Iranian New Year is approaching and I love the timing very much. The start of the New Year in Iranian calendar is synchronized with the exact moment the Earth finishes the entire circle of rotation around the sun and spring begins. According to the philosophy, we shall renew ourselves as the nature does in spring. I think it is a very sensible reason for having a new year and we do lots of things before and after the event. One of the historic traditions near the Norooz (the Persian name for the new year period) is the celebration the eve of the last Wednesday of the year, which was last Tuesday night. This is the night of joy and celebration and what people do, they make fires on the ground and jump over them, singing and dancing and since I do not know what time, there has been firecrackers going off dominating the atmosphere. This is so much fun.

Just four days is left from this year and one of the things that I m busy with is a complete apartment cleanup. This is another tradition for making things fresh and new. Tehran is a four-season city and you can smell the freshness of spring your window (well, you have to filter out the noise of the street traffic).