The Underground injury

Last Monday the first Iran's world-cup football match was held. A young friend called and invited me to watch the match in his flat with some other friends. I accepted. Although I am not into football, I did not like to lose this opportunity to see others’ excitement and joy. 

It was a bit late when I left my home, so I was in a hurry not to lose a part of the match. It was rush hour too. I assumed public transport to be packed. I chose the Underground as I had a long way to go, but I needed to change the line in the middle of the route at Warren Street to get to the Northern line. When I got there, I saw that the Underground train was there at the platform, but ready to depart. I hurried to push myself into it, the doors were closing though and they trapped me severely from my sides. For a moment I felt I could not breathe anymore. Fortunately the doors opened and I could push myself into the carriage. Then it set off. I was in a dreadful pain. I could not stand. Other people were watching me sympathetically. I was lucky enough to find an empty seat, even though the car was packed with people. I closed my eyes, tried to relax and gather myself. I could not breathe deeply, but I felt I had not broken my bones. The pain got much less after minutes when I reached my destination, still without the possibility of taking deep breaths. 

I had a great night with those friends. However I was still suffering from the pain particularly with any movement. At home, when I lay down on my bed, an extreme pain with shivering started. I felt I could not bear it. I could not move. The pain was killing me. I thought it might be a crack on my ribs when the incident happened and now the bones got separated. I asked my wife to call an ambulance if the situation got worse. She kindly provided a hot water bottle and helped me to take some strong pain killers. I went to a deep sleep after a while.

"Get up; I got an appointment for you to see a doctor. You must go now." This was my wife, trying to wake me up in the next morning. I tried to move and realised the pain was much less. I went and visited the doctor. He examined me and put me on pain killers. He did not believe that I had broken my ribs, but it was a possibility of them being cracked by the strong pressure. 

It was not worth putting myself in such risk for saving a few minutes at all. I will be more careful with the Underground in the future. 

World Naked Bike Ride

Yesterday was the World Naked Bike Ride Day, WNBD. I went out to watch it. There were six starting points around London and then they were supposed to merge at Westminster Bridge which is the most central point of the city. The event was to start at 2-2:30pm, so I thought I can catch them at around 3pm at the merging point.

Three years ago, my family and I went out for a nice walk in St. James's Park. It was there and then that we came across such an event. Before that we had no idea about it. We all got shocked when we saw them. Most people around us were cheering and taking photos and videos of the naked cyclists. Later on, I read about it a bit more when we got home and I realized that this is a worldwide campaign basically about defending the nature and against oil consuming. The campaigners also demand safer roads for the cyclists. The event is hold in many big cities around the world, especially in Europe every year simultaneously on a fixed day in June.

What I saw yesterday was interesting. The event raised several questions: how did thousands of people convince themselves to attend such an event? Were they just from one social class or were they from varied classes with different revenues and levels of education? Were they just the youth? How was their gender distribution? Was it an anarchy movement against the norms and values of the society? Would it count as the disobedience of the minority against the majority? Could there be any imaginable accomplishment for the movement? What has been the result in the previous years? In terms of psychological indexes, was it an exciting activity which could be considered to work against depression or similar mental disorders? What should be the government's reaction? Ignoring the movement, controlling it or stopping and suppressing it? Etc.

Personally I have no idea about the answers. However according to my observation, I can assume that the attendants were from both genders, from various ages, different educational backgrounds, and with varied incomes. I saw that most of them were quite happy and the reaction of the people on the street were mostly welcoming. The movement was extremely peaceful and I did not see any violence at all, not from the people and not from the officials. I take the movement seriously as a noticeable case study in sociology, anthropology, social psychology, politics, etc. As a journalist and a researcher, I like to see such events and study about them.

The horse riding experience

It was a surprising gift. About two and a half months ago my wife gave me a horse riding experience as a Nowrouz gift. Nowrouz is an ancient Persian ceremony to celebrate the New Year. Persian New Year coincides with the first day of spring in late March.

