Dedicated to all of you…thank you for being part of my life

Tagged by Technogal

LAST THINGS:

1. Last beverage : tea with milk
2. Last phone call: a Nowrooz Mobarak call from a friend
3. Last instant message: “Sweet dream”
4. Last song you listened to: watching local Iranian tv now; they are playing nowrooz/spring songs; dunno their names or the artists

5. Last time you cried: this morning…had the nowrooz blues
6. Last text message :Happy Nowrooz

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS:

Depends on the object, shape, and material. The only color I am NOT too fond of is brown…like I always thought that if tree trunks were a bright florescent blue, they would be a lot cuter

THIS MONTH HAVE YOU:

15. Made a new friend: Depends on the meaning of friend…
16. Fallen out of love: yep…I’m no longer crazy about Bounty
17. Laughed until you cried: Do people seriously laugh till they cry??!!!
18. Met someone who changed your life: no comment ;p
19. Found out who your true friends were: nope, but I did find out who the village cultural idiot is
20. Found out someone was talking about you: Yep…but dunno what they said…just overheard my name
21. Have you kissed anyone on your Facebook friends list: air kiss, yes
22. How many people on your Facebook friends list do you know in real life: Define real life…btw why is this question under the title: This month have you???
23. How many kids do you want to have: 0
24. Do you have any pets: Do the stray street cats count?
25. Do you want to change your name: Not legally nope, but since Darya is not my real name, guess I kinda already have
26. What did you get for your last birthday: Mostly clothing and accessories…none that I really liked
27. What time did you wake up today: today is Friday so I should have slept till 3 pm BUT had to go somewhere so I got up around 11:00 am
28. What were you doing at midnight last night: Dreaming
29. Name something you CANNOT wait for: this summer
30. Last time you saw your father: a couple of seconds ago
31. What is one thing you wish you could change about your life: I have already changed it
32. What are you listening to right now: The voices inside my head
33. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: I assume we aren’t talking about the cat here…let’s see Tom…hmm…oooh yeah…unfortunately yeah…I did have to put up with an imbecile/teacher called Tom once…
34. Who’s getting on your nerves right now: A couple of stray cats in front of Sultan Center
35. Most visited webpage: Google reader (including blogs, articles and news), facebook, emails

36: what’s your real name:
37. Nicknames: this would give my real name away…actually who cares…real name is Noushin…nicknames: nunu, nounoush, noush
38. Status: stable ;p
39. Zodiac sign: Cancer
40. Male or female: Female…I wonder what the ‘fe’ in female means? Hmmm?
44. University: does university mean there’s only one veristy…what does veristy mean?
45. Hair color: yep, my hair is colored
46. Long or short: eeehhh…what are we talking about here? ;p
47. Are you a health freak: yep, that’s why I love chocolate coz it’s a vegetable ;p
48. Height: I am 3 times the height of my niece…I think
49. Do you have a crush on someone: why is it called having a crush? Does it mean do you wanna crush them?
50: What do you like about yourself: too many to list here ;p ;p ;p …but what I LOVE about myself is that I never jeopardize my principals for the sake of acceptance…
51. What don’t you like about yourself: I get pretty annoying stm ;p ;p and RW, if you are reading this, you better wipe that smirk off your face
52. Righty or lefty: Righty

FIRSTS :

53. First surgery: appendix when I was eleven
54. First piercing: First and only ears when I was 2 months old…and the wird thing is that I kinda remember it…
55. Your first best friend: my blog
56. First award: 4got the name of the sport but the one where we throw a disk
57. First sport you joined: volleyball…I used to punch the ball over the net
58. First pet: gold fish for nowrooz
59. First vacation: London
60. First concert: Shahram Shabpareh in Toronto…I am not a fan
61. First crush: a classmate named Marwan when I was 13 or 14

WHAT ARE YOU?

62. Eating: Reese chocolate
63. Drinking: just finished the tea with milk
64. I’m about to: call someone
65. Listening to: TV
66. Waiting for: a business email

YOUR FUTURE :

Since I mostly live in the moment, dunno the answers

WHICH IS BETTER WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX?

