Life&death;my experience in Galveston

Last weekend, we went to Galveston for a short trip with two of my friends, Aly and Mohammad. We joined to our host, Mary, who rented an apartment in Galveston and is spending summer vacation with her mother and her son, Ali. Mary married a Turkish man and I know her from Turkish dance performances at SMU.

Now, there were 3 Alis at a home and Mary had a hard time to call us. Finally, she came up with an idea and call us Ali M., Ali K. and Aly F. which second letter is the initial of our family names. Mary's mom was a sweet 85 years old grandmother who was quite healthy. I was wondering how life looks like in that age and a lot of questions raising in my mind and was looking for an opportunity to ask her.

Saturday morning we went to a beautiful beach of Galveston, I mean people who were laying down on the beach! we enjoyed surfing on the waves with the boards that Mary gave us for a while. we came back to home and got ready for lunch. Sea food was a natural choice and we went to a nice restaurant with Mary. I was sitting in front of Mary's mom and amazed that she can eat whatever she wants in her age. I asked her if she goes to gym for exercise and she said yes. "How is life in this age?" I asked."it's good, I try to live like a teenager everyday" she replied. "a lot of people in my age are afraid of death, but there is no choice" she continued.

Saturday afternoon, we went for crabbing while Mary's mom stayed at the home. we prepared the nets and stood up on the rocks near the beach and tossed the net on the wavy beach. Ali, Mary's son was lucky to catch 4 crabs, but I wasn't that lucky since the sea was to wavy. it was becoming dark and we came back to Mary's apartment. We saw some ambulances with turning lights."There are ambulances everywhere in this city" I said. Suddenly, Mary jumped off the car and ran towards her apartment. "Everything is OK" a man on the apartment door told Mary. They came out of apartment with Mary' mom with some blood on her body on the emergency chair. Everybody was terrified. Suddenly, I remembered our talk about life with her some hours ago. Apparently, she fell down on the floor and hit the wall on the head. We got the emergency room address from rescue team and went there which was at UTMB which stands for University of Texas Medical Branch. Mary's mom arrived in emergency room as soon as we reached there. we had a chance to talk to her and she looked fine, however her heart bits increased. we realized she was terrified a little since she was in emergency room and I thought it makes sense since it's not a friendly place. we saw a frustrated couple waiting for doctor hours and hours. I got to this conclusion that if you have a serious problem, I doubt they can help you, so just keep yourself healthy.

Fortunately, Mary's mom released that night and she could sleep in the apartment instead of that unpleasant emergency room. Tomorrow morning, we were having breakfast and were talking about last night. "do you know what my doctor's name was?", Mary's mom asked me. "I am curious to know" I replied." His name was Ali!" she told.

A proposal for facilitating of Iranian students travel to home

The Honorable .........
I am an Iranian student studying at SMU towards PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering. As you may know there are a lot of Iranian students in Texas and US who are studying in graduate studies in different universities and academic institutes and I want to share one big problem in this community with you and ask for your help and consultation.
Iranian students are among a few nations who hold single entry visa(F1) while they are studying here which means if they want to visit their families back at home, they should apply for visa again and go through very time-consuming and difficult process. Since there is no US embassy in Iran, they should schedule a flight to third country, get an appointment for interview, wait for FBI check , pick up the visa to be eligible to come back to school again. Also, add the stress of visa rejection to these problems which make this trip very unpleasant for most of my friends such that a lot of them prefer not to visit their families, while their international friends go to their homes easily and this add some emotional pressure during their long period of studies.
I want to ask you if there is any way to facilitate this process and I have two proposals for that:
1- Iranian students, holding F1 visa, can go to a consulate office in Washington or somewhere in US to perform visa process if they want to visit Iran.
2- The embassy of Switzerland in Tehran is in charge of US interests in Iran. it would be great if this embassy do the visa process for Iranians on behalf of US government and send their documents to Washington for FBI check, in this way, students don't need to go to a third country and it facilitates their trips in a great deal.
I would appreciate if you consider these proposals and let me know if each of them is feasible.
I hope I see one day that the citizens of both nations visit each other's country freely and easily!
Thank you very much!
Ali Moslemi

Free discussion in Fluid lab

In response to one of my readers, I start to update this blog again. When I looked at the last post's date, I found that one year has passed, and it seems that I update my blog each year! anyway, hopefully I change this routine.
1- I am teaching a fluid lab this semester and we had a long experiment which provided some free time and I told the students they can talk about whatever they like. students started talking about different things until they reached "teen pregnancy" topic. " I lived in Amarillo, Texas and it had a high rate of teen pregnancy in Texas", one of students said. " what is the rate?" I asked. " I had a class with 20 pregnant students" he replied." it's so many!" I said. I was deeply thinking who is going to take care of these kids."what is the solution?" I asked students. " I control myself." the same student answered. " do you think putting some restrictions would be helpful?" I asked. but it seemed that nobody liked this idea. so I concluded that everybody should have self-control. I was again thinking that personal freedom is very important for these people, even if it creates some problems!
2- " Do you think America is ready for female president?" I asked in other class from students. " America is ready for female president, but not for Hillary", one girl responded. Another girl with the eyes full of anxiety said" she stayed in the relationship with Bill because of staying in White house!" I t seems that Hillary has a lot of enemies particularly among Women!

