructors, two course coordinators, and six TAs, it was a mess. The instructors themselves didn’t know what they wanted to do next week. So we would get our teaching package for the labs about a couple of hours before our lab started, and we had to get prepared to teach the material in the lab by ourselves.
Although the material was not hard for me, I had nightmares before the labs, especially my first lab (I had two 3-hour labs a week). I simply didn’t know how to handle the students. They were first year students, coming from high school, not knowing where they wanted to go next. Most of them didn’t really care about the class. They just wanted the grade. In my first lab, I had a group of troublesome boys that I got into argument with a lot. They didn’t listen when I was trying to teach them, laughed at me, and then asked question about what I had just explained. AND IT DERIVED ME CRAZY. One day, they were asked to present something and they were trying to put some flip chart papers on the board. The boy that I had fought with took out a KNIFE from his pocket and cut the paper. A real hunting knife. For a few weeks after that I had nightmares of him following me home and stabbing me for not giving him the full mark!
Now, the course is being offered again for Fall. The instructors have individually and separately asked me to consider applying for the TA position. The course has been offered before, so it will certainly be more organized and easier than last year.
I haven’t decided what to do yet. On one hand, I can use the extra income. Also, I have taught it before, so I know the material and I would spend less time preparing for it. On the other hand, I am scared to death of going into that classroom again and face the students.
Considering the fact that academia is one of my future job options (which I am seriously considering!), I need to get over the fear some time, right? Working with students can’t be that bad? I just have to be patient and learn some techniques to handle their different behaviors. If I want to have babies some time in the future, that’s inevitable (Oh my goodness, is that right? That’s like being in a classroom 24/7!).
So I am trying to get over my hesitations and apply for it before June 27′th. Hopefully I would do better this time around. I’ll let you know what I would do.
BTW, any advise for a novice TA?
