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I am still baffled by the number of people who want to become influencers and share their "life" with 8 billion people on Instagram. You might think I am also sharing my life on this blog, writing my views and exposing my incredible soul to the world. While you might be right with my inclination towards "sharing" my opinions, I do not consider myself an influencer, and I have no plans to become one. Truthfully, I do not consider that I have anything extraordinary to tell the world. There is a…
"Ceasefire" is by far one of the most meaningless words in the dictionary of the Middle East. Since the alleged ceasefire between Iran and the USA/Israel, the war has not really stopped. While the capital and bigger cities such as Tabriz and Isfahan have not been a target, as they were all bombed during both the 12-day war and the conflict this year, towns in the southern parts of Iran have been regularly under fire from the US army. I never had the chance to visit southern provinces, but based…
I have been using Gmail since I got my first electronic device. To be fair, I barely had any problems with it, as it was the only email I used and I did not really feel the need to switch to another app. However, things have changed a lot since then, and recently I was looking for a replacement. Considering I do not own a card linked to UnionPay and my Chinese bank only operates in China, I had to look for a free application that offers a decent package for its unpaid users. At the moment, I've…
After 7 years of being a consistent user, the highest for any platform I have ever used, I am really unhappy about the recent news that Netflix, Sony Pictures, and Paramount are all bidding to acquire Letterboxd. While my love for that app is undeniable, as it helped me a lot with discovering films that perhaps I could not find anywhere else, and I met truly interesting people with great taste in cinema, I can see the future of post-Amazon acquisition Goodreads for Letterboxd if it ends up with…
I've been a huge football fan since 2010, and it all started with falling in love with Joachim Löw's Germany in the World Cup. I remember how watching Manuel Neuer made me so interested in the sport that, as a person who was so afraid of football, basketball, and any other sport that includes kicking or throwing a ball, I became a goalkeeper after that, pursuing a childhood fantasy to start as Bayern's number one before 25. I had my 25th birthday 4 months ago, and as you might guess based on my…
As an Iranian, I normally have to give a lecture about “why I'm not muslim” and “the reasons I don't support many actions of the regime” after meeting a new foreigner. With Chinese people, it doesn't happen quite often. They react with “you have a very ancient and rich history,” and “Iran and China are brothers” type of comments that I assume are flattering enough to skip the urge to initiate that conversation. With Europeans, however, it's a completely different story. A couple of months ago,…
When I arrived in Shanghai, I kinda knew that one of the things that I had to adapt to was people leaving the city or returning to their countries. Since all my close friends were international students, and obviously not all of them were intending to stay in China after graduation, knowing this limitation scared me at first, especially after becoming closer to some of them and feeling the intimacy. I rarely faced a similar issue before in my life. Living in Mashhad, I didn't have an extensive…
A couple of weeks ago, I went on a rant about how Instagram is becoming the worst application on the planet (ok, maybe I was exaggerating, as nothing can beat X), and more recently, I was digging for a replacement, as I can't really control the need to share the pictures in my gallery with the world. The solution to that came in the form of Noa sending me a link to a blog post about a website called "Moments." To be fair, I spent only one or two hours understanding its functions and comparing…
"his blog looks depressing" was what a friend of mine told my other friend about my blog, which reminded me of a reality that I've been trying to overlook for the last two years: no matter what you do and where you are, you'll always be seen as an East Asian (yes, I'm becoming more and more exhausted of the term "middle east"). Truth is, I never tried to bypass that, but the more I interact with my friends from Europe, the more I understand how different our lifestyles, our ideals, our…
1- The Language I see language as the most robust bridge between two cultures, and with how similar two languages are, the bridge can become shorter. In Afghanistan, people speak Farsi with a different variety, but close enough for both communities to understand each other. When I arrived in Shanghai, the first person I chatted to was an Afghan. I noticed he might be Iranian the moment I saw him, and when I later approached him and asked about his nationality in English, we both switched to…
It took me a decade and a half to fully realize how ugly my fingers are without nails, and while I had multiple unsuccessful attempts in the last two years to overcome this ludicrous addiction, none of the solutions were as satisfactory as wrapping a stick plaster around my fingers for an entire week, and later, have a calming blue ball (yes, I myself chose that color for later making jokes about it) for time of stress, both were excellent ideas from my genius friend, Friederike, who was my…
