Tel Aviv – Wet Hijab Day

When we arrived yesterday at Tel Aviv airport, I soon realized that taking pictures in Israel wont be a straightforward job. Before officially entering the country, the boarder guard asked me to delete all images on my digital cam, after he understoud that I tried to make a photo of him.
Therefore today on the beach near Jaffa I used the camera with more caution, in particular when a large group of tourists fro m the West-Bank came to enjoy a day at the seaside. I found this Jaffa variant of Baywatch much more inspiring and beautiful than the original.

Wet Hijab Day at Tel Aviv Beach

Black and Blue

Coming from the north-east into Munich, perhaps one of the worst examples of 70th urban architecture awaits the traveler: The Arabella high-rising building, which harbours not only a large hotel of the same name, but office, medical practises and flats. What is less known: In the basement of this block once resided the most important music recording studio “Musicland”. It was of little domestic importance, because the innovative sound that sound-engineer Mack and pop-composer Giorgio Moroder produce there was more acknowledged by international stars like Freddy Mercury, ELO, Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones. They recorded a few of their best songs and entire records at Macks and Moroders Musicland Studios. For some of them, a special regulation in the british tax-law might have played a role in their decision to come here and live and work for at least a year in Germany, thus evading the astronomic income taxes of the labour government. But to large degree, it was the special Moroder sound and the savior-vive in the Bavarian capital that made Munich so attractive to them. Freddy Mercury liked to take the tram in the afternoon, to drive down across the Isar river to hang around at the beer-garden “Chinese Tower”.
The Rolling Stones produced the entire “Black and Blue” album at Musicland in 1975, but had enough time to meet Uschi Obermeier, the most enchanting of the Munich communards.
At the end of the eighties, Mack and Moroder came under growing pressure from the property owner Schoerghuber, who tried to rise the rent for the studio. At the same time, a new subway-line was build, only a few meters aside the studio rooms. From now on, subway trains running along caused too much noise to permit further music recordings. Giorgio Moroder left Musicland and went to the US, and Mack relocated the entire studio to the Munich suburbs.

About ten years later, rich Arabic families from the Emirates and Saudi Arabia discovered Munich as a save, convenient and pleasant place to spend the summer time, escaping the heat at home, spending large sums at daily shopping walks and visit high-class medical clinics for annual check-ups. It might be, that the Arabs were fascinated by the idea that the name “Arabella-Hotel” was a reference to their home.

I tried with little success to shoot a picture with one of them, and the record cover of the Stones “Black and Blue” in front of the former entrance to the Musicland studios. It took me several days to find out a trick, since none of the black veiled women or their husbands were very fond of appearing on a photograph, with reference to the Stones rock music.

Black and Blue - in front of the former Musicland Studios

The magnificance of Irans Nature

Dear Ghazal, Yesterday night the french-german TV channel Arte broadcasted this amazing two-series documentary about the magnificance of Irans Nature. And by chance (or perhaps not really by chance but due to a telepathic link of two like-minded souls), both Omid and myself were watching it. When we met in the morning at coffee break, we were both still out-of-breeze about the beautiful pictures, so we decided that we will travel Omids home-country next summer. In fact he already invited me several times, but I always had some issues regarding the current political tensions between the Regime in Tehran and the West. And Omid convinced me that he will teach me how to get around all hussles there. So we made firm plans for 2013, we will begin the Great Game again. Whats about you, Ghazal, will you accompany us ? It would be so much nicer, and of course we both would take care of you and protect you from the wild creatures all around.

To give you some taste of what will expect you if you come with us to visit the land of your ancestors, have a look at the Arte TV series (you can change the language to german in the tiny menue on the bottom, if you prefer):

The second serie goes to the north and north-west of Iran, visiting the reservation-area Golestan, Elburs Mountains and the Caspian Sea. It also shows peoples visiting Hafiz' tomb in Shiraz and reading his poems with great passion. Rare wild creatures such as Brown-Bear, the beautiful Ghazel, Leopard and Caucasian Deer. The animal photographs of the Serie were shot by Benny Rebel, a gifted expert of animal behaviour and the aesthetics of life.

(You can also watch the two documentaries full-screen size by pressing the tiny rectangular button below the videos.)

First system developed to assess living conditions on other planets

Hi Michael,

You recommended last year to escape onto this newly discovered exo-planet Giese..., which is 20 light-years away from earth. I told you I can not leave Stockholm , cause my family needs me here and I am busy with my PhD project.

But today I red something in the newspaper, what might make your invitation more realistic: Some researchers have developed a computer program that after putting in some data it can predict the suitability of any planet for human life. So in case you will know about a planet that is not light-years away from home, but maybe only some light-hours, we might have its living-conditions checked with this program, before going there for a short visit.

Take Care /ghazal

Fighting christian dominance on Blogger"s blogosphere

Where have all these babtists, evangelicals and other "born-again christian" morons learned how to write a blog ????  Is it only me who feels like sitting in the wrong movie (as we germans like to say), because always when I click the Next Blog command in the header row of my own Broken-Radius I got the impression to be thrown into a christian fundamentalists propaganda machinery. Most of these blogs then display personal profiles aiming of presenting its owner as a more faithful person than holy Thomas of Aquin or Margaretha of Bingen. What a crap christian conspiracy is occupying the cyperspace here ? I feel surrounded by dumb christian fundamentalists flooding  the web with their bigotry. 

This is as worse as it is nowadays on short-wave radio, where you dont hear BBC, VOA, Radio Moscow or Deutsche Welle any more, but all free frequencies are taken over by Radio Maria, Radio Vatican, Bible Radio and their islamic counterparts.

However small my contribution to fight this spread of christian stupidity and lies might be, I will counterstrike with some photos showing that the battle is not lost jet. and in particular to show, that the real life and the real battles are still happening on the streets. One of these street-born counteractions took place May 2010 in Munich (sorry Asal, I forgot to invite you to this event), where me and Jane from west-coast USA demonstrated our discomfort with Pope Benedikt personal cult. The demonstration under the slogan "Jolly Procession" was organized by the Munich branch of the "Freidenker Verband". 

Please note that we were escorted by the German Police, which expressed its sympathy and defended our march against the furious participants of a religious pro-Benedict festival that took place at the same time.

 

Thats NOT me and Jane, but the brave organizers of the event. This fake priest looks more disgusting than Joker from Batman, but the fake nun looks as pretty as Michele Pfeiffer.

We gave this grey day a lot of extra and vivid colours. Click on the "PLAY VIDEO" bottom below, please.  Never click on the "NEXT BLOG" bottom in the header row.

Chocolate and the last Woody Allan movie

Hello Michael,

Im glad you have your vacation and that the weather and everything is nice. enjoy these days.
Nice that my gels worked out!!
Thank you but you dont have to send me chocolate. i already eat too much here :)

I had my vacation (2 weeks), my family came for a visit from US. So it was nice.

Enjoy your vacation!

regards
/ghazal

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Hello Ghazal,

So nice to read your messages after an 7 hours train journey from the Black Sea back to Sofia. I am glad you had nice vacations with your relatives from the US. It must be interesting to talk to them. I guess your parents and relatives are very educated and cultural people, if they decided to live outside their iranian home-country for so long time already, only to live in freedom and to have their kids grown up in freedom. Ghazal, I think you have to be very grateful to them (what you are, of course, I know too good).

