life is art, art is life

Bonsai Tree Climbing

2011-08-21T00:41:00.010+03:00

At first, the screen is dark.

Then slowly, out from the distances we start hearing sound of the quite murmuring and the occasional sniffing of people. Apparently it's crowded.

The screen is light now. You see me - standing in a courtyard of a worn out village house. With people all around me. Most of them are old - with extremely wrinkled faces and hands. They are farmers.

Why are they there? Why am I here?

A coffin near the coop. Its cover is open and there is a body of which we can only see an old woman's white, cold, little face. She is my grandmother who died the night before.

My grandfather is standing near me. As monumental as always. How can such a small man be of such charisma? His whole existence there radiates a sincere sadness to the courtyard; elegantly. Near him my father. With his red eyes. You can tell, he had cried. A childish expression on his face just like the other time I had seen him cry. Maybe no matter at what age, every man losing his mother is supposed to look childish.

When not handshaking with people to accept the condolences, I look at the house. At its poor walls. At its courtyard shadowed with grapevine leaves. At its simple and ugly wooden door. At my grandfather's tractor. At the sofa on its veranda. I'm amazed by their sizes, they are so small. They were all so mighty and big at the days where I would spend my summers in this village house as a city boy. As if my childhood shrank or as if I've walked away from it and now looking back.

Wind the clock back - only maybe 7 hours. Now stop.

It's me coming from some bar late in the night. I'm half smashed. Enter the apartment stumbling to find my phone blinking. Mom has called me maybe 10 times and then she left one of her famous short bad news messages. "your grandmother dead, call me." I call her to hear her protests that I'm not at easy reach when needed. We make an appointment to meet in the morning and drive to the village together then we hang up.

After the short hassle, I look at the walls. It's quite. I can hear the buzzing of the street light near my window. I feel guilty for a moment to have fun at the minutes when my grandmother was dying. But it quickly passes. I put myself onto the bed, set the alarm clock and close my eyes. With all the alcohol in my blood, the world is turning.

Only then I come to realize the feeling that captivated me as soon as I heard the news from my mother. And two tears find their way out of my closed eye lids and roll down to my ears. Before falling asleep I murmur: "It's so difficult to say goodbye to your childhood."

Now wind the clock further back - 5 years maybe. We are looking for a scene where we are eating with my father - without my mother being present drinking Raki - there aren't many such moments. So it should be easy to find. Now - stop.

I took you here because this is the day where I first saw my father cry. Over a woman - of course. Over my mother. It feels to me, the moment you see your father cry for the first time, is a turning point in your life. It's one of the clear indications that you are saying goodbye to your childhood. It is the moment where you realize you are about to enter a world without superheros, saviors and miracles. That is of course if you are not a religious person. There's always something childish about being religious.

Now at this courtyard, near my grandmother's dead body, feeling utterly lonesome in between people, my gaze sneaks away to the mulberry tree standing on its own in the backyard of the house. I let my eyes dance with the tree to share its remote peace.

I remember that some of my childhood's biggest adventures involved climbing on it, finding my way through its branches which seemed to be endless then. I would day-dream that I was an explorer trying to find his way through some jungle. Of course every once in a while, usually seconds before dropping dead because of starvation, the explorer would find a delicious fruit to find the energy to carry on.

Also the mulberry tree shrank. Strange - it looks almost like a bonsai tree to me now. From a distance, every tree looks like a bonsai tree if you walk away far enough from it in - be it distance, feeling or time.

I find myself secretly smiling thinking about the bonsai trees I'm climbing at the current stage of my life.

Little bit of humor, dead body of my grandmother, memories about my childhood. When they come together, you momentarily realize that there are very few things to take seriously in this life. And this blog entry isn't one.

YOU Killing YOUR Half

2011-04-02T00:22:00.005+03:00

http://www.innerlocusart.com/comfort.html

You set out for a walk in the forest with your dwarfs. You find a little lake in between the trees. You lean to water surface with a narcissistic desire to see your image in the middle of leafs' vivid green reflecting.

Your reflection is looking at you with a childishly curious expression. You look back at it with a cold expression in your long face. Your eyes are bubbling with indifference - an indifference which could
quieten any sound.

You want it to be dead. Your reflection - you want it to be dead. Your other part - you want it to be dead. You are taken by the illusion that if you do so, you'll feel a wild pleasure which should be exclusive to sophisticated vandals; barbars of great taste. You feel like if you kill it, you'll become a piece of puzzle that will fit in perfectly.

You wait leaning to water. You look at your reflection. You wonder how long more it will take until your image in water finally drowns. You feel that a masochistic pleasure is starting to grow in you - almost something sexual. You keep looking at it. You keep looking until you once again realize you'll never be free of it. You say "fuck it" and turn away. So does it.

Haydarpaşa In Colors

2010-12-11T12:30:00.005+02:00

Haydarpaşa, with all its all magnificence, is one of the most dominant buildings in Istanbul's soul. If Istanbul is a meeting point between east and west, then Haydarpaşa, being the main train station on the Asian side, is the very point where these two symbolic poles touch each other perhaps in the most elegant manner. It's like an eagle head proudly standing at the edge of the Asian continent looking at the European shores of Istanbul with a confidence that it seems to take from the vast continent behind.

It was always depicted in the old Turkish movies as the first and rather shocking contact point between peasant Anatolian families and the "challenging" Istanbul with all its - to any foreign eye - intimidating skyline that can be observed right when stepping out the main hall. Perhaps it's this effect or surprise that it makes it "so Istanbul".

In those movies, you would mostly observe these families observing this skyline - which seemingly is so much more different to what they have in their villages - with thoughtful eyes and maybe also hear the hero utter a word or two showing that he accepts the challenge he is being offered. That that challenge is still the major one going on in Turkey's politics today.

This show I came across by accident. Like many of the Cultural Capital - 2010 things, I didn't hear about this when it happened. Anyway, better than nothing, I'm putting it here.Nice one, indeed, done by these guys.

‘YEKPARE’ (monolithic) from nerdworking on Vimeo.

ArtActors Community Website Online

2010-11-06T17:34:00.002+02:00

http://www.artactors.org/

Yet Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves

2010-08-17T00:09:00.002+03:00

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

...

Oscar Wilde

Thanks to the Flying Dutchman from Turkey.

David and Goliath

2010-08-15T20:54:00.003+03:00

Here is the result of our new project with ArtActors. This time we worked on Caravaggio's David and Goliath.

I'm starting a new category - ArtActors - under which I'll be collecting our work.

Blurry Picture of The Beautiful Day

2010-08-09T22:54:00.013+03:00

The moment you realize you are facing with beauty is the moment where you feel like a new born into a different reality. Like a baby with instincts to breathe or reach out for mother, we open up ourselves to a momentary grasp of eternity.

It is like to have a slight and curious look into a train rapidly passing by - seeing inside but not having the means to understand what it's really like inside. The beauty is a window opening to eternity remaining open for just a tantalizing moment. But even that little dose of eternity you capture through it, makes you a little richer.

Pain - in this sense - can be beautiful, because the true beauty of a thing lies in the way it is capable to wound our souls. Like titches on faces or scars on hands, a soul with its new wounds obtains new meanings or depths. Every wound uncovers a new unknown to discover. The beauty of a thing lies in its capacity to make us feel lost but at home - at the same time.

A beautiful thing infects our beings and that infection never leaves us again. It circulates - in words we utter, in thoughts we create; traces of that infection will be evident.

When living the beautiful day, there is a point you realize you're being infected. You look around with a humble awe. There is no yearning, there is no missing; you are one with who are missing.

From behind the camera, the beautiful day is something to be documented sometimes at the expense of not experiencing it. Its rarity inflicts an unsuppressable inspiration to capture it. The desire is to imprison the feeling on a piece of paper in such a way that it radiates a feeling of completeness, to make the eye the witness of a state of unity. Unity through the empathy with the one who experienced it but also in the sense it makes the viewer feel the unity with life.

It is like taking the picture of that tantalizing short moment where window into eternity stays open and perhaps because of this very ambition, the photographer is doomed to fail when it comes to share it with others.

But sometimes the picture of the beautiful day becomes a personal beauty for the one who is taking it; a personal description that is inspired by the tension between the beauty and his alienated machine is born.

The beautiful thing is a like star in otherwise dark skies. So no matter how you look for it, the question maybe is this:

How bright will our skies be when we watch it in our last breath?

"...A true philosopher, Spinoza believed, would cultivate what he called intuitive knowledge, a flash of insight that fused all the information he had acquired discursively and which was an experience of what Spinoza believed to be God. He called this experience "beatitude"..."

from "The Battle for God" / Karen Armstrong

The Worst Man Speech

2010-06-30T00:10:00.006+03:00

As mentioned in my previous post, I was in Italy for Idil and Axel's wedding. Nothing in the wedding was organized according to traditions - whatsoever.

So not surprisingly, there wasn't a Best Man for Axel; but I took the honour to be his Worst Man.

Here is my Worst Man speech upon his consent:

"About 18 Months ago, in the offices of the very same client I was providing my services to, a rather crazy looking guy started to appear. A foreigner; someone who wouldn't talk much but when he did, he did so loudly.

Soon through common friends we started to have occasional smoke breaks together. We would talk about stuff, discuss about intellectually enriching experiences such as women of South Africa or night life in Kazakhstan.

As much as he was open in the way he told about his experiences, he had a certain attitude of reservedness - something I at first attributed to his flaw of Scandinavian nature. But later on, I started to trace a familiar quality in his reservedness. And that feeling of familiarity might have led to a series of terrible consequences including our very existence here on this beautiful day.

The way I felt was that his reservedness was the kind that could only stem from a good and essentially innocent heart in an effort to protect itself from the evil world outside. In my humble observation though, at intelligent human beings, this kind of reservedness tends to usually couple with a strong and bitter sense of sarcasm which Axel interestingly doesn't have.

But as anyone else spending more than 10 minutes with him, you could realize why Axel didn't need to include any traces of sarcasm in his behaviour. Because his very existence in the universe is a sarcastic joke. He is sarcasm itself. Not bending concepts, phrases, meanings with irony but bending LIFE itself instead.

Luckily for our lives to bend, Axel likes' influence isn't necessary. In life's genes we have enough irony to feed countless life changing moments. At such a moment, I have decided to bring these two people together and still, even today, I'm surprised by this very decision, let alone its consequences.

OK - let's share some gossips:

At first, I mentioned about Axel to Idil. Upon her consent, I mentioned to Axel about this chick I have been knowing for such a long time. I showed him pictures of hers on Facebook and he said: "YEAH, IT WORKS FOR ME"

Axel, of course, didn't have a clue who he was talking about. I told him that her looks was just the start. Yes, she was very smart but what made her special was her misleadingly incurious, cheerful yet serious attitude towards life. I told him about the many cases at weddings where people were curious who that girl in her all the way cool dress dancing with all the grace was. Well - here we are at her wedding.

Anyway şekerler, they came together at Osman's birthday party for the first time in a dark little bar. I was with Idil when she first saw him from the distance. Axel was buying a drink probably knowing that he was being observed. Then those words spilled out of Idil's mouth: "HE LOOKS LIKE A BANDIT!".

Yes - Axel has tough face. Especially with his new titches on his forehead which he wants us to believe to be gained in heroic action where he saved a poor woman from some savage man - which - of course - we don't buy. Because it would be much more Axelish for him to get drunk in some shitty little bar in France to hit his head at the doorstep when leaving; right after to lose his laptop, wallet and not to mention his one shoe of course.

But yes, even without those titches that time, we agreed with Idil that he looked bit like Klaus Kinkski.

And all this talk gave me a chill for a moment. Because I was introducing a guy - a bandit like looking buy - to one of my best friends in this world, on the sole basis of my belief he had a good heart? I kept silent.

Today - after more than a year - I don't anymore believe that Axel has a good heart. Because I had the privilege to experience the means to know how warm, loving and welcoming he is.

A good friend of mine once said that she believed that everyone deserves a pair. Yes, I believe that too. But I further believe that everyone deserves a home.

So, what is home? Is it just an apartment? Is it a city? Is it a culture? Is it the perfect drag of smoke you have in bright sunlight on a cool day? Or is it a feeling of warmth fed by love we give to and receive from our families and friends that we carry everywhere?

