New Post!

-I am not sad any more about not going to Iran . I talked to my Mom and she said, “The flight from Atlanta to Paris was very shaky because of storm and on the other side Tehran is still very hot”. She was telling me that it would not be good for my health to go any way! May be she is exaggerating so I don’t feel bad but I am over it any way. Hopefully we will go some time soon when every thing looks right!

-Our department offered a training “re-thinking anger” last week for limited amount of employees; I signed up right a way. It was such a wonderful class. I feel I have learned a lot. We all become angry here and there and it is good to know how to deal with it!
One of the things that the professor taught was that if some thing unpleasant has happened to you that makes you mad and angry first of all try to monitor your body reaction which is usually faster heat bit, getting hot and raising voice tone. He was advising to take few deep breaths and then start talking! Try to talk it out with respect and then just let it go! Recently I am learning more and more every day to let things that bother me go and I feel I am getting used to the habit of letting go now. I remember that in past if something would bother me I would think about it for a long time and would hang on to it but now I just think about it once or twice then convince myself to let it go!
It just needs some practice!

-We are going to Disneyland for two days tomorrow, the first day my best friend who lives close to Disneyland will come with us and we will stay at her place for sleep.
My son is already very excited!

-I will know the sex of baby in 2.5 weeks! I really do not care if it is a boy or girl as long as is healthy! Both are good. I have already started looking for names! There are so many interesting names in Iran ’s Birth Certificate agency link: www.nocrir.com
For our first child since is named after my husband’s father we did not look for names. I told my husband that is my turn to pick name this time. We want him/her to have an Iranian name but the issue here is that we better pick a name that is not difficult for Americans to pronounce! My son’s name is not a difficult name but still they don’t pronounce it perfectly, that’s why we have a middle name for him too. I found so many pretty Farsi names that sound western too!
Any how I will let you know if the baby is a boy or girl!

-My boss just gave me the book that I talked about “Muhammad and Jesus”. I am looking forward to reading it. I want to know what is in that book to make my boss to lose his faith to Islam. On the other hand I used Ashkavand’s advice and ordered the book “Muhammad the profit of our time” which is supposed to be positive about Prophet Mohammad. It will be interesting to read both and then I will let you know what I think!!

I am Sad!

We were supposed to be traveling to Iran today! It did not meant to be and we ended up not going. I am a sad though, although I know with my pregnancy and other things it was a wise decision not to go but that does not stop me from being sad! My Mom went alone today; she is in air plane now. I had a hard time not to cry when we were hugging for good by! I am so attached to her. For a second I thought what would I do, if some thing happens to her! I always have that damn thought when I am saying good bye to a loved one when she/he goes to a trip. May be because my dad left for a business trip and never came back!! (I am crying now)

My son was asking me yesterday “how come we are not going to Iran ? “he likes traveling with airplane! We are taking off few days next week and will go to Disney land for two days, it is just one hour a way! I have not been to Disney land myself yet, neither my husband!!! Most of people get surprised that we both have not been to Disney land while it is just one hour a way!!

It is amazing how life goes on, and sometimes despite of our plans and interests things happen very differently and we cannot do whatever we were planning to do! I was thinking to myself yesterday that how life is going so fast! It is like a movie, we all have our own unique roles and every body’s movie is different, some people play a longer movie full of adventures and actions, some play a simple movie and not too long!
Just god knows what actions will happen in our movie, it seems although we are the actors/actresses but we don’t know about the scenario all the way to the end!!

I hope we all have a long happy ending movie, long enough to take care of our loved ones, at least until when they can be independent ( I am mostly talking about our children).

Religion again!

The readers that read my blog regularly know that I am not a religious person,
I strongly believe in god and always feel him/her (is not a he or she) in my life and I always see his signs every where. I accept and respect all religions but I myself was born and raised in a Moslem family, my parents were not religious people but would follow certain general rules that I believe are common among all religions but my grand mothers both were religious and thought me from childhood how to pray in Arabic (Namaz) and other religious stuff. Whoever is born and raised in Iran even if not a Moslem learns about Koran, Islamic rules and practices, etc mandatory in school all the way through university. God knows how much of those things that we learned about Islam and Koran in school is true and how mush of it was made up by clergy men and Islamic teachers.

Any way I am a very liberal person and think as long as people are decent, try to be a good person and believe in god (I have seen some people that don’t believe in god “atheist” but still very decent and nice, I am including them in the group of good people any way), it does not really matter to what religion they belong. Most of people have certain religion because we are born with that religion. Any way another thing that I believe in, is that no matter how liberal and democratic we are we should not use freedom of speech and democracy to insult other religions and beliefs, we can respectfully disagree but insulting is bad and makes people more distant from each other.