Yesterday evening we had a very nice evening show at this little family hotel: A charity group of artists-dancers gave a performance with orphan gypsy kids. First they did some classical ballet, than they switched to their traditional belly dancing, and finally they invited the whole audience to dance with them. The funny thing was, that our 13 year old son (who always wants to appear cool, like when he refused last year to have the pink Phillips iPOD station) was invited to dance by a polish girl his age. They had obvioulsy already exchanged some eye contacts during the days before. Although he has a "big mouth" always, if it comes to girl-friends he is absolutely shy (must be genetic, I guess somewhere on the Y-chromosome).
Therefore he first appeared frozen like a snow-man, when the girl just grabbed his hand. Of course he followed here on the dance-floor, but knowing that we were also there, he was a bit reluctant to dance. Only when he saw that we were dancing as well, he overcame his passiveness and suddenly danced very enthusiastic and with very funny habbits. I think it was good for him to see that it is nice and relaxing.
Because he would be sad to leave right the next morning after this encounter, he and the rest of the family decided to stay 3 more days there at the beach ressort.
But since I have a meeting at the Bulgarian radiation research center tomorrow, I had to leave anyhow. Late this week I go to Belgrad (which is in Serbia, just cross the boarder) to talk to some doctors about Tinea Capitis patients. In case you have forgotten about this story from your MSc-lectures: They were irradiated as kids for a fungal infection on their heads (done in the 1950s, also in Israel, Marocco and Iran - click here to see a photo.


Sorry to wright you always so long messages, would be easier to talk. I miss this a lot.
Have you been to the movies recently ? I heard that "Super 8" must be a good one.

About the chocolate: Sorry, Ghazal, but I cannot stop it any more, it is already on its way to Warsaw. If you don"t want to eat it all, you might do either of the following:

- eat only the thin chocolate layer between the waffers. Some assume chocolate helps to increase serotonine level, therefore it makes you happier. You can never be too happy, as was shown by the picture of you jumping high in Brussels. In case this was in part due to Belgium chocolate, you might try a little bit of this Knoppers stuff and test how high you can jump from this.

- you might help some of colleages/friends at the meeting surviving the polish cousine. I remember in the past it was not so tasty. Maybe you can please somebody a piece of chocolate buscuit.

- you can leave it till Christmas (or Jul or Yalda) and eat it with your family

- in the worst case, you can feet the birds and doves in Warsaw with it. There are thousands of doves on the public squares in Warsaw. Don"t know of they like
chocolate, but for sure they like the biscuit around (so you eat the chocolate for happiness, and give the biscuit to the birds for a good feeling). And I think in zoroastrian faith the birds are considered holy creatures.



Ghazal, my dear, wish you a nice time in Warsaw,
and as usual: happy days and success and optimism.

Take Care
Michael

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hello michael,

just wanted to thank you for the chocolate and I hope that everything is fine with you.

regards
ghazal

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Hi Ghazal,

I hope that the chocolate helped you to survive the polish cuisine.
For my feeling, polish cuisine is pretty much the exact opposite to the fine meals we had exactly a year ago at the persian restaurant here in Munich, where you and Shafa invited me. Please give her my best greetings and I hope there will be the possibility once to invite you and your family to such a nice place as well.

1: If you want to read about a nice movie, continue here (otherwise jump to 2:)
I went to the movies last weekend, saw Woddy Allan's newest film "Midnight in Paris". I liked it a lot, it is a complex story of a young writer engaged with a rich american girl. At night he used to escape into a dreamworld that lays 80 years back in time. There he meets all his historic heroes like Picasso, Hemingway, Bunuel, Dali, Josephine Baker, the Fitzgeralds and many others, which I am afraid don"t mean anything to you since you are another generation (they are considered the lost generation and were in fact the wild rebels in the 20s of last century). In particular, he meets a girl Adriana in his dream journeys, who is played by Marion Cottilard. You might remember, we saw her last year in the movie "Inception" on the side of Leonardo de Caprio, but she won the Oskar for playing Edith Piaf in "La vie en rose" (which we did not managed to watch here in Munich). I liked the movie a lot, there are no special effects, but this nice idea that one falls in love to somebody who is living in another time. If you like good actors playing in Paris, try to see the film.


2: I think that the link I send you recently showing some pieces of historical arts in Bulgaria, which in my view resemble persian style, was not working. You can either try it again here or have a look at the attached photo.


Take Care, my dear,

Michael


PS: It always makes me happy reading some words from you.
At least they show that the time you had here in Munich was not a horror for you.
Reading the e-mails that I send every day and night to you to the guesthouse, I am a bit shocked.
It must have been difficult for you to accept these messages, that not always could hide a certain degree of desire, Ghazal.
Seeing that you have not completely terminated our communication lets me believe, that you are strong and confident enough to laugh about all this and consider it a funny episode in life.

Munich Tourists and Shoppers Sign Declaration for a Free Iran

The Munich Association for a Free Iran organized a rally to protest against political oppression in Iran and inform about the raising numbers of its victims. Visitors of the city and people comming for Saturday shopping stoped at the Stachus square to see the photographs of people who were imprisoned and humilated for the crime of fighting for liberation of their country. Reading about several individual cases of torture and oppression, many of the passers-by signed a declaration demanding immediate release of all political prisoners, end of violence, torture and killing of political activists. Next to Frankfurt and Berlin, Munich was always one of the main destinations of political refugees from Iran in Germany.

کانون ایرانیان آزادیخواه مونیخ /آلمان

EVIN: A hotel named after a concentration camp

Hi Michael,

When somebody through facebook forwarded this sequence of nocturnal images from Teheran to me, I was almost prompted to ask if this is really the same place one knows from the news headlines of protests or from Ahadis movie "Green Wave".
Suddenly, it look more like a tourist promo for Beirut. Even during my last visit to Teheran in 2008, I have not seen the city in such glamour like here in this Youtube scenes.


but suddenly, at around 3:22 min a very short picture showed a neon-sign pointing to a "Hotel Evin", that convinced me it is Iran. Would like to know, is there really a Hotel in Teheran that carries the same name as the prison notorious for all the violence ? Which hotel owner would call its business after a place of death and violence ? And who are the customers booking in a hotel with this name ?



I heard the most horrible reports about Evin and other prisons, people in particular political prisoners are tortured there with pure saddism using physical and psychic violence in the most inhuman manner. People are killed there systematically. I feel anger imagine somebodies calls a hotel after this place of horror. When we visited last year with Shava the concentration camp near Munich (think it was called Dachau), at least people respected the memory of all those who lost their lives there. Nobody would consider calling a Hotel after this place Dachau, don"t you think so ?

