Rezaf Diary

I'll write about my daily life, as a PhD Student at the University of Illinois. I'll put some photos from my town, Urbana, and some music.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Funny illness!

It's a couple of weeks that I feel there is something wrong with my breathing... To be exact, I sometimes felt that I have to order my lungs to do the breathing! Of coarse they do their job even if I don't pay constant attention to them!

So, today I made an appointment with a doctor, and explained my problem with him. After conducting extensive examination, he concluded that it's probably something mental, as he thought my heart's sound is normal. By the way, he is a very talkative person, and he spent 15 minutes explaining to me why he thought that I'm all right!





Ok, after listening to a ton of different possible reasons, I was pretty convinced that I'm all right, and was ready to go, but now he didn't let me! He prescribed me to get an X-Ray of my chest and an EKG (Electrocardiogram, and don't ask me why it's written with a K, I don't know!). and while there, get an X-Ray of my head too.






Any way, after an hour of wandering in the clinic, and getting a couple of X-rays and EKG, The Doctor made sure that there is nothing wrong with me... He was deep thinking with himself when he suddenly saw my head's X-ray, and finally related my problem to mental pressure!!!



Well I don't know (Come on, look at the X-Ray! Do I look like someone who knows?!) But mental pressure seems to be a good reason to my unordinary breathing problem!

Note: Click on the photos to enlarge them.

If you feel interested in any of them and want to get the original file, please don't hesitate to email me!

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Life again!

Wow! Tonight was great! After about 2 weeks of hard work and studying, finally I decided to stop working after 6 o'clock today, and enjoy one night. But the good things started from 5o'clock...

You see, I was sitting in a seminar, and while the speaker was talking about what he saw as the most important thing in the world (which naturally many of the audience disagreed with), I was feeling my hunger (!), and was thinking about what I can get to eat after the seminar. When the seminar finished, surprisingly for me, they asked us to go to another room where there was a reception with fruits and drinks!

After having some fruits, I went to my office (the seminar was in another building), I got really happy to see that there was another seminar in our own building and there was a reception over there, this time with meat-balls, cheese and crackers! Better yet, the guy responsible invited me to join the feast!

Ok, after these happy moments, I went to our Persian dance practice (didn't I tell you? We are going to have a dance performance in the nourooz!), and when finished to tango. It was a long time since the last time I went there, maybe 2 months. And it was fun!

Then again, the exams are coming! PANIC!

Note: Click on the photos to enlarge them.

If you feel interested in any of them and want to get the original file, please don't hesitate to email me!

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Guess who's my valentine?!


You know, I believe in miracles! Really, I see them all around me, all the time. Let me tell you about one that I saw today. There is this girl in our network administration office, which I can't particularly say she's a happy person. In fact I seldom see her smile. (I am a nagging person about office tech stuff, and whenever something gets wrong I'll jump to that office, so it's no wonder I see those people a lot!)
So, today I saw her in the corridor walking out of the building, with a big smile, or I'd better say a grin! Stunned, I took a quick look at her and saw a red rose in her hand. Oh yes, of course! It's valentine's...


As for me, I happily spent all my time today with a smart creature, or at least it looked smart from the cover! Of course they say "don't judge a book by its cover", but well... in this case I have no choice!

Here's the picture of that special one I spent my valentine with!

Happy valentine everybody! I hope you were struck by the miracle!

Note: Click on the photos to enlarge them.

If you feel interested in any of them and want to get the original file, please don't hesitate to email me!

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Matrix PingPong?! Coooool!

Wow, look at this! Just think about the creativity of these guys! These kind of stunt work isn't usual to see even in Hollywood films (There are a handful of movies now, but it's not everywhere yet!) I really enjoyed seeing this video! These guys are Japanese by the way, if you're wondering...

Note that this file is about 3.4 MB, so it may take a bit until it fully gets downloaded, but it's worth it.

By the way, you should know by now that I'm an avid fan of the firefox browser, but putting this video here showed me an incompatibility between Microsoft's media player and firefox. So, if you are seeing this page in internet explorer, you probably see it filling the whole media player window. On the other hand, if you use firefox, you are probably seeing a small video. Be kind and right click on it and set the zoom level to 200%!









Note: Click on the photos to enlarge them.

If you feel interested in any of them and want to get the original file, please don't hesitate to email me!

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Busy Days...

These days I'm super-busy! There is meetings and seminars one afte another, and I still have 3 courses to attend! And all the homeworks! I'm trying hard, but it's tough!
I also have this project to finish. Actually I should have finished it by now, but it is stuck in its state for quite some time now. However I have promised myself (and my advisor!) that I'll finish it in less than a week! This translates to 16 hours per day work for the following days. phew!
Oh by the way, Leila (my sis) cooked a delicious stew (Gheyme) today, that I really enjoyed. Thanks!

Note: Click on the photos to enlarge them.

If you feel interested in any of them and want to get the original file, please don't hesitate to email me!

Saturday, February 04, 2006

A Del.ic.ious. Breakfast!

