Kids grow quickly... 

Kids

One of the most beautiful phenomena you can watch, is a kid growing and of all the things about them , is watching them showing intelligence. However, sometimes we go a little faster than they do, a little too much expectation: Today I was watching Rose playing with a toy. The purpose of the toy is to teach the child to match shapes. If they match a shape with its hollow counterpart, the toy plays a piece of music. I Showed her how the toy works and waited. She peaked up a shape. I waited anxiously. She paused a moment and then put it in her mouth!

Part of the walking path. 

The path from Sonny Brook park toward downtown is really refreshing and beautiful. 

Finally

I got the voucher for JCP exam. Now, I have started to review the tips and notes I collected while studying. I am planning to take the exam by the end of this month. We'll see what happens.

Dreen

English is so powerful. It's so alive. Tons of new words find their paths to the language and make it even more powerful. However, sometimes you feel the lack of a word. This specially happens for those of us who know other languages. Sometimes a single word says a lot which is only possible to express in a sentence in another language and sometimes it's not possible to express an idea, concept or condition at all.

It's not a matter of covering a concept. Yes, you can make the negative or opposite form of potentially everything using 'not'. How about the case you want just one word? What is the opposite of green? ( How about my suggestion as the title of this posting?) What is the opposite of kiss?

I think scholars have thought about this. That's why you find some made-up words in some innovative novels. Take Harry Potter series: A lot of new words for the new imaginary things and they work. People have read them, liked them and connected with them. I'll give you an example: J.K. Rowling calls the little winged ball they have to catch in amusing Quiditch game , the snitch. I'm sure she has invented this word because the usage of this ball is very close to 'snatch'. To snatch means to grasp or seize hastily, eagerly, or suddenly. This definition is exactly what the writer meant and she changed the word a little.

I'll write more about languages later.

Yahoo!

The good old chaps in Yahoo! mail team increased some of the boundries of Yahoo! mail. That's good news. Now they give 100 Meg mail space and 10 Meg message space.

Some of the essential things you have to take when you go to BBQ : Sunglasses, gel soap, cap and extra sweater ( 'cause you never know, it's Toronto's crazy weather!) 

Euro 2004

The European football matches are in progress. As I had predicted, football has lost its marvel for me. It's too slow. Now I rather watch the last twenty minutes. Upto now I like the match between France and England. The French seem rather old, experienced though.

I liked the simulator BBC has setup. You can watch the important and exiting moments of the matches with desired speeds using different cameras.

I found Scandinavian teams strong and aggressive. The championship of any of them wouldn't be a big surprise.

Old Country Inn- Unionville/Toronto 

Unionville - Toronto - a village which is now part of GTA ( Great Toronto Area) 

Unionville - Toronto  

A word about the office

Finally I finished watching the office, comedy series produced by BBC. On the whole, I liked it. It's a different kind of comedy, rather sad though.The interesting thing about it was that some of the characters were so familiar. I'm sure everybody will find a someone at work, in the family or neighborhood who is a match with a character in the office. For me, the character Gareth is more or less a combination of two of my cousins. I used to work for someone like David Brent.

Help Yourself! 

the office

Between the times, whenever I can, I try to watch the office, the new BBC production. It's a fairly new comedy, apparently quite popular in Britain. Everything happens in the office, with a boss you'd like to kill and a colleagues rather strange. It reminds me of some company I used to work long time ago!

Christ the king cathedral in Hamilton, Ontario 

Just a sample

When I recommended Persepolis book in a few posts ago, I never said that the problems caused by being Iranian ends in Iran. I am trying to register for Java Certified Programmer exam. Sun's site prohibits the registeration process to complete, because America bans the citizens of some countries to take participate in such educations! Sad but true. The only chance is to fax them the Canadian residency documents and see what happens.

History, my time

By remembering that I didn't have computer at home, I remembered that how expensive PC's were about 15 years ago, at least for university students. Older people in computer industry can probably tell more interesting stories, but I remember XT's with no harddrive. With their green monochrome monitors, they cost around 600,000 Tomans ( and I have no idea how much it was in dollars , but the average salary was less than 20,000, just imagine!) Anyways, Not many dared to think about owning a computer.

Then emerged 10 Meg harddrives (TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTEN megabytes). They were as big as a shoe box.