Hope everything is fine with you, Take Care
/ghazal

ELIZA - The Phantastic Answering Machine

Dear Michael,

sometimes I wonder about how much we trust in the electronic communication, that one person writes some words to another person thousands of km away, and these words are converted into a sequence of bits and rush through computer chips and are converted into electric pulses or light waves, send back and forth to satellites until they finally reach the recipient. And the recipient for some reason does not question that the words he reads in the message are nothing else but the written thoughts that his friend has hammered into the keyboard thousands of km away.
Shouldn"t we be more cautious about the messages we receive day by day ? I don"t mean the mail I receive from you, I"m always sure that they come from you, cause they have their very unique style and always contain some code-words that mark them as authentic. But my younger brother, who is studying IT technology in the 2nd course now has shown me something they are doing currently. They got the project to develop a computer program that is able to write "fake answers" to an e-mail. I don"t know how they are doing it, but the program searches for some keywords in an incomming message, and than replies with some sort of standard sentences (that are usually not very complex or intelligent) which again contain the same keywords.
So my dear brother asked me to test his program. Therefore I send him an e-mail and within some micro-seconds already got an answer:

My Dear Brother,
I send you my best wishes to persian New-Year. Did you received my present that I send you by post ? When I packed the parcel I cut my fingers with the scissors and had to put bandage on and now I can only use my left hand. I went with Shava to the mountains on Saturday, because with an injured finger the only proper thing to do is to go out for a walk in nature. We would have liked to stay there till Sunday, but I have no time because I have to prepare for the lecture at college. The students of the new curse will arrive tomorrow, and they want to be entertained properly. I hope you doing well and work hard to become the next Bill Gates or J.v.Neumann.
In love, your sister

No have a look at the answer I received instantly from his program:

"Dear Sister,
O, I did not knew there was persian New-Year. What present you send, I did not received anything. O, you cut your fingers ? Interesting, why you need the scissors for this ! Did Shava liked the mountains ? What else did you do on Saturday ? So the students will come. I hope they will have fun.

Take Care
/your brother"


And now, what you think ? Do you find that the program is doing a good job ? I know my brother was never very keen sending long letters to anybody, but at least he put his own (crazy) ideas into it. But the program that he wrote virtually only repeats what I wrote in my original message. I think it is better to carry on writing down our thoughts, even though the answers may take a bid longer.

Hope everything is fine with you, Good Night.
Ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,
So funny to read your experiences with your brother. Thanks god, it is just a technical project that sends you such standard and formal letters in response to a mail. The quality of a machine-based artificial intelligence was actully tested by one of the earliest and most influential computer scientist (Alan Turing) by setting up a similar device that you and your borther were using. Turing suggested, that an experimentalist should do two verbal dialogues in parallel behind two black curtains. Behind one of the curtains a human person should sit to conduct a dialogue with him, wherease behind the other curtain the artificial-intelligence machine had to be placed. If the experimentalist could not tell after a certain time where the talking machine was and where the person was, than according to A.Turing the machine has passed the criteria of having indeed artificial intelligence.
But I could imagine, that this also depends a lot on the experimentalist. Simple-minded people might get fooled very easily, they might even think that a mail-response from your brothers program comes from a real person. Other people who read and wright a lot are probably much more critical. I could imagine that you are extremely critical. I think it will not be possible for any machine to fool you. You have somethink like a seventh sense to tell what is real and what is fake.

There were several attempts among IT freaks to beat Alan Turings test. They were called Chatter-Bots and among them ELIZA was probably the most famous. ELIZA was such an artifical language dialoge program developed at MIT. The exciting thing was that it should play the role of a psychoanalyst, talking to a patient. When Weizenbaum developed ELIZA, it was the time of Flower-Power, Hippie-Music and mind-extending drugs for the young, but the elder generation discovered the healing power of psycho-therapy. I guess this was the motivation for Weizenbaum designing ELIZA as a psychatrists chatter-bot. But even though ELIZA impressed some people really a lot (they were told that the doctor has a bad flue and therefore talks to them from behind a courtain), dedicated linguists that used the Turing Test could tell that it was only a machine.

I hope you can sleep well and don"t carry on endless dialogues with a machine in your dreams.

Take Care, Ghazal,
Michael

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Hi Michael,
a last remark before midnight: Do you know why the computer program by Weizenbaum, that could participate in seemingly meaningful dialogues, was called ELIZA ? There was the character of Eliza Dolittle, a simple, uneducated person with a very basic language in G.B.Shaws play "Pigmalion" (later in the funny musical "May Fair Lady"). Two university professors, one of them was Mr. Higgins, made a bet: Higgins promised that he will "re-educate" Eliza Dolitte with brute force, give her not just elegant clothes but also a new language. And he will guide Eliza Dolittle to a reception of the high society and nobody should recognised that before she was selling flowers on the market every day. Guess what happend ?

Take care
/ghazal

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Hi Ghazal my Dear,

What is wrong with a girl that sells flowers all day long ?
(See, now you caught me responding to you in the answering-machine-style ;-).
I promise I wont do it again. But don"t expect me to read G.B.Shaws "Pygmalion" now to answer your question. It is already after midnight, and I have to go for a walk with our dog.


I"ll tell you tomorrow about what I think about Eliza Dolittles qualities as a chatter-bot.

Take Care, Good Night
Michael

Why the Fukushima nuclear disaster is good for nature

It is always worth to follow Monthy Pythons advise and ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE, even in case of an accident that is univocally considered a major disaster for the civilized world and in Japan the biggest catastrophy since their defeat in WW2. At least here in Germany, the most prominent critics of nuclear energy are the greens, in close alliance with WWF and Greenpeace. And as we all know how well and absolutely predictable this german Angst works it was no wonder that the Green Party managed to kick-out the conservative christian-democrats from their stronghold in Baden-Wuertemberg. They just had to point to Fukushima and reminding every voter in their state that it were always the cristian-democrats who support nuclear energy.

