Scientific knowledge and practice has always fascinated me since I was a school boy. No other activity than solving a puzzle or finding an answer to a bugging question has ever pleased me more. I still remember how enticing I found the opening of my 2nd-grade "Sciences" workbook where we were taught about "scientific method." Posing the question, researching possible answers, putting them to experiment, and voila finding the answer. I did not think how or why all this should work out. It was not a matter of logic, but of sheer curiosity and ultimately the joy of finding out.

It is still so. I still enjoy finding things out. And perhaps that's the only reason I have chosen to be part of the physics community. I find it the closest one in the plathora of academic disciplines to the pure practice of finding out. I have had my doubts of course. The way 16- or 17-year-old students are supposed to choose their undergrad majors in the inverted funnel of post-secondary education of Iran, I was only guided by my enthusiasm for physics, and the support of my mother. All my other interests took the form of major or minor hobbies. After a year or so, I had second thoughts about changing to maths, since I found myself irresistably attracted by their logical and rigorous exposition. In my solo or duo (with R. Jamei) walks back from school alongside the noisy, polluted Azadi street in Tehran, I decided to continue with physics only because I found its approach to understanding the world aesthetically and pragmatically more appealing—and philosophically truer! I was perhaps already high on the teachings of my field—it had, in that short time, affected my worldview deeply.

I'm recalling this history since, after 10 years of physics education and half a globe away from were it all so excitingly started, I feel drained out of my energy and enthusiasm. 'Why?' I constantly ask myself with no immediate or proper answer. I do still find myself very interested in the scientific activity, in the practice of finding things out, but this interest by itself does not converge to a full-time engagement. I fear my so-far life-long interest in physics is subsiding into merely a major hobby. For some time, I have been thinking this was a time-management problem of co-ordinating my various literary and scientific interests, and an inevitably busier and information-flooded life. My next idea was that I'm being discouraged by the very tough subject I am working on, namely high-temperature superconductivity $\subset$ strongly-correlated systems $\subset$ condensed-matter physics. The hardship in proceeding in any smooth way translates into an ever-present frustration that is almost unbearable. My next observation was that I do not have enough community contacts with other physicists. A few short but inspiring converstaions can sparkle a renewed source of energy in me that can fuel the core engine of my working for a few weeks.

I have tried to reinforce the strings that pull me down to work in spite of its frustrations and disappointments. This weblog is one of them. I am also constantly trying to re-examine the roots by which I'm connected to doing physics. This note here is a clue to be continued.