Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Say hello from Halifax :)

I'm in Halifax in a Hotel's business center checking my e-mails and posting on my blog of course. There was a conference, finished today which I attended. The conference went well, I met one of my colleagues from the University of Tehran. I haven't seen him since I left Iran and it was quite pleasant to catch up.
Tonight Nima will join me here and we will go around the city for the next few days. Nova Scotia has beautiful surrounding nature which reminds of Newfoundland. The Halifax itself is much like St. John's but bigger with some taller buildings. One of the places I am excited to visit is Prince Edvard Island. Back in Iran I used to watch two TV series: Anna of green gables and Road to Avonlea both were made in Prince Edward Island. I remember how much I was impressed with the beauty of the island.
Anyway we will back in few days and I'll post some photos from the nature around here.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Passion or Love

Last weekend we watched the movie "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" with a friend. It's a good movie, what you would expect from Woody Allen. It's about the love, passion, marriage, relationship. There was part of the movie that a middle age wife who was cheating on her husband was confessing 'she loves her husband but she is not in-love with him'. The idea of the movie was to show a life of good couples who are each normal people but there is not enough passion between them.

From wikipedia : Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something.

If you ask me passion can be a strong motivation for two persons to start serious relationship but it's not enough to build up long-term relationship and it's definitely no guarantee that the relationship will work. When two persons attract to each other at the beginning everything sounds very passionate. But as time passes when they know each other much better the passion replaced with real love if the two matched. Everyone might have his/her own definition of love. For me true love is not based on temporary passions comes and goes like a wave, it's a deep feeling you have for someone based on real knowledge of each other. It's a feeling you have for someone you can't live without.

Some people are a loner, they love to be free and live without the idea of committing to a single person. They keep the relationship as far as the passion is high and when it goes down the relationship is dead for them. But for those who are looking for long-term relationship, passion is just one of the required ingredients to build up healthy relationship. You might attracts to someone but also you couldn't stand staying with him/her under one roof for more than a week. Attraction/chemistry is something you need to initiate the relationship but for a life-time relationship you need something deeper than initial and temporary passions. You need to really love your partner the way he/she is, not the way you are imagining him/her.

What I want to say is that don't mix passions with love, you can love somebody deeply but your heart beat doesn't rise up or your cheeks blush every single day you see your partner. It dose not mean you guys have problem or that's the end of the relationship. Visa verse it could means you guys pass the initial phase of the relationship and now with your feet on the ground you have something deeper and more meaningful.

Monday, September 07, 2009

If you want to know someone...

I'm pretty sure you heard this saying "if you want to know somebody go on a trip with him/her". This is really true, I wonder why is that?
It might take years to know someone but traveling is like a shortcut . You learn a lot about your friends on a 10-day trip but you might not learn as much during a year of friendship.
You learn how flexible, tolerant, considerate your friends are. How much they can be easygoing? How selfish they might be to ignore you and act as they are on their own and you don't exist?
When you are going on a trip by yourself, you are free to do what ever you want (obviously) but when you are traveling with couple of people, it is very important to be cooperative. To be considerate enough to let everybody enjoy the trip. Try to learn about their needs and share yours to come up with the best solution for the entire group.
You need to listen and speak up both otherwise there is a good chance that you become (if you don't listen) pushi and boss your friends around all the time or (if you don't speak up) ends up being ignored all the time. Balance is everything.
This summer I had a chance to have short trips with different groups of my friends. I learn a lot about myself and them. Some of my findings are quite surprising :))