One of my new year's resolutions was to write here. Let's see if I can keep it.
After the separation with her husband, she starts learning Italian, because it's a language she sees to reason to learn but for her own pleasure. And to practice her Italian she goes to Italy for 4 months. While staying there she tries to enjoy the worldly pleasures of life, which in Italy means eating and eating!
After that she goes to India to spend another 4 months in an Ashram meditating.
The last place is Indonesia. In a previous visit a medicine man had read her palm and had predicted that she will be back to Indonesia and spends time with him. So she goes back there. And there she tries to find the balance between her normal life and spirituality. And as you can guess from the title she finds love!
As I said I liked the idea of the book. Going to such different countries to explore yourself. (As he mentions all these three countries start with "I" which what she tries to find, herself.) But it was a little bit long, especially in the India part.
Although I am not that into Yoga and this kind of spirituality, but the book made me think about my own state of spirit, and how it has been lost here. I wanted to spare myself from the constant feeling of guilt that I usually associated with religion and it seems the whole thing is gone.
On Monday I decided to go to Barnes and Noble to buy a copy of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert for our book club (that I'm going to talk about in the next post hopefully). When we got there it was so crowded with people all having a book in their hands some sitting on chairs and some standing in a long line.
I was so curious to know what is going on. I could guess that some author is going to be there but I didn't know who. I tried to sneak a peak and see what's the book they are holding, but I could only see a glimpse of the curly hair of the author. That was enough to remind me of the link I had seen in the morning in Iranian news: The bestsellers in America was announced. The first book mentioned there was Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. How come I hadn't heard about it? So I checked in Amazon and found that it is actually the first on the list of bestselling fiction. Could this gathering be about the same book? So i pushed myself between the crowd to look at the poster ad. And yes Jodi Picoult was coming to talk about Nineteen Minutes.
So I waited half an hour more standing until she came. She was in a hurry because of a flight she had to take to Philadelphia and then to Boston and then to London to attend an award ceremony. She read some pages of her book. I actually didn't like the first pages, it seemed a little cliché, the same standard groups of students in a high school, the nerds, the artists, the rebels and the cool. But the subject seemed interesting, a shooting in a high school by one of the students.
Then she answered questions from the audience. Somebody asked her about one of her previous works, My Sister's Keeper. She said while researching for something else she came around mentions of the case of Molly Nash who had Leukemia and needed bone marrow transplant. So after many years of surgeries and treatments her parents decided to conceive a child who would be a perfect match for a transplant for the first one. They did that and now both children are living and are healthy. (Sibling Selection in WebMD) She said she wrote the novel in the middle of the presidential elections and wanted to bring a more human touch to the stem cell discussions.
This one seems a very interesting subject to me. I should definitely read it soon.
As you can see I have changed my blog's banner. This means that I'm going to write more about books. I don't think it will be all about books but for the time being I plan to write about everything book related.
I have always wanted to have a good online home for reading. Somewhere that you can make lists of the book you are reading, have read, or want to read. Somewhere you can find people who read too, and exchange ideas with them, have online book clubs or maybe even swap books.
But sadly I have never found one. This Good Reads website seems to be good enough. You can make different bookshelves, you can write reviews, you can make friends. But I don't like its interface that much. It seems to become another Orkut, full of Iranians! It is good that I can meet my friends there and see what they are reading. But because now I'm reading more in English I prefer somewhere popular among English speaking people. I guess I can be useful in that part and introduce this website to my book reading non-Iranian friends too.
So here it goes, if you are a book lover, or even once in a blue moon book reader, go check out my profile in Good Reads and let's be friends.
Do you believe that your state of mind can change how physical things around you act? I consider myself a very rational and logical person. So if I want to think about it I don't believe it can. But in my deep heart I seem to be having doubts!
As I told you before I am applying for graduate schools, so I needed my transcripts from previous colleges. So I asked my mom to go to my college and order them and send them with DHL so I have them soon.
She did that while she was in Tehran (the city where my college is, not where my parents live) on a vacation. She gave me the tracking number. But it seems as soon as I tried to track the package it has stopped moving. It took it 3 days to get from Iran to the US, but now it is the 8th day that it is stuck in Wilmington, OH :((
I have called them a thousand times and they just give me some lame excuse about the weather.
OK, this was only one, but now I have also tracked my laptop (yes I ordered the new laptop, hooray!) and that also has been stuck in San Diego for 3 days :(( This one is with FedEx.
I should stop doing this from today. Although I don't believe in these things but it may help ;)
Related to this, did you hear about the Lab in Princeton that were experimenting on this? This is the article in New York Times. It is closed now, but before that they were trying to see how much people can affect a random number generating machine by thinking about it!
Ok! It's a long time I haven't written anything here. And yes, as some of my friends have noticed I have been extremely lazy these past weeks.
I had started going to the gym regularly and I even had registered for a class named "Butts & Guts"! It was more o less a pilates class with special focus on butts and guts!
But suddenly I felt down because of all the unfinished things I had on my mind. I had to finish a report and also ask for recommendation letters and then apply to schools. Oh, how much I hate applying.
It was a long process but I think I have managed to do most of the work.
I finished my report (though not as good as I wanted to be) and sent it to the professor and asked her to write me a recommendation and she told me she would.
I also asked two of my other professors. One of them has already submitted my letters. I have chosen 16 schools (yes that much, I'm so desperate) and I have submitted 7 of them. 9 more to go.
But what makes me going is the new laptop. Alireza's promised to buy a new laptop for me when I send all my application materials! I have already chosen what I want to buy! It's a good thing to look forward to, isn't it?
It's a long time I haven't written anything. I have been so lazy these days. I have a lot of things to do and I am promising myself to finish them before this coming Sunday. I will try to write here about my progress but I should post the same message in my Persian blog that has been forgotten for a long time now.
But still it was so heart-aching to see her go trough that pain and to see her family being so cruel.
And the main question. Do we have the right to decide if we want to be alive or not?
What do I think? I don't know. Sometimes I feel stronger when I'm in a difficult situation. So it was probable that I would decide to go n with life.
On the other hand I don't have much tolerance with pain. Even the thought of future pains discourages me from going on.
I have two book club meetings ahead. One is in the public library. Everybody except the moderator who works in the library is above 50 years old ( and I guess except me!). The book for this month is Veronica.
The second one is a book club one of my friends has started and we will have our first real book discussion meeting. The book is Angels and Demons.
(This is not the version I'm reading now).
For some reason I'm not excited about any of them. But I should read them anyway. I will write about them.
The four day Thanksgiving holiday is over and it's work day again.
For Thanksgiving dinner we were invited to one of our friend's house. We didn't have the traditional turkey but it was all good.
Our hostess had made Dolmeh (stuffed bell pepper), a pasta casserole and honey baked salmon. And I made the salad.
For myself I bought a sweater and a cami from Gap. The interesting thing is the sweater which is both in season and is so cozy and soft was cheaper than the cami :D
We also bought a 17 piece corningware set.
