It was about 10 AM on Thursday March 29, 2001. The night before was my first really late day at the office – I had to help one of the new employees install XSS on his computer. Microsoft Outlook alerted an incoming email: “Emergency GIS on Third Floor”. *** In the year 2000, near the […]
19 Years Ago . . .
I wrote the following in 1997 on the anniversary of leaving Iran. I still have not been back and don’t know when I will – my feelings remain the same. Happy Thanksgiving._______ 19 years ago, on November 25, 1978, my family left Iran. My memories of that night are still vivid – it’s as if […]
MISSION: Impossible
This following is a summary of my visa ordeal. On or about May 18, 2005, I, Saman Ahmadi, went to the Spanish Consulate in Houston and spoke with Official A. I showed Official A a letter, which stated that I would be doing a six-month internship, funded by the University of Houston, in Barcelona, and […]
Episode Two
I made it back to Barcelona – this time with visa in hand. It’s a balmy 66 degrees at 8:00 PM on a Tuesday night. More to come soon on the visa, etc.
I’m coming back but I’m coming back
Well, it’s a very, very long story with almost as many twists and turns as Pulp Fiction, but because of an issue with my visa, I will be coming back to Houston in mid-October for a couple of weeks and then hopefully return to Barcelona until the end of the year. I’ll explain what has […]
Chaos – theory and practice
When I was a student at Texas A&M, I was fortunate to see a lecture by MIT Meteorologist Dr. Edward Lorenz, an early pioneer of Chaos Theory. From what I remember, the basic idea of the theory is that while some phenomena are random, there are limits to their randomness. However, knowing the limits does […]
¿De dónde eres?
Where are you from? I’m from Texas. However, as Texans know, you should never ask anyone where he’s from – if he is from Texas, he will tell you without being asked and if he’s not from Texas, well . . . you’ll just make him feel bad. I am an American born in Iran. […]
The Firm
I’m doing my internship at the firm of Oscar Tusquets Blanca. The office is located on the hills in the northwest part of city, where most of the development seems to be from the 1970’s and later. There are some older structures however – a large piece of land, now a park, owned by Antoni […]
Houston, We have a Problem
I just got back from a nine-day excursion through Spain with a brief visit to Morocco. It was a wonderful trip and I will write in more detail about the cities that we visited in a few days. Aaron and I left Barcelona on a night train to Madrid. We then went to Segovia, Cordoba, […]
Fish out of Water
I’ve been able to see some of the interesting architecture of Barcelona so far. For the 1992 Olympics, the area along the beach went through an extensive development. One piece was a fish sculpture by American architect Frank Gehry – he is known for his “blob” buildings, with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain being […]
the City 