A few days ago it was my birthday. I was born in on September 11th. I had always liked the day, September is a beautiful month, with cooling weather and with beautiful light because the sun is already fading. Moreover I like the name, SEPTEMBER, sounds good.

In 2001 seems the date got dirty, I was eating with my parents in a Thai restaurant, Thai Gardens, in Madrid, the curry in coconut milk hottest of the menu was making my eyes cry as I had to blow my nose while I was drinking water to cool down the heat. A short Argentinean man that was eating with two very pretty girls told us, he had been told by phone, it was a bit late and only our two tables were left. We didn’t pay too much attention to what he said, he seemed a bit inventive.
One hour later, in a puzzle shop where my sister wanted to buy one, the shop-keeper invited us to go into the back part of the shop, and in that little rounded TV in the corner we saw time and again how the planes crashed into the towers and how the towers collapsed.
Each person has his story, where were they when they realized. Mine was at my birthday with Thai curry flavour.

I had left work early to eat with my family but meanwhile my co-workers were in the office. They got to know about it and they were watching TV on the Internet.
Waited to watch it, instead of going home, they were eating the pastries that I had taken in the morning. An ex-co-worker reminded me for years “watching the twin towers and eating your pastries”, as it was my first year at work, I bought an awful lot of them so as not to be short so they had them for a while.

If when I was 12 I’d have been told that in 20 years I’d have my birthday in Tehran I’d probably had put a face of  Where is that?, but here I’ve finished, not going out of the house all day until 8 pm to go for a walk and an ice-cream. As you see I’m a bit delayed in the blog, I have to tell you about Armenia and I’m already in Iran, but I didn’t want to write too much about Iran being here, maybe I’m too cautious, but…

I haven’t had presents either, except maybe the one given to myself. In a few days I’m going to Turkmenistan, the eight days there are going to be more than 1000 euros, so I prefer to see it as a present, but I’ll tell you why this cost when I write about the country.

Ah, I’ve got another surprise present. The Kanu Magazine, a prestigious white-water magazine from Germany, has published one of my pictures from Montenegro in double page. Aitor had a contact, he sent the pictures and they’ve published a picture from each of us. Here you have it.

With my name in the footer. I’m proud.

Here is the link to their page. It worth walking 50 minutes under the sun up to the bridge and back to the river to get the picture.

So even happier with my trip and my blog. From the trip there is less left, from the blog I’m happy because practicing it takes less effort to write and I think it’s better quality. After nine years writing documents explaining alternatives in a practical and objective form and documents with instructions step by step, writing a narration is a bit difficult, I have had to un-square my head.

There’s very little to tell you before arriving to where I’m living in Iran… which is great.

I leave you, this was going to be a short thing to tell you about my far away birthday and it’s become an enormous text.

See you soon!
Fernando