Here is a kind of autobiography that I put as Acknowledgements in my Masters Thesis (titled: "A Framework for the Long-Term Operation of a Mobile Robot via the Internet")


I would like to thank my supervisor (Gordon Wyeth) for providing me with the opportunity and financial support to obtain my Masters. Thanks to my university colleagues (Michael Milford and David Prasser) for helping me transition so quickly from a working class kid to a working class scholar. Thanks to Jon Kloske for his excellent help in configuring the robot web server. And thanks to my boss in Florida (Jerry Pratt) for showing me what a perfect mentor is.

 

Thanks to my best friends in Sydney (Ari Rintala, Chris Shortt, Luke Davidson, Al Monjehd, Rob Monjehd, Shane Emami and Craig Oliver) for allowing me to realise who I wanted to be, and my best friends in Florida (John Rebula, Victor Ragusila, Matt Missel, Jerryll Noorden, Will Taysom, Brooke Layton and Dawn Miller) for allowing me to be who I wanted to be. Thanks to my friends at Jaycar Electronics (Paul Ballard and Isaac Mendez) for rekindling my appreciation of electronics. Thanks to my best friends in QLD (Rob Mitchell and Timo) for showing me that Engineering can be fun. Thanks to my best friends from Germany (Alex Kanne and Christine Oellig) for making me proud of who I am, and my best friend from Iran (Shervin Adibi) for making me proud of who I’m not.

 

Thanks to my previous girlfriends (Danni and Bomi) for helping me find the things that matter to me the most, and Dawn for making me so proud of who I am.

 

Thanks to Amir Houssein and his family in Iran for showing me that even the family that struggles the most can still be the most genuine and honourable people I’ve met in my life. They let me realize from an early age that there is no God watching over me, but that I should use this wisdom to my advantage because anything is possible if I try hard enough. Thanks to my Grandmother (Iran Abolmoali) for raising me as a toddler and always being a part of me, and my Grandfather (Abbas Emami) for showing me what it means to be respected for your wisdom.

 

Thanks to my Brother (Shane Emami) for being my best friend since birth and showing me how to be normal. Thanks to my Sister (Sharlin Emami) for showing me how to be myself. Thanks to my Father (Shahpoor Emami) for always believing in me even if he doesn’t know what I do, and thanks to my Step-Father (Robert Stewart) for allowing me to always use his computers as a teenager. Thanks to my Mother (Azar Stewart) for doing as much as humanly possible to support my family and take us all the way from the bottom to the top by herself.

 

Thankyou to my Mother for giving me the freedom to be who we want to be, and for having complete trust in me and my decisions. But also thankyou to my Mother for constantly telling me as a teenager that I shouldn’t spend all my time learning about electronics and computers, because they have no future and are unsocial, and then that doing post-graduate research is a waste of time because I could be earning money in a job like normal people. These things helped strengthen my belief in myself, since I knew what I was doing was the right decision no matter what others told me. As a teenager I spent everyday teaching myself about electronics and computers because they were the only thing that made sense in my life, and now at 27 my whole life finally makes sense thanks to these.

 

Deciding to return to university for post-grad research was the best decision I have ever made, and yet it took many physical, mental and spiritual journeys for me to get here. It wasn’t until I was separated from technology for 1 month when I realised that learning about and working with science and technology has become part of who I am, and no matter how much I try to ignore it, I will always have the desire to build new things and learn more about nature and science. I was never in the smartest classes in my schools or the smartest schools in my area, since I’m not particularly smarter than the average person, however I have always used my brain to its fullest potential and am extremely self-motivated, to the extent that I can now be viewed as an academic. It was my keen interest in science and technology that brought me here, despite the many obstacles:

 

I’ve lived in the 2 opposite worlds (East and the West), and I’ve lived in the 2 opposite ways of life (in poverty, war and expensive mansions). I’ve slept on the streets, and been in gangs, drugs & alcohol, and 7 punk bands. I’ve narrowly escaped: being kidnapped, stabbed, drowning several times, a drug overdose, being sent to an orphanage, 2 years military service and burning to death. Obtaining my Masters degree means a lot more to me than simply an extra qualification for getting a job. It allowed me to look at all the qualities in the person that I wanted to become, and to finally be that person. Now that I have finally become who I always wanted to be, I know that for the rest of my life, I will be a happy person.

I had a 4 week trip from Dubai to Turkey for 2 days, Greece for 11 days, Germany for 4 days, and Spain for 7 days.  To cut the stories short, here is a list of the places I slept in along the trip:

- 1 night sleeping on the streets on a hard marble floor during cold windy rain, in Istanbul, Turkey.
- 1 night sleeping on a sleeper train from Turkey to Greece, which felt like heaven compared to sleeping on the streets the previous night!
- 9 nights in a backpacker hostel next to a strip club in Thessaloniki, Greece
- 1 night sleeping on the couch at a new friend's house in Greece
- 1 night sleeping at an underwear party, and waking up in my undies next to a guy in his undies, not being able to remember where I was for several seconds.
- 1 night sleeping while sitting up in a packed commuter train in Greece full of old angry Greek men arguing with each other for 10 cold hours.
- 2 nights sleeping in a cold car in Germany.
- 1 night walking blind drunk after OktoberFest, trying to find a backpacker hostel to stay in, and eventually finding my friend's car to sleep in.
- 1 night sleeping in a nice house surrounded by the forests of Heidelberg, Germany.
- 3 nights sleeping on a matress in a new friend's art studio in the dodgy section of Barcelona, Spain.
- 3 nights sleeping in a backpacker hostel in Barcelona, Spain, of which most people in my room were badly stung by bed-bugs, whereas I wasn't bit cos I only spent a few hours a night in bed!
- 1 night crashing on the couch of a new friend I met on the way home from an Erasmus internation student party in Barcelona, Spain.
- 1 night sleeping in Luton airport in London, UK.


