So it’s decison time. After close to 4 years in California I’ve decided I have to do something more. The goals I set for myself in college have been achived, I don’t have to worry about money or balacing a check book. And I don’t exactly want to settle down and live the rest of my life in Silicon Valley. So I read What Should I do With My Life ? by Po Bronson. It was interesting and it made me think I should do more with my life but what ? I thought about law school but honesty I don’t like lawyers and I’ve never met a happy one. The thought of going back to school and starting at the bottom of the ladder again didn’t really appeal to me.
Finally I accidently come across a PBS program called Commanding Heights whic is also a pretty big book. I found the idea of countries using open markets and making themselves relevant to the world pretty interesting. If you look at countries like Japan, Korea, China and what they were able to do in such a short amount of time it’s pretty amazing. And it also made me think why couldn’t Iran do the same thing. We have one of the highest rates of brain drain in the world. Why couldn’t Iran do what these other countries had done ? In fact you would think that using the oil revenue we could do it even faster. In reality the oil money goes to subsidise old factories that couldn’t possibly compete in todays global market. Take a look at todays asian car makers and compare them to the Paykan which was already old in 1978 and you’ll see why.
So what to do about this ? My degree was a BS in computer science and biology and that’s not going to help. After talking to a bunch of people I respect it’s become clear that I need an MBA, I’d like the Stanford MBA program but I can’t take two years off from work to do this. Berkley has a three year part time program but it costs about 73k and if I apply now it’ll be four years before I finish. Walk in the UCLA program, it’s 2 years, and it costs 60k as opposed to 73k. I think we have a winner.
My goal is to get the MBA and use it in fund managment in Iran and other “emerging markets”.
It seems that everyone these days is concerned with the politics of Iran, I can’t say that I am totally unconcerned but I’ve always cared more about the economics of Iran than the politics of it. The farmer in the middle of Kermanshah doesn’t really care about the government, he cares about his crop and how he will feed his family. Something you see very few blogger in or out of Iran talk about. Mainly if you can afford an internet connection most likely you are not out in the field working.

It’s almost scary how much I depent on 24hr high speed access. Not sure I could go for a month without any net access. Is that a problem ?

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it
deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny
iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is
bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. amzanig huh?

I missed my appointment with comcast so I have to wait till tommrrow until my network is fixed. bastards!

cause my friggen cable modem is dropping 30-70% of all the packets that go through it, this has made home broadband useless. They are supposed to come fix it on tuesday I’ll go back to regular postings once I have that back.

I am so sick and tired of reading about Iraqis blaming Iran for the disaster that is Iraq. Reading this blog just pissed me off even more. It’s not enough that Iran had to lose thousands of people to the chemical attacks and ambitions of Iraq now we are to blame because they live in a disaster. Well let’s see why they live in a disaster maybe because they couldn’t do anything about Saddam ? Maybe because before Saddam they were a bunch of tribesmen living in tents ? And now that the Sunnis have started killing the Shiites outright somehow it’s Irans fault. It’s amazing that she can somehow see the hand of Iran in the killing of Shiite cleric in the friggen tomb of Ali (the third holiest site for Shiites). Nahh it couldn’t be the Sunnis, I am sure it was Iranians doing the looting too. Raed has a better perspective on it and links to one article that claims some Arabs/Sunnis were arrested. Gee, Arabs and Sunnis I am shocked. Blog spot is not cooperating but this is yet another example of Iraqis living in never never land.
“If we were in Beirut, grozny or Tehran with the same set of events we just had in Baghdad, We would have half of the politicians around us assassinated by rival factions, at least 10 suicide bombers, half of the American journalists here taken as hostages and sectarian / ethnic fighting�s in the streets.”
It’s great to know how much superior the Iraqis are at maintaining peace for themselves. Yeah this would happen in Tehran, sure… keep smoking that pipe.