This, on the first glance, looked very straight for the green party, a clear "full-house" so to say. But in fact, they might have even won twice: Fukushima not only presented them the prime-minister post of Baden-Wuertemberg on a silver plate, but the long-term and global benefits of this "accident" might be even more important. I"m talking here about the whales and dolphins, who over the last years were slaughtered by the thousands to satisfy the desire of the japanese cuisine. Not the UN, nor Greenpeace or WWF could achieve, what the Fukushima accident did: a natural protection for these big naval mammals for at least one generation of animals. Remember, caesium 137, the strong gamma-isotope that was released into the japanese sea and into the pacific, has a physical half-life time of 30 years, and its biological half life time is not much shorter. It preferentially accumulates in the muscle-tissue of mammals, including whales and dolphins. For them, it does not bear a real health risk, so nobody of us should worry, and if Greenpeace and WWF do so, we all know it is just their business to beat the drum. In fact, muscle tissue is one of the most radio-resistent, so whales and dolphins will live as good or as bad as without caesium-137 in the ocean. But for us humans, since we always worry and we made the german Angst one of our best export-goods, any knowledge that some single atoms caesium-137 are in our steak or Sushi or Miso-Soup makes us sick right away. So the japanese whale-hunters and the violent Dolphin-Killers in Taiji will face some tough years to come. I guess the sale for whale and dolphin meat will drop by 99% soon. And unless some hard-liners such as Mr. "I-take-some-days-off"-Shimizu of Tepco, or Mr."My-blue-jackets-is-a-fake-Levis"-Edano of the gouvernment or his imperial highness Mr."I-love-you-all"-Akihito eat in front of the TV-cameras and on their web-sites some whale-sushi and dolphin-soup, the popularity of japanese sea-food would loose even more ground.
We all know instinctively, that there always must be light, when there is shadow. Or as a good friend of mine who was cought by the idea of physical laws-of-conservation ones formulated it: "For every person on earth who stops crying, another one has to break-out in tears. The sum of all the tears in the world is therefore a fixed number." Hence, we should not feel too much mercy seeing the japanese nuclear manager spreading their tears around and mourning in public and begging for pardon. We must know: for the whales and dolphins now starts a great time, they will live for the next decades a life without fear. Like the Jews still celebrate Purim as the rescue from a masacre planned by the persian minister Haman in the 5th century BC, such will the whales and the dolphins always commemorate the year 2011, when a devine hand blow up the Fukushima reactors and spilled the caesium-137 broth into the ocean to mark all naval mammals as unedible and unhuntable.
Or would it be possible that it was not God in his wise decision, who first triggered the earth-quake and than the tsunami, that hit Fukushima so badly ? Could it be that all the whales and the dolphins of the world came together on March 11th, to make a big, big wave, much bigger than the mini-tsunamis that our kids like to do at home in the bathing-tube ? A wave that hit the coolant-pumps and auxilary generators and electricity supply in Fukushima ? Don"t forget, how intelligent whales and dolphins can be: If you have ever seenw the movie "Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe", you remember how they could smell the coming disaster and with a smile on their face (which in fact they always have) they said "So long, and thanks for all the fish".
Does not matter who really did it, intelligent creatures (like the whales or dolphins) or a super-super-intelligent creature (like God or the WWF), finally we should understand that it was worth it. This little nervous break down around a japanse nuclear facility rescued the future life of our most loved naval creatures.

Help request: What means "Ey Vay !"

At university I had a very good friend from Jordan. He was palestine, much younger than the rest of us physics students and extremely gifted. But he did not only had an extraordinary mathematical talent, he was also very familial with classical european music and literature. On the other hand, he had a very firm opinion about Israel, whom he completely refused the right of existence. About the last point we had a never-ending intellectual fight, whereas for most other issues, philosophy, science, values of life we felt quite similar. During the friendship with him, Ismail, I learned a lot about tolerance and that different points in some aspects of life does not has to result in a confrontation, but in fact can be a gain for both. I knew that he was muslim, praying 5 times a day, and he knew I am bloody atheist, drinking a glass of wine here and than and having sympathy for Israel.

Thanks to his permanent supply of records from west-Germany, I used to visit him to listen to some rare pieces of music. Once he brought from his shopping trips to West-Berlin Strawinskys "Le Sacre du Printemps", played by the Berlin Philharmonics. When I heard the first tunes by the oboe, with the sudden entry of the rhythm strings, I got completely struck. Maybe this day I had already a glass of wine, but together with the music I felt more and more like in one of the fairy tales of 1001 nights. Inspired by the idea of the "Sacre" I asked Ismail if he knew something about this new student, which must be from another muslim country, because she sits the whole afternoon in the state library wearing a head scarf. But I told him that even though she wears the scarf, one could see how beautiful she was and that she had the most amazing blue eyes. So I asked Ismail if he could find out her name, what he did, but only after telling me that any further intentions to meet her were very likely a waste of effort. Anyway, a few days later Ismail came to me and said "The girl you saw at the library is Samira. She is from Syria, and daughter of a high ranking Baths party leader. They are all instructed not to make any personal contacts to ordinary germans. And by the way, all of us foreign students coming to your country also had to sign an agreement in the east-german embassy, promissing that we will avoid any privat relationship to german student-mates or people on the street. So you see, even our occasional get-together to listen to music, talk about quantum-mechanics and Einsteins philosophy and to argue about middle-east politics, all this might be already illegal. What you think they will call it if you start here to court a student girl from Syria ?". In my naive understanding of friendship (and in these times friendship in the official speach of politics meant "friendship between all peace-loving nations") I just rejected his very rational arguments and the next day went to the library again and asked the girl "You are Samira, right ?". Under her scarf I almost could see how she wrinkled her brows, since it appeared that except of her name "Samira" she did not understood a single word. What I did not knew, that except of Ismail, who spoke fluently several languages and quickly made the brilliant jokes in german, most of the foreign students from rich countries had their privat translator, who sat next to them during all lectures and seminars and therefore making any attempt to learn the language of their host country superfluous. Therefore, our first conversation was very limited. Today I have to laugh about my silly idea to seduce a girl with the only arabic phrase I knew: "Salam Alejkum". But at least I could invite her to "coffee", which I was pretty sure must sound similar in arabic. She shook her head and said "Chaj", which fortunately I knew from russian, where it also means "Tea". So we went to the library buffet, which was located in the basement and had the chic of a station toilet. I could imagine that for her drinking a tea or coffee had another cultural implication, and this filthy buffet with its fuggy smelling air would hamper the last bit of delight, even of this third-class tea. Therefore I made signs to her to leave this filthy room with our cups and sit outside on the concrete stairways of the old library building.

Our conversation resembled very much the one between Robinson Crusoe and Friday: pointing to various things around us we would give them the names in our two languages. This way I learned that chestnut was "chestanub", honey is "Al Asal" and eyes are "orjoun". We probably met several times in and outside the library, and I was following Ismails warning that inviting a girl that wears a head scarf anywere else could cause a serious problem for both sides. But even the occasional encounter between the two of us on the stairway outside the library must have attracted the attention of some watchdogs from either her or my country. Somebody must have been concerned that we might find our own very individual interpretation of friendship between the nations. And they might have also kept a record of the progress we made in our conversation, which became more and more intense, but absolutely ununderstandable for any outsider, who would have tried to sneak into our talks. For our own use we had created a sort of german-english-arabic Esperanto, that to anybody else must have sounded as a completely cryptic code. But I never considered, and neither did Samira, that Ismails advise not to meet each other somewhere else than at the library for moral reasons was indeed the most foolish thing to do. Because we were sitting there like on an open display: visible for everybody who wanted to keep a record of the frequency and intensity of our short, but regular meetings. And this was perhaps seen as an open demonstration of disobedience, for two totalitarian countries a heresy much worse than would have a secret get-together been.

The security forces acted fast, silently and efficient: without any warning Samira was send home to Syria with a couple of hours notice. And since we did not had telephone, let alone e-mail or mobile in the mid 80es, she could not even say good bye. I also had forgotten to give her my address, since for us the stairway of the library was always the natural place to meet. After a couple of days not seeing her I asked Ismail if he could find out what happened to her. His legendary talent in physics has made him an admired student not only for us, but in particular for most other foreign students from middle-east countries as well. So it took him only a short talk with a guy from the syrian students group to find out that Samira was back home. The explanation was that she came to Germany only for a short summer school in aerodynamics, and this course had finished now. Funny enough, the books she always read at the library were all about high-energy nuclear physics.

