Student's protest at Ahmadinejad's speech

Many student's in Amir Kabir University in Tehran held the Iranian president's picture upside down and chanted "death to the dictator". It is interesting that the demonstration has nice clear pictures and good video footage floating around the internet. I believe that is indicative that discontent in Iran about the status quo is getting stronger.

read AP article

Protests in Tehran Universities

This news is a little late, but according to Rooz online there were demonstrations last week on Iran's "students day". My understanding is that students were demanding more civil liberties for society. The article seemed interesting to me where some of the security officers were sympethetic to the demonstrators and this change of heart could help improvements in human rights in Iran.

Also, It used to be where only summer time there would be demonstrations. Then it was spring and summer. But now it seems that any opportunity that arises, some group somewhere in Iran is demonstrating. If I understand correctly, there are a set of elections for the "electible?" gurdian council members this friday, December 15th. I am not sure if people are chosing to boycott or participate.


read article

Staying True

The people that I have to interact with everyday can be a nasty bunch. Of course our superiors are pretty bad, and as a result many people are stretched thin and over-worked, and as a result angry. That's a good adjective for our colleauges, angry, and of course everyone is bickering with each other.

However, amongst us, there are some that simply crossed the line. One of my colleagues was telling a few others how she got into a fight with another that was working on a project with her, and she went behind his back and pulled out the power plugs to the equipment that she knew he couldn't find, and as a result would make him unable to work on the project.

My colleague had a vendetta against me from day one, because he was doing poorly on his own projects, and to make up for it, instead of working harder to up his game, he would put his energy and time into making me look bad. He always cut corners and would end up with garbage data because of it. Then he would blame "the organisation". Anyway, all of the sudden my software wasn't working. I kept troubleshooting for two weeks, causing our project a huge blow, because we lost golden opportunities to take data. It turns out, someone yanked out the fuses that is a power conduit to my hardware. I wonder who did that?

My friend consoled me. He said" Now you know and make sure you cover you back. Whatever happens don't let him turn you, into him, you have to fight to remain a good person. Because if you start turning nasty, vindictive and ugly like him, he has won. The world has one more jerk added to it."

I will try my best to follow his advice.