A few weeks ago our friend Roni traveled from London to visit her family that lives in the city. Irm and I thought it would be a great idea to meet over dinner and have some great time together, which we did. I checked Yelp for the closest Persian restaurant in the vicinity and came up with Ravagh Persian Grill. Sure, why not. We were hungry, and didn’t feel like taking the train (rush hour) or walking too long (too hungry).

One thing I always look at when going to a restaurant that serves specialized food is how authentic the diners that sit around the table are. As a rule of thumb it is always good to see people from the same ethnic group dining at the restaurant. It shows (in most cases) that the food is closer to ‘home’. It certainly true for our favorite Turkish place. This place had plenty Iranians dining in that looked like they were having a good time.

The food was good. I ordered the sultani kebab and Irm ordered the Koobideh kebab. Both were good. The rice was good as well, but in retrospect I should have asked for the “green rice” (dilled rice cooked with fava beans). I love (a good) Persian rice and this would have been a great opportunity to taste something I really like. Our friend Roni ordered the lamb shank, which by the way looked great.

Overall it was a pleasant experience. We will come back.

The images below is something I found on the web.

As a side note, one of my favorite Persian dishes is the Gondi dumpling (see image below). This is a dish I had at my friend’s house, and only recently found out that:

Gondi is said to have originated in the Jewish ghetto in Tehran, although Jews from the other Iranian cities also claim to be its inventors. Gondi was a special food prepared only for Shabbat because ground lamb or chicken was expensive. While Iranian Jews have over the centuries eaten the same types of foods as otherIranians, Gondi has been one of their few culinary innovations that they can claim their own

Go figure…

If you don’t consume any protein shakes to supplement your training, I suggest you skip this post. I write it mainly because I think it can help some readers of this blog save some money and also get a good product :).

Over the past decade+ I ‘ve consumed many types of protein powders from different brands to supplement my post-workout meals. Some were okay, some were meh and some were horrible. To be frank, I never really found the right formula that left me with a”wow” feeling. All brands were pretty consistent with how they tasted, as if they were all made by the same factory ( hmm, that’s an interesting point…).

Today, while I was grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s, I came across a brand that pioneered the MRP industry, MET-Rx.  I was short on protein shake and decided to give it a chance. I picked the chocolate flavor container and hoped for the best. To be honest, I didn’t really have high hopes but since I needed a protein shake, and this one was right there, I decided to purchase it . And I am glad I did!

The chocolate shake tasted like ice cream, and it was thick and very tasty. Delicious actually! In fact, my first reaction was to pick up the container and re-read the ingredients/nutrition facts label. I was sure I made a mistake and accidentally selected a MRP (a powder loaded with fat, carbs and protein) instead of a protein powder. I didn’t. It was a regular protein powder, which was low on carbs and fat, and high on protein.

This is how I prepared my shake:

• 8oz of 1/% milk
• 8oz of cold water
• 1 scoop of MET-Rx chocolate protein powder
• shake
• drink

I highly recommend this powder! It is by far the best protein powder I have ever tried. 

Last time I blogged was over three months ago, when I first started my ‘new’ position at the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD). Lots of things have happened since then, all positive and exciting.

The NCLD Experience

“So, how is your new job?”, I got asked numerous times since I left Princeton. I think the best way to describe my new job is this: if someone came to me and asked me to write down the ideal job (in terms of things I want to do), I think it would have come out similar to what I do now. I get to do inbound marketing, which I love, but I also get to be creative and I am encouraged to stay innovative. For those of you who know me, creativity and innovation are the essence of me.

And then there are the people, or the NCLD team as we like to call it. “Team” is indeed the correct word to describe the collegiality, friendship, common interests and overall positive vibes that flow in the office. From the Executive Director to the intern level, we all get along, we all laugh together, we all enjoy what we do and every person brings a unique set of skills to his or her position. There are no overlaps. Our executive director, James Wendorf , told me during my interview with him that “everyone in NCLD is like family”. I couldn’t conceptualize what he meant back then, but I do now. It is true. Everyone at NCLD IS indeed like family.

