sorry to hear about an apparent slide in the quality of Bad Monkey beer, it certainly used to be very good.

Something like Arab food, yes, but not identical; Iranians are not Arabs. Truth is, I find a lot of it a bit bland, but I can't remember having really high-class Iranian food. Very surprised the restaurant in question did not have flat bread, rice or yoghurt-based sauces (surely they had yoghurt, no?)
What do you mean by 'Chinese style menu'?

@Magnificao: I like your last post.
@Opper: But I think you've missed the major incentive for car ownership: to be seen as a bit higher on the linear-'Progress' scale, obviously very important in any hierarchical society, and more and more so in one that 'progresses' as fast as this one has - even faster than the US after WWI, when Henry Ford did his bit.

In the face of this factor, not being able to park (either because there is no place to park or because you haven't yet learned how to park a car without at least one assistant) is not a serious disincentive.
Personally I think it's a terrible way to run a railroad and leads to collective disaster, and not just in relation to automobiles. And it's global.

Above comments all good. I had money wired to me here some years ago, took about a month. There was indeed a minor detail that was wrong that had to be corrected - in my case it was in the original wire request from a stockbroker.
By the way, BOA sucks, they're guilty of almost everything all over the planet.

@Magnifico: Minor point, and I may be wrong, but I don't think 'art' was ever banned in Islam, it was only representative art, pictorial art, that was banned. I'm not saying this was a good move, but it led to a very high development of nonpictorial art (calligraphy, geometry) which I, for one, find wonderful. Take a good look at (especially) Iranian architecture, especially mosque architecture and design, inside and out, or the really very fine logo of Al-Jazeera.