I guess it's official now...

...this is the sexy Mazda3 we finally decided to get! pretty, isn't it? (the color does look a bit weird on the screen, it's much better up close)

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Women's rights activists arrested...

Read in Parastoo's blog.

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I'm all yours

Disclaimer:
Neither me, my parents, my past and future partners, and my friends, nor any other parties involved in creating, raising, accepting and/or rejecting me are liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or other damages or loss whatsoever, arising out of or in connection with you believing the aforementioned statement; including (but not limited to) heartache, confusion, sadness, anger, or other similar feelings.

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Movies again...

So with the Golden Globes behind us and the Oscars in only two months, i just couldn't resist the temptation to write about movies. Please keep in mind though, that my movie posts are basically just one paragraph saying how i felt about the movie, so don't expect anything too serious!

Well, let's start with my favorite movie, Pan's Labyrinth. It completely blew my mind... so amazingly imaginative... a great blend of fantasy and reality, in my opinion. And I absolutely loved the soundtrack. Have watched it twice so far, and am getting tempted to watch it again. Just read a few reviews on it and i'm sure you'll decide to watch it too.

Then, there's my least favorite movie of the season, Children of Men. I mean, you watch the trailer and you get all excited about it. Then you go watch the movie, and honestly, there's not much more to it than the trailer! Basically, just add a few running and chasing scenes and a good amount of blood in between and you'll have it. And except for Michael Caine i didn't find any of the actors too strong.

I also got tempted and went to watch the Dreamgirls. Now, it wasn't too bad, but definitely not the greatest movie. I agree that most of the actors were pretty good (there were a few exception, of course... like...hmmm, let's see...Byonce!!!) and the music was very good too. But honestly i can't see why it won the Golden Globes... anyway, if you're into musicals go watch it, it's kind of fun to watch it with a good sound system.

Oh yeah! and i watched the Holiday! (i know, i know, it's shameful!) ... i think it's pretty obvious what this movie is all about... a chick flick with beautiful people and a happy ending. I love Kate Winslet though and she looked gorgeous all through the movie, that's something to be happy about i guess!

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You know what's funny?

a guy who's trying to impress you, but is so nervous that ends up spitting into your Chai latte from across the table! Poor guy, must have felt awful.

irrelevant: thanks to Pooya's tips and ideas, i finally made a few changes to my template, so now longer posts with lots of photos and stuff will have a summary and an expandable link. i know how slow Internet speed can drives you nuts, but honestly, most of the photos on this blog are not even 50kb! Hope this helps a little at least.

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it's not me.

it's you!

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totally out of inspirations to write!

... but i changed my template photo! so hopefully I'll get back in the blogging mood pretty soon...

PS - by the way, my template now looks a bit awkward in IE! Anyone knows how I'm supposed to fix the top picture and the main body so they don't overlap?

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A real phone, finally!

So after three years of using the crappiest possible cell phone (provided by my even crappier service provider), i finally have a real phone to use, and it's seriously cool! I got it sent from Iran (naturally!) and am really happy with it, except that the ring tones are, how should i put it, a bit cheesy! but i can live with it i guess.

It's -6 C here tonight; my ears were literally falling off on the way home. Who says global warming is a myth?! If this is not the Universe messing with us, i don't know what is!

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Munching on holiday photos!

...Its the edge of the world
And all of western civilization
The sun may rise in the east
At least it settles in the final location
Its understood that hollywood
Sells californication...

Title: Californication, By: The Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Here's a few pictures from my vacation traveling, and it's not fair that California gets to be this sunny, like all the time! it's really not fair. To demonstrate this unfairness(!), just look at our back alley today (of course, the B&W effect is just to emphasize my point!!!):

and then look at the following!

The beautiful Getty Center in L.A. :

A very cute shoe shop on Sunset Blvd., L.A. (photo taken by Kaveh):


Waiting for breakfast from Porto's, a sunny day in Burbank:


Fake Venice and Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas, the most artificial place on the planet:




Downtown Seattle view from their famous Space needle:


And finally me, experimenting with the camera in a cozy internet cafe in Seattle:

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About a girl

She was not supposed to cry. She knew it. No matter what he said, no matter how close they think they were. Crying was a no-no. She was the cynical one. The pessimist. The one to resist the temptation of romance. She was only a human. She grew weak, let the temptation take over. She lost control. She cried. Everything turned into dust.The spell broke. The reality came shining through: People always act like the cliches that they are. No exceptions... never.

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Always on guard...

that's what you should be. Put your guard down and you'll see what happens.

Irrelevant - Pan's Labyrinth: AWESOME! The most violent fairy tale you've ever known. And the sweetest.

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random again

White wine and cheese, silence and an empty apartment.

Waiting for people, phone calls, and hang-out plans. Shopping. Iranian food. Cooking. Confused. Reading. Tired of excuses. Craving sushi. Running out of money. Happy to be here. Bored. Missing my bed. Healthy. Full. Lonely. Fool. Good friends. Grateful. Restless...

Help!

