It's a rarity to encounter with truly successful individuals who owe their achievements to their own competence. Ali Bajelan is certainly one of those folks.
Amazing artistic psyche capable of transmitting the aesthetic values in something as simple as a small sketch, admirably keen intellect that carries the weight of judgment in the most sensible manner, all wrapped up in a meek yet confident package.
Al is too young to be a legend and too old to be a prodigy, but none of that would stop him from doing what he has to do: contribution to the world.
I was fortunate enough to have a few minutes of Mr.Bajelan's time and that was more than sufficient to be a ground for a groovy interview.
Al is "twenty five and a half" years old as he put it; he has lived in gobs of countries for lots of years after leaving Iran at the age of seventeen.He is a major in fields of Mechatronic (robotic engineering),Nano and digital technology.
Nevertheless being a technophile is not going to hinder his substantial artistic profile; Ali has also mastered conceptual and artistic design along with musical instruments such as piano. I would like to admit that I personally have seen only a small portion of his design capability through an extremely elegant drawing of an auto that he left for me after observing one of my Talk Show classes. However, this competency is rooted in Al's childhood since he has been involved with drawing and art ever since, not to mention the multitude of international awards including "UNICEF youth award", and "world's eighth underage designer" that he attained in this area.
I then went on to ask him about his experience regarding visiting so many different countries [mainly in Europe], in response he said: " I have been around a lot, and I really enjoyed seeing these things [various aspects of a new society and a new culture], discovering these things, and talking different languages …I think it sets you apart from the crowd in so many ways". Although, he has certainly not been victimized by the infamous phenomenon of culture-shock simply because Al is profoundly interested in the European life-style and culture.
"They read a lot, they go to theaters a lot, they go to cinemas, they go to art galleries, they go to museums...they know a lot about a lot." said he, and then proceeded: "unfortunately other countries do not do that and especially smaller cities in Europe do not have that; so I am talking about metropolitan cities like Paris, London….these kind of places."
But we all know that having an "up in the air" life style has its own share of disadvantages as well, so the first prominent challenge would be adaptation to the continuous changes from one society to another since the Law of Inertia a.k.a Newton's first law tells us that change is difficult (let us get a little bit nerdy!).
Significance of ESL in the contemporary world was another subject that was discussed in our interview, and Al simply mentioned that "if you do not speak English you'd be considered stupid and illiterate in so many ways!" and that is merely due to the fact that English is the key to communication with millions of people all over the world.
In Europe for example, "everyone speaks English and in fact every one has to learn it" even in countries such as Germany and France which the notion of nationalism and official language is bought and practiced by almost all the population.
Now wait for the punch-line; living in so many different countries for what is worth, nets you with the opportunity to familiarize yourself with "shit-load" of different accents.
Then we discussed the impact of modern technology on academia which not to my surprise is as substantial in the eyes of Mr.Bajelan as it is to all of us.
Al himself has passed four courses for his Master's via e-learning. As a result it is quite common to use this technology for the benefit of learning pretty much everything, ESL not excluded.
To those of Talk Show students who are willing to move to other countries Al says that "they should expect the worst" since the aforementioned decision would certainly be rather arduous in so many different ways from the new culture and language to the exclusive fundamentals of that community.
As a long-time reviewer of movies for Total Film London and UK Film Society, who believes the financial intentions have overshadowed all other dimensions of cinematography in the contemporary world, Al recommends all the language learners out there to cherish movies as the best way to not only learn a new language but also the culture and mindset of the guild who speak it.
You can listen to the interview via Talk Show Podcast.
