For the first and hopefully last time in my life, I’m actually glad and relieved about the apparent postal incident that has resulted in me not receiving a certain package. *breathe*

Go figure.

I know, I’ve been quiet lately. I know you folks have been expecting to hear/read quite a bit more about how things are developing here. Well, truth is I recently lost someone of weight in my life under rather strange circumstances. As a result, I’ve fallen back a bit from all forms of online communications, while I’m trying to deal with this. But I’m still here and I do read all that you write.

This is quite difficult, I’m completely heart-broken and to all honesty it couldn’t have come at a more complicated point in my life. Nonetheless, I’ll get past it soon. I’ll survive… always do.

–

P.S.: As far as music therapy goes, I came across this track a few days ago quite accidentally on MTV DE. And I totally fell in love with the band.

So the new year has started with a collection of happy and sad events. The biggest happy one of course is that I took the last step forward and I’m now settled in Switzerland, and hopefully we will not have to worry about any more back and forth flights. And now I have to start a lot of things from scratch…. ah well, all is good. =)

I wish you all a great 2011, and hope you had a lovely new year’s eve. I had a pretty fun one, with Oliv, my mom, and Kolja. =) There will be pictures….

Cheers!

A couple of weeks ago, I had an offer to do some modelling for a pretty well known Italian fashion brand. The offer came to me through an Italian musician/artist friend of mine who is active in that field, and in touch with the founder of that brand. I told my friend that I was very flattered [which I really, truly am, believe me! =)], but working in that specific field is just not an interest of mine, and really not in harmony with my life style and fields of activity and work that I’m interested and involved in.

So my friend relayed my response to his friend [a lady working for the brand], and then came the real surprise. A few days ago my friend told me that his friend had said that she was wondering why I had said no to the offer, since she had seen my profile on Facebook [oh, yeah!] and I had listed “modelling” as one of my interests. Apparently she was very curious as to whether I have an offer from some other brand or agency that I somehow found more interesting. =P

Well, as you can imagine I had very big round eyes when I read my friend’s message saying all that. I knew that unless I was suffering from multiple personalities disorder, I couldn’t have possibly listed “modeling” as an interest of mine, and to all honestly I don’t think my friend believed that I had done so either. =P So then I ended up doing some digging in my own Facebook profile, and guess what… I discovered that I did in fact have the keyword “modeling” in there. Quite a few times too actually. Page names such as “Modeling the World” and “NLP Modeling” and numerous others with the “modeling” keyword most certainly are listed in my interests. =P Except of course, [well here comes the funny], those are all about  _SCIENTIFIC MODELLING_!!! D’UH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here’s the moral of my story, and my advice to all the recruiters out there: Make sure your target model is interested in the same kind of modelling as you are. =P And when you see something with the word modelling in it on someone’s FB profile, CLICK ON IT, you’ll see it may or may not have anything to do with your kind of modelling. And yes, there are, in fact, OTHER KINDS OF MODELLING in this world! =PP

We’re still having a good laugh over this so thank you….. ;))))

A while ago I was asked this question on Formspring: “Which people inspire(d) you? (name a few if there are too many) Explain how they inspired you.” I ended up writing a pretty lengthy answer to it… and I was planning on turning it into a blog post, but hadn’t gotten around to doing so yet. Interestingly enough though, I’ve been receiving the same question from various people in different contexts all over the place, so I guess it’s best to write it down here and refer everyone to it. So, below is the answer to the question, and here is a link to the original question.

—

Hmm. This is an interesting question with a pretty huge answer. =) Yes, there are indeed too many people who inspire me. It may be that I get inspired easily, by many things, ranging from very simple to very sophisticated. It could be a single sentence that someone says, or the simplest act, and what I get out of it could be massive.

Ok, lets name a few, more or less randomly and off the top of my head.

– My mom. Mahroo Araeenejad. =) She’s the strongest person I know, with a pretty much unbreakable spirit. She’s the power house, the one to rely on. And not just for me, for everyone around her. She has a heart bigger than this universe and a soul purer than sunshine. She inspires me in more ways than I can count.

– My uncle. Dr. Mehdi Ghalibafian, also known as “the father of Iranian concrete science”. His wisdom, his dedication, his courage, his knowledge, his resourcefulness, his intelligence, his fantastic sense of humor, his kindness and his amazing personality will always be a source of inspiration to me.

– Isaac Asimov. His books, specially the robot series, were among my main reasons for getting interested in robotics, AI and futuristic technology as a child, and later on choosing that as my main field of study and research.

– Frank Herbert. The author of the Dune series. His books are life changing. Food for mind and soul.

– The Little Prince. The adorable fictional character of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s legendary book of the same name. This book is like a road guide to life for me.

– Mike Oldfield. His music speaks to me, very often saying that not even the sky is a limit.

– Albert Einstein. I don’t think I need to explain this one. 😉

– Thomas Edison. The God of “if at first you don’t succeed, try try try again”.

