Why worried?

I took this picture a couple of years ago and still I am amazed of the way Camera can give life to solid thing.

Team and teamwork

Well, well! Life is going on well on the good earth and everything moving (almost) smoothly forward.
My work load is quite high in this semester. I have three courses and then I am also working 20 hours per week.
For a month and half I was taking a course from MBA program as part of my own program “Reservoir Characterization”.

Dr. Laurie Milton was the instructor of “Optimizing Team Dynamics”. I believe she was very good at this, though she also put a huge amount of load on us. We had lots of reading and writing assignments which almost kept me away from reading any of the other courses.
I was a little bit uncomfortable with the amount of time I spent on this course and maybe most of the course was a sort of common sense. But, looking back after finishing it, I see what has happened. The course has done a couple of good things. Firstly it organized “my understanding” of teamwork or the “common sense”. Also, it gave me some good ideas about what makes team fail. One interesting thing was the concept of team contract. What we did was that we wrote down on hard paper what we want to achieve as objective and how we want to do that. Even, how we are going to interact with each other. Probably the contract couldn’t help alone if somebody just had given it to us. What really made it work was the process of preparing it. The process allowed everyone to openly bring the things that he or she wanted to be there. The other concepts which were useful are appreciation of conflict while keeping it away of getting to interpersonal conflict and also the maybe the importance of openness. All in all, it was a good course, though it made such an impression on me about Fridays that I shiver when I hear the word.
For now I have to do something about my other two courses. Team is good, but I have other stuffs to do too!!!

Calgary Stampede, Parade

Watch more here

Our Happy neighbours

These cute things are our happy neighbours. I enjoy their presence almost everyday.

Winter 2007: The courses

I started this semester with three courses in advise of Amir which told me to not overload myself for the first semester. I came to U of C with the expectation that everything is here is so densely useful and I will have a time when each second has a new thing to learn for me. But in fact, the pace was so much slower than my expectation. This gave me the wrong idea that I am not learning enough here. Even at first, I started reading extra material which later I found it so extent that I could not follow anymore. A couple shocks including a ridiculous result in midterm of "Numerical Methods"alarmed me that I am on wrong way. So I fastened my seatbelt and started flying over course material without too much extra waste of time. With a great wonder I found myself learning more and the finals were excellent. By the way, the wound of midterm in "Numerical methods" lasted and I just managed to get an A-. Though I have the chance to keep my GPA about 3.9 yet.

Part Three: A Friend indeed! From airport to moving to our own App.

It's said that a friend in need is a freind indeed. Amir and his wife, Forough, are friends indeed. We arrived in Calgary airport and found Amir waiting for us. He took us to their home were Forough had prepared dinner. This was the first time Maryam and I were visiting Forough. We really were feeling that we may be a load on them. But we were thinking, "OK, it's just a night and we will leave to our own house tomorrow". So we enjoyed the delicious dinner and soon went to bed in the hope that tomorrow we will get our luggage. But the thing didn't go all well . The day after I registered the course, opened bank account and did many other things with the help of Amir. I believe if he wasn't with us, It would take a month to realize how to do those things. Unfortunately our luggage didn't come for five days. We had to go to airport several times and finally we got all but one which came almost a week later.During these days Amir and Forough were so kind to us. With their help we find a Russian guy who was moving to South Africa and had a moving sale. We bought almost all we needed include TV, bed, Sofa, a good bike, microwave oven, two chairs and many other tiny things we needed. The guy was going to flight to Johanesburg to manage things befor taking his wife there. So, we agreed to take bed, chairs and a small extra TV and wait for him to come back and give us the sofa and the big TV and other stuff. We rent a car and took things to our appartment which Amir had rented for us. After five days we moved to our own appartment. Our life in Calgary started.When I think back about the things went on those five days, I really wonder how we could manage all those things without helps of Amir and Forough. That's why it's said,"A friend in need is a Friend indeed".

Part 2: From Mehrabad THR to Calgary YYC

We got in to airplane and started calling as much people as we could, thinking that we gonna fly in few minutes. But it almost took 1n hour and half to fly. Airplane had a kin of technical problem or something. So, Mary called almost who ever she knows! By the way the flight had not so much exciting but it ended with lots of Adrenaline. London was quite windy and we had a very bad landing. It felt like roller coaster and unfortunately Mary's stomach didn't like it. She really tried hard to just don't blow up. With an hour and half delay and such tight flight schedule we had been late already. But, we had to wait for half an hour getting some pills and cool water from very friendly and helpful Iran air's staff to have her back on her feet. (Despite of lots of odd things I had heard about Iran Air I found it's international flights crew professional and so friendly, better than many other airlines like BA and even Emirates). Then we started run through the maze of Heathrow. Being there twice before we had less trouble than others to find the way but finally when we got to boarding desk they told us Air Canada has closed the boarding. The African American lady in Air Canada was also a nice lady and tried to find a way to send us with another Air Canada flight through Toronto or Vancouver but unfortunately (Not really sure about "un", you gonna see) she didn't find any thing. We went back to Iran Air desk. They asked us to wait and told us we may have to stay on a hotel (being guest of Iran Air) for a night. But as it was our lucky day finally we ended up in two business class seats of British Airways. Honestly it was my first time seating in a business class and I found it so good! So all bads turned to a happy end we enjoyed our 8.5 hours trip to Calgary. Fortunately our cell phones were working in UK and so we managed to send a message to Amir about our delay. We flight around 4 p.m. and as we were heading west we arrived in Calgary around 5 p.m. afternoon!
In Calgary airport we found out that our luggage were still in Heathrow. So a BA staff got phone and address of Amir's house and told that they will send luggage later.
We went to visa office and again as it was our day, we met a real gentleman officer. He was kind enough to give a two years study permit to me. And with a great surprise he asked Mary whether she want to study or work in Canada. We asked for a minute and then decided to go for work permit. So he kindly issued a TWO Years work permit for Mary. After such a disgusting time with Canadian embassy at Tehran, I found Canadians kind and friendly. So, we just stepped out after almost everybody. There a kind gentleman with a great heart was waiting for us. He was Amir!
I'll bring the rest of story in another part. See you then!