One note before I start this post. I've added a feature to this blog. You can enter your email address in the proper box at the right hand column of this blog. After that, all the new posts in this weblog will be emailed to you automatically! (But don't forget to visit here and put comments!)


A couple of days ago, while I was still totally busy writing a paper, I woke up and decided to give myself a self boost by preparing a good breakfast! I searched in the fridge and found these turkey bacons which are made from white and dark turkey meat, hence the two different color stripes. (They are horrible when eaten raw, but when you fry them they become delicious!)

I put them in a pan and started frying them, then put two loafs of wheat bread in the toaster.


When they were toasted, I started to eat one of them with some sugar free strawberry preserves . By the time I had my first two bite, I realised that I have to add an egg to the bacons! You know, it is like some kind of tradition, eggs and bacons! It's like Pasta and meat sauce, or coffee and creamer; you can have them separately but no one wants to do that!










Any way, I added an egg to the bacons and while they were cooking, started the coffee maker. What's a good breakfast without a strong coffee?!













And finally, here we are! ENJOY!


Note: Click on the photos to enlarge them.

If you feel interested in any of them and want to get the original file, please don't hesitate to email me!

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Another indication of my philosophical mumbling!

Well, I wrote this short article as a passing thought about God and universe. It came as an answer I wrote to a question on yahoo answers. Now I'm not claiming that these are all my own findings, but rather a summation of what I have read and studied earlier and my contemplations about these subjects. Also note that I'm not claiming that I'm 100% true about it, however this is what I believe for now.


The Question: "What came before God?"

My Answer:

Well, let me be honest here, before you go through all my mumblings; I'm tying to prove that after reaching a point in a string of reasoning, we as being human beings cannot continue…

OK, let's see.
Let's start with a definition of matter and time. I'll assume that we agree that you and me and everything that exists around us, our universe, or the whole world is made of matter. (I define matter as something which is comprised by atoms). Matter is subject to change, and in fact transformation is a property of matter. Now what’s the definition of change? The word “change” itself implies the existence of “time”. When we say that X (X being anything material, a table or a human) has changed from A to B, we imply that there was a time point T0 in which X was in state A, and another time point T1 in which X has changed into state B. So as we can see, MATTER and TIME are much interleaved abstracts.

What about SPACE? Space is where matter can exist. How about ENERGY? Energy is the ability to change the state of matters. What about us humans? We live in this world, we are made of matter and exist in space and all the rules of energy apply to us. We are part of this world anyway!

Conclusion 1: MATTER, TIME, SPACE and ENERGY are all interleaved concepts that apply, in fact govern our world.

Now another branch of reasoning: It is obvious to a logical mind that every thing which exists should have a cause, a creator. There cannot exist something material that had no creator. So if you start from anything material, let’s say your computer, and go back in the chain of creators. You can go back to through this chain, but you have to stop somewhere or else your reasoning will be caught in an infinite loop. There has to be a stop somewhere. Let’s call this entity as G.
Now, this creator G cannot be made of matter, because everything which is made of matter should have a creator. So, it’s logical that the first creator should NOT be made of matter. As such, none of the other terms of TIME, ENERGY and SPACE govern it or its actions. This creator G is what we call the God.

Conclusion 2: God is not bound by MATTER, TIME, SPACE and ENERGY.

So, now by using the first two conclusions, I can reason that your question is irrelevant in some way. MATTER, TIME, SPACE and ENERGY are all the foundations of our universe, and God created them. He is out of this bound.

To clear things up, let's think about the “big bang” theory. In a nutshell, it states that at first, TIME, ENERGY, MATTER and SPACE were unite, squashed together in a tiny tiny dot. Now they still don't know what was the condition of this pile of matter and energy and time at the very first moment of time (they believe it exploded in a BIG way), but scientists have good answers for what happened after about 1e-43 seconds (i.e. 0.0000.......001 seconds, the number of zeros being 42). From then, it's known. It’s also proven that the space HAS boundaries. See the reference to know more about it.

But what was there BEFORE the big bang?! We just know two things about it. First, as I reasoned above, God SHOULD have existed before, to create that small, condensed dot of TIME, ENERGY, MATTER and SPACE. Second, I (and for this matter nobody) cannot imagine what it was like before, because we are all part of this world, material. We cannot even imagine it; we are SO made of matter and time that we cannot think outside it. As an example, as I stated earlier, it is proven that the universe (hence the space) is bounded and it’s increasing for now, but a long time from now it will start decreasing. What IS outside the boundaries? Nothing! It even is not vacuum, there is nothing, not even time exist there! (Another good answer is that we don't know, and we'll never know, because we can't reach there and see). It is obvious that comprehending the meaning of “nothing” is very hard for us, thus strengthening my theory (that we cannot comprehend facts that are outside the bounds of MATTER).

The final conclusion: Time does not apply to God, it is his creation. As much as humankind can comprehend, God has existed before the creation of time. Beyond that, we cannot know and no human being can.

Note: Click on the photos to enlarge them.

If you feel interested in any of them and want to get the original file, please don't hesitate to email me!