70. Lips or eyes: Eyes
71. Hugs or kisses: both
72. Romantic or spontaneous: Both
73. Nice stomach or nice arms: nice something else ;p
74. Sensitive or loud: sensitive
75. Hook-up or relationship: Relationship
76. Trouble maker or hesitant: none
77. Lefty or Righty: Does it really matter?
78. Shorter or taller: around my height
79. Older or Younger: around my age

HAVE YOU EVER :

80. Lost glasses/contacts: before my lazik surgery, ALL the time
81. Ran away from home: Nobody runs away from home…people always try to run towards home
82. Kissed a stranger: I was air kissed by a TOTAL stranger once
83. Drank Pepsi: A loooooooooong time ago, gave up on soda
84. Broken someone’s heart: eeeeeh…hope not
85. Been arrested : been to police station twice, but only coz of accidents not arrested
86. Turned someone down: Yes, including myself
87. Cried when someone died:
88. Liked a guy/girl friend: I like 99.99% of the people I associate with

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

89. Yourself: To do what exactly?
90. Miracles: life itself is a big miracle
91. Love at first sight: Nope
92. Heaven: yep, in the eyes of a child, in the aroma of a flower, in ….
93. Santa Claus: in the old guy with a beer belly, yeah…in the flying reindeer nope
94. Kiss on the first date: define kiss
95. Angels: kids and guardian angels

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY :

96. Are you happy with your life: happiness is several stages; in my current stage yep…now waiting for next stage
97. Is there one person you want to be with right now: sigh
98. Had more than one boyfriend/girlfriend at one time: define boyfriend ;p
99. Do you believe in God: Everyone does…even self-proclaimed atheists do
100. Posting this as 100 Truths? Heheh, since I dodge answering most of them, yes ;p

My energy level is low…very low these days…except when I am at work…my new job has given me the passion I had long lost in the masquerade parties of my old work place…but since this universe never lets things be balanced, my personal life has lopsided…I don’t enjoy any one’s company anymore…anyone currently in my life…a minute chat with total strangers gives me more energy than a single exchange of words with my so-called friends…they haven’t done anything…it is I who have changed…

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You know how sometimes a song starts playing on your ipod that you have heard a billion times in the past 20 years but have never actually ‘listen’ to it…that’s what happened last night…I ‘listened’ to Whitney Houston’s song “Saving all my love for you’ for the first time and it just dawned on me that she is the other woman in this song!!! How come I had never paid attention to the lyrics before?

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Talking of Whitney Houston, I think her song “Greatest love of all” is gravely underrated…it’s the perfect song…the words should be taught in school…grade one…as the book of life…our manual…yeah the greatest love of all is learning to love yourself?…. Or is it?…what does loving yourself really mean anyway? …A while ago I was thinking whether there’s any truth behind this quote: “If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right.”…Almost every single person told me yep it’s right…but doesn’t it mean that you would have to give up your dignity for the sake of not being right?…

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THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL

WHITNEY HOUSTON

I believe the children are our are future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be
Everybody searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone who fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me

Chorus:
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone’s shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I’ll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can’t take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be

Chorus

And if by chance, that special place
That you’ve been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love

Posted in Awakenings, Clipped from the net, Family or Friends, God, I thunk about this today, Inner peace, Me, myself and moi, Song Tagged: beliefs, change, God, illusion, Love, quote, Rants, Thoughts, Work ]]> http://mymagicaldroplets.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/greatest-love-of-all/feed/ 8 Darya http://mymagicaldroplets.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/hectic-week-work-and-sony-reader/ http://mymagicaldroplets.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/hectic-week-work-and-sony-reader/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:53:23 +0000 Darya http://mymagicaldroplets.wordpress.com/?p=576 ]]>

Here’s a free word of advice: Be careful what you wonder about coz the opposite might just happen to you!!!

So a couple of posts back I wondered if it is normal to sleep 16 hours and still feel sleepy afterwards…well guess forces of nature thought it would be fun for me to discover what it would be like to sleep only 2.5 hours a night for 3 nights and NOT feel sleepy afterwards!!!