All I needed to do was setting an appointment and then redeem my coupon. I had booked the first appointment for two weeks ago, but the accident happened and I had pain in my leg, so I postponed it until yesterday.

The session was supposed to take three hours. The location was somewhere in the suburb, North London. I reached there on time. It was a vast green field and you could smell the stables from outside. At the front of the field, there was a small cottage and, beside it, a fenced garden. The cottage was used as the office. In the garden there were a few children, probably 4-5 years old, with their teachers. They were some playing and some sitting on the benches, apparently waiting for the school bus to come and pick them up. 

I entered the office and introduced myself. They asked me to fill a registration form, enquiring basic information about my health, connections and also my previous experiences of horse riding, if I had any. Actually I had a few, but they went back to many years ago, perhaps 10-15 years ago, and I hardly remembered any instructions! Therefore I preferred to introduce myself as a basic beginner.

When I was done, a young and short lady came and introduced herself as my instructor. Subsequently we went for picking a riding helmet and boots. It was there that I realised we were a group of three. Two young ladies, probably in their twenties, joined the session. 

First, the instructor started our tour with showing the stables. They were maintaining 160 horses and ponies in a number of various breeds and ages there. She showed us most of them and explained shortly about different types of every breed. One thing which was surprising for me was that most horses change their colours by the time they get older, from a darker to brighter colour. I had no idea about it. She also explained about their food, their health, their hygiene, their values, their passports, their ownership, the differences among breeds, their speed and power, their retirement, their holidays, etc. Then we went to the storage rooms, where they kept horses' belongings like saddles and reins. All of them were kept under the name of every individual horse. The whole information was quite interesting. 

During our visit we met many people, adults and children, who were leading a horse. Some of them seemed professional and many looked like they had attended just for fun. 

Then we went to one of the indoor schools for riding. The instructor allocated the horses to us in terms of our height and weight. My horse's name was Fewie. He was black, tall, extremely beautiful and quite intelligent. We got on the horses. Each horse was held and controlled by an individual expert. The instructor started to teach us how well we should sit, hold the reins and keep our feet. Then we started to walk gradually and she taught us how to keep our back, breathe easily, be as relaxed as possible and go up and down with the horses' movement simultaneously.

It was entirely safe. However when my horse ran, I felt a bit unstable. All in all, it was a very exciting experience. I learnt a lot, but unfortunately the instructor had a strong accent and it was quite difficult for me to understand all her words. I loved the experience and now I am thinking of attending again more regularly.

Stuart

Stuart is our nice neighbour. He has got a green thumb. He lives in a small flat nearby. His flat should be a suite or at most a one double bedroom. He has got a small front garden. The garden is filled with a number of various plants, full of colourful flowers.

Since around a year ago, he started to decorate all around his flat, including his neighbours’ front gardens and the communal area, with his beautiful flowers. Then he developed this decoration on the walls, in front of windows, and on the roofs; wherever it could be a showing place.

A month ago my wife and I thought it was worth it to get some advice from him. Actually we do not have a front garden. We have a medium size balcony, where we have got several troughs of flowers. Two years ago, when we moved to this flat, we had several pelargoniums. In fact, the previous residents left them for us. They were beautiful, flourishing in three colours: white, pink, and red.

This year we felt pelargoniums were getting a bit oldand my wife was keen to replace them with something different. She wanted herbs and varied flowers. Stuart was the best one to get advice from and we went to him. He asked us to give him some time to study more. After a few days he came up with the idea of six different species of thymes in two bigger troughs, three in each. My wife smiled and accepted. He bought them for us and made the new troughs with thymes. After a while my wife saw his mints in front of his flat and asked him about them. It was then that we learnt there are so many types of mints. He offered us one of his mint flowerpots. A few days later, he came up with the idea of fuchsia and petunia flowers. Now we have got a big trough of three varied types of fuchsia, and a smaller trough of petunia. Then my wife had a chat with him about chives and he grew a bunch of chives for us. We have kept a trough of red pelargonium from the past as well.

