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Re: What Made My Day Today? :-)

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On 8/27/2023 10:40 AM, Physfitfreak wrote:
> Several of Iranians in Dallas area almost as soon as they arrived from 
> Iran in late 1970s joined parachuting clubs :) Unlike in Iran, you 
> didn't have to have ties to a military organization to have that access, 
> so they were fast pursuing that part of their dreams, along of course 
> other stuff not available to ordinary citizens in Iran, like owning 
> guns, fucking literally any girl around them, going to topless bars, 
> doing their grocery shopping (and more!) at 3 am, getting their car the 
> same day they decided to have a car, and getting their driving licenses 
> in that same day... A bunch of blessings that were available to 
> Americans without the latter seeming to appreciate them.
> 
> So one of those blessings was parachuting :) I didn't join. But at least 
> two of my friends did. I was into swimming in those days, so I joined 
> the swimming club that used a nearby high-school's all-year-round state 
> of the art swimming pools (two of them). Unbelievably cheap, and always 
> available. Often with Texas girls of top model-type bodies mixed in! 
> Mostly students of that same high school. In Tehran, that would've been 
> a dream to have. In here, 1978 Dallas, as easily as paying I don't know 
> ... $7 ? 7 dollars a month. It was great :)


This is how we felt during the first months, even the first few years :)

https://streamable.com/g531dj

See how the dog first tries to make sure the yoke is not there anymore, 
and only after making sure, begins enjoying his freedom :)

The list of blessings I gave above is not complete by any means. 
Concerts! The greatest rock bands in the world always had Dallas on 
their tour list. I don't remember a weekend that there was not a hot 
band concert in downtown, or at the most in Fort Worth. I only once 
drove to Fort Worth. All the other times Dallas itself provided the best 
rock concerts in the world. Every weekend! Then after Reunion Arena was 
built (1980) the number of available concerts to see went up. In Iran? 
Forget it. We only bought the records and dreamed of it.

And porn movies! Damit, how could I miss this one. You could always find 
sessions in some movie theaters around the town that showed porn movies. 
The drive in cinemas also sometimes showed porn movies. I never saw porn 
movies in Iran. Magazines, sure, but movies, no way.

Other blessings? Plenty of them. In Iran, I, in my generation, competed 
with 700000 other applicants in the university entrance exams, so 2000 
students could be picked from us for that year. That was one chance out 
of 700. It was one of the hardest things I did in my life. This got 
harder and harder in later years, they were telling me, cause the number 
of applicants were skyrocketing while space they were adding in schools 
could not catch up at all with the demand.

In Dallas, August 1978, two and a half months after I'd arrived, I drove 
to UTD and talked with the secretary of the "foreign student advisor" 
(not the latter himself - he had left for the day) in physics 
department's grad school for like 5 minutes. Showed my GRE and TOEFL 
scores to her. She told me to hurry to the other building's basement 
before the registrar hasn't left for the day. She had also called her 
when I got there, the registrar was waiting for me. I spent another 5 
minutes with her, at the end of which she gave me some booklets and 
schedules and said you're good to go, bookstore is that way and you have 
till such and such day to pay the tuition and fees, classes begin in two 
weeks. Just like that. I was in. And I was in, not in any school. This 
was one of the best schools in Texas.

True, my GRE and TOEFL scores (obtained in those 2.5 summer months) had 
much to do with the ease with which I was registered, but ... hey, they 
were there for me the moment I needed them. I didn't have to wait for it 
one second extra. This is the point. The blessing, available for 
everybody like myself.

The secretary, after I'd left her office to go to the other building, 
must've called the registrar saying something like, "Don't go yet, 
another one is coming!" The blessing was available for _everybody_ in my 
shoes, not just me.

Do you think such things come by themselves? No. I can't even imagine 
how much work from how many good men and women has gone into it for 
things like that be as I described. Americans in general do not see 
that. They think God made it available to them cause that's how things 
are. No, that's not how things are.

So watch the above clip again :) It tells you a book about America of 1978.






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Re: What Made My Day Today? :-) Physfitfreak <Physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2023-08-26 10:28 -0500
  Re: What Made My Day Today? :-) Physfitfreak <Physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2023-08-27 10:40 -0500
    Re: What Made My Day Today? :-) Physfitfreak <Physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2023-08-31 20:13 -0500
      Re: What Made My Day Today? :-) Physfitfreak <Physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2023-09-01 18:46 -0500
    Re: What Made My Day Today? :-) Physfitfreak <Physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2023-09-01 22:44 -0500
      Re: What Made My Day Today? :-) Physfitfreak <Physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2023-09-02 09:55 -0500
        Re: What Made My Day Today? :-) Physfitfreak <Physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2023-09-03 06:56 -0500
    Re: What Made My Day Today? :-) Physfitfreak <Physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2023-09-03 12:14 -0500

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