Working for a nonprofit (at least at NCLD) is like working for a Startup, minus the profit. The excitement, the pressure to perform, the exhilaration when your community reacts to your effort and the feedback you get from the founders. These are all there, on a daily basis, and it is something that is very addictive. I like it, some won’t, which is fine. That is why we are different :)

Blogging

I am hoping to slowly get back to writing on my blog again. The transition to a fast pace, fast-think environment required me to use a lot of brain-power, which meant that something had to give. Now that I (hope) have things under control I can try and blog again. Some marketing stuff, some personal stuff.

Before I end this post I would like to share this video with you ( You’ll find me in this video, btw). It was shown during NCLD’s 35th anniversary benefit dinner, where we managed to raise more than 2.45 million dollars! An all time record! Money and records aside, what is more important are the changes and hope we give to children with learning disabilities. You will notice in the video that Lee Hirsch, the director of the eye opening documentary Bully, also talks about NCLD’s work. It was an amazing experience working with the Bully team, but this one I’ll save for another post.

Most people will define strength by pointing out an individual human being who is lifting some ridiculous weight for N amount of reps. They will even tell you that currently the strongest man in the world is Zyndrunas Savickas, which is all true. But, do you define strength by sheer power, or rather by sheer courage?

Let me give you an example: look at the two pictures below. Who do you think has more strength? Is it the 300lb behemoth that is pulling this massive track, or rather the anonymous man who is standing in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks the morning after the Chinese military forcibly removed protestors from in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989?

What do you think?

Let me give another example: we are all familiar with the Arab-spring that began on December 18, 2010. Aren’t these people who decided to stand up against decades of dictatorship by ruthless, corrupt, ‘leaders’ and fight for their freedom the strongest men in the world?

This goes back to the question I asked in the beginning: how do you define strength? You can argue that strength can only be defined by sheer power, but I beg to defer. I think strength can also be defined by how courageous one can be. Standing in front of a tank in the middle of a chaotic situation shows a different type of strength. The type of strength most of us will never have the chance to reveal.

I would love to read your opinion on this one. Comments are more than welcome.

Landing a job in this tight market is very difficult. Thousands of candidats send their résumés every day, hoping to hear back. Some do, but most don’t, which is why using a tool such as resunate may actually increase your chances of landing a job that fits your experience (disclosure: I never used this tool myself. It received good reviews on some of the social media websites, so I thought of sharing it with you).

Before You Start

I am sure there are dozens of tools out there that can help you build your résumé to match almost any position, which is all fine. However, I think there is one important thing you ought to keep in mind: applying to jobs that you are under-qualified, or even over-qualified, is not going to do you any good. Most likely you will find the position to be either boring, overwhelming or both. Before you use any résumé building tools, make sure you are 100% passionate about the position. Passion should be the main drive to get the position, not money.

What is Resunate

Resunate is a tool that scores your résumé against the job description. This is how it works:

The higher the score, the more likely your résumé will pass the screening. Again, I have never used this tool before, but it looked interesting enough to share. The video below does a good job describing the service. Good luck with your search!

Dr. Irm Haleem’s book is finally out! The Essence of Islamist Extremism is a

conceptual analysis of radical Islamist rhetoric drawn from temporally and contextually varied Islamist extremist groups, challenging the popular understanding of Islamist extremism as a product of a ‘clash-of-civilizations’. Arguing that the essence of Islamist extremism can only be accurately understood by drawing a distinction between the radical Islamist explanations and justifications of violence, the author posits that despite the radical Islamist contextualization of violence within Islamic religious tenets, there is nothing conceptually or distinctly Islamic about Islamist extremism. She engages in a critical analysis of the nature of reason in radical Islamist rhetoric, asserting that the radical Islamist explanations of violence are conceptually reasoned in terms of existential Hegelian struggles for recognition (as fundamentally struggles against oppression), and the radical Islamist justifications of violence are conceptually reasoned in terms of moral consequentialism.