– My friend TanTan. She has many many amazing qualities, but something about her that really inspires me is how truly fantastic a friend she is. I mean really, there’s being friends and then there’s being her…. <3

– Vincent van Gogh. Hard to explain. There’s something I see / feel in his paintings that is very difficult to put into words, but it’s quite inspiring. I read his biography as a kid and it had a great effect on me somehow.

This list could go on forever. Really, for EVER. It would include friends, musicians, scientists, engineers, writers, artists [and certain demoscene artists / musicians / coders would have their special place!]. But time is limited, and as I said, this is just a few, off the top of my head. This turned into an essay. Perhaps I’m going to make it into a blog post. And add it to Verse, so I can add people to it in time. Thanks for the idea. =)

Cheers!

Couple of days ago someone called me “Queen of exceptions”. For some reason it reminded me of this song that I’ve always loved…

Taking on water,
Sailing a restless sea
From a memory,
A fantasy.
The wind carries
Into white water,
Far from the islands.
Don’t you know you’re
Never going to get to France.
Mary, Queen of Chance, will they find you?
Never going to get to France.
Could a new romance ever bind you?
Walking on foreign ground,
Like a shadow,
Roaming in far off
Territory.
Over your shoulder,
Stories unfold, you’re
Searching for sanctuary.
You know you’re
Never going to get to France…
I see a picture
By the lamp’s flicker.
Isn’t it strange how
Dreams fade and shimmer?
Never going to get to France…
I see a picture
By the lamp’s flicker.
Isn’t it strange how
Dreams fade and shimmer?
Never going to get to France…
Never going to get to France.
Never going to…
Never going to get to France.
Never going to…
Never going to get to France.
Never going to…

It was really “interesting” today, when I ended up having to do a bit of an analysis on certain footsteps on my website visitor tracking tools to find out that it’s been in fact people, human beings, who have attacked Verse with stupid commercial posts and some other nonsensical twaddle. Oh, and guess what, some of them even went ahead and posted links on Twitter, to the garbage they had posted to Verse. Here’s a couple of examples [it might be a bot posting the stuff to Twitter though, of that I’m not certain…]:

http://twitter.com/#!/julie86smith/statuses/1207024033464320

http://twitter.com/#!/lutushia/statuses/1298952494260224

Of course the links in the posts now direct to deleted pages… I deleted the contributions of all these users from Verse, and reported them to Twitter. I also made a rather big change to Verse’s registration system today. I’ve changed the code so that it’s no longer possible to simply register an account and start using Verse. New users now have to request for an account, and then one of the admins would have to review their request and permit the account to be created, before the user can use Verse. This isn’t all that conventional for a wiki system… but oh well, people have to misuse absolutely everything, and you end up having to deal with it.

And by the way, if you’re ever in downtown Toronto and feeling hungry, make sure you check out the Eggspectation restaurant. Well actually they seem to have locations all over North America and India. Hmm. =P I loved the contents of the picture below…

Update: Ok… ok… seems like I have to explain a little something here. Why o why have I developed such a crush on this hamburger. =P Well, because it was SO INCREDIBLY YUMMY! I think it mainly has to do with the fact that it wasn’t salty. I mean, by default hamburgers taste slightly salty due to several of the ingredients. But this hamburger.. not salty at all, and hey, it wasn’t really greasy either! And I must say, the fries were also to die for. I don’t eat out very often and I also don’t eat all that much red meat, but I’d welcome one of those any time! =D

Update 2: Yes, NO! I’m not against red meat at all, I just don’t eat it all that much. I prefer fish meat instead… but I do try to fit a bit of red meat in my meals every now and then. And I’m definitely not a vegetarian or vegan. Why? I just don’t believe in it. I believe it balance, and flow of nature. I also believe in real, actual science. But I’m not going to get any more into that.

Oh… and I have this acute urge to mention, I bloody hate McDonalds. For all they do to humans and animals at the same time.

Wow… I just saw an article with the first set of detailed information and pictures related to the upcoming Tintin movie! Looks like it’s going to be awesome! =D Apparently this is going to be the movie version of the “Secret of the Unicorn”, which is one of my favourite Tintin adventures and the first one I ever read! =) I just can’t wait to see the movie…

“With live action you’re going to have actors pretending to be Captain Haddock and Tintin,” says Peter Jackson. “You’d be casting people to look like them. It’s not really going to feel like the Tintin Hergé drew. It’s going to be somewhat different. With CGI we can bring Hergé’s world to life, keep the stylised caricatured faces, keep everything looking like Hergé’s artwork, but make it photo-real.”

Check out the full article here!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the long wait is finally over! After years and years and more years of waiting for Genox’s highly anticipated new album, it’s finally here! =D Genox’s new album called “Hourglass” has just been released on the Enough Records netlabel, and you can click here to see the album information and download it.

Seeing how I’m obviously considered pretty biased, I probably should leave you to make up your own mind about the album… but I can’t help mentioning that I think every single track of this album is totally and completely special, and has it’s own unique character.

Of course I’m going to post the album to Verse shortly. Also, make sure you check out Genox’s new Facebook page here. =)