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Showing posts from October, 2011

My thoughts on Prisoner of Tehran

I finished reading Prisoner of Tehran a while back and wanted to write up my thoughts on it here. I have to say that Iran has been a fascination of mine for a while. I am not sure why, but I find Persian history quite interesting.  The book goes over an interesting time in Iran; a despotic Shah gets overthrown, an Ayatollah comes into power. In between these events, the protagonist in the story goes through a lot.  Anyway, if you intend to read the book, stop as I will go into details of the book. The book was written by an Iranian Christian  who now calls Canada home. As a 16-year old, she was put in prison as a political prisoner, beaten, tortured and so forth. She seems to be in an impossible situation: being sentenced to death and then saved by a prison guard, with a caveat that she change religions, and get married to him. Oh and be in prison for life. As a 16 year old.  Most 16-year old children , for they are children, don't have to worry about spending the res

Some things cut across boundaries

My Turkish friend and I have a ritual. He sends me a link of something from Turkey. It usually involves music (My favourite thus far is still moustache man ibrahim tatlıses playing the baglama). I find the Indian analogue. It is kind of scary. You see and hear the same sorts of instruments. But the music is different. Yet familiar. The other day, I was listening to a Malayalam song. I do that from time to time... to ensure I still understand it (that's a joke by the way). It mentioned Omar Khayyam. I asked the Turkish fellow about Omar Khayyam. And he knew who he was. With a slightly different name but still, the same Omar Khayyam. Bonus points to anyone who points out which Malayalam song that came from. I am still at a bit of a loss as to how it made it into the song. The only place I can find is that the Rubáiyát was translated in the 1930s by G. Sankara Kurup. But for whatever reason, there it is.  Nevermind that Omar Khayyam, by all measures, is a polymath and genius and

Finding Family

"Losing family obliges us to find our family. Not always the family that is our blood... but the family that can become our blood.... and should we have the wisdom to open our door to this new family... we will find that the wishes we had for the father, who once guided us... for the brother, who once inspired us.... The only thing left to say will be: 'I wish I had seen this, or I wish I had done that, or I wish...'"  My Name is William Forrester Finding Forrester at MOVIECLIPS.com The above quote and video come from the film Finding Forrester. I'll watch almost anything with James Bond in it (well except for the one where Pierce Brosnan runs around singing Abba songs; that's just going too far) and this was a decent one. Something not so different happened recently. I found family. Well, they were always there, but just a bit distant. With the help of some modern technological wonders, they have become a little closer. I never lo

Steve Jobs is gone

By now, you've heard that Steve Jobs has passed on. He was quite the brilliant business man and innovator. I've read some really heart-warming notes on how people felt about Mr. Jobs and I've also read some ridiculous nonsense. I looked around the house and I own 2 apple products: a 4th generation click-wheel iPod from 2004 (the first thing I bought after I got paid working at this software company) and my iPod touch. The neatest thing about both of them was that they allowed me to do some things I couldn't do before. I never quite got into buying/burning CDs or walking around with a discman (or a walkman for that matter). There were mp3 players before the iPod, but the 20GB iPod I got was amazing. It came with 2 cables (firewire and USB!) and a charger and I think it cost somewhere around $400. I had to pay the $25 fee that the Copyright Board of Canada imposed on such media. After many years of use, it still works. Except that on a charge, the battery lasts about

The good, bad and where-the-heck-have-you-been fall edition

I've neglected my blog this summer. I'm sorry to whoever still reads it. Now that fall is here, I'll have more time to devote to it, I think. So, what the heck did I do this summer? In a word, lots! I did a fair bit of running, hiking, biking, swimming this year. I turned vegetarian. Well, a relapsing vegetarian. I attended a wedding, a lamb roast, bought furniture, went back to school, learned to cook new things. I watched a royal wedding, a state funeral and a royal tour of our fine land. I also watched as our hockey team went all the way to the Stanley Cup finals and watched in horror as some of our citizenry decided to set fire to parts of our city. School's back and I'm excited by it. I've also got back to reading. I missed my books. I have no idea why I stopped... but somewhere along the way, I forgot how peaceful it is to sit in a quiet corner somewhere and lose touch with the outside world and step into an imaginary (sometimes brutal) world whe

Goodbye Jack

I've spent half my life in North America. I've spent the other half of my life in Asia and Africa. Well, mostly in Asia. I think I have seen a lot of interesting politics over my short lifespan thus far. I was born in a state run by democratically elected Communists. Not quite the they-will-kill-your-kids-and-eat-them-for-lunch kind of Communists that some may have heard of. They were more socialist in their ways. They spent time and money on somewhat sane things. Like basic healthcare. And going on strikes. Vancouver has been home for a little over 13 years now. I've watched a lot of Canadian politics over that time. From the venerable Jean Chretien (I think he was great, even if so many Canadians seem to dislike him, I have no idea why they do, but they seem to), to my former MP Svend Robinson, I've seen a lot of good and not-so-good people out there trying to run our countries.  And then there was Jack Layton. He was an interesting sort of guy; he rode a bike, had