Friday, February 11, 2005

Voting:

As we get closer to the date of enrolling for presidential candidates, the debates on who is going to win the election heats up. The interesting fact is that the number of famous & might-be-next candidates is more than it usually is.
Neither right winders nor reformists had agreed on a single main candidate yet. & the so-called supportive parties have chosen different candidates with diverse qualities & points of view.
During the last election, right wing hard liners won the parliament & ever since then government had faced so many problems due to the fact that parliament doesn’t see eye to eye with them. Few of our ministers including the transportation minister had been interpellated, while it's only 6 months to the termination of the Khatami's cabinet.
Most people I know did not vote in the last election. This is a way to show objection to the whole régime. Forbearing the validity of the governing system & the whole I-agree-I-agree-not issue, not participating in the political events has another reason to. "What you choose that had been chosen for you before" this sentence can be used to describe all the elections over here.
The parliament of elites (!) has to confirm legitimacy of the candidates & the elites tend to filter anyone who doesn't appeal to them either with or without a real reason. It is a trend to find your desired candidate forced to run off the election due to vague reasons like not being sincere in Islamic rituals. Thus you will have limited chosen candidates to run for the election.
On the other hand, nobody really pays attention to the Parliament of Elites election. In my personal opinion, the Elite Council election is where we can choose the rest of the government heads. Although that one is validated by Observing Council & is no better than the others, yet we could make small changes if we needed it.
Back to upcoming presidential election, if Shirin Ebadi the noble-prize winner runs for the election AND she gets validated, I'll vote for her, though the chance is very low.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

A New Job:

Wow I hadn't been online for so long! & I missed being on line & browsing the net. I have to find a way to manage more time on line.
Um... yeah, finally I got a new job & it is much related to my field of study. Recently I had been working with a team on some factory plans but I quit the job & now I'm working as a food-inspector in a huge governmental company. It's pretty hard & I have to work in a time frame of 8am-4pm which is not my cup of tea. I always preferred jobs with flexible time tables. Yet it's a quite good job & the facilities are good.
It can get rather stressful cos a thousand lives will depend on my accuracy. Healthy food & food safety can get very crucial concerning health issues. The job requires more on site supervisions along with the paper works. I hope I can get through the first month of training-examining, and then I shall become an official employee.
The worst point of the job is that I don’t any internet access from work. & usually I get home so tired that I can not go online. Even if I had the access to internet, it would not be easy to check my favorite websites or blogs. Although private net usage is allowed to some extent in governmental companies, the number of sites one can check is restricted due to the fact that no one is sure which sites are illegal & which are not. For example, I would like to check JC Source (I have been a JC fan for quite some time) but it would probably cause problems for me.
Unfortunately, most of the time people's private passions & ideas are questioned here & they are judged base on personal preferences.
At the same time, people contacting with foreigners (except for business contacts) are thought to be untrusting & not reliable in governmental environments. I don’t know but the general mood is like that especially when you are working close to the head of the company. (My situation is like that right now, beside the position is newly added to the organization chart & actually I am the first to do the job so...)
Anyhow... I don’t know how long I can survive but hopefully things will get better by time. May God help me through this one.