I watched the fairy tale cartoon, “Tinker Bell” (sometimes you watch things when a kid around you watches them 10 times!). Besides the cheesy aspect of all fairy tales, there was another interesting aspect into this cartoon produced by Disney in 2008. TinkerBell (a newborn fairy) was an engineer! and belonged to a group of fairies called Tinkers (Engineers). Watching this movie, you could easily connect with her experience as an engineer:

- She first finds her talent as an engineer after being rejected by several cooler talents! (this one not always true, actually!)

- Tinker’s territory as opposed to other fairies’ is not a beautiful place with pretty roses. It is in the basement, a not so beautiful place surrounded by all those gadgets!

- Her pals are not pretty fairies, but a bunch of geeky looking guys!

- As opposed to all the other fairies, Tinkers are not supposed to go to the main land to bring about spring. They have no business there! They just ought to stay and build things that others are going to show off with!

- When everything gets ruined, everyone points at her (the poor engineer) as the person responsible for all the mess!

And finally, the good part of the story:

- When everybody is disappointed and believes no one can fix the mess, our little engineer stands up and says: ”I can fix it. I am a Tinker (engineer). We Tinkers (engineers) know how to fix things!”

And she DOES. Looking at the situation from another (novel) angle, coming up with some innovative ideas, building some useful tools from a set of presumably useless things, she finally builds things up in a fraction of the time everyone expected to take for all those creations to happen.

And, since everybody including the queen (the Boss) was pleased with what she did, she (only that single engineer) gets permission to go to the main land (just this time only) to watch how spring comes about.

Yes, that is the life of us, engineers; but if you are an engineer too, be proud! Even though we are not as appreciated as we deserve and even though we are not invited to the nice parties in which people show off our products, we are still cool! Everyone needs us and they know it. Let’s have fun with our weird toys and gadgets which no one else in the world can enjoy from! We are engineers!

PS. I just found it an interesting coincidence that I wrote this post on the International Workers’ Day (May Day). Happy May Day to all workers including engineers!

A few days ago, while working on a project, I happened to find the data of all the Zip Codes in the United States. It was very exciting to me, so I created a database table for this data and started running interesting queries. In the following, I have collected a set of information (or facts) about the cities, states and Zip Codes in the U.S. based on those queries. Most of these facts may seem useless, but I am sure they are fun to know.

For some of the items, you can make custom queries. The default values I used are from College Park, Maryland, where I used to live. Check them for your own place, if you live in the U.S.

PS. Please leave a comment for me if you are interested in other queries on U.S. Zip Codes.

PS2. Thanks to a friend, I found out that my database is not complete. The correct number of Zip Codes seems to be 42294, so until I find a more complete source, do not rely much on the data!

I watched this documentary about Iran by Jane Kokan, the Canadian journalist which was made secretly in a trip to Iran. At first, the nonsense stories she was making up seemed funny to me, but I got mad at her later on. I am so sorry for people who can see Iran and its problems only through the view angle of this lady and people like her. She was talking about the dangers of her trip such that it reminded me of the movie “Mission Impossible”! She was explaining about coding the emails, being watched, secret places and mysterious people in a way I thought: “Is this really the country I was grown up in?!”

After watching the movie, I felt more respect for Christiane Amanpour, the CNN news caster who had some reports about Iran a few years ago. What she showed was much closer to the reality of my country than the imaginations of this Canadian lady. I don’t know how many groups, organizations and TV channels paid Ms. Kokan to make this artificial so called documentary. I am really sorry that unstable situations of Iran is a means for getting famous and finding reputation among people who may not even care what is going on in Iran.

I was watching the movie “Matrix, Reloaded”. In a section of it, there was a dialog between Neo, the main character and the councilor of the city Zion, the last city of real people. Their talks seemed so deep to me and made me think for hours. I will narrate it for you here. Think about it. It seems to be true:

N: Neo
C: Councilor

C: Almost no one comes down here. Unless, of course, there’s a problem. That’s how it is with people. Nobody cares how it works as long as it works. I like it down here. I like to be reminded this city survives because of these machines. These machines are keeping us alive while other machines are coming to kill us. Interesting. Isn’t it? The power to give life and the power to end it.