Eeentually I will post the details of each place I visited:

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Wednesday 17/9/08:
Flight to Turkey

As usual I arrived late for the flight from Sharjah (30 mins drive from Dubai) to Istanbul (West Turkey). But this time it was cos I tried to fix a bug in our robot before I left work, and ended up leaving a bit late. But then the taxi driver got us lost so we wasted another 40 mins backtracking! So I got to the airport just 1hr before the flight, and they'd just closed the flight checkin. When I showed that I only have carry-on luggage, and they saw I'm from Australia, they managed to open up the flight for me if I promised to run to the boarding gate as fast as possible. But then then problem was I also had to pay $15 fee since I moved my flight 3 days back due to my work.

They said to run upstairs as fast as possible and pay the $15 then race back down while they process my passport, and they'll let me board the flight. So I ran upstairs, but it was actually the wrong set of stairs, and since I was in such a rush and honestly thought I was supposed to be there, I ended up getting past police security, passport control and the metal detector, even though I didn't have my passport or boarding pass, which you normally need to show at each of the 3 checks! The people downstairs with my passport had called the people upstairs at the boarding gate, telling them to hold the whole flight for me and look for me to rush me through quickly. So after getting past all 3 security checks even though I didn't have any ID and did have a pocket knife, the people from the boarding gate found me and tried to rush me onto the plane. I could have gotten onto the flight without any ID at all, with a pocket knife, and without being checked if I am legally allowed to leave the country! Considering I was born in Iran, its pretty funny. But since the guys downstairs still had my passport I didn't want to board the flight yet so I kept saying that I still need to pay my $15 fee and go back downstairs for my passport & boarding pass. When they eventually realized that I went up the wrong staircase and so I still didn't have my passport or boarding pass and yet I was at the boarding gate, they got the head of security to quickly come and figure out what to do. He was going nuts, saying how the hell could I pass the police check, passport control and metal detector without any ID! He even started yelling at the police for not doing their job properly. They managed to fix the whole thing and after throwing away my pocket knife they rushed me onboard the flight just before departure :-)  I said thankyou about a million times for all the trouble I caused.

I was so glad that I made it onboard this flight, because of how everything went wrong in my 1st trip to Greece after missing my original flight by a few minutes, and then the whole trip falling apart and having bad luck for the whole trip. So I hoped I would have good luck on this trip, and I did. (Give or take a few mishaps!)

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Aug 13th 2008:
Flight to Greece: Stuck in Airport for 1 day!

My boss paid for my flight to Greece, in exchange that I work a few more weeks in September before quitting.  But since I had less than 2 days notice about the idea of going to Greece, and I still had to work 17hrs a day during those days, I didn't get a chance to organise anything for my trip to Greece. Since I was already expecting to visit Greece on my big Europe trip in September anyway, I didn't actually decide if I will go on this trip to Greece or not, until just a few hours before the flight! So I had just 4hrs to finish my work, eat dinner, go home and pack my stuff, book a place to stay for my first night in Greece, print some maps of the area, drive 150km to the airport, and return my car to the car hire place! Surprisingly I did all this ontime, within the 4hrs.

I was recommended to pack very light so instead of taking a suitcase, I took 2 smaller bags and carried them onto the plane with me.  But I forgot about one of my bags as I went through a bag screening / security check! I didn't realise this until 20 minutes later when I reached the boarding gate, so I had to run back to the places I'd been, but of course, the don't allow you to walk back through the security sections, so I had to ask a security guard to look through the airport for my bag, which I knew I would have left in one of the 2 bag screenings I went through.  The security guard came back 15 minutes later with my bag, but after running the whole way to the boarding gate to get on the plane, I arrived 2 minutes late for boarding, and so I missed the flight! I had to pay $100 extra and wait for the next flight, which was 23 hrs later!

Since I had to wait a whole day for the flight, I wanted to spend the day at Dubai beach, but after several hours of trying, I realised that since I'd already cancelled my visa for United Arab Emirates, I'm not allowed to leave the Dubai airport until I visit a different country! So I was stuck in the airport for 23 hours!

Since Internet wasn't working properly in Dubai airport and I arrived in Athens 1 day late, I hadn't booked another place to stay for my 1st night.  When I got to Athens, my hostel was full so I had to find a new hostel, which I eventually did a decent place for 30 EUR / night ($45), right next to Monastirakki train station in the heart of the city.  Actually I thought I was in heaven because this hostel  is surrounded by about 10 hardware stores with really cheap tools and materials :-)


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Aug 14th, 2008:
1st day in Greece: Expensive!

I spent 4 hrs in an internet cafe to book my trip to a Greek Island.  Both my Greek boss & coworker said that Ios is the rock'n'roll party island for young people, so if I went to just 1 island I should go there, so I did.  Unfortunately my 4hrs of internet bookings in a rush turned out very bad, cos it turns out that in Greece, you are supposed to book these things through travel agencies, since only a fraction of things are available or cheap on internet.  Since hotel rooms were becoming full even while I was using internet, I had to book as fast as possible.  And most ferry tickets have to be bought 4 days in advance when booking on internet, so it was a big mess. The next day was a public holiday, actually the biggest day of the year in Greece, when everyone flees to villages and islands, so the cheapest room I could find for the 1st night was 90 EUR ($135) and 60 EUR after that. So I booked 3 nights for myself for 210 EUR ($300) since nothing else on internet was cheaper.

My boss said to visit the area called Psiri at night, which was about 10 mins walk from my hostel in Athens.  I walked all along a main street in Psiri at 11pm and didn't find a single place open, just really dark & sketchy backstreets with trash everywhere and some homeless guys.  After searching a few alleys, I eventually gave up on finding night clubs in Psiri, since I was basically asking to be mugged! But after getting lost on my way back, I happened to hear some music playing & noise from a distance, and finally found an area full of clubs & outdoor restaurants.

