More From Me....

Well, to start off, yesterday, I watched the Miss Universe pageant. No real reason to watch it other than the fact that I was bored and was too lazy to reach the remote. Anyhow, I realized how the world perception of beauty has gone towards the European perception of petite stature and a relatively small to moderately sized bust (I have no idea what size cups are small and what are huge) along with a 34-24-34 size (Which totals to 92! I'm a math geek, I know!). Now, no doubt that the women were quite pretty, especially the Swiss miss (She's stolen my heart!), but I realized that the result of having one type of feminine beauty is a result of colonization in the first and second rounds.

For those of you that don't know what the first and second round of colonialism was, the first round was the discovery of the New World (North, Central and South America) in 1492 by Columbus thus bringing many spices and goods like potatoes and different peppers to Europe, which technically fuelled the Industrial Revolution, and thus causing the Empires to expand, mainly into Africa, in order to open up new markets.

Along with bringing new markets, a new class of colonial administrators, sometimes from the indigenous locals, were created in the colonies, thus having them adopting new European values and to do "European things" and to think European. The European thinking got a little too far methinks because along with colonial administration, media, in one form or another, entered and European beauty came into the colonies (for markets) thus showing skinny and petite models and encouraging women to be small.

This is just a small example of what causes one perception of something like beauty. Everybody now strives to be the smallest they can be, and as a result, can lead to anorexia and "bag of bones" syndrome! Just embrace the person you are and get on with life. Even if you achieve a certain body type, it won't stay with you forever. There is something called ageing and eventually, it'll come and slap you in the face! Anyhow, before I rant anymore, I'll just go now! It's sometimes liberating to write here, and I am a guy! However, I'm not a white male, but I am between the ages of 18-49, so people will at least give me one ear to listen!

Being Me

I see myself as a lonely person. I do everything on my own and it's usually right. However, being alone doesn't mean achieve happiness for me. I'm not the type of guy to go hunting for a girl at all costs, have a one night stand and call it a day. I'm the type that wants a companion, a friend, someone to talk to and be tolerant of me. Unfortunately, it's only a woman (at least in my mind) that can achieve all these criteria, plus they have a pretty face so go figure! I'm not asking for a girlfriend to all of a sudden come out of the blue on the net, I'm just merely saying I'm lonely and I'm ok with it to a certain extent.

Anyhow, I was reading here and there about things, since my anthropology test is over and done with, I was reading random useless crap on the Internet. Anyhow, I ended up going to a website about the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. I remember that kidnapping. Any kidnapping is terrible, especially if there's no immediate suspect to go to and no real MO either. The diary that she was forced to write was interesting though. I used to write a log of all things happening, including some thoughts I had about some people. Some of those thoughts tended to have been very affectionate, and some were plain hatred. What would've disgusted me was the fact that the kidnapper would look at the diary to make sure she was writing good things. My log was secret, totally secret. I've stopped writing in it because life has taken over me, but I remember some of the things I wrote in it and how I loved, and liked, some people over others.

Anyhow, I'm done for the day, I'm gonna do some stuff, and drink a bit. In case you're wondering, I'm gonna be drinking water, nothing else. In a hot day like this, only H2O can satisfy my thirst!

Meeting with F1 history, and the rest!

Where can I start? Oh dear oh dear, where can I start? Firstly, I work at the bookroom at the University of Toronto. What we do is we take donations of books, sort them, price them, and sell them at the big book sale in October. One of the pricers is a former French prof. I got to know her a bit since she has trouble writing the prices of books, so she asks me to write them while she tells me. She started telling me about the 1950's when she was in University herself and living in France as well. As it turned out, she was a big motorsport fan, and was able to try out for the Renault Formula 1 team of the 1950's, which they had a different name, to which I cannot remember. Anyhow, she drove in an F1 car and described it to me as the most 'exhilirating ride of my life'. She told me that she would have been accepted into the team, had she not been a woman, since it costs alot of money to train a driver. Hiring a woman would have been a bad move since she could only race for a little while and then raise a family. She was heartbroken, and couldn't race.

Anyhow, it has been a dull couple of days, apart from that meeting with history. I have been busy, and I will have to be choosing courses for next year on Monday. Anyhow, from what I've heard, the system to register (better known as ROSI) is actually much better than last year and you won't stall as well! I can only imagine how great it is. Actually, I can't!

A nice few days of loneliness, to a certain extent...

Well, I'm gonna put it this way, my mom's in Iran, half way around the world in a foreign land where I've only been 8 or 9 times in my short, 19.5 year life. Now, my brother's going away until Sunday for some camping trip. That'll leave me at home with my dad. It should be fun. That means I have a ton of freedom until Sunday, so I gotta use it well! Anyhow, I was on the FB aye (Facebook, aye), and saw that a global group was created by one of my friends for all people from my former highschool. The spooky part about this group was that the great majority of people from the University of Toronto. I think we're all a bunch of naive idiots to go to U of T to believe that we are the best and can become the best.