N: We have the same power.

C: Yeah, I suppose we do, but down here sometimes I think about those people still plugged into the matrix. And when I look at these machines, I can’t help thinking that, in a way, we are plugged into them.

N: But we control these machines, they don’t control us.

C: Of course not. How could they? The idea is pure nonsense, but it does make one wonder just what is control?

N: If we wanted, we could shut these machines down.

C: (Smiling) Of course. That’s it. You hit it. That’s control. isn’t it? If we wanted, we could smash them to bits. Although if we did, we’d have to consider what would happen to our lights, our heat, our air.

N: So we need machines and they need us. Is that your point, councilor?

C: No, no point. Old men like me don’t bother with making points. There’s no point.

Yesterday, I received a letter from a court. At first, I got shocked and scared, but after reading the letter I found out that it was not because of any accusation or something, but I was chosen to be a juror of a trial. Regardless of the big mistake of the random generator in choosing a non-citizen for this position, I really admire the idea. In our country, the poor journalists and other political activists are prosecuted in courts, which have one person in role of both prosecutor and judge. Also, just privileged people are chosen to be juror.

After one week of protests and demonstration of the Iranian students in Tehran and other cities and after violent reactions of the Police and vigilante groups, many officials around the world talked and wrote about this incident. Most of them condemned the violence and attacks against the students. Among all these however, I found two reactions interesting. First one was President Khatami’s. He said nothing!!! He behaves like nothing has happened and nobody was injured. Sometimes, I do not understand him at all. Having a pretty smile and many nice words to say is not what people expected and what they needed. Ebrahim Nabavi, an Iranian satirist, says: “Khatemi is the handsome kid of the family who is in charge of opening the door for the guests and greeting them!! This is while the other members of the family do whatever wrong they would like in the back!”

The other sad but noticeable reaction was Russians’. They just hope that these issues do not change the stable situation of the country. In fact what they are looking for is only money. They just care about their trades with Iran and nothing more. This is like what they said about selling nuclear materials to Iran. They said we are sellers. We do not care about what can be done with these materials. We suppose that everything is fine and no bomb will be made!! How dirty the money is!!

Yesterday, there was a football (what Americans call it Soccer) match in Iran. Iranians love football. It causes pleasure and pain in their hearts. Yesterday’s match was between the two most famous teams of the capital, Persepolis and Esteghlal. They have had a lifelong competition against each other. The fans of the two teams talk about their beloved teams enthusiastically. They use the colors of the shirts (Red or Blue) in their words and slogans and make fun of the other team. Although there is the same story in many other countries, what makes this one special is that Iranian people mostly do not care about the other sports as they do about football and about these two teams. They get excited when their beloved team wins, come to street, honk the horns of the cars and also dance and sing together, the scene that you can see rarely in public in my country.

Hi,

I am an Iranian student, living in the United States and studying in one of the universities of the east coast. I also have a weblog in my native language, Persian named Gahi Godari which means “Once in a While”, “Now and Then” or “From Time to Time”.

In this English weblog, I am going to write about different topics including my experiences about living in this country and also learning English as a second language.

In fact when you enter a new country or start talking a new language, many funny or sad things happen for you every once in a while. So I may sometime write about such experiences. These experiences can be interesting and maybe useful for a foreigner who also has or will have similar experiences. Meanwhile, it can help American people to know more about other people (especially Iranians)’ thoughts and also challenges they have in the U.S. Also, I will try to introduce my homeland, Iran and give a better view about her people and their culture.

I believe that all people around the world are limbs of one body as a Persian poet, Sa’di said it over 700 years ago. His words are now written above the portal to the United Nation. What causes difference and even arguments among people is a tall wall of misunderstanding (as said by President Khatami), which can be removed by more and more dialogue among civilizations. I hope this weblog can be a tiny source in this direction.

So, check my weblog out every once in a while as I update it.

Gahi Godari (Once in a While)