Ismail with some degree of satisfaction said: "You see, I told you never try to court a girl with a head-scarf. You have to wait until somebody of her family lifts her scarf for you". When I told him, that Samira ones already shifted her scarf backward, showing with or without intention some of her chestnut-coloured, curly hair and that she might not fit into his conventional idea of a modern girl, he band backward, started laughing and said "Oh Boy". Ismails "Oh Boy" was a sort of final sentence of this short but inspiring relation to a girl with a head scarf that she was just about to lift without any help. It was like the two words "The End" on the final credits of a nice, long movie.Until recently, and still entangled in the belief that a german-english-arabic Esperanto is an easy way to bridge language-boarders I was convinced that "Oh Boy" means just "Oh Boy", a very common vocative in english with a connotation that lays somewhere between compassion and admonition.

But only recently, 24 years later, I heard again this phrase, and now it sounded more like "Ey Vay !". It was during an interview with one of the students who took part in the 2009 demonstrations in Teheran, shown in Ali Samadi Ahadis wonderful movie "The Green Wave". And here, the interview was subtitled, and I had to learn that Ismail was using the same "Ey Vay !", meaning "Oh God" when he commented my reckless idea of courting Samira. In these years in the late 80es the islamic "revolution" in Iran was just 10 years ago, and occasional reports about police forces in Teheran that would fix womans head-scarfs with pins on their head were taken as US propaganda. Caught in the memories of Samira and her rather lavish usage of her scarf I did not had enough fantasy to imagine that a few strains of hair leaking under it could provoke a violent and inhuman reaction by the police. And I could not imagine that 24 years later an iranian student would talk about much worse violence on the streets of Teheran, using the phrase "Ey Vay !" to express complete frustration and disgust.

Meeting of the Curly Haired in Teheran

Sometimes it does not need much more than this ...
And who will doubt that the future of Iran lays in the hand and hearts of its young generation
(پارک ملت‎ Pārk-e Mella).



source: http://naafass.blogspot.com

Hi Ghazal,

I can"t help myself, but this "Group of the Curly Haired"   is so amazing and beautiful.
I think you should become a member of this group.
It reminds me of the movie "You don"t mess with Zohan", where Zohan tries to explain to his friends why he wants to leave the army and become a hairdresser:
"Hair is just beautiful, it does not do any harm, it does not hurt anybody".

How are you ?
Tired ? Sad ? Disappointed ? Too busy ? Feel offended ? Fed up ? Sick ? Taken hostage ? Electricity cut off ?

I do worry a bid (But I hope without reason).

Michael

The 32nd aniversary of unfreedom and violated human rights

Todays 32nd anniversary of the islamic revolution in Iran hardly gives any reason for celebration. Initially enthusiastically welcomed by many progressive people around the world - including the socialist countries and churches - it soon became clear that this revolution brought to the iranian people anything else than freedom from corruption or an end to a totalitarian leadership.
The last three decades in Iran were not only hallmarked by oppression of any free thoughts and violation of human rights, but also by a growing corruption among the religouos, political and armed forces. An article by B.Kalnoky and C. Wergin published recently in the german newspaper "Welt am Sonntag" describes the internal battle for economic influence between these ruling forces (Translated version see here).
There is hope, however, that the strength of the people of Iran, their cultural heritage and traditional civil values will overcome the current regime.

Darbareye Elly

hi michael,

I did not knew before that UV-light is so essential for our body to produce vitamine D. Interesting aspect, I have to consider this in my PhD-project. So maybe after UV-exposure my TK60 cells are really better off, cause they finally get some vitamine D after living for too long time in the dark incubator ? ;-) And what do you say now: Last year you have been wondering why I prefer to walk home instead of taking the bus. I then told you it is very relaxing for me, cause this way I can let my thoughts flow freely. Now it appears that I intuitively might have known that it is really healthy to spend some time out in the open to reconstitute my vitamine D reservoir.

I already saw the movie "Darbareye Elly" (what means "All About Elly", but the original title in persian is "Kanojo ga kieta hamabe")  about two years ago, after it received the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin film festival. But I watched it again yesterday with Shava.

I liked the movie, although it was no easy entertainment. It had no Happy End, but a Tragic End.
The story starts very relaxed, showing three young families (including Ahmad, brother of one of the women, who just came from Germany where he divorced) spending a weekend at a seaside cottage at the caspian sea. The three families have the silly idea to bring together the lonely Ahmed with the baby-sitter Elly, although they know that she is engaged with another man in Teheran. Whereas all the three couples and Ahmed start to make stupid jokes about this plan, laugh about Elly when she is not around and all appeare very superficial to me, Elly herself is much more closed. She is a girl with some mysteries, she keeps secrets and does not like the continious jokes about the attempted matchmaking a lot. She tries to do the job that she was officially hired for: looking after the little kids of the three families. She frequently calls her mom, who is ill, and after one day she decides that it is better to return to Teheran. The three couples don"t want to let her go, they hide her luggage and her mobile phone. She says that she has to leave and would even walk home. The three couples and Ahmad ignore her and start to play Volleyball and go shopping. Elly helps the kids to fly a kite, but suddenly one of the little boys falls into the water and almost dies. The three man, interrupting their game get panik and jump into the sea, so finally the boy is rescued. But after some minutes they recognise that Elly is missing. And suddenly, the relaxed relationship between the three couples and Ahmed turn into aggression and hate. Everybody accuses the others of beeing responsible for the desaster.

After one day, indeed Ellys dead body is found in the sea: She obviously died while trying to rescue the little boy. The three couples now have to inform some relatives of Elly about the accident, and they can only find Alireza, the man to whom Elly was engaged since three years. They find out his telephone number and ask him to come, claiming that Elly is just ill. When he arrives at the site, finding out that she in fact died, he breaks down. The three couples don"t want to admit that Elly was only invited to this weekend trip to match her to the divorced Ahmad. They try to make Alireza believe that Elly was hired exclusively as a baby-sitter. So they want to get around the conflict by adding more and more lies on top of each other. You can feel how their only concern is to get away with their responsibility.

I think Asghar Farhadi, the movie director, tried to show that this practise of organized partnerships for young family-members is highly questionable and it bears the seed for a tragedy. It is based on the arrogant idea that relatives know best what is good for their son or brother or daughter, and they can easily find a suitable partner using their own judgement. It is obvious that Elly hates this, since she is not sure about her 3 year long engagement with Alireza. But the three stupid couples and Ahmad think that they have the right to interfere with her emotions. They make unpolite jokes about Elly, they lie, and they dont respect her privacy. They are too superficial to see that Elly is full of doubts about her future, and that she does not want to be pushed into a new relationship. She has thoughts that are not for the public, emotions that she does not want to show around.
At the end, this stupid idea of pushing two person together leaves behind two victims: a physical one (Elly, who dies) and her former boyfriend Alireza (who breaks down emotionally). The bad thing is that the three couples continue to lie to Alireza although they see how much he suffers from Ellies death: They tell him that Elly knew from the beginning that the weekend-trip with the three families was intended to bring her together with Ahmad. By this lie, the three couples so cruely leave the mourning Alireza believe, that his girl-friend Elly was searching for an easy adventure with another man. But Elly, in fact, never agreed with this, she said she only joines the company to look after the kids.