Yep, last week was kinda hectic, here are the highlights:

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Work-Related

Had 2 project proposals to write and prepare a sales presentation for a major deal

TIP: If you looking for good animated smartart templates and designs for a powerpoint presentation, check out microsoft’s own site. You can download them by going to the “New” option in powerpoint-scroll down to the presentation templates—choose “Example Slide Effects with Instructions”

What pissed me off: So my Windows-Vista decided to update itself and download a patch that keeps warning me that my office applications aren’t genuine…get off my back Vista—I Just paid KD 18 online for a genuine copy of Kaspersky and then realized I could have gotten it for : Kd 8 at the Infoconnect exhibition here in Kuwait…my days of paying for genuine softwares are over

My baby arrived

My Sony Reader 700 arrived … my poor baby was held at customs for more than 2 weeks and I had to pay around KD 25 to clear it…but who cares it’s here, it’s here

What pissed me off: Those people at customs had opened it so I wasn’t the first person it saw when it was taken out of the box…I hope it didn’t mistake that custom dude for its papa

TIP: If you are thinking of getting a reader but are stuck between a kindle and a Sony Reader; here’s the main difference between them:

Kindle wins coz–the glare on the sony is a LOT; the kindle’s display looks just like a paper page, hardly any reflection or glare

The Sony wins coz—you can view any pdf format and word documents. On the kindle you would have to convert the pdf and word files before transferring them which for me is quite a hassle.

TIP 2: So my mom also wants her own Sony Reader to read Persian books. There are absolutely no Iranian stores here in Kuwait that sells Persian books…so here’s a site that has a rich collection of Persian ebooks: www.parstech.org

Glare of Sony Reader 700

There are other minor differences between the Kindle 2 and Sony Reader 700:

1. Sony Reader is touch screen (imp for me)

2. Kindle 2 is a LOT slimmer and lighter than the Sony Reader 700 (but for me I like the weight of the Reader; makes it feel more like a book)

3. Kindle 2 has a 3G wireless feature (but it doesn’t work in Kuwait)

4. Kindle 2 has a built-in dictionary (wished Sony had this feature)

5. Kindle 2 has a Text-to-Speech feature; you can get the device to read any material to you (it’s not a human voice, don’t know about you but I am not too much into a robot reading me a bedtime story ;p)

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I got up today around 9:30 with 1 question on my mind: Is it normal to sleep 16 hours on weekends and 11 hours on weekdays?

Ok, I got another question now: Is it normal to STILL feel sleepy afterwards?

If it’s not normal than I gotta sue someone…something must be in the air or in the food I eat that is making me feel this drowsy these days…

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[5 minutes later]

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I just had a good laugh at myself. Apparently, I have been told that one of my catchphrases is, “I (or you) should sue them.” ….Okay, I never seriously mean it, but wouldn’t it be fun to sue the skin* off someone over an absurd ground.

Some of the people I wanted to sue in the past were:

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1. the inventor of high heels every time I get sore feet

2. the inventor of pizza for making it taste so good that I can’t stop till I have had 1 complete medium size—thin crust of course—in 10 minutes

3. the person in charge of population control for not during their job properly and making me feel like a sardine among 200 others in a 5 cm tin every time I went to Engalab Square in Tehran

4. my gut feelings every time I misjudge someone (yep suing myself)

5. the inventor of the remote control for giving my brother the power to whizz throw 500 channels in 1 minute and thus my an irking headache

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But today I came across a list on The LIST UNIVERSE (love this site) on “Top 10 Bizarre or Frivolous Lawsuits”.

Check out this case:

No. 7 Holy Roller Vs Magicians

This is a true case of believe it or not. Christopher Roller, a resident of Minnesota sued David Blaine and David Copperfield – demanding that they reveal their secret magic tricks to him. He demanded 10% of their total income for life. The reason for the suit is that Roller believes that the magicians are defying the laws of physics, and thereby using godly powers. But it gets worse. Roller is suing not just because the magicians are using God’s powers – he is suing because he thinks he is God and therefore it is his powers they are stealing.