I love photography, and while I’ve never had a camera till last summer, when I kinda scammed my friend into selling hers at an 80% discount, the quality of the phone camera has always been the most essential factor when buying a cellphone. Nevertheless, I have become less and less enthusiastic about "flawless picture," as phones are obviously getting better at capturing high-quality, near-perfect shots. While I appreciate the realism of new cameras, I miss the vintage vibe of old ones, which is…
Today, Marjane Satrapi passed away. She was 56 years old, and according to the statement from her family, the primary cause for this extremely sudden death was the depression from the death of her husband last year. She was in Paris, so far from her hometown, Rasht, in Iran. Last year, I did a presentation on her celebrated film, Perspolis, for the cinema society of our university. I tried to show them why many Iranians have immigrated to Europe in the last half-century, the numerous issues…
I started my day with news surrounding Martin Scorsese's endorsement of AI and how he's going to utilize it in the "storyboard" process. Funny enough, Scorsese was one of the few directors who were very vocal about their artistic issues with Marvel and its antics, calling it out for not making "cinema" but "amusement parks." However, it seems Scorsese himself doesn't have much issue with not making cinema and making "slops" this deep into his career, and honestly, this is a sad ending for one…
Last week, I finally watched No One Knows About Persian Cats by Bahman Ghobadi, a banned and controversial Iranian film about the underground music in the late 2000s. I was around 9-10 years old when it was released on the internet. The illegal circulation of the film caused a major mess at the time, given the names involved. One of them was the famous rapper Hichkas, who not only acts in the movie, but also performs one of his very political songs about Tehran’s political climate at that time.…
My friend sent some pictures a couple of days ago from the lecture they had about the use of AI in video making, and frankly, I don't remember any of the classes I had in the last two years that have been as disgusting as this lecture. Based on what she told me, the professor came up with ideas like "live/love like a human, leave the rest to AI," and bragging about how he produced thousands of images by AI, which fundamentally is the same as "I burned a whole forest to find a location to pee".…
I caught myself spending too many hours on Instagram over the last three months, and I don't like that. It reminds me of the Twitter addiction I had in the early 2020s, one that I survived from and now I barely have more than 5 minutes of activity (which is still annoying, but better than two or three hours of wasting my mental health). Another reason I stopped using Twitter was the fact that Elon Musk somehow found a way to butcher the ecosystem of it and turned it into a…
Lately, I have been thinking quite a lot about altering the interface and colors on my blog. As this was the very first time in my life that I was doing something like this, and I have zero knowledge in coding, I used DeepSeek to assist me in this matter, and this is the result. While using DeepSeek for me is still embarrassing (less than Claude, who was helping bomb my country a couple of weeks ago tho. I seriously cancel anyone who uses that), I can't deny the fact that it made me more…
Last year, we often hung out at this cute little bar near our campus in the evenings. A few of us even had the benefit of having our birthday party there, and as a result, the bar turned into one of the nostalgic places I can recall whenever I want to talk about my life as a first-year Master's student. However, nobody is safe from the claws of Capitalism these days, and our beloved bar had to move to a smaller location in the same area, which is, to some degree, heartbreaking. The former spot…
A couple of days ago, I finally installed "Bale." For those who aren't familiar with the online sphere in Iran, this app is like WhatsApp/Telegram, but with direct state control over the data cycle and every tiny little message sent by the users. Assuming the whole concept of "end-to-end encryption" has been thrown in the toilet by recent efforts from Zuckerberg and co, not having a secure channel doesn't seem to be a problem unique to Iranians. However, the problem with Bale's case is that the…
Since becoming 25, I've been asking myself one very vital question: Am I an unc now? I googled it and came up with an unc is someone who is in his 30s, which technically disqualifies me, but again, due to the few instances of hanging out with people around 17-21, I feel like I'm too old now. Last Friday, Isaiah Rashad released his newest album, and it's been on repeat. Unlike his previous works, this one tends to be more of a hip-hop neo-soul kind of album, rather than hardcore Memphis rap or…
I haven't written any text in Farsi for the last three years. Back in Iran, I used to work as a literary journalist, something that perhaps reveals my decent understanding of the language. Yet after coming to China, I resigned from every position I had to fully concentrate on learning Chinese and improving my English. Similarly, I only met non-Iranians in the first half of my time in Shanghai, which meant I didn't speak any Farsi for a whole year until I met my one and only Iranian friend here.…
