Misc

-It is holiday season again and people are going crazy with shopping and holiday planning. The bad part is I see that lots of people feel obligated to buy presents for their family members and friends. That put too much financial pressure on people, some big families make it like a raffle, they pick a name and just buy present for that person, which is more reasonable! I am happy that we don’t have such a custom in for Persian year and is mostly giving presents or money to younger kids.
Not only buying present for every one is expensive but also is so time consuming! Yesterday I was passing buy the biggest mall of our city and the line of cars in freeway to get to the mall was so long! I myself just buy present for some kids around us and that’s it! We have bought good stuff for my son though, he thinks Santa is buying them and will bring it at Christmas night and leave it under the tree! Whenever he misbehaves these days I tell him, do you want me to call Santa and ask him to return your presents to the store! And he says, NO please no! This trick is at least working for now!

-We are going to Las Vegas for New Year! Since we are taking my son we need to take my Mom or my mother-in-law so when we go out at night someone will take care of him or at least be there while he is sleeping. I obviously preferred to take my own Mom but she does not like long ride in the car (it is about 6 hours drive to Vegas from San Diego), and my husband wanted to bring his Mom so we finally decided to take my mother-in-law with us! I hope it goes well and she does not go on my nerve!
They say the coolest places on New Year’s Eve are either New York City or Las Vegas. I also heard that people go crazy and we should be careful about the drunken people!!

-Last night I was flipping a Persian magazine which has usually interesting articles and is locally published here. The title of “ the will of great Dariush( Persian king) to his son Khashayar shah” caught my eyes and I started reading, it was so interesting, he was so open minded and his advises to his son was mostly about human rights and keeping empire safe and prosperous! One part that was really interesting to me was that he said to his son that Persian Empire contained 25 countries, and there were countries with different religion and different culture, he advised his son to never interfere with people’s religion, beliefs and culture!
The other good advise of him to his son was, visit my tomb every now and then so you remember that no one lives for ever and you will go some day too so never be too proud of yourself!
There were lots of other great points in the will, but I was amazed that how open minded our king was about 2500 years a go and how closed mined are our so-called leaders today! What happened to Iran? Why we lost all that glory? My husband believes if Arabs had not taken over of Iran we would have a better country today and we would not loose all that great culture and glory! May be he is right! Who really knows?
Any way it always makes me sad to see we had such a civilized country with rich culture and now our people are suffering from injustice and human rights violation every day, they are not free to pick their own religion or speak up when they are unhappy about laws and rules! I wish someday not too far Iran gains back the glory that deserves; at least most of Iranians deserve it!