AT's appeared very soon and the prices dropped dramatically. 300,000 Tomans for a 286 with 40 Meg hdd and color display , usually equipped with 1 Meg RAM. What more a man could ask? Then appeared the companies who sold financed PCs and there came my solution. My first PC which I bought at the end of second year of university was a 386, with 120 Meg hdd and 2 ( read TTTTTTTwo) Meg RAM.

100!

I remember the first challenging program we had to write in university was to compute the exact value of 100! (Factorial). Factorial is a value calculated by multiplying the number by the Factorial of previous number. For example 5! = 5 * 4! . The challenge is that in no programming language you can have a number with 70-80 digits, it's just too big. For such big numbers , programming languages use double values which can keep a number using precision format (by using decimal point and scientific presentation).We were told to write a program that could calculate the exact digits,all of them. Mr. Rahimi, our instructor who was my best teacher in university had given us this program to write and at the time I didn't have any computer. The university provided computers but not enough and this was not all we had to do for the week. So I and friend hired a computer for two hours and wrote the program. Each went his own way, the result was very interesting. I somehow came up with a simple algorithm that did the job in 7 lines of program code. Meanwhile my friend's code was more than 300 lines.Good old days...

Hamilton - from top of the hills. 

The Ontario Science Center- IMAX Movies 

Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi is the writer of some graphic novels with Persepolis on top. I recommend studying the book to Iranians - to remind all the hassles we all went through - and non-Iranians - to understand some of the problems their Iranian friend, neighbor or colleague suffered.

Pictures

I got pictures and that's why as soon as I noticed a way for publishing them, I posted a few.

Ottawa- Tulip Festival 

Ottawa-Tulip Festival / May 2004 

Flames hit by Lightning

It was a pity. Flames should have finished the job in Galgary when they could. Well, let's go back to Go,Leafs,Go!

Sharbat Gula

This name, which sounds funny and humorous in Persian, is the name of an Afghan girl who became famous when her image covered National Geographic 17 years ago and again in 2002(More). NG society gathered 900,000$ donation money and established a school for girls in Kabul. Want to help? I wish they could symbolize every human being in need so there wouldn't be so much trouble around the world, but that would be impossible. It's best to be able to grab the opportunity as it happens and use it at best.

The ultimate question

If you knew you could ask a question, whatever question even from those human beings don't know the answer, and the answer to that questions was the last thing you could learn before dying, what would that question be?

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by Bermuda triangle and all the strange mysterious stories around it. Even once I had promised myself to go there and see what's behind it when I got very old! This is perhaps one of the questions I'd to hear the answer, even now. However, I don't think that would be my ultimate questions. In fact, I haven't thought about it really. On top of my mind, when given the opportunity to ask such a questions, I would probably look at the world ( I am imagining I've got so big to look at the universe at a glance) and ask "so what?" I think for many, this is the question.

Go, Flames, Go!

I'm new in Hockey, about 3 months old maybe. Hockey started for me since Toronto Leafs' playoffs in this season. Leafs lost to Philadelphia and the only Canadian team left was Calgary Flames. And now they're in lead, 3-2 and what a match it was last night. Pretty worth of watching and the sweetness of winning in opponent's home. I hope they can bring the cup to Canada.

In Middle East, football is the thing, or as referred in North America, soccer. Watching hockey has just revealed for me why they don't count soccer as a manly game. Well, I think I still love soccer and am looking forward to watch a lot of it when European cup starts on 11th. However, I wonder if it has its old attraction comparing to hockey. We'll see.

Remember

Sometimes, you remember people for an unusual reason. I worked in a company for 4 years about 8 years ago. The public relations of the company was handled by a girl. One of the things she did, was to order a T-shirt with company's name and logo sewn on it. I don't know what kind of material is the shirt made from, but after all these years, it's like a new one with a soft and cozy feeling. So sometimes when I want to wear the T-shirt, I remember the girl and then other people who worked in the company and my mind keeps on drifting in those memories.

I bet in many occasions you too find it interesting how you are connected to the past, to a person or a memory by something that has no direct connection to anything. Another example is the used fax machine I bought. It's a RICOH ,produced for hotel rooms. The guy I bought it from was so polite and the machine has been working like a clock since I bought it. Again, whenever I use it, I remember the politeness of that gentleman.