Tuesday, August 21, 2007

UiO, Linux and informatics !!! :-D

The school started today, as always at first it's a little bit hard but hopefully there would be no problem and I hope I get used to it soon.

Now I am happy with my language abilities as I was totally understanding what the teacher was talking about in informatics pre-courses that I went to for checking my language abilities and today I was at the first informatics class in university of Oslo. But still I was afraid to take a course called Philosophy in this semester as I thought Philosophy is hard enough to be read in your mother language, how can I make it to understand and explain it in my third language which I know I am not THAT good at it ... Okay some people might say ARE YOU KIDDING THAT YOU ARE NOT NATIVE HERE ??? but still It's a big trouble to read Philosophy in Norwegian ...

It was not that interesting as I knew all about these things but still was useful as here they work mostly with Linux but in Iran focus was mostly on Windows.

I have installed Fedora 7 on my laptop. Actually it is kind of hard to communicate with Linux and it took me more than one week to set up the internet network which I had in my student town in my Linux but luckily I had windows beside so there was not that much problem ;-)

Good luck to me :-D

Shahab

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

How much does the life coast ?

*Ever thinking of committing suicide ?
**Why ? for what ?
*For not passing an exam ?
Are you kidding ?!?!? what kind of exam can worth a whole life !!!?!?!

Now let me tell you the story ... a real story ...

Two days ago I was talking to a cousin in Iran and suddenly he asked my brother if I know about a cousin who is called "Suraya" ? I said No, what is wrong with her ? He continued that yeah she had committed suicide after not being able to pass the university entrance exam this year. He said that she got the result and after the shock of not passing the exam took around 50 tablets of his dead father at the same time and FINISHED !!!! They couldn't help her in hospital either ... So easy ... She passed away ...

I don't know what the hell has happened there and I am not going to judge her family over it because I have no idea what she has been through but I know something about the society I come from.

Back there in Iran getting in to university and continuing your studies till higher education means every thing. There is no way that you are not called a looser if you don't have at least a bachelor !!! We even have now an expression back there that says : "Nowadays even if you kick a donkey, it will turn back to you and say I have a bachelor, what the hell are you doing ?"

Higher education influence your whole life there in Iran ... from your girl friend till your marriage, income or what ever you can think of and on top of all your social class ... So you can imagine everyone is just can't live without a higher education and passing this damn exam becomes harder and harder ( 235 questions from 7 different fields of science in 250 minutes ) and nowadays every year more than one million young Iranian participate in this exam and the chance to get in good universities or even the simple ones is not that high. It needs one whole or even more years of JUST studying and training to get ready for the test.

There has been lots of people ( specially girls ) who ended up in the hospitals during the exam because of high stress pressure. So these youngs who are trying to pass this exam are like being through a test of life, that shows how much ability they have to face real life and pressure. Plus these youngs have this idea in mind the whole time that if they fail this test their future may get ruined ...

With all these stupid theories around this damn exam, extra pressure from family, friends and others can easily drive someone to do something crazy ... As my cousin did and it coast her life ... A beautiful girl died just because she misunderstood the story of LIFE ...

God bless her ...

You may look at the photos below to feel the atmosphere ...

Shahab,

You feel the answering sheet
You sit there in the middle ... POOR YOU ...
Sometimes you need to help your brain to keep working after hours ...
Some people are maybe enough relaxed to spend enough time to get their own style even at such an exam ;-)
Families waiting for participants to come out ...
Some are more than relaxed ...
Need extera pencil ? :-D
Sometimes a simple watch doesn't help, you need to take care of time with a BIG ONE ;-)
More families around ...