After failing miserably at chatting with various Greek girls I ended up chatting & drinking till morning with 2 Greek guys, which was really cool cos they told me lots about the Greek youth culture
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Aug 15th, 2008:
2nd day in Greece: Street scams

The next day I was very hung over.  I had just spent 2 months working in a very traditional muslim town in the middle-east, where you're not supposed to even look at girls, let alone chat to them or try to hook up with them! So I hadn't talked or interacted with ANY girls in quite a while, and it took about half a week to be able to talk to girls properly again, despite being in a country full of hot Greek chics! I also had rarely been drinking alcohol in the middle-east, which meant my tolerance for alcohol had changed a lot.  The country I was working in (United Arab Emirates) allows foreigners to drink alcohol, but the problem was that I had to drive every day & night cos there was no public transport, so I almost never had the chance to drink there.

So like I said, I got a big hang over in Athens from drinking for the first time in ages. It happened to be a public holiday (August 15th, the main public holiday of the year!), and EVERYTHING was closed except for a few western fast food places, so I didn't do much that day. When looking for food, I happened to see a sign for a Persian restaurant that was surprisingly open, so I ate there. There was just 4 persian guys inside, that are regulars there, so I ended up making friends with them and the waiters, and they all gave me tips for what to do in Greece, and how to find free persian music videos on internet (www.glwiz.com).

Unfortunately everywhere was shut that night because it was a public holiday and it was my last night in Athens, so I went to the city square and drank 1 EUR ($1.50) cans of Heinneken in the park with some locals that were drunken skateboarding. A sleek looking 50yr old Greek man walking down the street put his arm around me and started talking to me as if we were old buddies. I mentioned that I'm from Australia and just worked in the middle-east, and he said he also worked in Saudi Arabia for a while. As we were walking, he was acting over friendly to me, and he asked me if I wanted to have a few beers with him at a nice pub he knows. I said yes at first but eventually realised that he was trying to trick me into buying ultra high priced drinks from his pub. When I said I didn't want to go to a pub anymore, he kept trying to convince me to go with him, and saying that he promises we'll split the costs halfway, and eventually said he would even buy me a free drink. It almost seemed legit, but he was definitely trying to scam me. I was quite proud of myself for figuring out that I was getting scammed, thinking that I can't be out-smarted so easily.

Then at around midnight I walked around the backstreets in case any pubs/clubs were open, and I found a small russian pub in a small alley. There was only a big russian 60yr old bouncer outside, and a hot russian bartender inside. I asked for a beer, which was roughly the normal price for a pub / nightclub (7 EUR or $11), so I figured it was a decent place. The hot russian bartender asked me if I would buy her a drink so we can sit and chat since there was no-one else in the pub.  I was already quite drunk by this stage so I agreed, and we had a nice conversation about Russia & life in general. While I was still drinking my 1st drink, she finished hers and asked me if I could buy her a 2nd glass of champagne. I said yeah why not.  But after a few minutes she asked me if I could buy her a 3rd glass, and I finally came to my senses and realised its another scam, so I said I can't afford to buy her another drink. The she started saying that I need to buy her more drinks because otherwise she isn't allowed to talk to me. But I kept saying I  don't have much money so I have to leave. Then when I went to pay for my beer and her 2 drinks, they said it was 30 EUR ($45) per glass of champagne! So I had to pay them 67 EUR ($100) when I just had 1 beer!  I was annoyed at first that I got scammed by a hot Russian chic, but eventually I realised its pretty funny, and I got ripped of fair & square.  Then when I left the pub, the bouncer put his arm around me & started talking about how he can get girls to come to my hotel room. Then I said he already took all my money so leave me alone.

After spending so much money at the Russian "pub" and booking expensive accommodation for my island trip, I decided not to spend any more money for the rest of the night, and since my ferry to the island was leaving early in the morning, I decided to walk to the Acropolis. In the midst of getting lost and walking through random back allies by myself, I eventually ended up on top of a mountain with a perfect view of the whole city! Even thought it was really slippery & dark, there was tonnes of young people also drinking & playing guitars on this mountain top, so I was really lucky to "find" this place.
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Aug 16th, 2008:
Trip to Ios Island: Mega sunburn!

After a few hours on the mountain cliff overlooking Athens and a few hours trying to sleep, I caught the ferry to Ios Island: apparently the main rock'n'roll party island in Greece. The ferry ride was from 9am till 5pm, in other words 10 hours in the direct sun. I sat on a deck chair / bench on the top deck, next to a rediculously hot metal chic from Greece (I think), possibly the hottest chic I've ever seen in my life! But maybe thats just cos I'd been in the middle-east for 2 months, where ur not supposed to even look at girls!  I eventually tried to chat to her, but she couldn't understand English :-(

Unfortunately, I fell asleep for a while on the top of the ferry without much sunscreen on, so I ended up very sunburnt on my face, before even arriving at the Island!  The last things you want when you get on an island is to be sunburnt!  I looked like a lobster, and so I stayed indoors for several days in the hope that it wouldn't get worse, even though the beach was begging me to come outside.

Even though I booked 3 nights at expensive hotels in Ios (the cheapest I could find on internet), I found a small remote hotel in Ios for 30 EUR ($45) / night for 2 beds.  Since an Indian guy from work was coming to visit Ios 2 days after me, I booked this cheap place for 2 days, to save about 150 EUR ($230)!  But when I tried to cancel the expensive hotels I'd booked, I found out that they need 2 days notice for cancellation, otherwise they charge your credit card for the full amount.  Which means I got charged an extra 200 EUR ($300) for 2 nights that I didn't stay!  I tried to get them not to charge me the full amount but they had it in their fine print.  So for my 1st night on the island, I was paying for 2 different twin share rooms (4 beds in total) just for myself!  So a lot of money was wasted on my trip to Greece!