I would like to hear what you think about the movie.

take care
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

Tonight I went to see the movie "Darbareye Elly". It was shown in one of the very small cinemas here, which are specialized on Arthouse movies.

Although you had told me already a lot about it before, it was nice to see it. After the first 5 minutes of the movie, however I thought that we might talk about two different things, cause it started so nice and relaxed, when they drove through the tunnel and all were just shouting for fun. And then they had this short stop-over at a small river, and I immediately recognised the russian Samovar, because we have exactly the same one (as part of a big collection of even older ones). And in the beach cottage, I recognised the old russain fridge, type "Wolga", cause we have the same one in our cottage in Bulgaria. So initially I was a bid distracted by pictures, also had problems to follow the subtitles and at the same time understand the relationship between all the characters and their names (you should have provided me with a sort of set-list of all character and who is married to whom and which kid belongs to which couple). Anyhow, after a while I got the impression that all the seven characters are interchangeable, they looked differently but acted similar. The only exception was Elly, who was mysterious. When she disappeared after the accident with the boy I was hoping for about an hour, that she might not have died in the sea, but just left the place to escape the silly jokes and the attempted match-making. When she was eventually identified in the mortuary it was really sad and I was almost ready to leave the cinema.

Elly reminded my a lot of you, Ghazal. She was also calm and the exact opposite of the loud and superfiscial society around her. She had secrets, that she wanted to keep for herself. She had an aura of pride and aristocracy, which stoud in sharp contrast to the other characters who never thought about the right of privacy or secrets. It is a pitty that it was Elly who died in the movie. I so much wished to see her finding a new live, deciding about her own future, to stay strong and nice and get happy.

As usual , I wish you all the best, success with the project, happyness in daily life but also exciting dreams.

Take Care, Ghazal.

Michael

Discovery of a habitable planet (also for horses ?)

Ghazal, my Dear,

What a funny coincidence that today, just a couple of days after you speculated about finding a house for us on the moon astronomers from Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C announced the discovery of the first extra-terrestrial habitable planet in the universe. For sure, the moon is much closer to the earth, to your family and friends, and you probably can even spot Sweden from there if it is "Full-Earth". According to the U.S. astronomers, however, the living conditions on "Gliese 581g" as the planet was named, should be much more convenient than the surface of the moon. O.k., I have to admit, you have to spend more for transportation (Gliese 581g is about 20 light-years or 190 billion km away from europe, moon "only" 380 000 km), but I would be ready to spend some extra money for the flight tickets, but have a nice environment instead (like on earth, the value of a property mainly depends on the three factors "location, location and location"). Talking about the living conditions there, of course one cannot expect exactly the same as on earth, but I guess we could easily accomodate to them. For instance, the seasonal year is only 37 days long (whether there ARE seasons like summer and winter here on earth is not known yet). There are, however day and night, that"s for sure. And the day-and-night rhythm seems to be much more human (first estimate is between 25 and 35 hours) than what you have in northern Sweden with their 180 days polar-day followed by another 185 days darkness.
There is one problem, and thats the mass of Gliese 581g: Since it is about 3 times heavier than the earth, physics unavoidably will give everything there a 3 fold higher weight. So the first weeks up there would be quite exhausting, walking, standing or dancing will be a tough physical exercise, untill our skelleton, joints and muscle strengthen and got used to carry this extra weight. The good thing and the best way to get around this stressful gravitational stress is the existence of water up there on Gliese 581g. Calculations show that there will be plenty of lakes, oceans and beaches, and the water should be crispy and cristal-clear. There just was no messy industry or agriculture or human sewage to spoil the water). And swimming, you should know, we would not feel our extra weight any more because of the (hydrostatic principle discovered by Archimedes).
Anyhow, whether you believe him or not and whether you like spending most of your day in the water, it is good that neither you nor me have any weight problems here on earth. This is for sure a good pre-condition to relocate to Gliese 581g, and maybe they even want to see a health-certificate for this when you ask for entry visa up there.

Hope you sleep well, and maybe in your dream discover some extra "must-sees" on this planet.

Take Care,

Michael

PS: You don"t have to prepare you luggage right now. And for sure: You first have to finish your MSc project and got the degree, because this improves your chances to make a scientific career on "Gliese 581g".

..........................................................................................................................................................................

hi michael,

what ???? I don"t wanna go to this extra-terrestrial planet ! I just made up my mind, and after struggling with myself again and again and weighing every pro and con, and talking with my family in Sweden I declined to consider a future here in Munich. Thats 980 km away from Stockholm, and I wont accept any further distance. Not the moon ("only" 380 000 km ha, ha, ha) let alone a planet that is so far away, that even the light needs 20 years to reach stockholm. So then, everything the U.S. astronomers discovered now only shows how this planet was 20 years ago. Things can change so rapidly, michael, just have a look on our earth and ourself: 20 years ago we didn"t had mobile phones, but instead Freddy Mercury and Frank Zappa were still alive. You have been in east-berlin working in the station-bistro and I was a 4-year old baby-girl carried around europe on the arms of my beloved parents. How can we be sure that during the last 20 years no massive industrialisation started on this strange planet, or that global cooling down turn all the lakes and oceans into ice-skating courses ? Thats my last word. This planet is not an option for me.
And by the way, I came along this marvellous horse range this morning, on my way to the lab. It was a mystic scenery, how the horse appeared slowly from the morning mist..
When I was a kid, my dad used to read me persian fairytales, in which a white camel played a role, because it rescued Zartusht (or Zaratustra as you call him) from the deluge. I think you mentioned this legend also on your blog entry form July 16th. I fell in love with this camel, and the horses I met this morning reminded me of it. I think their physical strength and mental calmness are similar, and that makes both of them good companions to men. There was a display on the horse farm, and as much as I understoud german, they offered to give you one of the horses for riding out, if you agree to take care of it and clean it and feed it, it wont even cost a lot. So this, I have to admit, was one reason for me to consider staying in Munich.
I doubt that there will be horses on this far planet, therefore I also don"t want to go there.


Hope you understand my concern, michael.

Have a good night, and good dreams.

/ghazal

Champaign Dreams

I dreamed, that reason and truth might rule the world instead of religions and self-installed gods, and that the later are kept under glass in museums. And in my dreams there was no place any more for saints and gods, who use to judge man as heretics or as immoral.

I dreamed, that mankind will live free from hate against each other, that culture, birth, tradition, colour or race will loose its deviding function. I dreamed, that men find paradise here on earth, and not commiting crime and murder against each other to reserve a place in heaven after life. I dreamed, that love brings people together, rather that laws or social normatives, and that sympathy and attraction between two people would be the only reason to come together, not their cultural background, nor nation, gender or age.


I dreamed that people would do the biggest creations ever, not because they have to fight against poverty or death, but because they want to rise above nature and tradition and convention, because they want to discover the unknown land and conquere the desert and turn it into a flowering garden. I dreamed that men were doing good things, not because they fear punishment from a false god, but because they believe in the eternal values of good and beauty and truth.

I dreamed a silly dream, that at the end of my 4th life decade I start a second period of life with a 25 years old persian princess, who thinks that books and historical myths are useless, who fears spiders and ants, who loves McDonals and KFC fast food more than anything else. Whereas she does not know the magic of her blue eyes, she tries every morning to defeat her wild hair with cremes and razor-blades.