I'd like to toast to these two beautiful people now. For literally creating a home for themselves, but also for making my home and each and every one of your homes and OUR HOME bigger, warmer and more colorful with their love.

Axel - welcome home, baby. And I know - by definition - I'm always welcome too. Because I'm your worst man.

I love you, guys."

Art Actors

2010-06-29T23:18:00.009+03:00

Last weekend I was in Italy for my good friends' - Idil and Axel's wedding. There is no way for me to describe how much at home I felt in that creepy castle in the middle of beautiful Tuscany. About 30 people - most of them knowing each other since a very long time - became a great family under the same roof. Everywhere we turned we found friendship and care. It was a weekend filled with joy of life.

Result of one of our many little night time activities we organiszd during our stay; reenactment of Da Vinci's "Last Supper":

First with men;

and then with women;

Idil at this one just became the perfect Jesus.

There is a tendency in the group to turn it into a collective hobby where we would re-enact masterpieces like this one.

Let's see how it develops. Hope to share further results here soon.

Speaking of Istanbul

2010-06-18T13:39:00.002+03:00

Here is what an Istanbullu is like...

Oven Baked Dried White Beans

2010-06-06T23:08:00.003+03:00

I've tried to cook some dried white beans using slow cooking methods. The results tasted quite good to me. One thing to mention is the use of cast iron pot - which gives better results in slow cooking.

Place the beans in a bowl and pour over with cold water - make sure it covers the beans by about two centimeters. Let this sit overnight in your fridge.
Heat your oven to 100-120 Centigrade degrees.
Boil two glasses of water.
Take two mid sized onions, chop them.
Take about half a kilo tomatoes, peel and slice them into half a centimeter cubes.
Take two fresh green peppers and slice them.
Take a clove of garlic and crush it slightly.
Take half a kilo chicken ham meat without bones. Slice it into roughly 2 - 3 cm pieces.
Heat half a glass of olive oil. Roast the garlic first for couple of minutes. Then add in the onions and roast it on medium heat until the onion pieces turn pinkish.
Add the chicken and roast on slightly for about 1-2 minutes.
Add tomatoes, green peppers, some salt and two pinches of dried oregano and cook on for couple of minutes.
Drain and add your beans. Add some boiled water. Make sure it covers the beans by about two centimeters. Stir and cook it until it starts to bubble.
Cover the pot and put it into the oven. Keep it there for 2-3 hours depending on the type of your beans.

Afiyet olsun.

Monochrome From Yann Tiersen

2010-06-06T12:18:00.003+03:00

Another nice song from Tiersen - this time with its video. I was thinking... Does liking the idea of this clip confirm I'm an engineer?

IF

2010-06-06T00:29:00.001+03:00

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

How Istanbul Feels To An Istanbullu Man

2010-05-31T01:02:00.010+03:00

I think for a man, there is a strong sense of wisdom in kissing a not spotlessly beautiful woman. How life wears a woman's body, the faults and even more, how she handles these; her fragility makes a woman attractive.

If Istanbul is the chubby, middle aged next door woman with large breasts, then -say- Paris is the photo-shopped beauty on the cover of Sports Illustrated - in a continuous state of narcissistic masturbation.

If there is no other woman in the world when you're making love, then you know you are in love and probably being loved - this way or another. And at some point, as irrational as it is, if the city you live in is the most beautiful city in the world to you; then you know you truly live in that city and that city, I assure you, is and will be breathing with you - wherever you are.

Picture from Ara Güler.

IG Nobel Prizes

2010-05-30T14:26:00.009+03:00

IG Nobel Prizes is an actual scientific award that was designed around a very interesting concept.

Wikipedia's definition is:
"The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think".

... Ten prizes are awarded each year in many categories, including the Nobel Prize categories of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace, but also other categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research. With the exception of three prizes in the first year (Administratium, Josiah Carberry, and Paul DeFanti), the Ig Nobel Prizes are for genuine achievements."

I think this approach - I mean - bringing humor into the area of science is something we deeply need. Because somewhere I think, without humor, we tend to decay; things where humor isn't involved tend to become inhumane.

And here is my favorite research topic that was awarded in 2008:

ECONOMICS PRIZE. Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that professional lap dancers earn higher tips when they are ovulating.

Makes sense - eh?

Not Being Able to Present The Turkish Identity In Eurovision

2010-05-29T14:28:00.020+03:00

(This discussion on Eksi Sozluk was opened to criticize Turkey's entry selection for Eurovision.)

Assuming that Eurovision is really a place to present an identity - an interesting thought though I must say -, right away, the question that comes to one's mind is what Turkish identity that is not well presented in Eurovision is like. We, as a nation, love to live at the peaks of a reactionary attitude. But, don't you think that slowly we need to start to understand that this land we live in has a history and that we didn't land here from space or even more absurdly from Central Asia? Our essence is a mixture. Only 7% of our genetic pool is originated from Central Asia while around 30% is from Middle East and another around 30% is from Europe.

We have made ourselves so deeply condition that we Turks have to be the center of the world, that we are a very special race crowned by the contemporary fact that we are a Muslim nation, we tend not to understand or see that we are owners of this also in terms of civilizations highly fertile land . Being cut from history other than the official one, we tend to forget what really matters is the LAND. Cultures flourishing on it don't vanish but only change form by interacting with each other. Have no illusions: We are Urartu, we are Hittite, we are Sumer, we are Persia, we are Antic Greece, we are Troi, we are Byzantine, we are Armenia, we are Seldjuk and we are Ottoman.

With this certain stupid idea what a real Turk is like (encoded by official and still too nationalistically oriented education system) in our head, we struggle to find whether we fit into that image. But the minute we try to fit ourselves into something is the actual moment where we put a distance to our true selves.

Manga, Mor ve Ötesi, Hadise, Kenan Dogulu - all of these artists are rooted from this land. They grew up here and they were loved here.They are PART of this land. They reflect this land. Without any complexes they should be accepted.

And if really needed - I don't see why we should it need it though - we shouldn't refrain from looking directly into the eyes of our sarcastic foreign friends and say "hey - we are this, I don't fucking care about the rest, really."

Don't think we are pure. Nobody actually is. But living up to the idea that we are mixture can be really nice - creative, passionate, joyful. And we have an opportunity where we could realize this state of mind more easily than most of the other nation states.

Armenians Killed 519.000 Turks

2010-05-27T22:59:00.005+03:00

A sentence designed to continue like this: "... therefore incidents where 1.5 Million Armenians were killed cannot be called a genocide."

Numbers quoted might be correct or not. Incidents that happened could be called a genocide or not - this actually isn't the point. Far from it. But the claim that the suffering party has to be 100% the victim like in the Holocaust to call it a genocide is utterly foolish to me.

In the end, while until only 100 years ago, "Kurds, Armenians, Turks etc." lived in this land, now "Kurds, Turks etc." live. Find the difference between the two pictures.

After Pancho's Death

2010-05-27T22:16:00.002+03:00

When I think of Pancho, the most predominant feeling that comes to my mind is patience. Patience I would preach myself seated in bed whenever he would cry in the middle of the night for maybe fourth time because he had diarrhea and wanted to go out. Or patience I would preach myself whenever he would want to spend more than 10 minutes sniffing at the very same tree on our walks. (later on I developed a very cunning strategy where I was actually able to read my morning paper while walking him.)

I'm not sure if he loved me. I wasn't maybe the ideal care giver for him. But I loved him. Not only for his cute nose but also for things I have learnt from him. I think, thanks to him, I'll struggle less about being a father if I ever come to that point.

Enjoy the winds and sunshine there. The cookie pool too, of course.

Pakistan - Observations

2010-03-17T20:25:00.010+02:00

I have been away for a trip to Pakistan as you might have noticed through my twitter updates.

The experience overall was great - yes this is the word; it was simply great. I'm not going to say that its greatness stems from great fun I had or wonderful things I saw. Life isn't only about having fun and seeing wonderful things after all - is it?

The way I feel is; this experience has added something to my personality - subtly and profoundly. Like every precious experience in our lives.

I'm not able to put my thoughts into words right now - maybe later after my observations get a bit brewed in my head. Until then; here is Pakistan through my eyes:

Pakistan - Observations

Thank you, Pakistan. For your hospitality - but before anything else, for your all the way humane vulnerability and sensibleness you shared with us.

Lively Atoms Coming From The Sun

2010-02-18T00:44:00.002+02:00

The title is direct translation of the rather bizarre name of (probably) first vegetarian and raw food restaurant in Turkey that was owned by my grandfather.

Today, as an act of great surprise, my grandmother gave this to me which she found in an old box; a menu used in that restaurant for which I had been looking for quite a long time. This piece of paper dating back to 1956 is a precious artifact of my family's history.

Restaurant of Lively Atoms Coming From The Sun
List of Dishes
Owner: Ejder Akısan
Beyoğlu - Kurabiye Street 24.

Next challenge; to locate exact the spot where it operated.

Looking for Some Monday Inspiration?

2010-02-08T12:01:00.000+02:00

Yann Tiersen might be of help:

Magus - Bozcaada - Fowles

2010-01-30T18:00:00.012+02:00

Magus - a novel by John Fowles - is my favorite book. There are so many elements in it that I like. It is the book for instance which made me question the "realness" of things around me in the most surprising manner: One night reading the book, I must have fallen asleep for a couple of hours to wake up in the middle of the night. I walked to the fridge in the kitchen - a reflex by me -, opened the door, looked into it and then for at least 5 seconds there was a time where I couldn't tell whether what was happening at that moment was real or not. I'm not talking about a case where you would merely try to tell, what you encounter is a dream or not. It was that coupled with: "Suppose this fridge is real; but the way I perceive the feta cheese in it - it doesn't feel real at all. Maybe the fridge is real but the cheese is a set up."

Bullshit in the end - but this is what this book does to you. It shakes your sense of reality - strongly, subtly and in a very smart, intelligent way.

Another thing that stroke me right away was that it was set on an imaginary Greek island - Phraxos (means "fenced") which Fowles created based on this experience in the Greek island of Spetsai. While the atmosphere he describes establishes the perfect background for his mind game, the way he explains the atmosphere in these islands is simply magic - particularly for someone like me with strong ties to one particular island in the very same Aegean sea: Bozcaada (Tenedos in Greek).

Now after maybe 7-8 years, I have returned to this book, this time reading its English original. How different it feels when compared to reading its Turkish translation! And how different the book feels after all the experiences I had in my last decade.

Anyway, this is how he describes his experience in Spetsai in his introduction for Magus:

"...No writer will happily disclose the deeper biographical influences of his work, which are seldom those of outward date and occupation and I am no exception. But my island of Phraxos (the "fenced" island) was the real Greek island of Spetsai, where I taught in 1951 and 1952 at a boarding school...

Away from its inhabited corner Spetsai was truly haunted, though by subtler - and more beautiful - ghosts than those I have created. Its pine-forest silences were uncanny, unlike those I have experienced anywhere else; like an eternally blank page waiting for a note or a word. They gave the most curious sense of timelessness and of incipient myth. In no place was it less likely that something would happen; yet somehow happening lay always poised. The genius loci was very similar indeed to that of Mallarme's finest poems of the unseen flight, of words defeated before inexpressible. I'm hard put to convey the importance of this experience for me as a writer. It imbued and marked me far more profoundly than any of my more social and physical memories of the place. I already knew I was a permanent exile from many aspects of English society, but a novelist has to enter deeper exiles still.
...
"

I was going to write an entry about Bozcaada but I thought this paragraph above sums it all so perfectly that it will hold the need for a while.

May you rest in peace, John, my man.

Naked side of Bozcaada as seen through my eyes during a winter storm - 5-6 years ago. Overlooking to Ayana bay.

My Answer to Life

2010-01-29T17:07:00.005+02:00

After a year, which wasn't particularly good, I thought I could treat myself with bit of self spoilage. Ladies and Gentlemen, here is my new view at 5 in the morning with that magic orange tree in my block's garden; with its oranges making me remember about life's beauty - with its ups and downs.