Now our balcony has various types of colourful flowers and herbs exactly as my wife had desired. They are lovely and look great. The petunias scent every evening. All the flowers are quite joyful and, above that, we are happy for the experience. The flowers have connected us more closely to Stuart and we have learnt more about these plants.

Family or friends?

Following my writing about happiness, I raise this question this time that, in terms of happiness, which one is more important: family or friends?

I think there is no certain general answer to this question. Every single person could have their own priority. However, both play essential roles. There are not comparable though. If connections between friends are cut, they could be parted forever. Persons amid a family can be parted, but the blood relation between them is undeniable.

Loneliness is one of the major reasons for not being happy. Quality plays a more important role here than quantity. Good relations are not merely related to a greater number of close people, no matter friends or relatives. It depends on the quality of how close people are to each other, and whether they can rely on each other, particularly in tough times. If  that is the case, people will feel more content.

As a conclusion, I think the topic question does not seem right at all. Never will there be a clear answer for such a question. Different conditions will require different answers. However, some ideologies might have certain answers. Sociological and psychological approaches cannot follow such paths. Ideologies are always firm about phenomenon, but science takes a relative approach. Being one of the family or friends is not very vital: happiness is the subject that should be attract more attention.

The tough night

The night before last I experienced the most intense accident I have ever had in my life. It was late in the evening I was on my way back from my journey to the University of Oxford.. Usually, every other Tuesday, I attend the Iranian history speeches run by Professor Homa Katouzian at St. Antony's College. Last Tuesday was one of those seminars too. A young friend there offered to give me a lift home. I thanked him and wanted to go back as usual by the public bus, but he insisted. At last I accepted. We had a beautiful chat together all the way to London. Amid the conversation, he mentioned that he had bought his car recently, and this was his fourth Toyota Yaris. He said: "I can vouch for Yaris based on ample personal experience, and this is a good one.”

When we were on a main road quite close to my house, out of a sudden, a black car jumped out of a narrow sideway and we crashed into this car. The accident was extremely intense.  Both cars were so entirely damaged that they could not move any more. The accident happened very quickly, in a fraction of a second. The first thing I paid attention to was our safety. No one was really injured. However, my leg hit the dashboard and I was in real pain. I tried to move my leg to find out whether it was broken or not. Fortunately it seemed OK. My friend who was driving us asked the other driver how he was doing. He was OK too. Seconds after that, suddenly, we saw the other car is trying to move. A pedestrian on the street cried: "Be careful. He is escaping!" Actually the driver of the other car was trying to, but he could not because the right wheel of his car was totally displaced. When he realised he could not move, he got off, came to me and asked whether we could declare someone else as the driver? "I am not the one who decides,” I said, and pointed out to my friend as the owner of the damaged car. He was talking on his mobile by the time. I could not believe it, seconds after that, the young driver disappeared.

The street was entirely blocked by these two cars. A taxi driver behind us came and gave all his details to my friend, volunteering to testify on his behalf if needed. I admired him as responsible citizen. He said he had seen first the accident and then the young driver's disappearance. After a few minutes a new man came and said: "I was the driver!" It was another shock. He was not alone; he came with a bunch of people, his family perhaps. An observer told me to be cautious, because they might deny the truth and create a new story, quite the opposite of what had actually happened. I was quite confused.

It was rainy and a bit cold. After standing ten minutes out in a corner of the street, I noticed that I was shivering. I did not know the true reason behind my shivering. Was it from the rainy cold weather or was it from the shock caused by the accident?

The whole process took about three hours until police came and received our report, then the insurance company sent somebody to collect the damaged car.

It was one hour after midnight when I got home, all soaked, tired, and in a real pain. I could not believe what had happened and felt sorry for all the loss my friend had suffered just because of me. Even though it is hard to compensate for his car, I feel I have to. I will try my best to make it up to him.