No the baby is not mine

She was born to Shabnam and Badi

Baby Alia

Baby Alia
Originally uploaded by justin a. portillo.

Baby Alia is here! Click on the photo to see more pics!

Introducing Miss Alia Azad!

Miss Alia Azad -

Born - June 8, 2006 - 11:03 am - 7# 7oz -

Parents are ecstatic!

Glass

Glass
Originally uploaded by peisser.

What a kewl photo of Israeli balls. Peisser, you're the man. Click on the photo to see more of Peisser's amazing photos.

Insights.Bosch 2006 photos

Courtesy of Sanaz

Lots more photos here.

Mozart had a mullet

I thought this was funny....

Ladan's B-Day

Some friends met up in San Francisco not too long ago to celebrate Ladan's birthday. She put some pics up here.

Conversation with Dylan

This is a conversation my mom had recently with my little brother Dylan:

"Mom you are my heart and soul, you are my strength and greatest weakenss, (pause) well actually, my whole family is my weakness, but you are my greatest weakness." I asked him how I was his greatest weakness and he said, " If anything were to happen to you I would be so weak, I love you so much! Infinity, love and light."
then a few mintues later he says, " I dont like being the youngest, I want to be 17 and getting my drivers license and going to college, (pause) well actually, I want to be older than Justin, what does he do? Well I have to wait forever, a whole week and then a month until I am older than Justin and that is too long!"

Me on South Park

Make your own here.

Courtesy of Peter.

Maame's visit

Maame was in town back in March visiting her relatives. Here is a pic from her visit. She stopped by for lunch and we had yummy wraps at a restaurant outside city hall in downtown Oakland.

Berkeley Law Conference

I went to the Berkelely Law Conference recently after a friend of mine signed me up. I was considering law as a profession once upon a time, and recently began to re-consider it. However, this conference was helpful in allowing me to cross LAW off my list. Way off. I sat through the conference proceedings cross-eyed and almost went blind from boredom. (No offense Elham! Law is great... for you. ;) The best part was hanging out with friends. Here are some photos that Samira put up. (Can you see me sleeping?)

New Year's Bike Ride

In attempt to deliver some updates on my life since my blog went dark, let me first remind you all to come to the Insights Young Adults conference (see my last post). I am helping to plan it, but maybe I shouldn't tell you that, as some of you will no doubt impute that my involvement is a legitimate excuse to avoid Bosch and the Santa Cruz area entirely. Wrong I say! The conference will be fabulous...

Anyhow, enough digression. These are photos of a bike ride that I went on with Kasra, a very good friend of mine, in the rural outskirts of rural Davis, California. This was New Year's weekend and the torrential downpour almost overran the levies in Sacramento, which we are told, are the second most flood prone after New Orleans. Photos couresty of Kasra Eliasieh.

Insights Young Adults Conference - Bosch, April 14-16, 2006

Birthday

I recently celebrated my birthday with friends in San Francisco at a restaurant called Bissap Baobab, a Senagalese place that is REALLY good, with a kewl crowd and fun music. I look like I am having an epileptic fit in the photo, but don't worry, I am not. Samira Samadani posted her photos from the night here.

Parisa and Sasha's Wedding

My family recently attended the wedding of Parisa Maghzi & Sasha Voight in San Francisco. The wedding was very nice and simple, held at the Bahai Center, only 100 people, and had the ambience of a Bahai devotional meeting - tranquil and loving.

Here is a picture of my family. Unfortunately my mom only took the camera out to photograph us, and we don't have a single photo of the wedding itself or the bride and groom. But the photographer has a website with tons of photos. Click here to be taken to his web site. Pick "Parisa" from the event list and enter the password "weddings".

My Avatar

Yahoo and MSN have these new avatar features, where you get to make your own digital representation. Here are my first goes at defining the virtual me. Click on the pictures to make your own. Make sure to show me the new virtual you too.

Yahoo:



MSN:

Take Over Canada 2

Brother: "What is the capital of Canada?"
Me: "I think it is Toronto."
Brother: "Yeah ... we can take Toronto."
Me: "Umm, bro, you've been watching a little too much South Park lately."
Brother: "You think they would even fight back?"

[Ok, I know! Toronto is not the capital of Canada! But if you thought there was a good chance that it was, click here for some informative material on our "friendly" neighbor to the north.]

Take Over Canada

Brother: "I think I am going to marry a Canadian."
Me: "Why?"
Brother: "So I can have a person on the inside when we take over."

U.S. Flags

Yesterday I ran to the store to pick up a new U.S. flag for my grandfather. He is a World War II vet and has flag hanging from a 50-foot pole in his front yard. (My grandmother says it reminds her of the post office.) Anyway, a recent storm had left the flag tattered, and he sent me to the store to pick up a new one. Upon arrival, I searched around a bit, but couldn't find it. So the first employee I saw I asked "Excuse me. Where are the U.S. flags?". She thought for a bit, then replied: "You mean the American flags?"

Dylan's Birthday!

Dylan turned seven yesterday and we had a little family party to celebrate. He got to choose what we had for dinner - surprise, surprise - it was pizza! (One of like two food groups - the other is hamburgers.) Then my mom brought out the “Death by Chocolate” birthday cake with seven little candles, which Dylan blew out successfully with a single breath! Then, to commemorate the opening of the presents, Dylan initiated a ceremony derived from the game of “Hot Potato”, where we passed the presents around until he said "Stop!". Of course the presents always stopped when they got to him... I was disappointed of course because I didn’t receive any gifts, so he generously gave me “The Chronicles of Narnia” on VHS tapes. I was naturally excited, but he couldn’t help me when I explained I also needed a VCR…