What Genius Sounds Like

2010-01-24T18:59:00.001+02:00

It seems Fazil Say did it again.

He took this classical Turkish song from 18th. century (one of my favorites),...

to turn into this brilliant jazz piece:

How To Fish A Cat - A National Geographic Documentary

2010-01-22T18:18:00.008+02:00

It's one of the many interesting things about my new apartment block. We share the block with cats. They are allowed to enter the building as they wish, live there as long as they want. While feeding the stray cats is a common habit in this city - as matter of fact it's an essential part of Istanbul's culture - I must admit I had never seen this nice tradition being taken to this extreme.

Anyway - I like cats; so no big deal despite the smell in the block.

Today, one of these cats sneaked into my apartment and found her way to my extremely small laundry room which has a corner in its end where a cat can perfectly fit in without being reached by any human being.

At first I tried for many minutes to convince the extremely anxious cat to come out using my most charming voice to not much luck until the point I realized that the whole scene must be looking extremely bizarre. So I initiated the execution of plan B.

Right after this pic was taken, she ran back to her corner. Flashlight scared her a lot.

I went to the corner shop to get some frozen turkey döner. Here is what happened next:

Good bye Miss Cat.

Nayu - Gevende

2010-01-22T14:01:00.004+02:00

This song's lyrics are in Turkish but every single word is sung backwards giving the impression that it is written in a totally different language. Nayu - the title - actually stands for Uyan - meaning "Wake Up".

Amazing...

About Morality

2010-01-15T12:11:00.001+02:00

Is it possible that we created moral rules to only increase predictability in human behavior? We wanted to feel safe and for that we sacrificed on our own freedom for only to have a higher predictability on how other people would act under different conditions.

As Maslow's pyramid suggests, reaching a sense of safety has always been a top priority for us. Fear as it seems to me is the very base upon which we built our existence. In a sense fear is sister to existence or better to say fear is the anti existence. Because the moment we start to exist, we are born with a desire to survive, with a fear of not existing, of dying.

This base of fear diffuses to all parts of our developing lives - slowly and subtly. Also to our social relationships. We fear each other and this fear makes us to do the most stupid things.

I think Rumi had it all right (I hope he is - as these 4 lines sum up my life philosophy):

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings.
Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

Instead of negotiating with and trying to understand what being a human is all about, to deal with the fear, we have been choosing the much easier path. We created rules to imprison ourselves and others; reference points where we could align human behavior to. But these very rules sometimes make us alienate ourselves.

Why I wrote is a duel scene I saw in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. You see - until only couple of centuries ago, it was morally wrong to kill someone unless you invited the person to a duel. How graceful hypocrisy can get - eh?

Re-thinking History

2010-01-02T15:15:00.011+02:00

In this post, I had tried to describe a fundamental problem that I have been observing in us - the mankind where I attempted to explain how under the information bombardment of today, we sometimes tend to fall into the trap of not thinking and not questioning.

"..Especially in our age of communication, when I see how some thought patterns are prepared, packaged into easy to swallow thought tablettes to be consumed by public and served through public opinion channels worldwide is somewhat disappointing.

It's like these radioactive marker drugs they inject into your vein to see how your blood travels through your body; a thought is created and you see it travel from continent to continent, from country to country, from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood for years - without being questioned, without being re-thought, accepted as they arrive, used with confidence and pride in every intellectual conversation."

Ironically, technologies we used to create this environment are taking their roots without any exception from science and the idea of continuous questioning behind it. Yet, while science's products reach more and more people thanks to our consumption cycles, the philosophy behind it becomes more and more isolated to ever shrinking, privileged oligarchic structures.

In any second, pre-processed information is flowing from all around the world right to wherever we are in such quantity and frequency that we barely find the time to even only consume them. We rely on people who think for us, people who sum it all up and tell us what we should think about things.

We don't even need to go 20 years back in time to see how fundamentally amount of information we receive and share on a daily basis has increased. We tweet, we facebook, we google, we cnn, we bbc; we do many things to collect facts from and distribute to the world. Yet these "facts" are mostly products of a perception and rarely just simple facts. They are processed and prepared by individuals with an established paradigm to be served for the hunger of our already established perceptions.

Perceptions or paradigms more in general seem to have their own appetite. Just like we tend to favor a pizza as compared to celery, our paradigms seem to hunger for certain kind of information, certain kind of factual looking comments, not just the facts. Because, the idea is not to eat something good for our health and feel good in longer terms; the idea is to reach satisfaction as fast as possible through holding the hot, crispy crust and melted mozzarella. And today's information bombardment mostly plays on our need for junk food. Not on our civilization's health.

Come to think of it, none of the wars were caused by celery but almost all of them were caused by pizza.

We think we are talking about facts. But truth is we talk about someone else's truths. We fail to recognize how deceitful facts can be.

I truly believe that human kind is more open to influence than we think. I believe we tend to think human beings in general are close to influence so we find it easier (and more profitable for some of us) to milk them instead of trying to change them. Yet, mostly the problem arises only because we don't prepare environments to allow people's exposure to different ideas.

That's why, one of the three potential social responsibility (Like many other things, this phrase has been exploited so much for the sake of brand identities that it sounds miserably corporate) topics that I would want to work on in the future is improvement of the quality of social sciences education at primary and secondary schools.

Particularly in the context of history teaching, I have been trying to follow new developments. I'm happy to see that there are waves of improvement in many countries where the history books are being revised and much more importantly children are taught how to reason. Yet the efforts put are very slow and very small in their effects when compared with the realities out. Because mostly the books they are based on, the traditional history writing in short, is crippled.

A quite old article written by Stefanos Yerasimos (RIP) - a Greko-Turkish historian - had served as a great mind opener for me. In that particular article, we was mentioning how in history writing, events are used as an, what he calls, "Argument Library" where some historians tend to select arguments from this library to support THEIR VIEW they had ALREADY established and omit the rest sometimes to severely cripple the soul of mankind.

Like every fundamentalism, nationalism has its echo, its even more irrational anti thesis. So as long as there is no global effort to revolutionize our education systems, we will keep failing.

But when we are doing this, I doubt it that rationalism alone could help us out:

In the biographical documentary named "The Fog of War", Robert McNamara (US Secretary for Foreign Affairs during bloodiest Vietnam war days) tells us about 11 lessons he had extracted from his long life. And one of the most important one goes; "Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us."

The reason why I wrote all of these is actually remembering about this favorite paragraph of mine from Charlie Chaplin's wonderful autobiography (My Autobiography, Charlie Chaplin):

"...His (Eisenstein's) film Ivan the Terrible, which I saw after the second World war, was the acme of all historical pictures. He dealt with history poetically - an excellent way of dealing with it. When I realized how distorted even recent events have become, history as such only arouses my skepticism. Whereas a poetic interpretation achieves a general effect of the period. After all, there are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books..."

Granted, I never could manage to like "Ivan The Terrible" and to deal with history and with today's events for that matter poetically sounds naive but Chaplin surely has a point. I wonder how he would have felt in today's world.

Of course, writing History and getting informed about today's actual realities are two different disciplines. But I think these two disciplines are affecting and feeding each other where particularly the latter one feeds the former one. I think in a way, set paradigms of today establishes the framework of history writing of tomorrow.

Vacuum of Non-Existence - 2

2009-12-29T18:09:00.011+02:00

What made me try to imagine and write about my grandfather, Ejder’s death, was a series of important developments in my family and particularly an interesting anecdote that got refreshed on my memory after a recent family meeting. I don’t know why but most of the thoughts on my mind nowadays are about “The Family”.

I was only 40 days old when he died. Now looking back, during my early childhood that I spent in his apartment with my mother, aunts and widowed grandmother, they seemed to be living in a state of sad harmony with a continuous sense of supporting each other as if they were navigating through some crisis. Only I didn’t know what the crisis was all about by then apart from the very evident feeling of that emptiness that seemed to be sharing the apartment with us. It was like an invisible creature that would first provoke generation of emotions and then suck them all in like a black hole in an urge of survival of the family universe. It was the vacuum of his non-existence that he left behind in the family and the vacuum alone became my grandfather.

At first he was like a mystical myth. Stories told about him had left an impression of perfection on me and as my limited life experience by then wasn’t rich enough to allow me to question the hero concept, he became my hero. A clever intellectual who had marginal/mystical interests (namely, claiming to be a medium, an enthusiast of telekinesis and member of some esoteric organization), someone who wasn’t afraid to stand out. Growing more powerful on me with the help of this charismatic image, this emotion vacuum I grew up around, became something due to be filled in me during my teenage years.

Objects have helped a great deal in this quest. When I was 16, I started to smoke his pipe that I had found in his dusty closet of books to be still filled with the ashes of his last smoke. And when I was 18, I was given his watch which I’m still keeping today.

As I grew on though, stories told about him started to change. Perhaps it was only the length of time that had passed since his death. Or the urge the three sisters and their mother felt to come into peace with their past. But they started to dig out most private things even in our, their children’s presence. I always liked this openness in my greater family which I attribute to the female dominance in it. His weak sides started to appear as well among the ones of my grandmother.

As his perfect image started to decay, I started to feel even more connected to him. And perhaps most ironically, something else started to happen. Even though we didn't have much in common in the way we look, more and more cases started to occur, where older relatives would catch odd things like a look, a comment I would make upon a little thing, where they would say that they caught Ejder in me.

His vacuum became a teacher – a mentor if you will – for me, showing we are not supposed to be perfect and if we try to be perfect, we are doomed to lead a crippled life.

About 10 years ago, I came back from school to find a little red agenda lying on our dining table. It looked like as if it was beamed there from outer space. Its binding was quite worn but intact. With a great curiosity, I started to page through. It was more like a diary written by someone with a hard to read hand writing. Owner's name wasn't written.

I called my mother in awe to ask where it came from. She was still excited about the story: Apparently a week before, it was found in a second-hand bookstore by one of my aunt's rather strange friends who was into old books and diaries. He immediately recognized it to be my grandfather’s diary for by then his wife in future's, my now grandmother's name, Süverce, which was frequently mentioned in the diary is a really rare name. We don't believe there are more than a handful people with this name in Turkey. So thinking that she must be that Süverce, he brought it to my aunt which was then relayed to my mother.

"Ask for your grandmother's permission if you want to read" my mother said. I didn't listen to her. I perceived it to be a crucial document to understand my roots, not a document of privacy. I also felt that learning about private matters about my grandmother from 50 years ago wouldn't harm anyone or anything. Besides, even if she had allowed me to read it, she still could have felt bad about it. So without having the slightest bit of bad conscience I started to read.

I read about this young man who was about the same age as me when this encounter happened. He was apparently in love with his fiancée, Süverce, that was the most frequently mentioned figure in his diary. I read about their almost daily routine where he would pick up his sweetheart in the evening to go to movies together at Istiklal street - a street where 40 years later I would spend my high school days. Movie names, actors and actresses’ names were exclusively recorded. I read about his depression about working at his father's publishing house and his protest yet submissive style when describing his father's trips to strange places. Then about their moderate wedding and some other interesting details I won't disclose here.

At last, this was a direct contact to the owner of the vacuum.

The taste remained after that reading is still very vivid today. There are not many things in the world that is as fulfilling as to learn more about someone whose vacuum you have been used to.

I believe to get to know someone is not strictly dependent on the amount of time we spend together. It is more like related to the depth of bondage you were able to build. In Ejder's case, I grew up around the vacuum of his non-existence which actually turned out to be as effective as his very existence. After all, the persons you love are not necessarily the ones you see most but the ones with whom you could connect and maintain that bondage.

3 minutes over Istanbul

2009-12-09T01:14:00.004+02:00

I came across this video when looking for multimedia art pieces about Istanbul. It is by far my favorite so far. Most of the images in it are more likely to be from early 80s. Things covered look different than they do now and of course things that developed at mind numbing pace in the last 20 years are missing. But the essential feeling about Istanbul and about being an Istanbullu is to be felt in here. I could at best describe it as a mystical sadness that could only be found in the joy of living. Like the lover far away.