Ghazal, you should know that you are a woman, not a girl any more, and that you can easily drive a man into madness or into heroism. If you only want, you can be a queen and become myth as the founder of a new, enlightened empire, where love and reason rule, rather than superstition, religions and the hate and war they cause. Ghazal, my persian princess, your beauty and wisdom and grace does not put a spell only on me, but will seduce everybody who sees you.

...............................................................

Ich träumte, dass Vernuft die Welt regiert und Religionen nurmehr in Museen zu bestaunen seien und keine Götter uns mehr zu Ketzern oder zu Abtrünnigen abstempeln.

Ich träumte, dass Menschen ohne Hass leben, dass Herkunft, Kultur oder Tradition, Hautfarbe und Rassen unwichtig werden.Ich träumte, dass Menschen ihr Paradies hier auf Erden fänden, und nicht Verbrechen begehen müssten für ein jenseitiges Himmelreich. Ich träumte, dass Liebe die Menschen zusammenführte, und nicht staatliche Gesetze und Normen, dass Liebe das einzige Argument wäre für die Verbindung zwischen zwei Menschen, egal ob sie Geschlecht, Kultur, Nation oder Alter mehr trennt als vereint.

Ich träumte, dass die Menschen Grosses leisteten, ohne Angst vor der Armut, dass sie sich erheben über die Natur und über die Konventionen und über das Althergebrachte einzig und allein, weil sie nach Höherem und nach Wahrheit und nach Erkenntnis streben. Ich träumte, dass die Menschen gut sind weil sie an die Macht des Guten glauben, und nicht weil sie ein Gott belohnt oder bestraft für ihre irdischen Taten.

Ich träumte einen wahnsinnigen Traum, dass ich am Ende meines 4. Lebensjahrzents ein zweites Leben beginne mit einer 25-jährigen persischen Prinzessin, die mit Bücher und mit Historien-Mythen wenig anfangen kann, die sich vor Spinnen und Ameisen fürchtet, die Fast-Food von McDonalds und KFC vergöttert, die aber den Zauber ihrer blauen Augen selber noch nie wahr genommen hat und ihr widerspenstiges Haar mit Cremes und Rasiermessern zu bändigen versucht. Ghazal, Du bist eine Frau, Du bist kein Kind mehr, Du kannst einen Mann zum Wahnsinn treiben oder zum Heldentum, und wenn Du willst wirst Du zur Königin und zum Mythos eines aufgeklärten, neuen Reiches in dem Liebe und Vernuft regieren statt Aberglauben, Kirche und Hass.
Ghazal, meine persische Prinzessin, Deine Schönheit und Deine Anmut und Deine Klugheit schlägt nicht nur mich in seinen Bann, sondern wird alle verzaubern, die Dich erblicken.

Spot the Stjaernfallen next week

Hi Ghazal my Dear,

Don"t know were you spend the evening tonight, but I"d like to remind you of the Perseiden Stjaernfallen that are most prominent these days. I think to watch them is also a good remedy for the sadness that one usually gets before beloved people leave.

Since the next two days might be quite cloudy, I think tonight is the only chance to view the fallen stars (nice term, isn"t it. Maybe we can see fallen stars like Whitney Houston, Britney Spears or Mikey Rourke tonight, or Michael Schumacher, Maradonna and the like).
To be honest, real Stjaernfallen are much nicer than these celebrities that greet us every day from the yellow-press.
To help you find the Perseides and have a good chance to spot some of the meteors, I made a scheme for you to get an orientation on the night sky.

First try to find the northern direction (from your house look towards the Olympia TV-tower). Then turn your head further to the right, untill you see somewhere a very prominent constellation of stars called Cassiopeia (like a hughe W on the sky). Below or slightly left of Cassiopeia (depending at what time at night you are there) there is the constellation called Perseus, and the Stjaernfallen should originate from this site.

As I told you, according to mythology, you can express a wish whenever you see a Stjaernfallen, but you should not tell anybody about it.
I saw some already yesterday night, and I hope that neither of my wishes collided with your future planing. I tried to avoid anything that is related to the place or the country where you want to do your PhD project (I think this question is too much conflict-loaded).
Therefore, I"ll continue with wishes that I think everybody can live with.

Would be nice to read some words from you

Take Care

Michael

PS:
Just to avoid any confusion on the night sky: the description above referes to the site of I.s house. In case you are in Unterschleissheim tonight, you have to look north, but this will be almost opposite to the Olympia-TV-Tower. Standing in front of the guesthouse, you should then turn your eyes to the left (along Edith-Stein-Strasse).
Maybe you are not in the mood to watch the stars tonight at all. But be careful, than all my (crazy) wishes might come true.

Take Care, my dear

Michael

Nocturnal thoughts

Hi Ghazal my Dear,

It is always difficult for me to drop you at the end of the day in front of the guesthouse and drive away, but I think it is better for you to recover. I already exploited so much of your emotions during the evening. I hope, that it was not just me who enjoyed it (very egoistically, I have to admit), but that you also liked the few hours walking around and chatting.

I hope you sleep well, my dear

Michael

......................................................................

Hi Michael,

Thank you for showing me Munich. It was really nice. I like munich actually, but not the munich-police. thank you also for the stereo. havnt opened it yet. will open it tomorrow. take care and have a good night!

/ghazal

......................................................................

Thank you, Ghazal, for showing me the world with new eyes. It is strange, I"m always talking to much when we are together, as if I would know already everything. But in fact, later on I got the feeling that it was actually me who learnt much more from you.

If we both benefit from the time together, what can be bad about it ?

Sleep well , my dear

Michael

Time Shift and Crystals

Ghazal, my dear,
what can I say ? Your watch indeed runs pretty slow. I opened it yesterday night to clean it (but of course it was extremely clean from the inside). Between midnight and now, 8 a.m., it lost again about 3 minutes.
When you told me your observation that it regularily looses about 15 minutes per day, I thought this indicates once again that you came here from another universe. Maybe you know the TV-serie "X-Files" with Agent Scully and Agent Moulder, who always find simple evidence that people like you and me come from outer space. I think both of them would like the idea that somebody with the potential to slow down a watch (if it is in close enough contact with its own pulse, like in your case) must come from another world (where, as we all know, time is running slower, the spiderman falls into love with a swan and people are born old to get younger every day).
But coming back to your watch, which I fully understand you want to have running with earth-compatible speed. Sure enough, you are also going to spend some more time here on earth, with no flight booked yet that will bring you back to your angels universe. I heard of cases, when Angels came here just for a short visit, and suddenly started to like the wild life in our world and decided to stay for longer.
Therefore, I will do my best today to set up your watch to +/- zero. I"ll put in a new battery, later we see. In case it still runs slow, I"m afraid nobody can help you and you would probably have to return it to the shop (in this other solar-system) and ask for replacement through warranty (you have not shown to me the warranty certificate: I guess it was issued from a shop not known here on earth !!! Something like "The Unified Reverse Time Company at Zartha").