The country for singles

1-This is our mentality that when people get older they should go to school and graduate, then find a job and get married in their20's or 30's. They live for some decades, have some kids and finally pass away.

2- with this view I thought everyone should select this way of life! but it was not true. I remember it was a Thanksgiving morning and I was standing in a long line for a sale. There was a mature man retired from UT Southwestern Medical center and in his 50's. I started talking to him, "how many children do you have?" I asked."None", he replied." "How come?!", " I did not get marry!" Another day I asked this question from my English teacher and he said he is single and doesn't have girlfriend.

3-Statistics show that more than 51% of American ladies are single, showing the falling of marriage rate compared to some decades ago. Doesn't it make sense?Let's me explain; marriage has 3 functions: Sex, reproduction and companionship and this is a society everyone can get these things without marriage, so everyone should be crazy to get marry. The question is, how about negative effect on society? Negative birth rate can be a major threat but don't worry, we can import people from India and China!

4- There is no doubt that family is the foundation of each society, but I do not see a major support in media, although I saw some advertisemet to encourage people for having baby in Time magazine. There is a strong emphasis on freedom and individualism which confronts with marriage whereas your freedom and privacy should be shared by someone else.

Honesty

1-Last year I started hiking on the mountains near Tehran with some of my friends,one time in a way back to home one of my fiends told"I heared the signs are very importanat on the roads and streets in abroad",at that time I did not realize what he said,but when I came here I got that completely, particularly after I bought a car and start driving here.I drove far away from my apartment couple of times and I got lost. In the second time I wanted to go to a company in Grand parie, I got the directions from google but I missed one point and I got lost totally,finally got to a lake and asked some people who were taking plots of land over there,fortunately they had map and could help me to find my way,also in the middle of way I asked some African-American guys and they were pretty helpful. It was an experience showed me I have to have a Dallas map in this occations.
2-last semester we had an exam,the teacher told us we can have one formula sheet or cheat sheet,my friend Tyler used two pages cheat sheet because he did not know he supposed to use one page sheet,after exam he emailed the professor and asked him if it is against rule I can retake exam,but professor said it is OK,I was surprised when I heared form him,but it is not all this summer semester we had a take home exam,and he even he did not say to me a word about exam, I did not expect to discuss about solutions but not about questions!
I thought these American guys take this issue too serious!I talked to Amarano, my friend from Sri-Lanka,he always has comments in different topics,he believes this is the way they are trained in their family to ease governing them,otherwise controlling this country would be difficult!

Language Imitation

1- He was a typical of Texan people,tall and wearing cowboy hat from cow town(Fort worth). he was talking too quickly such that my translator compiler could not catch him and I was usually behind him some sentences.sometimes he said something and laughed and I started laughing with him pretending I underestand him.He looked 45 years old,I asked him"how old are you?"
"55"
"You look younger than your age!"
"My dad is 85 years old and he wanna start working. "
"Are you married?"
"No,I am single but I tried 3 times but it was not successful."
In my veiw most of people are younger than their ages and look happy,althogh the divorce rate is high and if you ask 2 people one of them would say I got divorced,bu still they are happier than people in my hometown country.sometimes when I am thinking about this fact it bothers me deeply.

2- A 10-12 years old Mexican guy came and told me"if you need any help my dad would help you.""No,thank you"I told.I started talking to his dad and he was a translotor.It was interesting that dad could not speak English but son could.

"How long have you been here."I told to dad

"3 years"

"what do you do?"

"I work on roof construction."

"which grade are you?"I told to his son.

"third"

"Was it hard to learn English?"

"No,after six months I learned."

This is true that learning any language is inveresly proportinal to age,in other word if we get older learning a foreign language becomes harder like this case for Mexican dad, and it is easy for son because he is much younger.In our age even if we learn English completely we still have an accent,but one of ways for eliminating accent is imitating native people,and everybody who is better in imitation he is more successful in this amtter.

City of God

1-I saw my Rumanian friend who was very desperate on Friday evening,I asked him what is going on?

"I was waiting for a Laser equipment for One year,now it has come but the camera does not work,during this time I could not do so much and I can tell I wasted my time,I wanna graduate as soon as possible but I cannot,all my friends graduated except me,when I came here there was nothing here and I construct my lab step by step I came here I just thought this is America and I did not think about my research area,and now I am screwed up."

He advised me to tell anyone who is willing for graduate studies to pay attention to research area as well as research team.

2-I saw the Brazilian movie"city of God" some times ago,there is an area called "city of God" in Brazil capital which is famous for poverty and crime,this movie is a story of a gang leader who started murdering when he was 10_12 years old which was unbelievable to me,finally after a long fighting with other gangs he killed in his 20's.I thought this a fake movie and can not be true but it was made according a true story in Brazil have some area in Iran similar to some areas in movie but it is not comparable.

I saw my Brazilian college some days after watching movie and we talked about it.

"It is true,they are still exist and are very powerful and some times police cooperating with these gangs",Christian said.

"Brazil and United states founded nearly at the same time,what happened to you guys ,why here became America but you have a lot of problems?" I asked him.

"First Portuguese discovered Brazil and they usually exiled criminal people and uneducated people to Brazil which it is not the case for US,most people who immigrated to US were educated and you can see the difference."