Vacuum of Non-Existence - 1

2009-11-16T01:06:00.015+02:00

February in Istanbul can be strikingly cold. Temperatures rarely hit below zero, dominant northern winds and humidity swept from seas surrounding the city however make it nothing but painful to be outside especially at night time. It is such nights where you would rather stay at home to make some tea and appreciate the warmth of your home, perhaps watch TV, read a book or look through your window at deserted, wet streets, listening to sounds of a car or a rushing pedestrian rarely passing by.

It was a such cold night in 1978, when Ejder, a bald, chubby man at his mid 50's, was woken by a depressing feeling in his chest. He opened his eyes in the dark with an urge to put his point and middle fingers on his neck to feel his artery. The heart seemed to be beating fine. He checked with his hand on his wife sleeping by, seated himself in bed and listened to the cold silence of the sleeping apartment for a while. Then with a naughty hope that his restlessness might soothe if he grabbed a late night snack from the kitchen, he slowly stood up.

Trying to be as silent as possible, with clumsy steps he found his way to the hallway of the apartment which he found being bleakly illuminated by the reddish, heavy light that was oozing out of her eldest daughter's room. “Poor Mine” he thought to himself smiling and knocked on the door and opened it to find his daughter afoot trying to convince her newly born baby to sleep.

The young mother, Mine, was only 22 and it had been less than 6 months since she came back with a surprise baby in her womb along with a surprise fiancee holding her hand from Ankara where she actually was supposed to be studying engineering and not making babies.

Ejder remembered it very clearly the day they showed up in his apartment. He at first was shocked but then quite quickly he grew to like the imposed groom, a charming young man coming from a little, poor village in Thrace who was smart enough to make his way to the primary engineering school in the country despite his economical disadvantages. But why he liked his new son in law was mostly because he could convince himself he wasn’t class conscious, one of the many features in his character that he had developed as a passive aggressive reaction to his own father. He didn’t resist his father much openly when he had the chance but chose to be the opposite person instead to disappoint him. This was the way he was dealing with his dominant, highly individual, selfish, eccentric father.

The young lovers got married in a Blitz fashion before the belly became too visible and only one month after their surprising appearance, his daughter had to send her husband back to Ankara to finish his school.

Ejder walked in to caress Mine's tired head. He wanted to provide but also find some comfort. She however in all of her frustration, tiredness and loneliness in the absence of her husband wasn’t in a state to cope with such warmth. All she could think about was to put her son to sleep. She asked his father to leave her alone in an almost impudent, plaintive manner without even looking at him. Something she was going to regret for the rest of her life.

In slight disappointment, Ejder left her room and moved on through the dark hallway to kitchen. He opened the fridge door and stood in front of it for a while scratching his big belly in a sweet state of indecision. Then he took butter and jam out to prepare a slice of bread for himself. He quickly smeared the butter on the bread, spread the jam on it and took an impatient bite right there in the kitchen with a childish joy. There he felt it. The restlessness in his chest started to take shape of a sharp pain and grow to the point it felt suddenly as if something was trying to rip his ribcage open from inside.

Feeling utterly helpless, with the great pain, he tried to grab his heart, knelt down onto the kitchen floor first, then he laid down on his side. His eyes got fixed at the dust pile under the fridge he could see now. He made a last effort to scream her daughter’s name which was followed by another big blow coming out of his chest.

The panic air initiated by Mine invaded quickly the night in the house. All of his three daughters and his wife rushed into the kitchen waking up each other. All the screams, cries, efforts couldn't help and touch him anymore. Nevertheless, it was better not to be alone. He realized what was happening. A great fear coupled with a sadness captured his existence. “It is such an inappropriate time” he thought before giving in to pain that was pulling him away from his body.

It all ended quickly. When the three young women and their mother realized they lost the father of the house, the loud panic melted into a silent grief that could only be caused by a deep shock. They just stayed in the kitchen, looking at his body with wet eyes. It felt like they were part of an imaginative death cult ritual for a while.

The baby crying from the back of the house brought them back to life. Sisters looked at each other with confused eyes. Mine left the kitchen to check on her son leaving her sisters, mother and death behind in the cold kitchen.

Invitation for Ejder Gulen Akisan's remembrance service to be conducted in Tesvikiye Mosque on March 18th. 1978, 40th. day after this death.

Utanıyoruz! *

2009-11-07T13:18:00.012+02:00

Yes - today I'm ashamed to be a Turkish citizen. I'm ashamed to carry the citizenship of a country which sees no problem in hosting an official war criminal - El Beshir, Sudan's president, primary responsible authority for Darfur crimes. And this isn't the first time we did it. It is already the third time in two years of time. But this is the first time after he was officially declared as a war criminal by International Criminal Court in The Hague.

* WE ARE ASHAMED!

Update on November 8th: What a relief! He's not coming.

Youth for Human Rights

2009-10-21T14:29:00.002+03:00

Speaking of incompetent education systems; here is a brilliant campaign that could be a bit of help to fill the gap.

Beat It

2009-10-11T14:07:00.000+03:00

Of course, Istanbul had to do it as well. MJ@ Galatasaray square.

Movie Sum Up

2009-10-10T18:44:00.008+03:00

As the summer comes to an end, I have started to spend more time on watching movies at home. Here is a short sum up of what I've been seeing in the last couple of weeks and short descriptions of their impression on me:

High and Low / Akira Kurosawa / 1963

This one has been waiting for my attention ever since I came back from India. Calcutta's entertainment stores had a surprisingly good selection of movies at very cheap prices so that I could sample some lesser known Kurosawa and Bergman movies.

High and Low was a nice and surprisingly entertaining thriller. What I particularly liked about it is the ability to observe how Japanese culture re-interprets itself to cope with the capitalist world.

Of course Kurosawa's touch is very evident. His style could at best be described as theatrical. You can tell this by only looking at the way he positions his characters on the screen as if it was a stage. Particularly at negotiation scenes at the main character's villa, every move of his characters (almost 10 of them), number of steps they should walk, angles they should hold to the camera is clearly calculated in great detail and dictated. Just like in Bergman's cinema.

Hiroshima Mon Amor / Alain Resnais / 1959

This one is a tough one. One of the best movies I have seen for quite a long time.

Actually this wasn't the first time I saw it. I had seen it in Istanbul's film festival some 10 years ago. But by then the movie just couldn't attract my attention and had bored me to death. It is funny how sometimes you have to experience life first before you can understand such creations.

Hiroshima Mon Amour is about two married people, a Japanese architect and a French actress, falling in love and about the only two days they spend together. The movie is set in Hiroshima with occasional flashbacks to French woman's youth at her home town of Nevers. The terrible emotional baggage Hiroshima carries and scenes shot in Nevers where she had her own share of WWII's horror, act as a brilliant Leitmotiv between the characters' past and today and for that matter between the two characters as well.

The movie has a very famous but also a quite disturbing opening sequence.

Elle: Hi-ro-shi-ma. Hiroshima. That is your name.
Lui: Yes, that is my name. Your name is Ne-vers. Nevers in France.
---
Elle: You're destroying me. You're good for me.

Der Baader Meinhof Komplex / Uli Edel / 2008

I think new products of the German cinema like Der Untergang, Das Leben Der Anderen and Fatih Akin's movies mark the brilliant point it has come to. They are easily entertaining yet they never compromise from European sensibility.

This particular movie is about Rote Armee Fraktion - RAF (Red Army Faction), a terror group which influenced German politics quite harshly in 70s. What I have found particularly interesting was how lost people could build and rebuild their values to justify their terrible actions; actions that cause them to become marginalized even further and eventually become ever more lost.

The movie opens with the best demonstration scene I have ever seen. It is so well taken that depicted unsymmetrical violence applied by Iranians and by the German police brings tears to your eyes. And the music used at this scene. Oh boy.

Tiny Bit of Heaven

2009-10-06T01:16:00.007+03:00

You get seated at your desk to work in the silence of the night, see some chocolate left from the night before on the table. You light up a cigarette, inhale the smoke and throw the piece of chocolate into your mouth. As it dissolves on your tongue, being needled by a sweet restlessness, you look around. Something is missing; just a sip of coffee would suffice, you think, but kitchen is too far away. There you see the mug you had your morning coffee from. Tiny bit of sip of cold coffee is still left in it. You drink it to hold and let it dance with other sour tastes in your month. For a little while, you are complete in simplicity. You just had tiny bit of heaven.

Turkey's Not Europe

2009-10-06T00:36:00.002+03:00

Couple of weeks ago, when reading through, the temper hit my head and I felt the urge to contribute in a discussion board on Sunday Telegraph's site. 

To understand the average human being's thinking pattern, one should really spend some time on reading newspapers' commentary sections - my favorite sports among with listening to religious radio stations. (topic for another entry). There you would understand how difficult it actually is to reach a peaceful world with current education systems (and with the current nurtition diets for that matter) on the globe.

There is so much to say on this topic that I couldn't include. Anyway; shallow as it is, I'm copy and pasting my stuff here:

Hello from Istanbul; I believe the Turkish perspective is definitely needed here.

First of all; I must say that I was deeply shocked by the level of ignorance displayed here in the commentary section and the apparent confidence displayed when doing so. It seems to me that everybody is pretty sure that nobody else knows much about the topic anyways and feels free to speculate about or even create historical “arguments”.

The paradigms we grow in establish a very essential part of our thinking process. The average being isn’t able to think out of this cage and completes his life having nothing added to the human culture. To maintain a monster-poor-savage Turk image is the easiest; so it is to forget that history isn’t that easy to grasp especially looking from only one side. 

I will not argue whether Turkey should join the EU or not – to be absolutely honest I don’t care. All I care is some historical facts.

First of all, when Turks overtook the city of Istanbul 1453 it didn’t end a glorious Byzantine empire. They merely finished a painful process that had started 200 years ago by a force which was far more barbarian in the way they treated the city. You might be very interested in finding out who: For any questioning mind, here are Google key words: “Constantinople Latin Invasion 1204″.

Moreover, the conquest didn’t end the Byzantine culture, in fact Turks acknowledged that culture and built upon it. In our music, other art forms, imperial architecture, traces of the Byzantine culture is very evident
 
While kingdoms in Europe were persecuting the ones that weren’t from their own, in Istanbul, Christian (Catholic & Orthodox), Jewish and Muslim lived side by side for centuries. I mean side by side. Today in districts of Istanbul like Ortakoy or Kuzguncuk you still have a mosque, a church, a synagogue at the same little square – all still active. By the beginning of 20th. century there were more churches in Istanbul than there were in London.

Secondly – it’s true that Christian minorities were forced to leave their soils and even got killed in great numbers during the last years of 19th. century and first 20 years of the 20th. century. But we must place these facts into the big picture of that time and realize that nation state transformation was in place anywhere in the region. Turks wanted their own nation state and unfortunately they acted towards it in a shameful way. But they were not alone. Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbians, Macedonians did it. And Armenians tried to do it. And none of these nations have sent Turks who had been living on the same territory for centuries with flowers and waved good bye.

Thirdly, in 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus based on its rights coming from the London agreement which was signed between the UK, Greece and Turkey. In 1974, the military administration of Greece decided to add Cyprus island to their motherland. Some acts of terror have started, killings of civilians took place. And Turkey moved in making sure that only one third of the island is taken.

History is like this. No one is innocent. And I mean no one.

We are perfectly aware of our strengths and flaws. A strong sense of confidence is growing in Turkey. We have been transforming our identity and surroundings in the last 20 years in a positive direction. Yet we know we have to cover much more. This transformation process isn’t that smooth. Lots of ups and downs but eventually we clearly see where we want to reach and EU is not an essential part of it.

We are neither European nor Middle Eastern. We are a mixture, a fusion, just like our beloved city of Istanbul and we love every bit of this richness.

Illustration of two faced Roman god - Janus. One face looks towards the east - past, the other one to the west - future.

I believe I could finish with an anecdote. In 1964, when the Cyprus conflict started to gain pace, Johnson – the US president at that time – sent a message to Turkish president Inonu where he openly threatened Turkey against any military action in Cyprus. Inonu’s response was a public statement; ”if it’s necessary to do so, a new world would be set up and Turkey would not hesitate to take its part in it”

Please excuse possible errors in my English.

Completely Legitimate Act of Protest

2009-10-01T22:58:00.000+03:00

This one was taken at the Zoo in Berlin. The inscription says: "Attention! Lion splashes urine through the lattice."

