Family Trip to Chicago

Damn it was fun !

Dark Knight Massacre

So here is the scenario ... A 24 years old PhD student in the field of neuroscience that frankly is one of the most complicated topics I have ever encountered in my graduate life, dresses up as Joker (I'm not quite sure about this) and opens fire to a large number of people during the first show of "The Dark Knight" movie somewhere in Colorado.

It's funny (or better say sarcastic) that this state, Colorado, has witnessed numerous events as such for past decades including the very famous Columbine high school massacre on April 20th, 1999. This time, according to police investigation, our little genius has ordered 6000 bullets from an online store, booby-trapped his entire building with homemade bombs and police has not yet been able to get inside ! Just to get an idea how easy this is in United States, just watch "Bowling for Columbine" by Michael Moore:

Now thanks to this, police has occupied all the theatres and awareness about PhD lunatics with dyed hair is filling the American media (Looks like another south park episode to me!). So what is the aftermath? well,  thanks to another social panic attack , people buy more guns, take guns to the movies, and cry in front of cameras that "WHY ? WHY SHOULD WE AMERICANS BE THE ONLY VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE?" and then a suited up president appears on TV , and blabber about " ... Dear citizens, we are passing through the hardest times of our history and as always we should stay united ...BLAH...BLAH"

If you could only knew how similar those speeches are to the nonsense that is fed to brains of millions of Iranians every day ! Sometimes it makes me think that the leaders all across the globe have a private landline that they sync their bullshits with each other every night ! 

A New Life !

Well there are times I think to myself, man could things get any worse ! and I just get hit by something worse !!! It's like sometimes failures are just waiting for the rightest times to hit me. However, the purpose of this post is not to complain about how miserable my life can get and what not. In fact, in contrary, I want to show you the total opposite and perhaps you can learn from this and apply it for your own lives. 

It started with a miserable day that I woke up in a damp basement that has now become a territory in the house that the other family members don't usually intrude thanks to the co-existence pact that I signed with another living species called spiders. 
Same as every day, the first thing I did was checking my email desperately looking for an admission offer, interview opportunity, anything really ! Anything but the usual RSS feeds of LinkedIn about some stupid recruiters with backgrounds in history and art hiring for nuclear engineers or desperate job seekers begging for free internship opportunities or business owners who always complain about that LinkedIn is not a job-hunting  website (Damn I hate these people the most!). Dollar/Toman exchange rate didn't look promising either and the usual thoughts around weighting dad's business with the new Dollar value wasn't a good start for the day. 

Well... There I was in the lowest level of "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" where the only things that kept me above the base line was the fact that I could breathe.  

Being in such a state in your life, it only takes a text message from one of your best friends in New York saying that he and his lovely wife have decided to name their son Sina that can make you the happiest living thing on the planet earth.

You simply wake up, delete all the stupid LinkedIn feeds, dress up and head downtown with the "HOPE" to catch the professor at UoT you have contacted with earlier to convince him to be your PhD supervisor. 

The last thing you utter before heading out would be:

"You know what? Fuck Maslow! I can't let a triangle ruin my day!"

Shoot out !

 

Apparently there has been a shoot out at Eaton center with one boy down and 7 injured. My friend was telling me how horrible it was to be there seeing a 14 year old holding a gun running through people to get to subway while the police was chasing him. I didn't hear much of her blabbering as I was thinking , how does it feel to be that one boy who's dead now. Or the 13 year old who is severely shot. How it feels not being able to write the finale of your life, laying there lifeless while living people screaming around you, taking videos with their phones and talking excitedly with the reporters. 

It can be a very void and unexplaineable feeling unless you have suffered yourself. It can only be an entertaining topic to be covered on your facebook or twitter to get more "likes", or comments like "Oh my gosh, are you OK?" and this is the shallow society I am living in and frankly, I can't wait to get the fuck out of here. Shouldn't be that hard. I have lost my identity once, it's much more painless the second time.

Best Regards,

-S