But more importantly, Ios Island, and probably all 2000 of the Greek Islands, are fucking awesome.
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Aug 16th, 2008:
Partying on Ios Island

For my 1st night in Ios, I was supposed to meet up with my bosses friend that lives on the island, so he could give me some local pointers over a beer.  Ios is a very relaxed beach island in the day, with lots of water sports on the beaches but most people just spend all day on the beach until 7pm. Then most people eat dinner at around 10pm. But around midnight to 1am, everyone between 18 to 30 go to the center village and party till morning at all the pubs & nightclubs that don't close till atleast 7am. So I was supposed to meet my bosses friend at 1am in the center village.  As I was trying to find my way to the village,  I met 4 Italians that also just got to the island and were looking for the village, so I searched with them. We still weren't entirely sure how to get there, everyone we asked would just point at the mountain and say go up. Eventually I found 3 glammed up Greek chics that were going there through a shortcut that basically involves 10 minutes of mild rock-climbing, and yet these chics did it in high heels!  We found the village, and since 2 of the Italians liked rock & heavy metal, we found a pub that played it but wasn't opening until 2am, so 3 of us waited for it while the other 2 that didn't like rock music went to a dance club.  The rock club had decent rock / indie-pop / metal music, and cool drawings & stuff on the walls, but there was barely anyone in there so we started to leave, but talked to 3 Greek rock chics smoking instead. We ended up talking to them for a while cos they were hot and into cool music and play in rock bands. But they were 19.  We said we were 29, 27 and 18.  I was surprised that the tall Italian guy with a bandanna and old-school Guns'n'Roses shirt was just 18 when he looked about 23.  But then the older Italian guy whispered to me that the tall 18yr old guy is actually just 15yrs old!  It was basically the first time he'd been to a pub / nightclub!  We eventually left cos of the age differences, but the chics told us of another rock/metal club in the area called Orange, so we went there instead.

Orange was much more of my type of club, full of goths & metal heads & punks, and metal posters & pics all over the walls and really dark & smoky, and yet still a fair few chics in there!  I ordered an "Ouzo" cos I kept hearing of it as a traditional Greek drink. It tasted so bad! It was basically vodka mixed with tonnes of licorice / mint. I drank most of it and then asked a Greek metal chic if everyone does actually drink Ouzo, or if its a joke on the foreigners, and she started laughing at me, saying that only the older people drink it in small villages and only with food cos it goes well with food but tastes terrible by itself. She also said I should make sure I don't mix it with other drinks cos it makes an extremely bad hangover.  Considering I'd already had beers and a mixed drink, I put the glass down.  Then a few minutes later, the DJ played a Man-O-War song and about 10 Greek guys suddenly all collected together and started chanting the song as if they were in a huge opera, and played air guitars for about 20 minutes. It was pretty awesome.  Me & the 2 Italians talked to another set of 3 Greek metal chics, but they were also about 19, and the Italians wanted to check other places out.

We ended up going to a big dance / techno club, since the 15yr old had never been.  Inside, he kept saying how crap it was and how stupid everyone looked and how terrible the music was, and we kept saying that yeah its a nightclub, you'll have to get used to it eventually.  But after a while, an Indonesian chic started dancing with the 15yr old.  Eventually they were on the podium dancing & making out for about an hour.  Me & the other Italian guy kept laughing, trying to think what the chic would do if she found he's only 15!  She was probably about 22, and she would have thought he'd be about the same! Eventually we went home cos it was nearly sunrise and the Italians were sailing to their next Greek island in a few more hours.  $10 says the 15yr old Guns'n'Roses rocker is a pill popping raver by now!
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Aug 17th, 2008
Staying on Ios Island: Peep Show

At my hotel, I went to use the girls toilet cos someone was showering in the guys toilet. After I started pissing, I noticed the big window in front of me was wide open, and there was a set of stairs to walk onto the roof of the hotel.  I considered closing the window in case someone was on the roof and sees me, but I figured its so unlikely that there would be someone on the roof and they would come down the stairs within the 30 seconds that I would be there, so I just continued. Then a chic did walk down the stairs!  I didn't realise until she would have already seen me pissing.  She just ignored me & kept walking down the stairs, so its all good. But if this happened while I was in the middle-east then I'd probably be in jail right now!
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Aug 18th, 2008
3rd day on Ios Island: Infection

On my 3rd day on Ios Island, I woke up feeling really bad, especially in my lungs & stomach.  I'd been out till 5am, but I only had about 6 beers, so it shouldn't have screwed me that bad.  I had a really bad cough, and whenever I breathed deeply I would suddenly cough up flem.  Normally I would barely notice it, but my workmate said it sounds just like a lung infection that he had in India, and if I don't take antibiotics then it will probably get much worse, and potentially become Tuberculosis. Then I realised that I've been coughing flem a lot for the past 5 days or so & haven't had an appetite in about a week either (I usually ignore or don't notice things like these unless if its really bad).  So then I started getting paranoid that my infection will get worse unless if I take antibiotics soon, but that means no alcohol, when I'm on one of the biggest part locations in the world!  I knew I would be drinking for 8 days straight if I didn't take antibiotics, which can't be helping an infection, so eventually I decided to see a doctor.  This was so annoying, spending about 6 days on a perfect party beach island but not being able to go in the sun because of my sunburn and not being able to drink alcohol cos of antibiotics!!