Confrontation with a Jew

2009-09-19T00:10:00.000+03:00

Sounds like a title coming from a Nazi officer's wartime diary but no the title is today mine. As discriminative as it sounds, the type of conversation I had with a Jewish fellow couple of weeks ago justifies this title as we had the opportunity to discuss some of the tragedies the Turkish-Jewish diaspora had to face coming from the Turkish governments in the last 80 years particularly during 1940's and 1950's.

Bit of a background first;

Of course - if you look at the surface Turks love the Jews. First of all, an average Turk couldn't care less that Jesus was betrayed by a Jew and for that matter, quite frankly for Jesus himself.

Secondly when the catholic crown in Spain looked for places to dump them in 1492, only two places in Europe were willing to accept them; Amsterdam and Ottoman Empire's trade cities including Istanbul and Thessaloniki. It is said when Sultan Beyazit 2nd. heard about the news, he said something in effect; "Ye call Ferdinand a wise king he who makes his land poor and ours rich!" He was very right especially when you considered that the Jewish population was known to be very good in trade.

This pragmatic approach - actually found in every successful empire in history and today's world - ensured a peaceful habitat for Jews in Ottoman Empire to show their magic.Indeed until the beginning of 20th. century, they became an essential nation in the Empire. Of course, we are not talking about type of daily life we would encounter in today's world where regular Ottoman Jews and Muslim Turks meetup in the corner shop for a drink to wash down the daily stress. In fact, until the beginning for 20th. century very few Jews spoke Turkish. They had their own districts in the city (not Ghettos - Mahalles in Turkish meaning simply district) which they rarely needed to leave. In 18th. century Istanbul which was crazily cosmopolitan, this was the way cospolitanism was experienced.

Then when in early 20th. century, as the nation state transformation took pace in the region, unpleasant incidents started to occur against the Jews as well. Although we could safely say that when compared to tragedies what Ottoman Greeks and Armenians had to face, what Jews had to deal with was softer.

Coming back to present; I was at my good mate's wedding coctail where the majority was Jewish. I didn't have any other friends and so I started to gulp down margaritas after margaritas until the point I realized that a little, at his well above 60s, white haired, partially bald, chubby man in his funnily looking white suite was on his own as well. He was checking people around with a shy attitude and was occasionally answering greetings sent over to him from far away corners of the room by shaking his head or slightly raising his glass.

We came eye to eye, smiling at him I walked over and said "you are too handsome to be so bored." No - this isn't how it happened and I haven't turned gay yet; neither do I use such terrible pick-up lines.

We got started talking about daily stuff. He immediately understood that I wasn't Jewish whereas I immediately understood that he was Jewish. Our initially polite and distant conversation developed quickly thanks to my sometimes a bit too direct or even impudent style. I asked him about his first hand experiences at incidents such as the Wealth Tax and September 6-7 1955 incidents; two major sins in the Turkish Republic's short history.

Now, you should know that these are still delicate issues in Turkey. An average Turk thinks he is not racist. He sees racism as a western notion and ignoring the very western transformation his own country has been experiencing from an empire to a nation state, he argues that the Ottoman Empire didn't have any racist history and therefore Turks are exempt from racism. To support this, he gives examples of Ottoman Empire's Milletler or Nations System - an indeed brilliant system for its time. This in the past living, self protection mechanism however prevents him from dealing with phenomena that are actually very evident in today's life including racism. Therefore he prefers to ignore related shameful acts from his own history as if they never happened and shows strong reaction when they are brought up. The reaction is mostly fueled by a sense of deep insecurity.

What I found particularly encouraging were his direct and honest responses that he gave looking directly into my eyes, recognizing the state's and for that matter at that time young nation's direct responsibility. His confidence made me realize with the help of all the movies made and public discussions hold things were changing.

I had been trying to face and come into peace with these actions by reading and by trying to remotely empathize with victims. But this was the first time I could find a real opportunity to actually discuss these face to face with a victim. I chatted with him to learn as many details as I could learn from him where I realized with every detail I could catch, I was becoming freer in a sense my ties with a nation in a nationalist sense was weakening but with the humanity strengthening.

We talked for an hour and in the end we toasted to the human; the sometimes most horrible animal.

The Genious of the Crowd

2009-09-04T09:58:00.000+03:00

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

C.Bukowski (1920-1994)

İçine Girdiğin Küçük Kaygan Delik

2009-09-03T18:43:00.000+03:00

The title in Turkish above means "little slippery hole you enter".

Nope, I didn't rip it off a poetic porn movie but from the lyrics of a rock song from three years ago sung and written by one of the most popular rock singers in Turkey named Şebnem Ferah.

Part of her lyrics is like that:

Merak etmeden duramıyorum, geceleri nasıl uyuyorsun?
Beni boşver kendine cevap ver lütfen bu kez dürüst olur musun?
İçine girdiğin küçük kaygan deliği yeni ve büyük bir dünya mı sandın?
İstersen bir aynayla yardım edeyim ama umursamazsın.

Meaning;

I can't help wondering; how do you ever manage to sleep?
Don't mind me, but answer yourself, and for once be honest.
Did you think that that little slippery hole you enter is a new big world?
I would want to help you with a mirror but you couldn't care less.

As soon as the song was released, it became a vivid discussion point especially on the boulevard press. Thanks to them, it didn't take us - the public- long to find out the motivation behind these lyrics. We found out, that the song was dedicated to the singer's ex producer who apparently had dumped her for another singer he had under contract named Ebru Gündeş.

Now, like many of my compatriots, whenever I hear this song, I think about Ebru Gündes's vagina. And Ebru Gündeş's vagina is perhaps the most successfully branded human organ. So successful you could easily create an artificial vagina brand named "LITTLE SLIPPERY HOLE THAT YOU ENTER PUSSIES".

Well on second thought, maybe the brand is a close second to Rasputin's dick.

( I think, this entry can well mark the start of a new category; newpeaksofoddity. I'm intending to share some of the odd thoughts that come to my mind here. It's very likely that it becomes my favorite category.)

The Glass Cage

2009-08-23T01:52:00.000+03:00

I started running when I was 15. I don't remember what exactly brought me to the idea. All I remember is first time I felt like doing it was when I was on a holiday trip with my parents on the Gallipoli peninsula. We were staying in a little hotel nearby the beach and the atmosphere with all the old retired people around me started to become a bit depressing. One day, I took a walk to the main gate of the hotel which was opening to the side of nearby country road. I looked at the quite road that was shining so beautifully in the light of evening sun, watched the cars passing by every few minutes disappearing in the hilly horizon. Then all of a sudden, I started to run.

On that particular day, I ran for kilometers. My legs took me to a great trip through now with pine forests covered battlefields that witnessed one of the many horrible battles of WW1 where roughly 250000 young men lost their lives. I imagined to be hearing their sad voices through the twilight of the forest. Occasionally  blue of the sea was shining from between the trees in distance providing a feeling of comfort.

Then it happened; I found myself in the glass cage and as ironically as it sounds, when I came back to the hotel well after darkness fell, I instinctively knew I had discovered what freedom must have been all about.

In the following years, I searched for the same kind of feeling in different kind of activities including photography; but even though I'm not much of a runner anymore, I found myself comparing the feeling I got doing these to the wonderful mindset I find myself in when running. 

When you are about to start to run, the world doesn't like you. The road doesn't like you, the air doesn't like you, the sun doesn't like you, the forest doesn't like you, even your own shoes don't like you. You feel being rejected. But despite all of these you start to move in protest. You take hesitant, very slow steps. It doesn't feel right at all but you keep running patiently, getting slowly faster and faster until you suddenly find yourself under the feeling's spell.

Now you realize that everything around you is sliding by your existence in a pleasant manner. Branches of trees above your head, lane markers under your feet, beams of sun light on your face; they all are sliding. Wind caresses your hair. Everything becomes quieter. You forget about your breath pace. You feel your pulse has become one with the earth's as if you are one giant metronome to the ultimate music. You become the lazy dog sitting at the corner of the street. The fish in the sea. You let go thinking. You are at a place where there is no need for answers. Without the need for words, you become a true voice in the universe.

You are a tiger in the glass cage now. 

Please Take All Your Belongings With You

2009-08-10T00:48:00.000+03:00

Went to supermarket to shop for groceries yesterday. The fridge was all empty; so it was a big one. I strolled through the aisles in a kind of strange joy - the joy of consumption. As I proceeded through the aisles, my trolley got heavier and heavier and eventually became difficult to push it around in narrow aisles. So I parked it in some unpopular corner and went to some section to pick my stuff.

On my way, an itch came whether it was safe to leave all my stuff there. Then I realized that my wallet was in my pocket, so was my phone. Rest in the trolley was goods that I hadn't paid for yet. So it was OK to leave them there. Even if the trolley was taken away, I could have started shopping from the beginning which wouldn't be very pleasurable but certainly not end of the world either.

Suddenly I realized that the level of attachment I felt for that basket was the level of attachment I wanted to feel against my actual belongings. I realized strong relations between objects and my persona wasn't something I wanted to cope with.

And what about the idea of belonging to a person or a person belonging to us? Can the above mentioned sentiment be applied here? Does fear get involved here? If yes - fear of what?

This text brought me again to this G. Marquez quote that I had posted on my FB profile the other day: "...The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary."

Bad Eye

2009-08-10T00:18:00.000+03:00

Today, I have come across a scene that would have been possible in only very few places on earth, fortunately or unfortunately including Istanbul.

A woman at her 40's is walking on one of the main shopping streets of Istanbul with her daughter. Very conservative in her moves, the mother looks quite poor and is wearing an old fashioned hijab. The uncovered daughter walking beneath her mother is throwing wannabe sexy smiles around; she is at most at her 15. The big inscription on her tight t-shirt says: "NO SEX CAUSES BAD EYE".

The incident looked so weird that I questioned whether or not it could have been that long since the last time I got laid. Or whether or not Istanbul is the bad eye itself.

July 19th. 00:20

2009-07-19T19:28:00.000+03:00

It was yesterday midnight when the smoking ban in Turkey started to be in effect. Last night after having couple of beers with my friend Idil, we moved on to Peyote . When we reached the place, at roughly 00:20, we found people apparently kicked out from inside gathered in front of the entrance smoking their cigarettes. The mood seemed to be quite positive where everyone was complaining but secretly seeming to like it.

We moved on to Cihangir. Walking along streets lined up with clubs, we passed by groups of people smoking outside. I kept thinking that the law was received surprisingly fast until we reached our destination club Kiki to find it still in a thick smoke cloud. The law apparently hadn't reached there last night. People were smoking, so were the bartenders and DJs.

So yeah, luckily another night could be spent with smoking and being smoked. But indicators show that not many of these nights are left for Istanbullus.

Fenerbahce

2009-06-09T00:24:00.001+03:00

One of the major ngo's with the greatest number of supporters in Turkey. The organization is actively working on fostering wannabe mafia culture in the country.

For other similar examples of this size, please refer to following articles;

(refer to: galatasaray)
(refer to: besiktas)

Duman Making Fun of Koran

2009-06-05T00:44:00.000+03:00

(the discussion is about a particular song from the new album of a rock group named Duman which has lyrics where well-known Arabic words from Koran are selectively taken and distorted into funny Turkish words to criticise the religion)

If someone feels like it, it should be more than OK to make fun of Koran. Sacredness is all about one's personal perception. Someone else's sacred thing doesn't necessarily have to be mine as well.

If our dear religious friend is looking for the affirmation that he is not stupid or for the social applause he thinks he have earned for his very eligible art of submission in Duman's songs - well this is the wrong place to look for, I'm sorry. He needs to find about these in himself - only in himself.

If your faith is really that strong, why the need for to keep an eye on your surroundings?

To Feel Like Belonging To Only One Man All Your Life

2009-06-05T00:38:00.000+03:00

At most, a sensitive little dick can feel like that.

