Portland Fire Boat

Portland Bridge Pedal 2009

""Perfectly Portland" is what The Oregonian called Providence Bridge Pedal. This annual tradition is a community celebration of Portland, the Willamette River bridges and bicycling. It is your one opportunity each year to bicycle across Portland’s bridges from the Sellwood to the St. Johns, including the top decks of the Marquam and Fremont bridges."

It was a nice ride and a long one as well. We rode about 38 miles in 4 hours. We visited 8 of the bridges:

• Hawthorne
• Ross Island
• Marquam (the third photo)
  
• Burnside
• Broadway
• Fremont (the second photo)
  
• St. Johns (the first photo)
  
• Broadway

Marquam bridge, which is the highest bridge in Portland, is actually part of the I-5 freeway. It was interesting that they closed an interstate freeway for this event for like 2 hours. The last photo was taken when I was on the Marquam bridge. A pretty view of Portland.

Manzanita Beach, Oregon

Multnomah Falls

Ducks in The Pool Fountain

Shaky Mirror of Water

This is a real photo without any photoshopping. It looks more like a blurry oil painting.

A Quick Trip to Mashhad, Iran

This is a shot of two of the minaretes of the holy shrine in Mashhad, Iran.

This one is a zoomed-in shot of inside the shrine in Mashhad.

Drift Creek Falls Suspension Bridge

Iranian Festival

Today there was an Iranian Festival in Portland. It was good and happy. I made some Iranian friends, had some Iranian food and enjoyed listening to some Iranian music and seeing Iranian dance. It was all Iranian today. The first photo shows just a sign of the festival. The second photo shows Persian drawings of a traditional Persian girl and the third photo shows some Baghlava (Baklava.) Baklava is more known as a Turkish pastry. However we have our own Baklava in Iran too. Before coming to the US, I didn't know that Turkish and Arabs also have Baklava. By the way, it's so sweet and yummy!

Robert L. Bertini

In each person's life, there may be a few people who make a big difference; who impress the way we live and think and basically change the whole picture of our life. This post is dedicated to a person who has influenced my life a lot. He is Robert L. Bertini. I knew of him when I was 20 and back at home in Iran. I was surfing the net and searching for positions in graduate schools around the world that I saw a picture of this guy and learned a little about him through his web page. I was amazed. He had a resume of more than 50 pages. I emailed him and asked him about the program they have to know more. The first email I got from him was bright and hopeful. He gave me a sort of self-confidence for the way I was about to take the first setps toward it.

Monday, January 15, 2007 at 4:19 PM

Dear Meead: thanks for your note--we would be glad to receive your application for fall 08, the best thing to do to trigger our interest is to actually apply for the MSCE. We do expect to have graduate research assistantships in the areas you are interested. I hope this helps. Thanks and best regards,
Dr. Bertini

I still have his first email in my inbox and I will keep it forever. Since then I've had near a thousand emails from him and I've kept all of them. In each of his emails, I can see a short lesson, a hint, or an advice. In my Persian culture, two people deserve hand kissing. The first one are parents and the second one are teachers. He is going to leave Portland because of some good reasons. I'm happy for him. Right now I remember two of his valuable sentences that he has told me:

• Treat everyone the same.
• Be humble and honest both in your life and in your research and writtings.
  

He will be in my heart as a perfect teacher, a perfect advisor, and as a perfect man. God bless him and save him throughout his whole life. I hope I will meet him again and again.