The 1st night I took all my medicine, I suddenly felt extremely tired & weak, so I didn't go out that night (and I didn't go out that day cos still sunburnt!). Me & my workmate hired a scooter to share for 2 days. He's used scooters & motorbikes a lot in India, so I assumed he knew what he was doing, but I felt like he was going too fast around the turns considering it was only a small scooter, so I kept telling him to drive slower around the bends and he would just keep saying don't worry. At one stage, I said it again, he said to stop worrying so much, then 20 seconds later we slid out on a turn and I flew off the back of the scooter!  A small Jeep behind us nearly hit me, but luckily they stopped just in time, so I wasn't really hurt.
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Aug 19th, 2008
4th day on Ios Island: Finally at the beach!
The next day I wasn't so tired from all my medicine and my sunburn was OK & not peeling, so we went to the main beach all day & tried the "Flying Fish": a big air bed that 2 or 3 people sit on while getting driven around on the back of the speed boat, and you get air cos of the wind and get through around and almost upside down, etc. It was pretty fun. But my coworker had only been in a pool or beach just once in his life (we took him to Dubai beach a month ago and tried to teach him to swim for the 1st time). So he wasn't used to being in water, and when he fell off the side of the Flying Fish, he was so scared of drowning (despite wearing a life vest) that he wouldn't let go, and kept yelling for help and to stop the boat.  So even thought they said I shouldn't, I went over to his side to try to lift him back onboard. But since all our weight was now on one side, we flipped the whole Flying Fish over, which caused him to panic even more so I had to swim him onto the boat & we went back to shore. I did some wakeboarding too, with some good jumps and some good stacks. Then we just chilled with some aussies for a few hours.

I went out at night, despite not being able to drink, and I still had a decent time.  I was in the "Orange" metal club most of the night with some Greek metal heads, and was constantly amazed at how all these ruthlessly hot chics kept going in & out of the metal club, cos u don't see that happen much in Australia or America!  There was only a few girls that stayed that weren't with their boyfriends, but since I was frustrated about not drinking, I didn't end up talking to any of them. Then at 5am I went to a small Greek night club to see what its like.  There was about 10 people inside, all Greek, and 4 were doing a cool traditional dance together. Eventually I talked to one of the chics, thinking she'd be around 27 - 28, and asked her if she could teach me how to do their dance. She said that dancing is part of their blood & life, so she can't just teach me in 5 minutes. Then she walked me over to the bar and introduced me to the 19yr old bartender, who was her daughter!!  I like Greece :-)  Unfortunately the daughter didn't like me much and after I decided not to hit on the Mum, I talked to 2 Greek guys for a few hours and watched them all doing dance improvisations.
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Aug 20th, 2008
5th day on Ios Island: Live sex show

On the walk home from the nightclubs in the morning, I ran into an aussie bartender that I'd met earlier. He went to say Hi to his old boss on the way home, but his boss and everyone around him on the street were just frozen stiff, staring at the top of a building. We had a look and assumed they were just looking at the church there something. But then we realised there was a couple having sex out the front of a building on the hill in broad daylight!  Everyone was cheering, and when the finally finished the chic waved to us all!
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Aug 21st, 2008
Leaving Ios: Canadian chic

Eventually we caught an overnight 12hr ferry back to Athens, and were expected to sleep on deck chairs on the top deck even though it was really cold & windy. We were sitting next to 2 Canadians that were coming back from Ios too.  I assumed they were a couple, but I talked to them anyway. It turned out that I got along extremely well with the chic, who was one of the rare chics doing a Mechanical Engineering degree! Apparently a lot of people in Newfoundland (an island in Canada where she lives) do Engineering so they can work for the oil rig companies there. I really liked talking with the chic, definitely girl-friend material, it was a pity she was catching the ferry all the way to Italy. After a few hours of talking & playing cards we were too cold so we went inside and found a corner wall that wasn't occupied and slept there till morning. But unfortunately I caught a cold since I was already infected with something, and it made it really hard to sleep in the tiny space on the hard ground with air conditioning.
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Aug 22nd, 2008
Last day in Athens: Exhausted & sick

When we got to Athens at 6am, me & my workmate were exhausted, but we still had to catch 2 trains and carry our luggage for 25 minutes to get to our hostel. We were SO tired by the time we got there, we just really wanted to sleep, especially since I had caught a cold in the ferry ride and barely gotten any sleep. But the hostel said our room wasn't available until checkout-time at 11am! I kept asking if we could just sit or lie down anywhere, but they kept saying they were packed full. So we had to wait 4hrs before we could finally rest, despite being dead tired. My coworker walked around Athens but I really needed to rest so I went up 2 floors and sat in the hallway and tried to sleep.

People kept walking in & out of their dorm rooms staring at me, but I got a bit of rest anyway. The hot young cleaning lady kept throwing the sheets & stuff over me into the dirty pile, and didn't tell the boss that I was sleeping in the hallway, so I thought she was pretty cool. Then at one stage I realised she was sitting on the stair case around the corner, having a cigarette break, so I asked her for a cigarette so I could sit & chat with her. She ended up giving me a total of 4, and we chatted about Romania where she was from while she was constantly switching between cleaning the rooms and sneeking in quick ciggy breaks without the boss finding out. She said she came to Greece to earn some money to finish her uni degree in Journalism, since its really hard to find a job in Romania. She had been working there 7 days a week for 3 months, with just 2 days off!  Eventually I bought her a chocolate as a present for the cigarettes and asked her if she wanted to have dinner with me but it turned out she had a jealous boyfriend.

For my last night in Greece, I really wanted to go out to Exarhia, where everyone told me had lots of rock / metal clubs, but it turned out pretty hard to get there on public transport and I was still really tired, so I ended up just resting.
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Aug 23rd, 2008:
Flight back to Dubai: Ear Infection

We caught the flight back to the middle-east the next day. That was the worst part of the trip (besides the 1100 EUR I'd spent in just 9 days): going back to the middle-east, where things are so much more anal than Greece and you can even get in trouble for just saying something undesirable, such as saying Hi to a girl!  I really liked my trip to Greece (even though things didn't turn out so perfectly), so I'm definitely going to visit the traditional parts of Greece in a month, and hopefully the party island again next summer :-)

The air pressure on the flight back to Dubai caused my runny nose to painfully spread into my ears and I ended up in a fair bit of pain & sickness for the first few days back in middle-east.  This happened to be the only few days that I was in the middle-east and didn't have to drive people around all day since I didn't have a car, but of course I was on antibiotics so I couldn't drink now that I finally had the opportunity!  I'm pretty sure God is trying to mock me on a daily basis, but I'm not complaining :-)
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Everyone hates public transport but I reckon it can be pretty sweet.  NOTE: This is a REALLY long blog. But take the past 2 weeks as an example:

Public Transport Example 1:
Since I basically live in Alabama, catching a Greyhound bus across the country is WAY cheaper than flying, but everyone kept telling me not to do it because it's full of crazy people & criminals.  So I caught an 18 hour Greyhound.