Sour Dictionary - 1

2009-06-05T00:35:00.000+03:00

Eksisozluk - literally meaning the sour dictionary - is the primary online community in Turkey where people share their (mostly bullshit but sometimes really) interesting thoughts. The site is reachable by anyone where articles are written by somewhat 20000 authors - in eksisozluk terminology so called "susers" - whose articles are being monitored by a handful praetors - voluntary legal counsels, mostly lawyers by profession - who make sure that the entries have no legal implications and moderators who are responsible that format rules are being followed. In this fashion on average every year about one million articles - entry in dictionary terminology - are recorded.

The authors include some really interesting fellows coming from all corners of the political spectrum. Sometimes the discussions become really harsh particularly around topics such as the Armenian genocide, Kurdish question, religion's role in the country and so on.

Overall it is a platform where a country's fiercely divided youth learns to co-exist with each other and learn about each other's thoughts.

I have been contributing in this community in the last 4-5 years under the nickname degisen - literally meaning "the ever changing one".

I decided to translate some of my contributions I will be doing to the dictionary here to give you an idea about current hot topics in Turkey and my point of view about these issues. After all, it's Turkey, on any given day the country is burning with discussions. Of course, I will take the pleasure to share my entries which are not that serious as well.

Label for these type of entries will be "sourdictionary".

Mind Cancer

2009-05-26T22:10:00.001+03:00

Mother - her name is Mine - has been fighting with cancer. One of her breasts was removed and she had her first chemo session about a month ago. The first session caused a collapse in her immune system imprisoning her in the hospital for four days. Her doctor had said he would wait until the next session to allow her body to gain strength a bit; next one will be tomorrow.

When I paid a surprise visit to her last Sunday at my parents' house, they were spending a lazy Sunday in their bleak apartment. Father greeted me over his computer screen where he was playing online chess. Mother was lying in the living room conducting one of her self consuming, long, dull TV sessions.

Be it in her academical, professional or private lives, she was always known to be an extremely intelligent person. That's why it is more heart breaking for me to witness her consuming herself on meaningless things - a retirement habit of her - than seeing her fighting with cancer.

I went into the room, gave her a kiss, asked how she was doing. She was all sleepy and thoughtful. Then in boredom, I started my usual little walk in the apartment as if it was a museum of our family history. Artifacts such as a broken, old toy of my brother or an old book of mine in some shelf.

Sometimes visiting the house you grew in or houses you spent time in long time ago can turn out to be the best museum experiences. To witness that what an object means to you can change vastly as you get older keeps the experience ever fresh and personal.

I came across the picture above in a far corner of the apartment. The picture was taken some 20 years ago in a sunflower field where she was holding my apparently bored brother. Even though I knew the picture very well, I couldn't help to become amazed about the way she looked in it. The way hope, intelligence, beauty and optimism was radiated through her eyes.

Avoid the cancer. Especially the mind cancer.

Coming Back To Life

2009-05-25T00:41:00.000+03:00

After weeks spent in a partially paralyzed state, at last I'm coming back to life.

First indicators; an appetite to work efficiently, an itch for organizing things, return to systematic approach shown in response to challenges and much more importantly a healthy sense of intellectual curiosity.

The first thing I did was to pull out the fork that was sticking in the antenna slot of my TV. It has been serving me great deal to cheat myself by bypassing my longstanding "no TV" policy. Did you know that you can receive quite a number of aerial TV channels with just a fork? That is of course if you are not in a country as freaky as Finland where no aerial propagation is available anymore.

Luckily, I have had quite a number of good movies in my DVD rack waiting for me to explore. It's time to wipe off the dust now.

This weekend, I have seen three of them. I will not take a long time to describe what I have thought about each of these movies. Instead, I will just put a couple of lines about and/or from each of the movie to give you the general idea.

Paris, Texas By Wim Wenders

Really cool movie with a healthy level of poetics in the way it explain things .

"I didn't want to use him to fill my emptiness."

Russian Ark By Alexander Sokurov

Technically very challenging movie that was shot in a single plan. The 96 minutes long shot takes you through the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg and in a very elegant way the Russian history. The movie discusses Russia's and Europe's point of views towards each other.

N= Narrator - seemingly symbolizes contemporary Russia's intellectual inner voice.
E= European guy - symbolizing European point of view.

"N: Lost you. I'm sad. Let's go.
E: Where?
N: Forward.
E: Forward? What will we do there?
N: I don't know.
E: I'm staying here.
N: Farewell Europe.

"Before Night Falls By Julian Schnabel

"I'm that repulsive child that improvised a bed out of an old cardboard box and waits, certain that you will accompany me."

Saliva

2009-05-14T22:07:00.000+03:00

Today, on my return flight from London, my seat was nearby the place where the cabin crew puts their usual before flight play on stage. You know; the usual "this is the way you fasten your seat belt and when the doom day arrives, oxygen masks will fall" tirade.

It's during this tirade I find it particularly interesting to observe the crew as well as the passengers. Passengers always seem to be extra cool about the whole situation as if they showed the slightest bit of interest, they would be pinned as first timers and made fun of. On any plane, most of the people seem to be spending their whole lives on airplanes.

On that particular flight, a 3 year old boy caught my attention sitting with his parents in a nearby seat. He was clearly amazed by the stewardess' moves. With an awe and a great curiosity he was watching every move of hers sucking at each of his fingers one by one. His saliva was flowing slowly down his chin and his eyes were big looking at the way the oxygen masks and colorful life jackets were shown and worn.

In London, people travelling in the subway system, with all their cool face expressions seem to assume that the city was created with a subway system. But the fact is it's wondrous.

My point is; with every feature we learn, we seem to die little bit. Sounding as paradoxical as it gets, it feels to me that knowing is dying. With every single day left behind, our curiosity depreciates a little taking some piece of our appreciation for life with it.

Not that I don't see a kind of wisdom in the routine. Perhaps little bit earlier than I was supposed to do so, I had taught myself to like and appreciate the meditative peace in the daily routine. I have experienced that and remember it all to be good times.

My last 5 years however could at best be described as an attempt to escape the routine. For now, I want to be uncool. To be able to look at things with awe. To be surprised. To be shocked. To be tortured by the itch of not knowing. I want saliva dripping down my chin.

Istanbul Is Blooming

2009-04-27T22:34:00.000+03:00

Literally, the spring has arrived to Istanbul. The tulips started to show up everywhere.

"Sümbüls" started to shade the terrace of my favorite day-time cafe again.

But more importantly, our much beloved "erguvan"s (Judas trees) started to bloom dotting the green landscapes of Bosphorus with its pink flowers setting gray winter-time imaginations free. To an Istanbullu, when erguvans bloom, it is time to end the hibernation and mix with life outside.

Indeed, the same time has been coinciding with Istanbul's major cinema festival for the last 28 years. The event - Istanbul Film Festival - is a two weeks cultural feast consisting of some 200 movies gathered from all corners of the world shown in movie theaters that mostly concentrate around Taksim area attracting thousands of loyal followers every year.

The lively crowd on streets melts all of a sudden during matinées making the Istiklal and its side streets resemble school corridors. Then when the movies are over, the crowd makes its way back to the streets rushing to cafes to grab a quick drink over a short chat with an acquaintance run into on street until making their way to the next movie.

The festival marks the cultural awakening of the city each year starting a chain reaction of festivals blooming one after another around the city making you believe whatever events you attended during winter time were merely preparations for the real thing - the cultural summer.

Link:

Being In The Middle

2009-04-24T13:35:00.001+03:00

My last two posts gave me thoughts around a favorite movie of mine named "Taking Sides" from Istvan Szabo.

Those in the middle seem to be richest poors or the poorest riches.

Being one?

Happy Children Day

2009-04-24T12:33:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, when children in the west were celebrating their day exchanging smiles with politicians, some children in the east had to deal with a slightly more unfortunate treat.

"...Video footage of the protest showed an officer from the special operations unit beating the boy in the head with a truncheon and then kicking him as he lay on the ground..."

Of course, this specific case is an indicator of a big problem with lots of dimensions. But the output is as simple as shame.

Decomposing Leafs

2009-04-23T23:13:00.000+03:00

Today's April 23rd. It is the 89th. anniversary of the first assembly of the current Turkish parliament. Much more importantly, it is the national holiday that is completely dedicated to children.

It is in the republic's tradition that the primary statesmen (president, primary minister, chairman of the parliament and minister of education) invite children to their offices today, give them their seats for couple of minutes and let them symbolically give orders and talk before the press.

The tradition apparently began in 1929 when Ataturk started to invite children to his office; but no one seems to know exactly whose idea was it to give the children the seat. It is however one of the rare state traditions that is being followed by all without any objections - something very rare in this country.

This girl - apparently a natural republican - replaces the prime minister to give clever answers such as; "don't ask me questions about the possible revision in the cabinet, I've just sit here". To a question whether she thinks that the raise given to civil servants this year was enough, she answers "I want to see them well off as much as you do. But these are tough times and tough times require tough decisions."

Another young lady that was replacing the president was challenged by a more difficult question coming from an enthusiastic 5 year old boy:

"What happens to decomposed leafs when they decompose?"

Everyone laughs at the only question that would mean something in the universe.

The laughter ends, the bullshit continues.

Source of Violence & Equal Societies

2009-04-21T08:38:00.001+03:00

I read an impressive article in The Independent yesterday.

Key points to me;

"...One of our most basic psychological needs is for status – to feel that we are a valued member of our tribe. We evolved in small, very egalitarian tribes of hunter-gatherers, and have only lived outside them for a few minutes in evolutionary terms. So when we feel our status is threatened – or there is no way of becoming respected by the rest of the tribe – we begin to malfunction in all sorts of ways.

Indeed, almost nothing makes humans more anxious than panic about our status. Endless clinical trials show what happens to our bodies when we feel we are going to lose our status"
...
"Our systems flood with a hormone called cortisol."
...
"...Yet we have built our societies on exaggerating this status panic, and we have been ratcheting it up over the past 30 years. The more unequal a society is, the more intense it becomes. Even if you slip to the bottom in Sweden, it's not so very different from the top. But when there is a long social ladder, and the bottom rung means humiliation and poverty, everyone at every rung feels a sweatier need to cling to their place – and the society starts to go wrong. This isn't left-wing speculation: it is an empirical fact."
...

...
"How can this be? Permanent status panic is an unnatural state for humans. High cortisol levels corrode our insides and massively increase the risk of heart-attack. We eat more – and our bodies store fat differently. It hugs them to our middles, rather than storing them lower down, in our hips and thighs. We look for ways to soothe ourselves – like drug addiction. We are far more likely to break down into depression or mental illness, or to snap and attack somebody. "
...
"James Gilligan, the psychiatrist running the Center for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School, explains that acts of violence are "attempts to ward off or eliminate the feeling of shame and humiliation – a feeling that is painful, and can even be intolerable or overwhelming". He adds that he has "yet to see a serious act of violence that did not represent an attempt to undo this 'loss of face"
...
"Our élites have adopted an ideology – the extreme inequality of market fundamentalism – that simply doesn't suit our species. It doesn't have to be this way. By democratically taxing the rich and using the money to lift up the poor, we can make life better for all of us. Of course there must be some income differentials, but nothing like our own grotesque rates. Plato suggested the richest person should be allowed to earn five times the wage of the poorest person, which seems fair to me. "

I Want War

2009-04-20T08:55:00.000+03:00

Just occured to me; do you know anyone from history or from today's world sent to prison for wanting war? None that I'm aware of. Isn't it ironic when you consider how easy it is to find yourself in prison or even get yourself killed under certain circumstances when what you want is "peace" ?

Why Dunning & Kruger Effect?

2009-04-10T12:10:00.000+03:00

Sometimes I tend to think that it's a pity that it wouldn't be very practical to implement a law to enforce people to study issues they write about. A quote I tend to find very important is "Bilgi sahibi olmadan fikir sahibi olmak" in Turkish; somewhat meaning "to reach a conviction without the necessary information".

W: Aaa, this joke is really funny.

W:I'm sending it to you

M: Send...

The reason why I named Dunning & Kruger effect this blog actually slightly contradicts with what I just said above. I chose the name because I wanted it to remind me these 4 observed phenomena whenever I would feel the urge to express my thoughts here:

Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill

Under the horror of these 4 principles, I wanted to remind myself that I should be doubting every idea & thought no matter where they are originating from - from myself or someone else. On the other hand, I didn't want my doubts to prevent me from sharing them.