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PS. I digress again…I was gonna post about sth else, dunno how it ended up being about suing…and i forgot what i initially wanted to talk about ;p

I did something shocking today :O :O…I never thought I would stoop so low. In the 40150 hours I have spent online since WWW and I were first introduced I must have committed more unethical downloading acts than those 16-year-old dvd street vendors. I am ashamed to admit that today I actually PAID tried to pay for something.

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*bows head down in shame*

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Yep, the trial version of my Kaspersky expired so I had to renew…after searching for an hour for illegal activation keys..I finally gave up…hey if an anti-virus program can stop people from cracking it, then it must be good…and then a little voice inside my head went: “Weeeeellll, if you are pleased with their product, why don’t you reward their skill by PAYING for their service”

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Yikes!!!! Where the hell did that voice come from??? I have never paid for any song I have downloaded, nor any film, or any program, heck before Kaspersky I had always used Norton and I never bought the code, so why now????

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[10 minutes later]

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check out this screenshot from the activation form of Kaspersky:

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Apparently these Kaspersky people would only allow men or married women to use their applications ;p ;p … hmmmm on second thought maybe I should try to crack their code anyway…let’s see which i easier: get married so i could use Kaspersky, or have a sex change operation, or crack their application??? hmmmm?

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UPDATE: Apparently Kaspersky has problems accepting paypal. See even when i want to do good, all forces are against me…it’s a sign

UPDATE 2: So apparently the dude reading email complaints/questions is waaaaaay too busy to read the actually email and just response with a generic solution…it’s either an auto-response, or a man…stm it’s hard to tell the difference ;p

UPDATE 3: I gave up trying to use paypal and just paid up theKD 23 ($59.95) for a year subscription directly through their site….congrats Darya for your first ever ethical act online

My stay in Isfahan (last week) was exactly what I wanted it to be: To reconnect my inner being with the mystic souls of my yesteryears. I am not sure if the correct word to use here is ‘reconnect’? Did I ever float comfortably with these serene souls?

Anyhoo, I’ll tell the story of how I rekindled my soul in a later post—but what I wanna tell you now is WHY THE #$%^ DOES MY FACE BURN LIKE HELL

So, one early afternoon I was lingering in the labyrinth of Shah/Imam square’s bazaar. I chatted for a while with a lady working on a miniature-design clock

Isfahany Miniaturist Artist working on a clock

And a grumpy copper-smith

Isfahany copper-smith

Then I spotted a lively, beautifully aged woman sitting on the stone benches of the main entrance to the bazaar.

Copper Bazaar

I overheard her talking to another old man. She had a Yazdy accent; my dad’s city. She noticed me–well I was kind of hard to miss. I was just standing there for a good 5 minutes starring at the pattern of the engravings on the old door to the bazaar

“Are you a school girl?”

Now at my age, that is always a delight to hear,

“Nope, I passed that stage long time back.”

“You are a photographer?” pointing to the camera hung around my neck.

“Hmmm, not a photographer; just like to capture the beauty of it. What’s that?”

Now I knew perfectly well what she was selling. I know it sounds absurd but she kind of reminded me of a similar old woman sitting on these very cold stones 20 years ago when I first visited Isfahan, also selling loofahs. Could she be the very one?

“These? These are keesehs (special kind of loofahs). You come from abroad, right? Here on vacation?

I smile and just nod my head.

“Well my dear, we call these loofahs.

That’s so sweet, she is explaining to me what a loofah is. Don’t know why she suddenly felt like the grandmother I never knew.

And what are these?” pointing to the Sefidab (traditional Iranian soap)

Keeseh and Sefidab

Now before you start rolling your eyes, yes, I do know what sefidab is…though I myself have never used them before. But her eyes, tone of voice, smile, all signaled to me that she wants to talk about keeseh and sefidab. So I asked:

“What do I do with this?”

Ever so delicately,s he took out one sefidab and then looked up at me,

“See this is a keeseh. You take this and you rub two strokes on the keeseh, then you take the keeseh and scrub your skin with it. Oooooooh, your skin would become sooooooo clean, your face would glow with redness, your cheeks would become so red, just like a baby, oooh you would be so so so so glowing. So much dirt would come off your skin that you would be actually able to see them on the keeseh!!”

