Keyvan Nayyeri

You know that it’s been over ten days since the last update on this blog and such a suspension has not happened to it to now, but as I had described before, it was all predictable for me.

Since the beginning of my military service I’ve had a gradual aggravating process in my life that has been putting me under a pressure both mentally and physically. At first glance, I expected to be able to have a better position as time goes on, but I was wrong because time proved to worsen things especially in the last six months when I was getting closer to the end of the service, and right after that.

When you’ve been stopped from living the life that you’d like, you’re compelled to find a solution to escape away from the situation, and I had only one solution which was, accelerating my life after the service; therefore, I had a difficult plan for the latest months of my service and the short era after that. These plans required much effort and time to be done, and interestingly, I chose side-projects that exacerbated my case. I wanted to condense the lost 20 months of my military service in a few months, and ameliorate my personal and professional life as fast as possible.

As long as time went on, I confronted with more difficulties that were duplicating the pressure on me. To be honest, many times I was going to fall apart under this heavy pressure, but thank to God, I could resist it.

A few weeks ago, I gave a brief summary of the main four threads that I’ve been following up with. Fortunately, most of those tasks are now done, and I feel like that I’m released from a prison after a long time!

I said that I have many paper works to do and now I’m so happy to say that all those paper works are completed. This task was the most annoying one because it was something beyond my power, and had to be done by others. I always hate such cases when I don’t have any control over, and this was even worse than that!

The other tasks were, taking two important exams right after the service. I took the first exam in the end of October in Tehran, and fortunately I got good scores from that exam. The other exam was something that required good preparation in the longer term but I didn’t have time for that. I had observed one month of good preparation for the exam, but I had to allocate more time to other tasks which almost stopped me from a good preparation; however, I had to take the exam abroad until the end of November, so I chose to take it in Ankara. Finally, I spent the past three days in Ankara and took the exam on Tuesday. Unlike my anticipations, I got a good score on this exam as well. This time I really didn’t know much to get that score but I used my background in the exam fields as well as my background in mathematics to overcome this computer adaptive exam with its specific structure. By the way, I’ll write more about my trip to Ankara in a moment.

As of the book which was the third task, I completed my manuscripts before leaving country on Sunday, and we (Simone and I) just need to wrap up on the content in the editorial stages which wouldn’t be so hard.

The last task was an application that I’ve been proceeding with; although it’s not completed yet, I’ve passed the main parts and don’t have much concerns about it anymore.

All in all, I can’t state that I’m not busy anymore because I’m still so busy, but fortunately that terrible pressure is gone, and I can control myself. Honestly, this pressure was driving me crazy and I had bad times in the past six months. By the way, I hope that I can get its results very soon to forget all these bad years that I’ve had.

Speaking of my trip to Ankara, this was my second trip to a foreign country, and the first one after finishing the service. You would all know that the main reason that I passed the service was, getting my passport and being able to go here and there, so this first trip had its own difficulties as well.

Ankara is the capital of Turkey and is not the largest city in country but the most influential one. I’ve always enjoyed being with Turk people and have had great friends among them (we have Turk provinces as well). For my exam, there were some options in our neighborhood but for several reasons I preferred to take it in Ankara.

I was not in the city long enough to judge on it even I spent much time studying before the exam and staying in the hotel. I don’t think Ankara has many places for sightseeing but it has great people. During my stay I enjoyed their hosting and had good times there. In the test center, they tried to do their best to help, and they were a big help indeed. Other than walking in some streets near the hotel, and eating some traditional foods like Pide (Turkish Pita) and Adana kebap (which seemed to be a derivation of our own famous Kebabs), I didn’t do much in the city except sleeping after the exam which was the best thing for me; however, most likely I’ll be back within the next three months and may stay longer to enjoy the better weather in spring.

Here I should thank Turkish people for their hosting and kindness because I’m sure that I ought to have many troubles if I had to take the exam in one of those tiny southern neighbors! The only problem that I had in the city was, communicating with people which is so important when you’re visiting somewhere for business or a work that mandates communication. Most of the people didn’t know English, and those who did know had some problems with more complex structures and vocabularies; however, my exam supervisor was good at British English, and I also could find a girl with a marketing position at hotel who could help me to a great extent. By the way, do I have Turkish readers here?!

One interesting thing that I watched on Turkish channels was frequent advertisements about Istanbul 2010 that is sponsored by Microsoft, and seemed to be a non-technical event or something like that (Thank to Orcun for his comment, Istanbul is chosen as the European Capital of Culture for 2010). For your information, Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey and the third largest city in the world.

There may come one marginal post about something that I eventually found in Ankara but is not related to Turkey at all. It made me sad before leaving country!

In the end, I would say that “I’m back, baby”! Expect a smooth reload of everything including this blog.

+ Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans!