The unbearable lightness of traffic in Tehran!
It took me 2 hours to get to work today! Can you believe that? We are talking about a distance that should normally take at most 30 to 40 minutes. I was going crazy in the horrendous traffic :( Now the main problem here was something else. First let me explain what the situation is.
There is this workshop in the former Diplomat's Club in Niavaran St. arranged by the UNICEF and I was invited too due to previous cooperations that I had had with them during the MR national vaccination campaign. I have no idea what it is exactly that I'm doing there! I mean the participants are all medical specialists in high levels of different ministries of health, education, internal affairs and some NGOs! 80% percent of these people are my mom and Dad's age and oh my God they are so formal :( Now imagine me there!
I'm trying to be cool and act as a grown-up but well you cannot change a person overnight, can you?! I'm there as a journalist! Taking notes and writing reports for some interested parties. It is very well-paid but… now picture this: it's the first day, I'm all shaken up and intimated by the big names and ages (!) and then they say the day after each session we choose two people to give a presentation of the feedback they got from the previous session. We will draw names written on pieces of paper from a small bag.
Guess whose name came out first? Hehehe, isn’t that just fantastic?! I tried my best to persuade everybody that I'm just a nobody, leave me alone for crying out loud! But nobody would listen! And so today I was supposed to be there at 8:30 and give a presentation, well you know what? I arrived at 9:15!!! While I was on the way I remembered one other thing as well, I remembered that one of the ground rules of the workshop was that they would clap really hard for anyone who would arrive late :((((( I wanted to return home and quit the job altogether but stupidity stopped me!
When I arrived awaiting a round of applause, everybody smiled and said hello very nicely, nobody clapped and they just continued with the session! But as a punishment I was made the speaker of groups, I had to check with groups during group works and talk instead of them :(( I think tomorrow I'll leave the house before dawn!