I watched the World Cup finals yesterday and much to my chagrin, actually there were a few, Shakira was singing before the game (Bringing more Shakira jokes to me) and that Italy won, France should've won and by alot too. I think a stupid thing was one of the Italian players calling Zinedine Zidane a 'dirty terrorist', to which he replied with a headbutt, and the Italian flew back on the ground and Zidane was given a red card for that.

Anyhow, I'd like to have a wrestling match with drama queen football (soccer) players because it would be so entertaining. Or, they should bring Cristiano Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane in Celebrity Boxing to see who is the better soccer player by faking it. I bet you anything that Ronaldo would cover his face so that there is no damage to his very pretty face (Yes, I'm a guy and acknowledged that Ronaldo is quite good looking!). It reminds me back to the threads I had on biome about who would win in a fight and it would be a poll between two different characters like Darth Vader and Harry Potter. You would have soooooo much discussion about these two characters, like the fact that Vader uses the force and can immediately force choke Potter, but Potter can use the killing curse or something like that to kill Vader and all that crap! Man, what a great way to kill time, but as one person said in regards to these things, 'Sheiban, you need to get laid!'.

That's me for today, I've had enough stupidity going on today and I'll send it to your comments, if anybody cares to read this blog...

Rose goggles and the loss of them

On Thursday, my anthropology prof talked about two schools of Christian thought during the Renassiance, the monogenists, who believed that all humanity was divine and that only the indigenous peoples of other places had simply devolved, the second school of thought was the Polygenists, who believed that it was only Europeans that were Christians and that the other people weren't even human. That is one of the reasons why you had the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the slavery and killing of indigenous North Americans.

Anyhow, I thought we as humans had evolved and all differences that were in the past were in the past. Boy was I wrong! My prof did mention something about White Supremacists using the words of Thomas Hobbes and other notable philosophers of the time and took them out of context in regards to Africans and other non-Whites as being savages. I believed that these groups were fringe groups and were merely a nuisance. I believed that these groups didn't have a large following.

I checked Wikipedia (As I do all the time to feed my curiosity) and there were many many many notable names of white supremacists, the majority of them being in the US (No surprises there!). Anyhow, the lingo and expression used on their websites were very interesting. They kind of reminded me of Bob Ewell in "To Kill A Mockingbird", using 'nigger' and other racist terms in their language. They talked about the Nigerian 419 scams (To which they called 'Nigeria' as 'Niggeria'. That's no typo!), which unfortunately is a chimera on our cyber planet, and used that as a justification of why they believe they are supreme over all other skin colours (Although, a white scammer was caught just over a year ago).

Overall, my heart hurts that the ideology of white supremacy still lives today in our societies. I think that living in a very multicultural society, where you can get Italian and Japanese food on the same block, has given me a rosy view of the world at large. Unfortunately, it's things like these that hinder us and stop us from reaching a point where we all can embrace each other for being different.

A month, or so

A few days ago, my mother left for Iran, since my grandmother is ill. That leaves me alone with my little brother and my dad. Nothing wrong, but I feel a little alone (Go ahead, call me a mommy's boy). The benefits of my mom not being here is that I get her car, credit card and other things! This one month also revolves around social and cultural anthropology for me as well.

Anyhow, I was looking at the different courses that wouldn't be offered next year, and to my shock, I'm not gonna get to do youth culture next year. I was looking forward to that course, but at least I still get to take physiology (phew!). Anyhow, tomorrow will be the big game in Berlin for the World Cup finals. France takes on Italy. Go France, show the world that the Italians can be beaten when they play dirty! That's all for me here, I gotta take a shower now and shave off my goatee, I'm getting the Jacques Villeneuve look!

Thinking and loss

Today started a new anthropology course with a professor whom if you just go by name with association, can think of many atrocities caused, and she seems to be causing university atrocities. I don't know what I meant with that last sentence, but yeah, I started a new course today called Social & Cultural Anthropology. It's ok, if you like politics and other things. I used to be a political junkie and dare I say, a troublemaker as well, so I feel quite at home with this course. Even though I do believe in the left wing, her views are more left wing. She absolutely despises George W, while I don't believe he's THAT bad! He pushes for social reform to a certain extent, but unlike daddy Bush, he's not putting any pressure on Israel and lets them reign supreme over the Middle East. I am not anti-Israeli, but I do believe that the government does cause alot of atrocities, one example that comes to mind is jailing the whistle blower on their nuclear program for 18 years and they haven't joined the NNPT either as well. But that's the part of thinking for the day, I can't change the world, but I can say what's happening, in the hopes that somebody on a higher level of the International hierarchy (Whatever that is) sees it and thinks, which I doubt since they have to be monitoring terrorist threats in chatrooms and online forums!