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things that mess with your vacation:

1. stomach flue (doesn't matter if it's you or your friends, it's disturbing and painful).
2. losing money in slot machines...
3. having to drive for 8 hours on a route that you know is only supposed to take 4 hours...what's up with all the cars anyway?
4. going through your ongoing personal issues, and not knowing when the hell they're supposed to go away.
5. watching a Bunuel movie and not understanding its significance, AT ALL!

and I'm sure there's a lot more that could be added here, so I'm happy that my list ends here.

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Yalda game!

Thanks to Laleh and Marjan for inviting me to this game. Here we go:

one - I enjoy spending time by myself.

two - I am a vacation-smoker! usually end up smoking my whole year's quota in two weeks!

three - I'm so "cleany", sometimes it gets annoying, even for myself.

four - I pick traveling over shopping any day; and shopping over research; white wine over red; sushi over burger; tequila over beer; tea over coffee; movies over dinner; and adventurous affairs over romantic ones.

five - I am content with my life. at least I think so... it could be a lot better, but then it could be a lot worse too!

Looks like everyone I know has already written their post on this, so Raha and Mayssam, it's your turn now!

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life is good

... when you're on vacation. Especially if you've left all the rain and the clouds behind to go somewhere sunny. Life is so good, it makes you wonder how you were ever unhappy, depressed, or bored... There is jazz music, Belgian beer, and good tequila. There's Mercedes Sosa and cheesecake. There is Karaoke and 90's music. There are good friends; old ones, new ones, special ones, absent ones... there is Christmas, traveling, shopping. And above all, there are cats! Lost ones... they follow you around, even into the apartment. They roll on the carpet, begging you to pet them... life is good, my friends. It really is.

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Christmas Shopping...

...done! :)

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Still Douglas Adams...

I'm in love with the guy... I mean literally. I would marry him any day, if he returns to life, that is.

I finished the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy tonight at 7:00 pm and was on my way back from the bookstore with the second book in the series by 7:30! The second book is The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and starts like this:

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

I hope it will be as interesting as the first book.

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Mothers and daughters

After two weeks of constantly thinking about it, I finally went and watched Volver, Almadovar's latest movie. I liked it very much, it made me laugh quite a lot and brought tears to my eyes at times. It tells the story of this two sisters whose mother has died a while ago, but decides to return to life and finish off her undone business. I think the strength of love between mothers and daughters in this movie was very clearly portrayed, or maybe I just miss my mom too much and my judgment is clouded!! I liked the fact that all the main characters and almost all of the cast were women,it gave the movie a very unique feel, and helped in getting its message across in my opinion.

I really think Hollywood should be sued for converting Penelope Cruz into such a commercial celebrity... her acting was amazing in this movie. Actually, all the cast had super-strong performances... I definitely recommend watching "Volver". Here's a song from the soundtrack I liked the most.

Title: Volver (to return), By: Estrella Morente

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Categories at last!

So Blogger decided to add labels to the posts and that's why I spent an hour going through all my posts and labeling them, of course because I have a final next week. I had to also struggle with a lot of issues while migrating to beta, do it with IE if you want my opinion. I am a big fan of FireFox, but it just kept freezing on me. Don't know why. Anyway, not much to say really.Except that what I have labeled as "random" is more like "daily blabbering" or "not full of whining" or "surprisingly not about movies"... just to make it clear. :)

Now I wonder what I should label this one as!?

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Trying hard here...

So I'm stuffed with soup and salad (and yes, that's possible!) and feeling a little light-headed from the wine I had, trying really hard to come up with something to write. I think it must be a disease or something. I even watched a movie and didn't feel like writing about it! Don't know what's wrong, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. I watched Stranger than fiction... didn't hate it, but didn't love it either. Can't seem to understand the point of the movie, but then again, who says movies should have a point!? I liked most of the movie though. Can't really tell you what it's about because it doesn't make any sense. You don't have to watch it in the theater, wait for the DVD. Dustin Huffman and Emma Thompson are great in it though, as always.

I guess what keeps me excited these days though (except for the thought of Wednesday when I'm officially done with my finals)is The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy. Absolutely genius! Thanks to Shahin, I now own the first book in Douglas Adams's sci-fi series and I have to tell you, it's quite the funniest book I've read in a LONG time. If you're against sci-fi you should skip this whole paragraph totally. I tried watching the movie that was made based on this book in 2005 and couldn't understand why it was such a big deal. Scenes made no sense whatsoever. I basically stopped watching halfway through the movie. Now I know that the whole point is to read the book and laugh at the author's wired scientific British sense of humor. I mean the guy knows how to write funny nonsense... The book is about this two characters (a human and a human-like creature from another planet) who starts this adventurous journey in the galaxy after Earth gets demolished because there is a need to build a hyperspatial express route through the star system! It probably sounds lame but you gotta try it.

here's a paragraph from the book (there are so many good ones, I can't really choose from!). Omitted parts are replaced with [...].

"[...]a sperm whale had suddenly been called to existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.

[...]

this is a complete record of its thought from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah...what's happening? it thought.
Er,excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now [...]

And hey, what about this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that...wind! [...] it must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it.

[...]

And wow, what's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like... ow... ound... round... ground! That's it! That's a good name - ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence."

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