I try to remember not to reach convictions without adequate thinking. Especially motivated by the challenge that my posts are being followed by some of the minds I value in this world, I keep re-thinking issues already expressed here. I love to observe that in this re-thinking process, ideas I share here tend to evolve, mature and sometimes even completely change on my mind. It's like a diary where records keep ever changing. Precisely the reason why I started this blog.

Especially in our age of communication, when I see how some thought patterns are prepared, packaged into easy to swallow thought tablettes to be consumed by public and served through public opinion channels wordlwide is somewhat disappointing.

It's like these radioactive marker drugs they inject into your vein to see how your blood travels through your body; a thought is created and you see it travel from continent to continent, from country to country, from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood for years - without being questioned, without being re-thought, accepted as they arrive, used with confidence and pride in every intellectual conversation.

Let's avoid that.

Recipe Nr 2: Chilbir Sauce

2009-04-08T10:35:00.000+03:00

Last night we felt the urge to cook some pasta late in the night. There wasn't much in the fridge - so with the limited ingredients there were, I came up with this quick "chilbir" sauce for the spaghetti. Chilbir actually is a simple dish made of eggs and yoghurt which I modified a bit to turn into a sauce.

Ingredients:

4 eggs
About a full glass of yoghurt
2-3 cloves of garlic
4 mid-size peeled tomatoes
Two pinches of dried mint
Two pinches of sumac
Sea salt
Two pinches of paprika

Boil two glasses of water in a pan.
Fold the eggs into the boiling water - don't scramble!
Let it boil on for about 5 minutes until the color of the yolk changes significantly.
By now you should have at most half a glass of water left in the pan - add the yoghurt.
Mingle the mixture squashing the eggs into little pieces with a fork.
Slice garlic cloves as thinly as possible and add to the mixture
Chop the tomato into little piece and add to the mixture
Add the spices and salt
Mix and let the mixture simmer on for while until it’s viscosity feels right.

Afiyet olsun!

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency

2009-04-08T09:54:00.001+03:00

Thinking about death re-provoked my particular interest for one of my favorite photographers; Nan Goldin.

Especially throughout my university years, her images had a profound effect on me. I was writing pornographic sci-fi stories at the time; this is probably why what at first attracted my immediate attention was the "truth" and the venturesome immorality in her work. Then I started to realize the special thing about her; connections she manages to build with her subjects.

These connections are so strong, that her work witnesses her subjects making love, getting married, melting day by day with AIDS radiating -maybe even burning with- intimate truth of life. She even manages to photograph blankness they leave behind after her subjects' deaths.

Obama the Diplomat

2009-04-07T09:35:00.000+03:00

Obama is currently visiting Turkey apparently having done his homework. Cutting all other bullshit out, at his speech he made at the parliament yesterday, he said;

"....This is my first trip overseas as president of the United States. I've been to the G-20 summit in London, and the NATO summit in Strasbourg, and the European Union summit in Prague. Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message to the world. And my answer is simple: Evet — yes.
...
This morning I had the great privilege of visiting the tomb of your extraordinary founder of your republic. And I was deeply impressed by this beautiful memorial to a man who did so much to shape the course of history. But it is also clear that the greatest monument to Ataturk's life is not something that can be cast in stone and marble. His greatest legacy is Turkey's strong, vibrant, secular democracy, and that is the work that this assembly carries on today..."

Obama in the Turkish parliament. The inscription behind says: " Sovereignty Is Nation's Alone Without Any Reservations". Subtext: "Sovereignty is not God's when it comes to state issues"

What a relief after 8 years rule of Bush (and all the bunch of his dickhead bureaucrats) who kept referring to Turkey as a country of moderate Islam.

It was the biggest mistake you could have done when approaching a country with a proud history where more than 85% of the public is allergic to the political implications of the Islam word, where its constitution, education system, governmental institutions are built around strict secularism; a country which is changing at a great pace doubling its income, industrial production, size of its urban middle classes every few years; growing its democracy more and more colorful and maturer every decade.

Of course, they harvested what they seeded; in 2003 the very same Parliament in the picture above - backed up by huge public support (including mine) - voted against any support of US ambitions in Iraq. No single US soldier was allowed to put foot on Turkey's soil. The public support for US policies dropped to below 10%.

Obama seems to have been taught well about Turkey's unique realities. Of course; these are all part of a game. But it's good to know that opponents at the table of diplomacy are well informed.

I'm Not Immortal Anymore

2009-04-01T11:04:00.000+03:00

Another good swimming exercise at the pool. On the way out, couple of new emails, 2 missed calls and two text messages on the phone. Missed calls; one from my wife, the other one from my mother; an unusual combination.

I get into the car; my friend is driving. Check the emails - usual daily issues about the business; write some emails in response drinking water. Then check the text messages - one from some bank promoting something. Delete immediately. The next one is from my mother: "yarin memem aliniyor." "my breast will be removed tomorrow". I look around in the moving car. I look at the cars and buildings around to capture a reflection of what I have just read. No reflection whatsoever; the universe is still alive - there is no tragedy.

Quick call to mother; collect some soothing facts. The cancer hasn't spread anywhere yet and as she is only 55, there is a really good chance that it will not go too bad. Feel the fear in her dignified voice. There will be chemotherapy she says hating what she's vocalizing. Learn about the location and time of the operation and let her know that I'll be there. She seems to be prepared not to have me there with her. But she likes the fact that I seem to be eager about it.

"Do I seem to be that distant?" A quick thought that comes to my mind that should be stored and kept away until the ever postponed parent - son confrontation that will be done one day. (but of course)

We hang up; I look around, chat with my friend. Slightly feeling guilty for having fun. The "tragedizer" in me keeps needling me to remind me that I should feel worse. No; I don't. Maybe it's because I don't perceive it to be very serious.

The concept of death is not very alien to me. Couple of friends had died, couple of remote relatives as well. People died in the hospital I used to volunteer for. In other areas, I have been in cases where I came very close to death myself. But none of these experiences, or similar experiences confronted by other people, not even the fact that my mother in law had to go through the very same thing couple of years ago, could shake me the way this news shook me. In a subtle but powerful way. Despite all these experiences, I realized I didn't feel prone to death until I read that text message yesterday.

I am lucky; both of my parents are alive. So are other really close people in my life. Having the deadly word "cancer" touching my closest circle, it feels like death touches me for the very first time. No matter how serious this case actually is.

I'm not immortal. Not anymore.

Meet my hero: Selim Aydemir

2009-03-30T21:40:00.000+03:00

A few weeks ago in this post, I had tried to explain a phenomena about the culture I grew in. In an attempt to describe the way artfulness is hailed in the Turkish society, I used these sentences:

"...In Turkish society, artfulness in daily life is hailed and to be artful is accepted as the common norm to the degree that sometimes complying with rules is seen as stupidity.

and here is the news I came across in today's paper. Selim Aydemir, a soccer player in the 3rd. league in Germany, was fired by his trainer because he simply preferred to secretly take the tram for couple of stations during a running training instead of running the course like all of his team mates.

In the same post where I described this behaviour, in an attempt of further explaining this strange characteristic, I said;

"... What makes it even more bizarre is we are perfectly aware of our flaws and contradictions but we love them. We love to make fun of ourselves where we call the Turkish stereotype "yurdum insani" - "human of my country".... "

and to exemplify this sentiment, here is how one of the major newspapers in Turkey preferred to comment on this news:

"Answer to Turkish style training: You're fired."

I'm so delighted to be able to provide a good example. I can sleep peacefully now. ;)

Void

2009-03-28T19:49:00.000+02:00

Define and narrow me, you starve yourself of yourself.

Nail me down in a box of cold words, that box is your coffin.
I do not know who I am,
I am in astounding lucid confusion.
I am not a Christian, I am not a Jew, I am not a Zoroastrian,
And I am not even a Muslim.
I do not belong to the land, or to any known or unknown sea.
Nature cannot own or claim me, nor can heaven,
Nor can India, China, Bulgaria,
My birthplace is placelessness,
My sign to have and give no sign.
You say you see my mouth, ears, yes, nose---they are not mine.
I am the life of life.
I am that cat, this stone, no one.
I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag,
I see and know all times and worlds,
As one, one, always one.
So what do I have to do to get you to admit who is speaking?
Admit it and change everything!
This is your own voice echoing off the walls of God.

Rumi (1207-1273)

runrunrunrunrunstoplookandlisten

2009-03-24T21:36:00.000+02:00

If only we didn't need a train to remind ourselves.

(from Edinburgh-Waverley train station)

Mind The Recession

2009-03-19T15:51:00.000+02:00

Having received results of endless formalities mentioned in this post, in the last few weeks I have been trying to shape the mold of my life for the coming few years.

In addition to allowing myself to decay in a series of super boring accounting classes as part of my newly started PhD curriculum, last week I was in the UK to deal with some formalities (again - ouch!) which unfortunately came bundled with the granted work permit.

London looks as busy as always. Not much seemed to change since my last visit a year ago; Oxford Street is as chaotic, tube stations still look like as hectic as an ant nest. Sun shined unusually brightly all through my stay making people flood to parks turning Hanover Square -where our new office building is located- into a lunch time festival area.

As soon as one starts talking with people however, traces of recession begin to appear. What I have found particularly interesting was the reaction I received from people - mostly officers from governmental institutions or banks - when I told them that we were in the UK to start-up our own company. Omitting few topic specific differences here and there, the conversations looked almost the same wherever I went:

DK: Hello, I'm here on a Tier 1 visa and would like to register my UK address/open a UK bank account/file a health record/etc etc...
Officer: Certainly. (a very evident doubt appears on the face) Did you already find a job or are you yet to find one?
DK: I'm here to start-up a subsidiary of my own company in Turkey.
Officer: (The face expression changes completely with an awe) Oh marvelous. In this country we need more investors and new jobs nowadays.

Well...

Not best time to start a business in the UK - that is for sure. I must admit however that all this recession thing amplifies the sense of adventure and makes the whole idea more likable. Of course, our decision is based on strategical business/personal reasons that we think are more sound than mere suicidal romanticism.

We'll see.

First Love

2009-03-02T09:34:00.000+02:00

Saw one of Bergman's early movies yesterday. The "Summer Interlude" dating back to 1951.

Motto used in the teaser of the movie was this:

"First love never dies, but something dies with first love."

Amen.

Body the Trickster

2009-02-24T01:18:00.000+02:00

Just a question that came to my mind - is it possible that our bodies trick us into believing that we crave for something salty or sweet when what it actually needs is simply water inflow?

The thing is we generally don't like plain water because it is - well - boring. But after you eat something sweet or salty, water tastes so much better - it makes sense that way. So maybe our body learns this behavior and in an adaptation effort it does such tricks to make us drink water.

My advise would be - whenever you think you should have lost some water although you feel you haven't sweat much - in other words you don't feel thirsty even though you feel you should have been that way, (typical examples for such cases; long distance swimming, moderate winter walks, sailing in spring time) no matter what your body craves for, try to drink much water before you start eating something. It definitely works on me.

Sociological Incompetence

2009-02-23T09:39:00.000+02:00

Another example that I came across when doing a highly value-added research in Kolkata / India in the framework of the very real science of Contemporary Sociological Erection Studies.

Dear Foreshore Road, don't be sad, please remember; it is probably all psychological.

Sociological Erection

2009-02-22T23:43:00.000+02:00

Freshest example for the very scientific concept of Sociological Erection came from Iran:

If I'm the only one who sees a vagina in the giant building behind - well, sue me.

Ree-inwenting the Turkish Vheel

2009-02-21T19:15:00.000+02:00

I have been giving some thinking to the innovation culture in general and how it is positioned in the Turkish culture.

In a company, there are several reasons why innovation is needed in strategic management. To me personally however, the psychology behind the need of innovation has three aspects;

1- My admittedly obsessive and possibly troubled way of thinking - if the majority seems to agree on something, there has to be something very wrong about it.