Why am I so thrilled about this book you ask? One good reason is because Irm is my wife. I was there throughout the process of writing this book. I watched her spend hours at Widener library (Harvard University), and later Firestone library (Princeton University) conceptualizing her ideas, reading hundreds of articles and books and devoting her entire life to finishing this masterpiece. There were many obstacles along the way, but she didn’t give up. She kept fighting. I am so proud of her!

The book itself introduces a fresh approach to the Islamist Extremism discussion. A lot have been said, some more racist than others, but no one really provided an analysis of the real big pink elephant in the room. The Essence of Islamist Extremism does just that!

Follow this link to order your copy of the Essence of Islamist Extremism  (amazon link)

The new WordPress 3.3 upgrade offers some nice features, no doubt. The team at WordPress did a great job polishing their CMS. But there was a cost, for me anyway, to this upgrade. Apparently, ALL the Google+, retweets, and Facebook sharing that my posts accumulated over the years are now gone. Vanished.  Man, I thought to myself, that sucks! Nothing I can do about, right? I wonder if anyone else suffered the same problem. hmm…

Anyway, a friend sent me this video that made me feel a little better. It features some astounding moments (hence the name…) that I am sure will make you smile. It is too bad Yahoo doesn’t offer the option to embed videos.  The most astounding moments of 2011. Enjoy!

Today was a very exciting day for all marketers around the world. Today was the day Twitter reinvented itself with a new design, updated its iPhone app AND launched (limited to a few companies) the most anticipated feature of the year: Twitter brand pages for businesses. I spent most of the day in NYC so I was late to read all this exciting news (and maybe it is better this way), but when I did get to read it I was so thrilled. Especially the last part, Twitter brand pages for businesses.

There were rumors about twitter brand pages for businesses back in April, but I must admit that I never even thought it was going to be this exciting.

I think this post summarizes everything you need to know about the new Twitter brand pages for businesses. There is no point for me to repeat it.

The feature that I think is the most exciting one is the embedded tweets feature. Giving your readers the ability to reply, follow, favorite and re-tweet without even leaving the web page is a huge advantage. I cannot wait to see how companies and bloggers are going to leverage this one. Below is an example of what I am talking about:

Just saw it now (out all day). This is SO exciting! Twitter Launches Brand Pages for Business Accounts ow.ly/7TDo4

— ItaiBoublil (@ItaiBoublil) December9, 2011

We’ve been building something new! Come see: fly.twitter.com #letsfly

— Twitter (@twitter) December8, 2011

That’s all people. It is time to hit the bed. In the meantime, enjoy the video below. It tells today’s story in less than two minutes.

PS: I might have some exciting news to share with you soon… :)

I finally had a chance to test google’s new changes to SERP with a blog post I wrote yesterday. I wanted to test how ‘fresh’ content that appears in SERP really is. I was taken aback. I typed “Pro HDR App”–the title I used for the blog post–in the search box 12 minutes after I published the post, and lo and behold, it was right there! 12 minutes!

Takeaway

This is really a no-brainer. Blog more often. Pick good keywords. Be relavant. I know it sounds simple, but to do so, as a marketer, you’ll need to develop a good content-creation strategy. Personally, I really think a good content-creation strategy is one of the hardest thing to do as a marketer. Don’t get be wrong, you can create crapy content and publish dozens of articles each week, but what do you think is going to happen? Nothing! No conversions. Low to none CTR. A total disaster to your brand. There are many ways to create a good content-creation strategy, but that’s is a topic I’ll need to cover some other time. The point I want to emphasize though is that Google’s new changes to SERP do work, and as a marketer you need to learn how to turn these changes into an advantage over your competition.

How Do You Do It

There are a few ways you can use these changes to your advantage. These are just a few examples I can think of, but feel free to add yours in the comments:

• Product launch: if you are a blogger, you can take advantage of a new product launch event (let’s say iPad 3, for example) by creating content around this event, and strategically choosing your keywords.
• Breaking news: do you have a new product you are planning to announce? Good. Now get to work and start creating content around this product.