But first, let me try to adjust it. We here on earth are good scientists and talented engineers, although we can not compete with you angels in terms of beauty and wisdom. Maybe I find a way to bring your clock-speed in synchronity with ours.

Have a nice and inspiring day, my dear.

Yours Michael

...............................................................................................

hi michael,

im fine, yesterday was a nice sunny day as today.

thank you for taking care of the watch. i think i should bring it to the shop in sweden. maybe they can fix it. or i just have to return it. haha no im just a normal girl living in the right time. just something wrong with the watch. :) you dont have to change batteries. i just have it until i go back to sweden or something. but really thank you for trying to fix it.

hope it was not too hard to take back the other bike to helmholtz. i would think its hard.

i will take a look at the trailer later.

take care!!:D

/ghazal

................................................................................................

Ghazal, my dear,

Of course every angel tries to insist he (or she) does not come from another star, but simply from a country a bit further north. O.k., I acknowledge that you learned some swedish to convince me of this. But maybe it was just enough to guide me through IKEA, explaining to me that "Ordin" means "order" and "Äpple" means "apple". I think I could learn this in a couple of days too. And what still makes me suspicious a lot are your blue eyes in combination with your dark hair. This, for sure is neither oriental nor scandinavian: this is celestial.

Now the latest news regarding your watch: I put in a fresh battery (guaranteed made here on earth), and have to say it seems to be 100% compatible with your extra-terrestrial DKNY watch. It runs nice and smoothly, and after 2 hours still without a second delay. I will leave it in for a couple of hours more, just to make sure it is stable. I just suspect, that your watch with its strong extraterrestrial energy has already influenced my watch at home, also causing this one to run slower now. Finally, both our watches now might run synchroneous, but are perhaps lagging behind normal earth clock-speed.

What would support this notions is the fact, that always when we have been together somewhere, like recently at IKEA or at the lake, in the coffe or just sitting with you in the car and driving the wrong way, I got the strange feeling that we were suddenly drifting into another time-zone, where everything is happening slower, but more intense. I would not say that it was an unpleasant feeling, it was just unusual. I think I could get used to it.

There is a second possibility to explain why the time around you runs 15 min slower per day. And this in fact has a scientific base, it is not a joke any more:

Some years ago US scientists wanted to understand how much is our human 24-hours diurnal rhythm (that controls when we sleep, dream, wake up, eat, work, digest etc) determined by the day-night-cycle of the earth. To study this, they recruited about 50 volunteers, who agreed to live for a month in a building that was completely isolated from any sun-light. The volunteers could only use electric light, which they switched on and off when they wanted. So finally, after some weeks in this isolated environment, the entire group had adopted its own rhythm of inactivity (sleeping) and activity (beeing awake, working, playing etc.). What was strange: their own physiological rhythm was exactly 11 min slower than 24 hours. Therefore, when the experiment was finsihed after 7 weeks, the people inside the building were almost exactly 12 hours laggig behind the day-night-cycle outside the building. This means, that we still have our own biological clock build in, that runs per day 11 min slower than 24 hours. It is only the astronomic day- and night-changes, that synchronizes us to an exact 24hours rhythm. Without seeing the sun coming and going every 24 hours, we would all live a slightly longer day. The most likely explanation for this slower running biological clock inside our body was, that it developed already in primates about 1 million years ago. And 1 million years ago, the earth was indeed rotating approximately 11 min slower per day (because the gravitational force between earth and moon continiously fasten it up).

If we use this knowledge, and remember that your watch runs 15 min per day slower, we might conclude that you came here from the past, from approximately 1 273.645 years before.
In case you think this is all very academic, have a look at these two papers that shows how DNA-repair and radiosensitivity changes with círcadian rhythm or how disturbances of the later can even increase cancer-risk.
Sorry, my dear, if I start to confuse you. It is not really my intention to cause you any headache.

I met today on the flee-market a man fro Persia, who used to sell books. I wanted to get something about Zartoscht, in case you decide to do the Pecha-Kucha about this. The man said he has a few in persian, but they are not for sale, you could only try to borrow from him. He also has german ones, but than I would have to try to translate a bit. I think it would be an interesting subject for a short talk. And you could combine it with some contemporary musicians who had or have zoroastrian roots (Freddy Mercury of Queen and former general conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, Zubin Mehta).
I think due to my own interest in this philosophy, I might help you to collect some material.
But you have to made up your own mind.

At the end, Ghazal, here comes something for you just to relax:
It is a tour through the Swarovski Cristal exhibition and performance and I am absolutely sure that you will like it (it is calm, probably also runs on a slower speed and therefor more suits your rhythm of life).

Take care, don"t condemn me, relax.

Michael


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Ghazal, my dear,

Hope you had a nice day. I wish you some interesting dreams. You might dream of your wrist watch. It runs since 2 p.m. without any delay. But maybe now you are sad hearing this? Maybe this 15 min delay per day was one of the last links that connected you to your former angels universe, Ghazal.

I willl keep the old battery (the one that makes the watch running slower). If you feel to much nostalgia, I can put it back into the watch for a day or so.

Yours Michael

Day Dreams at a Summer Night

Hello Ghazal, my dear,

Sorry I came back to the office much later than planed and therefore did not met you any more to wish you a pleasant evening.
I hope you are alright and could enjoy these marvelous last hours of a summer day. I remember you once told me that you used to escape into day-dreams.
I"m wondering if a beautiful day like the one today might not be superiour to a dream? But who knows what your dreams are about?
I was making a short ride-out with the bike and our dog, through the wild nature around our village. There is a tiny river, but it is cristal-clear, and there are old stone-bridges (look like from roman times) that were in use maybe hundreds of years ago. Now they are abandoned and stay there on the plain fields without having a function. But they are build in such a solid way that they will be there for the next thousands of years. They are just beautiful, without having a function any more. And now people living here use them for a rest. At the first bridge I arrived, some teenagers were just preparing for a party (it is a quite hidden place and they probably wanted to smoke something illegaly). They wanted to invite me, but I am probably to serious to accept. At the next bridge, a young man was sitting and playing a bandoneon, very silently but you could imagine that he might soon perform at an tango concert. At the next bridge my dog forced me to stop for a while, since she likes to jump into the water and swim. While I was waiting for her, two girls arrived and started to make photographs from each other. Still being there to play with my dog and listening the silly chats of the two, a young man arrive also on a bike and prayed this paradise-like evening.
Ghazal, do you also have moments like this when in the light of the evening sun all problems and difficulties seem to disappear in nothing ? Is this what you call day-dreams ? Probably a very special type of them, which should be rather called end-of-day dreams.

wish you a good night Michael

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hi michael,

haha no the daydreams are just things that i have in my mind. things that i have to do or something. not really dreams.
i see that u had a nice and interesting day, thats good.

see u in the lab tomorrow! take care

regards
ghazal
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Hi Ghazal,

It was a pleasure to read your words. I think that with the ability to dream, every day, every evening can become a miracle, does not matter where you are or what you own. Somebody said that the beauty of a picture lays in the eye of the viewer. Maybe it is the same with how we see the entire world and our own life.
I"m talking silly things. I should better let you sleep, it is already late.

See you tomorrow

Michael