My name is Ali. I'm 29. I was born in Surrey in 1978 but as my parents are Iranian we moved back to Iran when I was 2. So I grew up in Iran-Tehran (the capital). I got my BA in Visual Communication- Graphic Design from university of the Arts, Tehran. Meanwhile, I started my career in advertising and design industry since 2001 for about 5 years. I met my wife at university and we used to date for about 4 years. She is a graphic designer too so we had a lot in common. Then we got married 3 years ago in Iran and came here almost two years ago and no children so far.
Geranigah Advertising Group
Photoshoot Backstage
The reasons I came back to the UK were:
1) The opportunity of coming here was easily ready for me and I wanted to use it.
2) Getting new life experience
3) Upgrading myself for my new career
4) And finally, evaluating the new situation as a place of living.
I suppose Why I am telling you about my past could be useful to get to know me better and maybe could find some clue to my consuming behaviour.
So far, we know I was grown up in middle eastern culture and carry the middle eastern attitude with myself but I am trying to learn more European culture and adopt it with the thoughts and behaviours I already have.
My daily life...
At the moment I'm working part-time as a graphic designer in a food company. But it's not a proper job for me and I'm looking for a full time job in advertising industry. So I normally wake up at 8 o'clock and leave home around 8:45. Every day I get my mails around 8:30 and spend at least 10 minutes on them before leaving and if anything important comes up among them I would take it with me to spend more time on my way to work. I try not to miss anything!
I don't have car and I always use public transport. Depend on where I am heading to I choose the tube or bus but always my first choice is bus specially to go to work because it is more convenient and economical. Besides, I love to travel over ground and see the city live and people rushing specially at the beginning of the day.
As I've spent a lot of time in my life on dealing with images I'm really sensitive to the images I see around me. I notice every advertising in the street, papers and on the web as I am a graphic designer and this is what I've been doing for a long time and because UK in the leader of the advertising in the world and I want to make the most of it.
I usually take London Paper and Lite!!! Not because of their "content" but because they are full of images and photos and that is what really cheers me up.
At work I have the opportunity to surf the internet, check my emails etc. Therefore I'm pretty aware of what is going on around the world.
Usually I finish work at 5pm and get home around 6:30pm. Watching TV is one of my routines, about 2 hours a night and in average I watch two movie dvds a week. I don't listen to music a lot but I do listen to BBC online or even on the bus when I'm coming back home.
We come from Iran and that is the country with a lot of problems but I believe it still has one thing adorable and that is the "Value of the Family". In Iran we used to spend most of our times with our families and each person is emotionally dependant on his/her family. It is common between Iranian families, even those live outside Iran, always have the meals with all family members together. Therefore it is not unpredictable that how much hard it is for us to live far away from them. We spend almost 10 hours a week talking with our families in Iran just on the phone and we spend around 5 hours chatting and talking to them on the internet.
At weekends we usually spend our time at home doing cleaning, having good lunch together at home and mostly on Friday and Saturday nights we go to eat out.
At the moment we don't go on holidays abroad because we haven't seen enough of the UK yet.
I don't have a clear plan to stay and live in the UK forever and at the moment it is most possible to go back to my country after a year or two. Therefore I'm not looking for mortgage or any long term investment. I have rented a flat in London, NW11 and at the moment I'm happy with that. Although it's a little bit expensive for me but it's just going to be for a while.