Any how I wrote the above preface, just to give a brief idea about my personal opinion on religions. The story is that, at work every one in our team is Christian or at least raised Christian, just I and my boss who is Iranian are Moslems. He has been religious when he was young, he even belonged to an Islamic group back in revolution time in Iran but eventually he has grown out to be less religious and when we were talking about politics, Iraq and world’s reaction to Islamic terrorists, he would say that Islam is a peaceful religion and some crazy fundamentalists have ruined it’s reputation, etc. Recently he told us that how his son has converted to Christianity and talks to him all the time about Christianity and is encouraging him to covert to a Christian. Any way last week he told me and the other co-worker that I can consider as a religious Christian about the new book that his son has given to him, called Jesus and Muhammad written by Mark Gabriel a former Moslem and Islamic professor at an Egyptian university who has converted to Christianity. He was telling us how the writer has referenced to verses of Koran and has explained in his book how violent is Islam and the versus in Koran is all about violence, putting down women, etc. He told us after reading this book and referring to the verses and other references, besides other studies that he has recently about Islam he has come to conclusion that Islam is a false religion and other comments that I don’t mention here! He offered the book to my Christian co-worker to read, he read it in two days and they were both talking about it yesterday. I have not read the book but when you can loose your faith over a book like that may be there was never a strong faith any way.
As I said I am not religious at all but I got upset for two reasons, first of all I myself know there are things in Islam and other religions that does not make much sense in today’s world (like women rights) but 1500 years ago or 2000 years a go would work and helped people to live in a better way, when most of Arabs killed their baby girls, prophet Mohammad could not tell them men and women are equal ( they were not ready to hear that) but he told them at least not to kill baby girls because they are girls and tried to convince them that women should have rights as well, the rights are not equal to men’s right but it was better than nothing for that time. He could not jump to the last step all at once, or Jesus could not do that at his time either. History shows that Islam helped Arabs and lots of Moslem countries in old times to grow and have a better life style but for today there are things that should be modified by us human beings,especially because all religons have mixed with superstitious stuff and personal openions of their followers. Now we are in a stage of human history that we can follow our logic and decide better for our lives, we can follow the common spiritual rules of religions like being honest, don’t cheat, don’t gossip, don’t steal, etc but for human rights and other things we can follow our brain and by using education, democracy and voting systems try to improve the laws. So we can not just point at negative points and condemn over 1 billions Moslems religion, I know there are verses about war here and there in Koran but there are lots of verses about peace and forgiveness too. Prophet Mohammad said very clearly to every one that “every human being is same, you are better if you are more decent and if you try to be a better person, not because you have a certain color, language, etc” for 1500 years a go that was a big message to me, even in today world in a free country like US there are still people that they think they are better because they are white!!
Any way I know that I should read the book and then judge that but even my Christian co-worker said that the writer has said all about the negative points in Islam and Prophet Mohammad! No positive is in that book! The other reason that I got upset was why my boss gave the book to a non-Moslem, the non-Moslems already have not a good image of Islam and Moslems with all these bad news and advertisements!

Any way I still give my boss and every one right to believe and talk about whatever they want, and I know that there are lots crazy Moslems who are bad representatives of Islam but I know lots of good Moslems that are scientists, doctors, engineers, teachers, etc that contribute to societies and are great people.
At the end I like to know a good book that defends Islam and Prophet Mohammad, I think my co-worker should read that too and then decide how good or bad is Islam!

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to defend Islam here or promote religious beliefs I just got upset because I thought based on one book, or specific group of people we cannot judge a religion and completely condemn it. Every one knows that people abused religions for the power and money at all times, Christians got involved in lots of violence in middle ages under the name of Christianity! That does not make Christianity a false religion.
Religion itself and its prophet can be very different from what its followers do!
We should all open our eyes wash it positively and see both sides of the coins!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our Trip got cancelled!

As you remember since the beginning that we reserved our tickets for Iran , I was concerned about my husband, although he has valid passport and every thing and he was never part of any group or political opposition but I still was worried, because he has not been in Iran for 27 years. Any way when I bought the tickets I did not know that I was pregnant and when I found out I thought that is ok I go but will be careful. When we heard about the demonstrations in Tehran because of new Gasoline rules we got scared again and thought may be we should not really go at this time, so I called my travel agent and asked him if there was any way to cancel our tickets and get some refund back because I was pregnant and I did not want to travel at this time. He said I dont think I can do any thing but I will check for you. He never called me back and we heard that every thing is back to normal in Iran so we though, we would go ( I prayed to god from the beginning that if this trip will be a good trip it happens for us, otherwise something happens and we dont go).
I started shopping for gifts and stuff and planning for every thing but all of the sudden I got a message from the travel agent on Sunday I have canceled your tickets, have you got your refund back yet?‌ that voice message was like a big metal ball thrown to my head! I could not believe that our trip was cancelled, I called him back but he was not answering, I called Air France and they verified that our tickets were cancelled TWO WEEKS AGO!
I was very mad and upset; I could not believe that he cancelled our tickets without double checking with me and getting my confirmation. Any way I and my husband discussed this lot and we both thought that it was not meant to be (ghesmat naboodeh)! I remembered my prayers to god and I thought may be god is sending us a sign that this is not the right time to go to Iran for us, I thought that it is a very long trip any way and I am pregnant, may be some complications comes up or I get sick and being that far from my doctor is not wise!
I even remembered Al Chemist (Kimiagar) book that I just recently re-read it again and I thought I should follow the signs! May be it was all planned from god that the guy can make our non-refundable tickets refundable, then does not double check with me and every thing happens behind the scene out of my control!!
Any how, I called the travel agent and he said, he thought I was sure to cancel the ticket and he did not needed to double check with me! He said if you are still willing to go I get you another ticket with the same rates! Just let me know!
I talked to my husband again and we both came to same conclusion that considering my pregnancy and the "Sign" we should not go at this time. May be when the baby is born and is about six or seven months then we can go all of us together!

I am a little sad though, especially that I know that my brother and his family and all the relatives were excited to see us! But hopefully we will go in 2008!