It actually was pretty tough, every single seat was full and there was barely enough space to fit even without luggage.  Basically half the people looked like they were ruthless black gangsters, while the other half looked like they were ruthless latino gangsters, and I probably looked like a geeky tourist! It was pretty crazy cos there was a really depressing atmosphere the whole way that you had to get used to over a few hours.  So every hour or so when you came to a new stop and new people would get onto the bus, they would walk onto the bus in a line and all look fairly worried at first, and it felt just like in the prison movies when "fresh meat" arrives and everyone is sussing them out, trying to figure out who will crack first.

Or atleast thats what I was doing for the first few hours, but then eventually I saw a REALLY hot latino chic get onto the bus and then get hassled by the bus driver for some reason.  So at the next pit stop I sat next to her, and it turned out she's a pot-head, which was awesome cos everytime the bus would stop somewhere for 10 minutes we would sneak somewhere and have a toke for the ride, so it turned out to be a pretty mad trip ;-)  We nearly missed the bus about 4 times too, and I even had to run in front of the bus at one stage cos he wanted to drive off without us!  This was awesome cos I had actually been thinking for the past week how much I felt like a smoke after living in the middle of nowhere for 5 months.

Anyway, this chic was half Italian, half Greek (oooh yeah) and a really cool chic but unfortunately for me, she was a lesbian.  And even after she told me, I still managed to fall for her just cos she was so damn hot, but anyway she told me about how her very christian Mum dis-owned her & always told her she's evil for being a lesbian!  I couldn't believe a Mum could hate her own daughter for being a hot lesbian, what a cowardly bitch!  Pure evil if you ask me.  But anyway, I was definitely glad I caught the 18 hour bus instead of a 1 hour flight, simply cos I made a cool friend.

Public Transport Example 2:
When I got to Australia I caught a train to my old house in Brisbane, and just next to me was a fat lady with her 3 kids that were always running around.  And when we passed "Toowong" station, the Mum spoke wisely to her little children, saying: "Oy, this is where your shithead of a Dad lives.  If that fucken cunt of a bastard gets anywhere near me again I'm gonna fucken kill that motherfucker!"

After telling that to my brother, he laughed so hard that we decided we would catch a train again that night.

Public Transport Example 3:
On the 1st night me & my brother were in Brisbane, we were both really jet-lagged but decided we would go to a pub or something for a quick drink but then call it a night.  So we waited for a train to the city, and then these 2 fairly decent 19yr old chics walked past (a brunette with HUGE tits, and a skinny blonde) and so we pretended we were dumb and asking what to do in Brisbane.  It turned out that the blonde chic was absolutely wasted and ended up causing a whole night of crazy laughs for us.  A few minutes later another chic came to the train stop wearing all black cos she just finished work.

But this chic was sitting on the bench with her legs up and bent back, and started smoking a spliff (ie: obviously a metal / gothic chic) so the blonde chic next to us started ripping into the metal chic saying all this stuff like "Why the fuck are you wearing black?  Stop being so depressed!  Look at you, you're sitting like a guy!  What, don't you have a fanny or something?  And sit up straight! You should be proud of being a girl!"  We thought the metal chic would start a fight or something but instead we were all just laughing our heads off at the blonde chic, cos the metal chic was saying that she's wearing her work uniform since she works at a cafe, but the blonde chic just kept ripping into her saying all this stuff like "See, I'm a lady lady, but you're a man lady.  And why are you smoking weed, don't you know its a depressant, you should atleast take something that makes you feel good, like pills or something."  Even the metal chic was in tears on the ground laughing so hard!  I kept trying to take videos but my camera's batteries were dead, I was so pissed off!  And Shane said that it was the funniest experience of his whole life!

So anyway, on the train we sat next to the chics and they were swearing really loudly about the time someone spiked the brunette's drink and she was spewing blood everywhere.  So I asked them where it happened and they said the Down-Under Bar.  Straight away Shane looked at me with a smile cos I was telling him earlier that it has a reputation for being the sluttiest place in Brisbane.  Then I asked them where they're heading to now and they said the Down-Under Bar!

At the Down-Under Bar, we met up with their 3 Maori / Islander friends,.  The blonde chic was a hairdresser so she was always playing with everyone's hair but after some more drinks she was dancing everywhere and eventually took my hat and started dancing on our table.  And not long after, I was dancing with her ontop of our table!  Eventually the blonde chic knocked over a random chic's drink and the chic got really annoyed and was about to start a fight so we all left.  I asked the brunette chic (the blonde chic's best friend) if this was a standard Friday night for them and she said yes.  And that a few weeks ago after getting kicked out of the clubs they ended up going to a strip joint and the blonde chic jumped onto a stage and started undressing but then she got kicked out again!

So we were all walking around trying to get into other clubs but we kept getting refused cos the blonde chic was too drunk.  But when we passed a stretch-limousine that was waiting on the side of the road, the blonde chic started chatting to the limo driver and the brunette chic was trying to look into the tinted windows to see if there were celebrities inside.  Me & Shane were telling them not too, but then suddenly the limo driver told the blonde chic that he would give us all a free ride, so we got into the limo with the blonde, brunette and their 3 Islander friends and he gave us a free cruise through the city!  It was so much good, I cant believe I couldn't take photos!  The limo was actually owned by a classy nightclub called Caesars, so the driver even gave us free tickets into Caesars and dropped us off at their red carpet!  But even after stepping out of the limousine with the whole red carpet entrance, the blonde chic got denied for being too drunk!  And then she started going off at the big male & female bouncers saying "You cant tell me I'm not allowed in, look at you, you look like shit, get a haircut!"  We managed to stop her before she got into another fight and we kept saying to her "You need to stop shouting & settle down" and the blonde chic would just yell "I'M NOT FUCKEN SHOUTING, I'M PERFECTLY NORMAL!" but we managed to get her into our last resort:  the casino!

