I should definitely start writing again. I miss it so much. So I promise promise to start again. And I have some big news which you have to come back to read about :D

I hate it when I cannot respect my own promises. But this time I’m not going to give up. Although only a couple of people read this blog I will keep writing because of me.

Yesterday I went to the knitting group meeting. It is always fun. It makes me feel good to talk girl talk and more than that, to talk with non-Iranian people. After any of our meetings I come to the conclusion that we are more influenced by Europe (mostly by France) and are closer to taste to them than Americans. I am sure this will change in future because of the internet and TV.

For example we learn the continental style of knitting while in the US they use the English style. European clothing (the cut and the design) is more popular with us than the American ones.

Since Reza Shah started sending people to France to study, the influence of France especially as a sign of progress was undeniable in Iran. In everyday speaking we use a lot of French words  like ascenseur, abat-jour, lustre  and many many more.

Although Britain has been very influencial in Iranian politics in my opinion they haven’t had the same effect as French did on people’s lives. Britain has always been considered a very strong power that cannot be trusted and is behind every controversy that happens in Iran. BBC has made a very good documentary on the subject (+) which you can find illegally uploaded on youtube! The famous satirical book My Uncle Napoleon shows this ongoing belief in its extreme.

The relation with America is more complicated in my view. Because of many things that has happened in the past , the 1953 coup d’état being the most significant, there is definitely a lot of mistrust but at heart many people are in awe of this country. The movies, the music , the politics is on many people’s radars constantly. So that’s why I think this cultural influence will change eventually toward  being more American.

Recap of the past couple of days:

- For Halloween we had planned to go to New York to watch the parade but then the weather forecast was all rainy. So we canceled going to NYC and went around Princeton with friends. There was this alley that was apparently famous for the Halloween designs and it was full of people in costumes and kids trick or treating. One even had a haunted house which was fun and gave us candies at the end.

- I finished my 1000 cranes. All done and now I have to wait for my wish to come true. I wish I had found a better fitted vase for them.

I’ve missed so many days that I forgot what was the last post about and I had to check!

I love love stationaries. Notebooks, pens, pencils, anything related to writing. And my taste is quite varied there. I like cute and pink with little flowers and I like black and geometric and chic.

One of my favorites are Moleskine notebooks. I have so many versions of them. A packet notebook for anything that has to be written down, like a phone number or name of a book or movie or a recommended restaurant. A blue large one for taking more serious notes, like when I am studying  or I am attending a class. Also another large version with hard covers as my journal.

Today I was thinking about keeping a notebook of my recipes and imidiately I thought of my Moleskines. Especially the small one since with my iphone I take less and less notes on paper. And lo and behold! I read this post in Mariam’s tumblr; Moleskine is going to release a new line of notebooks called Passions and that will inculde one for recipes and also one for books. I am so excited I cannot wait until February. They’ve promised to put the templates online sooner, so we can print them until then. I hope they do and I hope February comes fast.

Today we went to see a play called: She Stoops to Conquer. The theater here in Princeton has a Graduate Night for some (or maybe all) of their plays. It is basically free tickets for students and then a small happy hour afterwards. We are not graduate students but our friends are and they get us guest tickets.

I wish I could have taken a picture tonight. The stage decor was amazing. It was so good that each time a new decoration came people clapped even in the middle of the play. The acting was really good and more importantly the story was  very funny and engaging. I really wish I could have taken a picture but it was forbidden.

So I just share the cover of the information booklet:

I am planning to write this for my Farsi blog but since I can talk more candidly about it here I’ll unravel my mind here first.

I’ve always considered myself an intellectual, whatever it has meant to me over the years. And I like to be considered an intellectual too. So I’m hard on myself when I think different from the people who are considered cultured and intellectuals by the society. But to tell you the truth I sometimes get frustrated by the black-white attitude  some of these people have. Mostly regarding women and men. I sometimes think some of us want to escape from the traditional way of thinking about men and women so much  that we have turned to bigoted people in our own way. Somehow like we are ashamed of ourselves being women. Or maybe you have to be radical to come out of tradition and then you can relax and adjust.

These days one of the blog provider services in Iran is holding a contest among women bloggers. Some people have been criticizing this and saying that  a blogger shouldn’t be judged by her/his gender. Since we believe they are not different and so they can write about similar things, there shouldn’t be a contest for women only. This seems true to me in theory.  But I sometimes feel jealous of women in the US. Not only they live more freely and have more opportunities they can be comfortable with their femininity. They are easy in calling themselves a mommy blogger and signing up with blogHer and going to women only summits and making friends and earning money and ….

I told you I am still very confused about this and I like to think about it more. I may write about it soon as a comment for the people who said this or as a post on my blog. Then I can see what feedback I would get.

Do you remember I talked about luck recently? Luckily! I found this interesting article on luck via my friend yogurtsoda. The psychologist who wrote the article has done research on people who consider themselves lucky or unlucky for years. He has tried to understand what seems to be people’s source of luck as they see it. One experiment is really interesting. He gives them a newspaper and tells them to count the pictures. But the thing is, on the second page with a large font there’s a sentence that says, there are 43 pictures, don’t count. Less people in the unlucky group neither this nor the other sentence printed on the 4th page that says stop counting and get $250.

He concludes that unlucky people are more tense about what they do are asked to do, so they don’t pay attention to their enviroment and so they miss opportunities. Like the people who are so concentered on finding a date that lose opportunities to make friendships. And they are probably so nervous on dates that they mess it up.

There are some other reasons and solutions in the article but this one struck a chord with me. There was this other phrase that I always repeated to myself since teenage years that you should let go of something to win it back. This sentence had a mystical meaning to me till now. But now I think it is something that you have to work for and try to act on.

What do you think of your luck? Do you see any ways o improve it?