Mr. Ali’s Place

It’s Monday morning right now in Tehran. I am currently at Sharif University using the internet since it is much better then the dial up connection I was using a few days ago. I’ll be here in Tehran for about a week and fly back home 5:40am Saturday morning.

One of the more interesting things I did a few days ago was to visit the Azadi Tower (Freedom Tower) which is situated in the middle of a roundabout. To see a picture of the tower and to read more about it, go here: Azadi Square.

There is a museum under the tower and you could even go up one of the four pillars or legs of the building all the way to the top and see a good view of the city.  Two of the legs had stairs and the other two had elevators.  Fun fact, since the legs are at an angle you had to use two separate elevators to get to the top.

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We had a spectacular light show last night on the island. What I mean by light show is lots and lots of lightning. Yes, we had a thunder and lightning storm brew up out of no where. It also rained quite heavily for an hour or so. It didn’t cause any damage or power outages or anything but it was fun to watch.

I have been eating out a little more this past week. This one place I ate recently at was called King’s Burger and had a logo that looked almost exactly like this one. It also was insanely expensive relative to other restaurants here. For example, I got a simple burger with small fries and a small drink (basically their combo deal) for 70,000 IR which is about $7.50.

I think I have over done my stay here on the island and can’t wait to leave for Tehran this Thursday afternoon. Nothing against this island but a man can only take so much humidity and an endless supply of shopping malls.

For fun, here are some other expenses converted to US Dollars:

Hair cut with beard trim: 35,000 (5000 for tip) IR= $3.75

Taxi fair (flat fee that will take you to almost anywhere on the island): 8000 IR = $0.85

Lunch at a 5 star hotel (price includes drink, appetizer, main course, desert and tip): 175,000 IR = $18.80 per person

I don’t usually buy brand name cloths because the costs associated with that is just silly but I did buy some here since they are cheaper (I think):

Collard t-shirts:

Timberland: 200,000 IR = $21.50

Tommy Hilfigher: 170,000 IR = $18.27

Christian Dior (don’t know this brand but sounds familiar): 200,000 IR = $21.50

These are probably decent prices but not mind blowing cheap.

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So I am back.  Well, I have been back since sunday night but have been too lazy to update this site.  Persepolis was much bigger then I had imagined, it is a massive complex that sits about an hours drive outside of Shiraz.  It’s hard to see from the pictures of the ruins of persepolis but this area once housed a number of colossal buildings over 2500 years ago.  Without further ado, I present pictures from Shiraz and a few from Kish Island.  I do apologize for the horrible quality of the pictures courtesy of my camera phone.

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This Friday I will be visiting the beautiful city of Shiraz for a few days. Read more about it here:  Shiraz Information

One of the more popular attractions in Shiraz are the ruins of ancient Persia called Persepolis or as Iranians say, Takht-e Jamshid:  Persepolis Information

Other then that not much else to talk about. I have been burning through the movies and tv shows I brought with me to watch on my down time. I underestimated how much downtime I would have here and I am now left with only 4 movies to watch for the next 3.5 weeks. To think, I have 300 or so movies sitting at home and I decided to only bring 9 with me on this trip. It’s not a problem because I will just get some books to read or buy some pirated movies once my supply runs out.

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My camera has a mind of its own. It controls when I can use it and when I can’t. For example I went to one of the hotels here in Kish to have lunch and wanted to take some pictures. I couldn’t for the life of me get my camera to work to take some pictures. So, instead, I point you to wikipedia for pictures of Dariush Grand Hotel:

Dariush Grand Hotel

I was able to take some pictures of other things:

Anyway, hopefully in the next few days they will hook up a network connection to the university at my dads house so I will be able to surf the internet more.

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So I call home this morning (night time in the states) and my mom tells me that my bank, wells fargo called 3 or 4 times to inform me about some recent charges on my credit card that seem fraudulent. Oh great, I already knew they were fraudulent charges since I haven’t used my credit card except for two weeks ago at the airport in Amsterdam. So I call up wells fargo bank and sure enough I did not make the charges they were listing off. So they canceled the card and are issuing me a new one. It’s not that big of a problem but getting a new credit card number is a big hassle since I have a lot of auto payments setup on my current card that I need to change.

Other then that not much going on here except for other parts of Iran are freaking out over the cyclone that is lingering to the south of Iran. It shouldn’t come near us so we are out of harms way.

I also wanted to mention how inexpensive some things are in Iran. Right now gasoline is about $0.43 a gallon and electricity is about 1.5cents a kilowatt (ours is ~11cents in California). I have been contemplating on how I could bring some gasoline and electricity home but somehow I don’t think its possible.

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