At the casino, she started dancing with the absolutely biggest & most intimidating guy I've ever seen in my life!  He was a really tall Maori that was built like a machine and looked really angry and had a skinhead except for his little rats tail to show how hard he is.  So the blonde chic was dancing with him and playing with his rats tail saying "Look at how shit this is, if I was at work I could just chop this straight off" and suddenly we were all shit worried thinking he might kill her cos she just crossed the line and you just don't say that to a 300lb monster!  Luckily he didn't do anything and they just kept dancing for a while.  Eventually they came back to our table and the blonde chic was rubbing against him and trying to dance with him for about 10 minutes but he just looked too pissed off, and she kept saying things like "Hey why do you look so angry, you should be more happy with your life" and he would just make a grunt noise and not say anything.  Then the brunette suddenly grabbed the blonde and they said they are going home and walked off.  The huge Maori suddenly went nuts and goes "What the fuck!  I'm gonna grab that bitch and throw her off the balcony!" and chased after her!  Five of us tried to stop him but he got through us all and chased after the blonde, but luckily the chics got the security guards to stop him and the chics went outside.  I didn't know why the Maori went nuts, but then when he got back we all realised that while the blonde chic was dancing with him before, she cut his rats tail off!!  He just had a little stub left!!  We couldn't believe it, no wonder he wanted to kill her!!


Anyway, the 2 chics went outside and the brunette tried to send the blonde chic home in a taxi cos she was too drunk.  The blonde chic kept saying she wanted to stay and eventually bitch-slapped the brunette chic so hard that it got swollen!  So then the brunette chic punched the blonde chic in the face, ending up with blood on her knuckles!!!  Then blonde chic finally went home, with a cut lip!


So thats why I love public transport, cos otherwise I wouldn't have so many stories!

Man America is supposed to be the land of the free.  At the moment I live across the road from my work (you can even see it from my window), but today I wasn't even allowed to cross the road between my house and my work cos President Bush is giving a talk at the community hall next door!  I can understand why they would have extra security, but just to get across the road to my place, I have to walk over 6km in the rain because theres a military lock-down for the entire area with cops & military & guard dogs EVERYWHERE in the suburb!  There's even military commands being yelled out over big horn-speakers, its just like worst parts of Iran!

But I can sorta understand the paranoia today cos basically everyone here I know owns a large gun and it is the President.  What I can't understand is what happened last week, when someone went to jail for wearing a terrorist costume on Halloween!!  I thought the whole point of Halloween was to dress up to be scary, but now there's even laws about how to dress up on Halloween!  It just happens that I was planning on dressing up as a terrorist on Halloween too, so its REALLY lucky I didn't cos I would have got fucked over a lot more than the U.S. citizen that got arrested for it!

Ignoring whats happening overseas, how can a government win a "War on Terrorism" when they're even terrorising their own citizens?

Yesterday we got motorised scooters off eBay, which are so much fucken fun and so much better than riding a push bike for 6 miles (10km) everyday for work!
... BUT ... I already got pulled over by the cops today, cos theyre not legal to ride on the streets!  He said you're not even allowed to ride motorised vehicles on the pathway but I have a feeling I'll be better off riding on the pathway than the road.  FUCK it sucks, we both bought the bikes for transportation to work & back and to goto the shops and the beach, now we find out they cant be used for transport!
I was gonna ride to the beach today but then after getting pulled over just outside my house, I ended up catching the bus to the beach instead, and now obviously if i get caught again I'll get screwed.  And the thing is that I see atleast 1 or 2 cop cars NEARLY EVERY SINGLE DAY!  There's just so many cop cars here its insane.  I've seriously seen cops arrest or pull someone over atleast once every 2 days average I've been in USA!
Actually last night was pretty crazy, theres a night club that just opened across the road from our work, and last night when we were about to go home, there were all these cops around including a fucken police helicopter that was hovering over my work building!!  We literally walked out of building and suddenly saw all these cops and then the cop helicopter shone its huge spotlight on us thinking we were criminals or something!  I tried to get it on video but by the time I filmed it the helicopter was leaving so it doesn't look very cool.  So we had to ride the backstreets with our scooters since there were cop cars literally 20 metres from our work.

SO ANNOYING!  I'm gonna check to see if we can get number plates for them but its very unlikely, which means we just wasted US$ 550 on 2 toys!  FUUUUUUUCKKK!

Updated on October 1st:  To get back at the company, I gave them a REDICULOUSLY bad eBay feedback which tarnishes their eBay reputation, I wrote: "DONT BUY! Low quality scooters, made illegally in China, not road worthy in USA!".  The company went nuts and got my personal information off eBay and started emailing me saying they did everything they could so if I remove the bad feedback they'll give me $40 USD for the trouble and they'll remove the bad feedback they gave me.  They said I should "sell them to the kids in the neighborhood to get the rest of my money back"!  I obviously know that you can't ride the scooters legally in public so as if I'm gonna try to scam other people, so I'm leaving the bad feedback.  Not even Ari's mum can buy me for just $40!

I officially live in the ghetto, and its not nearly as cool as Elvis' song "In the ghetto ..." makes it out to be!  Me and my workmate from MIT moved to a new place last night, which turns out to be in the ghetto!  I've actually rode a bike to this area (4km from my work) a few times and I still haven't seen A SINGLE WHITE PERSON YET!! It's seriously 100% black people living in the ghetto, no kidding!  Every 4 houses or so is like Al's house but worse!  There's so much crap sitting on so many people lawns (like old, dirty matresses & junk) and there's just black people walking around or sitting on their porch all day doing nothing.  Apparently it wasn't quite as bad before, but its been getting worse ever since the hurricane about a year ago .

