Statement by a group of Iranian bloggers about the Presidential elections and the subsequent events

1) We, a group of Iranian bloggers, strongly condemn the violent and repressive confrontation of Iranian government against Iranian people's legitimate and peaceful demonstrations and ask government officials to comply with Article 27 of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Constitution which emphasizes "Public gatherings and marches may be freely held, provided arms are not carried and that they are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam."
2) We consider the violations in the presidential elections, and their sad consequences a big blow to the democratic principles of the Islamic Republic regime, and observing the mounting evidence of fraud presented by the candidates and others, we believe that election fraud is obvious and we ask for a new election.
3) Actions such as deporting foreign reporters, arresting local journalists, censorship of the news and misrepresenting the facts, cutting off the SMS network and filtering of the internet cannot silence the voices of Iranian people as no darkness and suffocation can go on forever. We invite the Iranian government to honest and friendly interaction with its people and we hope to witness the narrowing of the huge gap between people and the government.

A part of the large community of Iranian bloggers
June 26, 2009
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Dear reader,
If you are a blogger, please post this in your blog too. We might have differences in our views towards this crisis, but we can stay united on condemning the violence and valuing the lives of our people. Let's have our voices heard. (The complete bilingual version)
Thank you.

Engineer @ Work

Keep back, keep back.

This engineer is at work...

chaos? check.

mayhem? check.

One of the crazy things that happened on our trip to PA last week was that our GPS started acting crazy and saying that it wasn't charging up. So as we were crossing NYC, A and I kept turning the GPS off in hopes of preserving some battery life.

Anyhow so yesterday i started wondering why the GPS was not working and I thought the problem must be in the adaptor. So I was playing around with the prongs and one of the side prongs fell out! I put it back in the way i thought it would go in but nothing happened... so i was thinking hmmm i wonder...

next thing i realize is that my clock display was no longer working!

Sooo.. I am thinking that I either busted a fuse (hopefully!!) or shorted that section of the electric circuit in the car.

OMG for 2 reasons:

(1) I broke the car

(2) No GPS!!!

I think (2) is almost a catastrophe for me!!

Please stop this engineer from "helping out" again!

Stoned in circles

Is it wrong of me to find the following story really funny? Would PETA hate me? :-P

Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said. (full story)

I wonder what the relationship between circles and being high is.

Meanwhile, the King of Pop has passed away :-(

Know thy self

I had a bit of a shock the other day---I was not the O blood type that I had always assumed! You see, I am pretty average in most things, so it was but natural for me to presume i also had the most common blood type. But no it seems I actually have a pretty rare blood type. FSM help me if I need a blood transfusion!
So anyway i started reading up about blood types and I learned some pretty cool stuff.
- The distribution of blood types is dependent on geography and the difference in distribution is pretty large. For example, [see wiki page]

Country	O+	A+	B+	AB+	O−	A−	B−	AB−
Aust.	40%	31%	8%	2%	9%	7%	2%	1%
Turkey	29.8%	37.8%	14.2%	7.2%	3.9%	4.7%	1.6%	0.8%
Saudi Arabia	48%	24%	17%	4%	4%	2%	1%	0.23%
USA	37.4%	35.7%	8.5%	3.4%	6.6%	6.3%	1.5%	0.6%

- That graph on top shows who can donate blood to whom. The universal donor is O- (so best blood type if you are selfless) but AB+ is universal recipients (best blood type if you are selfish :-P)

- Scientists have found a way of converting blood types A, B, and AB to O!
- An aussie girl's blood type changed upon a liver transplant!
Know any other interesting facts about blood? :-)

Ume ume yum yum yum

Last weekend I was introduced to the yummiest and most interesting candy ever -- Ume Candy from Nipon!
Ume is plum in japanese i believe and the candy is this dried ume in a container of sugar candy that tastes like cotton candy. The taste is almost like tamarind but not quite.

It is my new mission to find where i can get me some.

Young

I have a tendency to really connect with kids, probably more so teenagers. I love hanging out with them and talking to them. I feel like I am one of them. I can act their age. It's liberating and oh so natural for me.
Last weekend, I met two girls, probably around 13 and 15. I seriously connected with them and i hope I will keep in contact with them and see them again. A while ago (maybe a year or so ago), at a friend's house, I met her younger cousin (again around that age) and I didnt want to let her ago.

I wonder what these kids think when faced with someone like me.. the are probably thinking, man this really uncool ADULT (omg insults!) won't leave them alone!!
HA!
if only they knew :-P

Intolerable Cruelty

"We have seen courageous women stand up to brutality and threats, and we have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and painful, we also know this: those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history."

- Obama

enlightening

When you first join a new team, all the dynamics of the team members, the politics, the agendas etc. are hidden. You need to walk on your tippie toes for a while, keep looking around and making sure everyone is satisfied enough, happy enough.... until things begin to clear up and you realize who the players are, and how they play.

Today I had a very interesting conversation which shed some light onto some of these dynamics. I am learning the rules.

It's the wild wild west out there!

traffic story

A and I had did an illegal u-turn last night and the police caught us. The nice policeman asked Alvaro if he knew that u-turns over there were illegal and Alvaro replied " yes but the GPS told me to do a u-turn!"
Good reply!
surprisingly we got off with a warning.

sleeping story

A and I caught an overnight flight last night for the wedding reception of JA<3N - woo hoo! We ended up getting two middle seats so and it was so hard to get into a good position for the night. Anyway neither of us got much sleep on the way over. We flew into JFK in NYC and were planning on driving from there to east Pennsylvania. We thought to drive thru Manhattan, have lunch before getting to PA for the reception on sat night. As we started driving to Manhattan, the traffic around us got worst and worst. Since we were both tired we decided to skip Manhattan and drive around through Brighton Beach and have breakfast there and continue past to PA. Anyhow by the time we got to Brighton Beach, we were both so tired we ended up parking the car at the side of the road and locked the car and leaned our seats all the way back and took a snooozzzzzzzz..... for 1.5 hours!! when we woke up, the sun was up, the air was hot and stuffy in the car and there were people walking all around us! :-P ok maybe they weren't peering inside the car and there were on the side walk so not exactly next to us, but it was so funny! Sleep in the car? ha! been there, done that... now! ;-) We woke up just in time for lunch. Chevere!

Starting 3...2...1

Funny things are happening in my life and I am forgetting them!
I have to start writing them down, else they will be gone for eternity.
and that would not be good.
So I hereby renew my blogging efforts.