Saturday, December 30, 2006

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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Thursday, December 28, 2006

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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Tuesday, December 26, 2006

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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Thursday, December 21, 2006

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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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Christmas Shopping...

...done! :)

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Tuesday, December 12, 2006

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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Saturday, December 09, 2006

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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Friday, December 08, 2006

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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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

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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Sunday, December 03, 2006

I have become a photo...

... the girl in the frame used to belong to a family. She traveled to a northern land though, somewhere beautiful, at the end of the world. The girl in the frame found a house. She found a friend. She found more friends. She started her studies. "Oh, look, that's her first Christmas party". "That's her first birthday away from us!". "That must be her close friend". "Is that her street?". The girl in the frame graduated. "She looks very happy in that photo, doesn't she?". The girl in the photo went traveling... "it looks like she's having a good time".

She'll never be their daughter again, she won't be their sister, or granddaughter... she is not a part of their life anymore. She is nothing more than a picture, a memory, in a pretty frame on their shelf.

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