I thought I had heard/seen most traditions and customs in the Persian culture, at least the common ones, but here is one that caught me off guard. The other night at a dinner party with some very well educated people, one being a well versed scholar in Persian history and culture, as my wife came in with our new born son of two months, the gentleman looked at him and then with a smiling face looked at my wife saying : he is very ugly!….long silence…. My wife and looked at each other very puzzled but managed somehow to not show it smiling back in silence, thinking “what da?!?”.

Later on we found out, this phrase is said to ward off the evil spirits, for those who believe in it I guess. So I guess you learn something new every day and if this happens to you (at least when someone Persian says it), they don’t really mean it; you can hope.

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You mayhave seen the movie: The Truman show with Jim Carrey where his character Truman was the star of a TV show with everyone in this world but him knowing about it.

Hearing about it on the radio today, something similar is, in smaller scale, happening around us here in the US at least. It seems with the ongoing recession and home sales so low, real estate agents are taking to new tricks to sell houses: they hire actors to play the roles of good neighbors and plant them around in the emptynext door house or as dog walkers up and down the street or lawnmover neighbor 3 houses down, or a few kids playing on the street…you get the picture.

I personally found it quite disturbing, especially when the buyer in the story realized this after buying the house and moving in that his street pretty much has only empty foreclosed houses.

So, next time you are house hunting and meet a friendly future neighbor, make sure they actually live there.

PS. This is not a April’s fool joke.

Had to look up binding adjustments for my skis ahead of  a trip and found this page useful.