Anyhow, to the loss, it was Germany's today. A very sad ending to a truly magnificent game against a great Italian team. Unfortunately, Germany, on home turf, just couldn't master a win against Italy, posting their first loss to a European team since 1998 when they lost 3-0 to Croatia (I read too much!). I watched the two and only goals scored against Germany while listening to "I Believe In You" by Il Divo and Celine Dion, a far cry (No pun intended!) from the usual fast paced Eurodance I listen to. Anyhow, I'm a tired person today! Thanks for reading, and if you didn't then you can't see the motions I'm making either!

Beaches and the Haircut

Nothing interesting happened today! I'll be working this week at the Bookroom and promoting events. Today though, what happened for me was that I went to get my haircut, the first in over a month and it feels great to be light! I went to the Vietnamese side of town, which was interesting. I noticed though that beside the barbershop, there was a Vietnamese restaurant which had some interesting things in it. What was most interesting about this Vietnamese restaurant were the owners! The owners were not Vietnamese, they didn't even come from anywhere near Vietnam, China, Korea, Laos, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore or anywhere around those areas. The two owners were Iranian! They were standing outside and speaking in Farsi which I could understand. A fellow from one of the mentioned areas (I don't wanna discriminate) came and asked one of them how the food was to which he replied "It is perfect"!

After that little episode, I drove myself around town, went to the Danforth, and then making a few twists and turns, ended up at Woodbine Beach. I found a parking spot (Which was quite hard to do), walked to the beach and started skipping rocks while children and sunlovers were enjoying themselves. I was dying to go commando just once in the water but saw children running around, and the water was too cold to do that as well. After about 15 minutes, I jumped into my car and gunned the engine back to Etobicoke. A fun day, but I'm starting class tomorrow as well *cry*

Ironic Indy!

I watched the US Grand Prix from Indianapolis today and was quite surprised by the almost irony taken out from last year. In case you've been living under a rock, the USGP had some issues with the Michelin tires thus causing 7 of the 10 teams (14 out of 20 cars) to not race at all, leaving Ferrari, Jordan and Minardi to race. This year, After the first turn, a 7 car pileup occurred, leaving 15 cars to race, minus a few that returned to the garage because they weren't able to race anymore, leaving only 9 cars to finish. Ferrari finished 1 and 2 this year, like last year with a subpar driver, Giancarlo Fisichella for Renault (He's just not a good driver), taking third place.

Back to the crash though, man, what a crash! Something about crashes is quite mesmerizing, but I'm also very glad that everyone involved walked away. I realized something was wrong when I saw Nick Heidfeld for BMW Sauber flip over when the camera was focusing on the first turn, and then everything came together. Anyhow, as a McLaren-Mercedes fan, I was quite saddened that both Kimi Raikkonen (BEST DRIVER EVER!) and Juan Pablo Montoya crashed in that pileup as well, but life goes on. I'm not too disappointed that they couldn't compete, I was simply saddened to see 2 beautiful cars retire from the race (The McLarens are just beautiful!). Anyhow, life goes on and my life doesn't revolve around F1 racing. I have a course starting in 2 days, so I'm preparing for that, unfortunately, but what the heck, it should be fun!

Heeeeere's Sheiban!

Well, this is my first posting of a blog, my first blog ever! I avoided blogs like the plague and stuck to updating my facebook profile, but then I couldn't post more than 3000 characters, so I'm here on the blogway! I'm a University of Toronto student. I am majoring in Human Biology and double minoring in Human Physiology and Anthropology. I am not keening to go to medical school, but I will try for it nonetheless.

My hobbies include watching sports, mainly Formula 1 racing (Go ahead and say it's not a real sport!), collect model cars as well as building a few myself, play trivia (I know alot of useless facts!), travel (I've been to many places, mainly Europe and the Middle East!), and I like to go out and about with my friends (A hell of a lot of them too). I enjoy James Bond movies, movies of a historical nature (My favourite being 'To Kill A Mockingbird'), and the odd Sci-Fi flick here and there. I don't watch alot of TV but I love to watch The Simpsons and Futurama, Airport (The British version) and from time to time, like to watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. There'll be more of me coming since I'm taking a full university course in one month (For those of you don't know what that means, I'm basically shooting myself in the foot!). I listen to alot of Eurodance music mainly because I'm a European junkie!

My dreams include wanting to drive in the Le Mans 24 Hour Race for either the Audi, Pescarolo Judd, or Aston Martin Racing teams (I wanted to race in F1 before, but then I grew to be 6'1"), living in Monaco and visiting, just visiting, North Korea just to say that I've been there. Anyhow, I'll be around, hopefully!