“So would I have to use water?” Need I remind you guys not to roll your eyes!! But I think I did shock her with that question. She paused for a while and then said:

“Yes, my daughter, there’s water in the bathroom. You should take a bath with water.”

Ok, fine I deserved that. But would you believe she wasn’t sarcastic when she said that. She genuinely wanted to teach me.

Now since I really wanted to rekindle with my lost tradition, and was looking forward to having my cheeks become baby-like, I got a bag of sefiab, the keeseh loofah and a face loofah.

So last week I decided to take a bath the way my ancestors did several hundred years ago.

Now when my mom dear saw the keseh and sefidab, she warned me, “I hope you got those an Atary (Herbal/Natural medicine shop)

“Nope, got them from an old street vendor from some remote village near Yazd. She had a cloth laid out in imam square in Isfahan, a very charming woman.

“I wouldn’t use it if I were you; most likely it isn’t very ….”

I didn’t hear the end of that sentence for by then I was already rubbing that Sefidaba on the keseh.

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1 hour later—my skin did turn red, yeaaaah

3 hours later–skin still red, way too red

5 hours later—skin unnaturally way too red

The next day at work—colleagues point, gasp and awe at the redness of my cheeks. Some seem scared

2 days later—skin less red now but very dry

2.5 days later—skin so dry brother is thinking of using it as sandpaper for his project

4 days later—all is back to normal

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PS. Ok, so apparently the culprit over here was not the poor sefidab, the keeseh, or that wonderful lady, the problem was….ehhmm…it was…moi ..i used the body keseh on my face coz I figured hey why not up the dose a bit so I scrubbed like lady Macbeth scrubbing the blood off her hands—she wanted to rub the red off, I got it on

I received this letter today:

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Dear Darya,

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When we first met, you were totally a different person; your dead aurora gave away the bleakness of your smile. I saw pass that; I befriended you. I befriended you at a time when people you thought cared about you began to shed away their mask and you saw their true faces. You were drowned in your dark reality…but I accepted you and stayed with you just as you were beginning to get out of the masquerade party you had been caught up in for so long. I held your hand the times you fell; it was my shoulder you cried on when you couldn’t even find a cold cement pillar to lean on. Wasn’t I? Wasn’t I the one who introduced you to your lost world; who brought you back to childhood sentiments? No one stood by you through your soul-stirring, and at times suffocating, whirlpool of a journey but ME. And this is the thanks I get??? Now that things are going smoothly, now that the fog has cleared; you ignore me??!! When was the last time you paid me a visit, huh? This is the thanks I get??!! How dare you? How dare you forget my birthday??!!! I honestly thought you were a better person.

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No longer truly yours,
Your blog

www.mymagicaldroplets.wordpress.com

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Dear Blog,

Ouch, it seems someone is pissed off at me. And I deserve it L….eeh so happy belated birthday bloggy…

Yes you are right, we have been out of touch…well, I have been out of touch…dunno why communicating with you is so difficult now? It’s like we stopped speaking the same language…maybe its coz we have both changed. I guess we need to discover a new layer to connect with.

Thank you for your patience,

Darya

Never ending circles

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Wrote this at wee hour of a Thursday morning after listening to “Windmills of your Mind” over and over again. I first heard this song in music class in grade 2 or 3. The melody was stuck somewhere at the back of my ‘windmills’ for many years. I ‘found’ the song 2 years ago on one the blogs but didn’t quite get it till this morning. Finally the lyrics clicked; now that my mind is entangled in the same whirlpool

The original version of the song and in my opinion the best version

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Dusty Springfield’s version is the best female version of it.

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Lyrics

The Windmills Of Your Mind

(from “The Thomas Crown Affair”)

Music by Michel Legrand
Lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman

Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning
Running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that you said
Lovers walking along the shore,
Leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And a fragment of a song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong

When you knew that it was over
In the autumn of goodbyes
For a moment
You could not recall the color of his eyes

[if a man is singing, this part would be:]

When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair?

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
As the images unwind
Like the circle that you find
In the windmills of your mind