This morning on the way to work at 9am, about 5 houses away from my house I heard angry dogs barking at me and I thought "Shit, I'm glad they would be locked up cos they sound brutal!", and then all of a sudden 2 pitbull terriors run out in front of me, cos they weren't locked up behind a gate or chained up or anything!  They started barking at me so I tried to calm them down but I accidentally tripped over a rock which scared the fuck out of the dogs so they went totally nuts at me, jumping all over me and trying to bite my hands and shoulders and shit!  Luckily they left me alone after about 20 seconds.  I've decided from now I'll walk on the opposite side of the road!

And then tonight I walked again at 9pm, and there were 2 black kids that left their house just as I was walking past, so I was talking to them for a bit.  The younger kid had to be about 15/16, and the older kid would have been about 17/18.  I asked them what they're doing and they just said "not much, just chillin, tryin to sell some green or some pills, you have change for a twenty?", and cutting the story short, I had a feeling they might do something dodgy so when they asked me where I was going I pretended to go somewhere close by.

After about 5 minutes of walking with them the younger kid threw a boulder at me from behind!  The older kid pretended like it was some completely random thing from the kid so I just said "man take it easy!" and walked off but then he threw another boulder at me from behind, and so i knew they obviously wanted me to fight them so they must have either had a weapon (they both always had one of their hands tucked in their pants) or friends close by since they were drug dealers, so I ran off.  They chased me for a few blocks even though I zigzagged but eventually I lost them but I kept running until I passed the area I told them I would go to.

It happens that I've literally walked through my neighbourhood twice at night now and both times black people have attempted to mug me, and since I usually have to take my passport with me and other important shit, from now on I'm gonna stick to walking in the daytime, even though it means walking for 4km in 39 to 42 degree sun!

OK I know it's stupid, but I didn't start clearing my room and packing for my 3 month trip to USA until midnight (9 hours before I had to leave), cos I ended up going to a BBQ and jamming on the Gold Coast.  Well I managed to finish by 8:15am ... see I could have even started at 12:45am and would have been OK!

On the flight to USA, I sat next to 2 Americans that talked non-stop about relationships & similar bullshit, no kidding I was already sick of Americans while I was still at Brisbane Airport!  I thought America would be full of rich white people constantly talking about their really boring lives, luckily I was heaps wrong, the second I got to LA, I realised that America is actually full of Latinos and Mexicans and Blacks, etc, and only the rich white Americans come to Australia.  So many hot brunettes everywhere it was awesome!  Something I REALLY wasn't expecting is that almost no-one understands what I'm saying and I don't understand most of them cos of different ascents.  At one stage I had to type my address into my mobile phone to show the guy cos he couldn't figure out what I was saying!  At the LA border I had to go through extra security checks & interviews cos I'm a wog, and they gave me a "Special Registration", which means I have to do it again every so often as well as before I leave USA.  It was kinda funny cos the only 2 people on the whole 747 plane (hundreds of people) that were pulled aside was a guy for being to jail and me for being born in Iran.

My flight from LA to Miami was pretty cool but, I sat next to a rediculously hot chic that was heaps cool and turned out to be a famous celebrity, wearing big sunglasses as a disguise :-)  When I told her that I didn't recognise her, she was so glad cos she said she hates all the constant attention and how everytime you slip up your all over the media and you can't go anywhere in public without people talking to you.  While we were on the flight (for 5 hours), two different people came upto her to start talking and she told them she wanted to be alone.  She said she's been doing it for 10 years now but she's really over it but has to keep doing it for another 12 months cos of her contract, and the only friend she has in the world is her sister, all of her "friends" are really just "acquaintances" that only like her because of her job, and she has to fly to random places around USA about once per week and she lives by herself in a mobile campervan and she's really over it.  She said she wouldn't tell me what she does until we leave the flight because I probably wouldn't believe her.  Since she had allergies and said she never gets a chance to eat and so was eating all my lollies and chocolates, and cos she was constantly saying how ugly she looks now cos she's so tired and doesn't have any make up on, I figured she couldn't be a sports star, she must be either an actor or a model.  It turned out the 1st friend I made in America is a famous porn star!  She even shown me some of her glamour shots ... much better than your average in-flight entertainment!

When I got to Miami I realised Florida is rediculously hotter than anywhere I've ever been to, even though it was 10pm!  I stayed overnight at Miami Beach till my 7:30am flight the next day.  Even though everyone kept telling me that Miami is full of snobs I figured I'm only there for the night so I might as well go hard so I went to a pub down the road that had bands playing.  I hated it at 1st cos the bartender couldnt understand me properly and so it was a bitch to find out what a normal beer is, I ended up getting a Heineken cos atleast I knew it wasn't Light beer, but it cost $6 USD just for the beer!  I thought I was gonna run out of money really quick, and whenever I tried to talk to the local shielas they would either not understand me or laugh at me.  Eventually I talked to this black guy who understood me cos he's from England, and he said to ask for the "25 cent beer".  I thought he was bullshitting, but it was real, the same place that just charged me $6 when I asked for a normal beer had a ruthless special of 25 cents for a small cup of Budweiser, but you could only buy one at a time.  Needless to say I got wasted and it only cost me about $2, and I made friends with the guy cos he was obscessed with the World Cup.  I managed to get home at some stage, ready for my flight in a few hours.  What I didn't realise is that even though I set my alarm correctly and changed to the local time in USA, Miami is in a different time zone than LA when I did it!  I ended up missing my plane cos my phone was using the wrong time zone!  I had to wait an extra 4 hours but it wasn't that big of a deal.  And so ends my 1st day in America.