Gold medalist and pictionary

I met an international gold medalist at the airport.

My friend Mayra and I were about to play pictionary (with some words she had written down on pieces of white paper) when a young man approached us. With no real greeting, he just sat down next to me and asked, "What are you girls playing?"

I thought maybe we were bothering him with our laughter and he wanted us to keep it down, but I answered anyway.

"We're about to play pictionary... want to play?"

And that is how Mayra and I met Babak Mafakheri, a 25-year-old electronics design engineer from Tehran, Iran. He had just come back from iENA, the International Trade Fair for "Ideas-Inventions-New Products". It seeks to solve global economic problems with innovative product ideas.

This year it was held in Nuremberg, Germany with more than 800 innovations from more than 37 countries.

Mafakheri is part of a four-member team and an advisor who designed a remote control boat which can take off vertically from a water surface. He explains that this innovation could help in research by looking in "some places which are not easy for people to go" like in swamps.

This was Mafakheri's first time in an international contest, and his team won first place. He was the only one from his team to come to the trade fair and represent the design.

He hopes to get accepted in a university in Europe to continue with his higher education. His main choice would be a university in Germany.

It was very pleasant to talk to Babak and share stories. It is neat how many interesting people you can meet at the airport or any other public place. For being an electrical engineer... Babak's drawing skills in pictionary were not that bad either:

(Top: onion, bottom: pizza)