2- A sense of aggressively radical resistance against the perceived suppression of fear. In other words, if I come to feel my being is seriously limited by a sense of fear, my immediate reaction is to act against the will of that fear - sometimes in a very radical way. Innovation generally comes together with a sense of risk and fear of unknown. So, in a situation when it comes to decide in favor of an innovative action that I believe in, I tend to become a radical.

3- The great sense of satisfaction that would come from creation of new things.

As mentioned in our company innovation plays a great role. I feel very fortunate that both of my business partners share the same kind of vision about the business where we place the innovation and differentiation strategies in a very central position when taking tactical decisions. I feel very fortunate because in Turkey to find two innovative professionals in your whole business network is difficult enough let alone to be so much aligned with them to set up a company together.

Unfortunately as it is, innovation as a concept is not very much valued in the traditional Turkish society. Even though things have been changing rapidly where an innovative culture seems to flourish at a great pace in new generations, even in my generation innovation can be seen almost as an act of naivety or stupidity, something definitely not needed, something hippie until of course you show people the money you make through it. As money is perceived to be the only universal sign for success.

There are lots of proverbs or sayings suggesting this sentiment. "Eski köye yeni adet getirmek" for example literally meaning "Bringing new traditions to old village" is a saying generally used ruthlessly to criticize progressive ideas. No wonder that the national program that targets fostering innovation culture is named "Bring new traditions to old village!"

"If you think I'm driving wrongly, just ring me and hang up. I'll be calling back."

Another sad example is the word "yaramaz". When a child is being naughty, we call them "yaramaz" literally meaning "useless". Can you imagine how suppressive can that be? The act of naughtiness is usually coupled with a sense of innovation mixed with some creativity and the culture stamps this act as "useless". Well, I know about this as I had to cope with this word all through my childhood. One who could see my parents' faces after parents days at schools could easily tell I was quite a pain in school administrations' asses. I still enjoy being naughty for very much the same three reasons I have listed above.

Come to think of it, one witnessing life in Turkey would very much surprised if someone told them that Turks are not in peace with innovation or creativity. Because one of the key aspects you would be able to observe in life in Turkey - and in Turks in general - is our fierce practicality and pragmatism.

We are practical animals. Function is important but not the way it is in the Scandinavian design for example - function is achieved somehow with the givens not through minimalist creation. Rather, aspects already there are brought together - possibly ignoring or breaking some rules - to achieve a function. Aesthetics, permanency, perfectionism (hell no!) is not important. This is why yu come acros tousands of typos in signs in Engilish wenin turkey.

To explain the philosophy better, another example would be to mention how the civil engineering
discipline is called in Turkey; "Insaat Mühendisligi" - "Engineering of Building". Civilization versus the building. This is what the classical Turkish thought is all about.

In Turkish society, artfulness in daily life is hailed and to be artful is accepted as the common norm to the degree that sometimes complying with rules is seen as stupidity.

The Turkish cunning behavior generally drives the humorous innovation in daily life and appears at the point where there is some saving in the amount of labor or more rarely in the total cost or the time to spend. An example would be the basket-grocery culture in cities. Especially if you live at one of those streets lined with apartment blocks on both side, it is the norm to call the grocery shop by shouting his name from your window, as soon as the grocery man appears in front his shop, tell him what you need and dangle a basket down to street level for him to put your groceries in and take the money from.

As said, emphasis is always on saving through cunning behavior. But this shouldn't make you think that we like to save as the Japanese people do for example. Hell no - we are big spenders. I think we have been carrying this sense of saving from deep problematic history where tomorrow was always a big unknown.

Today, this sense of saving is merely a competition object for people to play around where results of cunning behavior is compared with other results in a childish sense of competition. Men would compete on how smart they are showing how many rules they broke that day to save on a few meters of extra drive or a few extra Liras.

The classical Turkish innovation versus a product of the new Turkish design that is flourishing at great pace - a boat design which collected many of the major innovation design awards globally last year.

However when you talk about "real" innovation, we are not talking about daily shit anymore, we are talking about the betterment of the future at the cost of "blood and tears". Even if there is a saving in the end, to get there requires long, patient work in an ambiguous environment. We are talking about taking risks. In the case of Turkish society, we even are talking about risking your image in the society because of the fact that even if you messed up everything through traditional methods - they would call you unlucky, but if you would lose it all by trying new things, they would call you stupid.

The whole picture is simply difficult - if not impossible - to accept for us.

This brings us to the general problem of lack of anticipation in the Turks. This phenomenon is much easier to observe when it comes to (not) anticipating even probable catastrophes in near future. The great Istanbul earthquake waiting to happen in probably less than 10 years is a good showcase for example where very little is done in preparation. Or a family continuing to live in the same ruinous apartment despite the repeated warnings and when something bad happens crying loudly in protest of god is also a very Turkish behavior.

I guess this is related to the nomadic past somehow. You see - in the big picture, when you are permanent somewhere, the trouble comes to you. You are the victim who needs to take precautions - to be proactive. The nomad is the trouble itself. The decisions are reactive, immediate and temporary. For the nomad, two steps ahead isn't something to think about. So it is not easy for us to work for the not yet seen catastrophe and as most of the catastrophes arrive without prior set appointments, well...

But in the context of innovation, this lack of anticipation affects more in the gain area; we are very reluctant to work for probable gains which are not seen clearly yet as well.

As I'm writing these I come to realize a strange double facedness in things (but then again if the matter is Turkey and Turks, I would be deeply shocked if things would easily sit on a thought template) :

Turks are extremely good when dealing with ambiguity in their daily lives. But when it comes to the future - even tomorrow - their tactics shift from dealing with ambiguity with reason to a strange fatalism, to an emphasis of temporariness of everything. On the other hand, when it comes to risking, we take risks when dealing with daily problems but when it comes to invest for the future, we suddenly become extremely risk averse when deciding on critical actions.

What makes it even more bizarre is we are perfectly aware of our flaws and contradictions but we love them. We love to make fun of ourselves where we call the Turkish stereotype "yurdum insani" - "human of my country".

Probably thanks to these bizarre national characteristics, there is a very much developed humor culture which created some of the best selling humor magazines in the world. Movies that makes fun of this Turkish stereo type like "Recep Ivedik" gathers millions and millions of people to movie theaters to share one common sentiment. A sentiment which wouldn't be understandable for a foreigner at first sight.

She might not be very helpful when it comes to be innovative but I love this country. I love its strange people. I love the strange sense of humor exemplified by this man here carrying a placard saying "To do a protest, I'm looking for individuals to recruit".

I love this identity which is about the sense of independence, a fierce stubbornness, almost an anarchist rebelliousness.

Recipe Nr1 - Salmon Meatballs

2009-02-09T17:03:00.002+02:00

It's been quite a while since I've quited to be the trolley-case-pulling nomad. More than 6 months have passed since the last time I had to spend more than half of the month on the road.

Writing this last sentence actually felt a bit like as if I was making a speech at the "Travelics" Anonymous convention to receive a medal to celebrate my sixth clean month. Topic for another entry: "Hello, I am Dunning Kruger , I'm a Travelic. "

Anyway; even though being quite busy in Istanbul, not being a nomad anymore grants me access to some of the luxuries that I couldn't even imagine to enjoy while on the road. One of them is quality time in the kitchen.

Cooking is like a mediation session. Very few things are as sedative as cooking on my own in a well lit kitchen listening to some good music. When cooking, you are in complete harmony with your surroundings. You're a part of the kitchen and kitchen is a part of yours. You two become one. It almost feels like the womb.

When cooking, a number of tasks are listed and re-listed on your mind to achieve the correct timing and absolute efficiency. While you undertake the planned tasks one by one, you allow creativity to get involved a great deal where you let indigents dance with each other.

I generally trust my intuition when cooking and my senses didn't disappoint me much until now. Of course, there have been cases where I have messed up a complete meal by pushing too far in innovation, but generally I could say I rarely step on their feet when dancing with ingredients.

This intuitive style of cooking lacks a documentation methodology however where sometimes good ideas get lost as I never take time to note down what I have done. So I decided to use this blog space to record the ideas as generated.

So; a dish from the party we gave on Saturday evening:

Salmon Meatballs

Take fresh Salmon and stripe its skin carefully
Chop it into roughly into 3cm x 3cm cubes.
Then squeeze each of the cubes lightly trying to feel its bones. Make sure that you find and take out all of the bones one by one.
Then mince the cubes into smaller pieces - say half centimeter cubes. Smaller pieces are no good as we want the meatballs feel knobby in mouths.
In a stewpot, boil some rice. Preferably Basmati rice. You shouldn't cook it too much. It should feel "al dente".
Cool the rice and mix it with the salmon you prepared.
Add some soy sauce, fresh black pepper, two egg yolks, some lemon juice, some curry, some olive oil and very little amount of cinnamon.
Then mix everything and mould the mixture for about 5 minutes. It should become of the right consistency to give it the desired form.
Then take a handful of the mixture and roll it to meatball form. Dip the balls in Egg yolk and fry them.

The critical part of this recipe is the way cinnamon enriches the salmon and the way curry and cinnamon fit with each other. Also cinnamon is an excellent natural regulator for blood sugar. This also ensures a sense of fulfillment after the meal.

I'm afraid I'm not very good with scales and measures. So you will have to trust your own senses if you ever try these recipes.

Life Engineering

2009-02-06T11:48:00.000+02:00

In the last two - three weeks I have been busy taking actions to shape my next few years. Ironically all of these actions required heavy dealing with bureaucracy. So heavy that it gave me the impression that our lives are frozen to their shapes in molds of bureaucracy, that the borders of our comfort zones coincide with potential struggling with rules and procedures.

First thing I did was to set up a base camp in the living room, totally occupying the little, red dining table by bringing my LCD screen, printer, files from my little corner study upstairs .

Then I started to work: First issue was that I had to deal with military service issues for which I went to my home town to declare why I didn't report myself in the last year as the law was entitling me to do so after receiving my master's degree. Eventually because of the legal procedures, my case was decided to be taken to the court. So I had to attain a lawyer to deal with this case. Let's see how things will develop there.

Then only to support my case, as decided earlier, I applied for a PhD program. I can't tell how much I resented to write statements of purpose about things which aren't actually my purposes. It felt as if my life was being raped by being entrapped in a situation where I had to show fake enthusiasm about something I didn't like. Too bad that you can't simply write in your statement of purpose that you want to do PhD because it's the only way to avoid military service in the bloody country.

My problem regarding the military service is not very ideological by the way. Neither is the reason that I'm a comfort maniac. It seems to be more like related to an intellectual snobbishness. I just don't want to give my six precious months to a system that I perceive to be uttermost stupid. I don't want to easily hand my contributions to a world where killing and to be killed heroically under a uniform is the perfect norm. Spineless as it is, I will eventually do the service as I wouldn't go to prison for the "cause". But I don't want to ease things for the state by volunteering either. So I stick with this light defense mode I guess.

Then when the PhD application was over I have applied for a work permit to be able to start a subsidiary in the UK of our company in Turkey. It was also hell a lot of paper work but managed to finish that at last.

Sleepless nights under piles of paper. Depending on their results and how the business shapes, in June 2009, I might be;

a- A soldier
b- Ripping my ass in the UK enduring all the complexities to set up a company from scratch again and this time in a new country.
c- Continuing working for my company and attend a PhD program that I totally dislike.

Let's see how my life will be molded this time.

simple is complex (and complex is still complex)

2009-01-15T11:34:00.000+02:00

Came across an Albert Einstein quote today: " Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"

Being an engineer, in my professional career, many times I have come across what I would call "complexity traps". These are spots in a project which generally prove to be the most tasty, the most pleasant parts. Especially in the cases where creativity needs to be involved, an engineer tends to turn the quest for a solution into a Sunday puzzle. The solution gets more and more perfect but also more and more difficult to implement to the degree that sometimes it is not implementable anymore or even worse to the degree that it is implementable but becomes very difficult to maintain afterwards as no one else fully comprehends what the solution is all about. Just like the above sentence.

But this certainly doesn't mean that achieving simplicity when dealing with complex issues is simple. Neither it is about leaving things at a primitive level. The brilliance of simplicity becomes only evident if the mind behind it is fully aware of the complexities of the matter. So simplicity can only be permanent if it is derived from complex thought. Like Eric Satie's or Phillip Glass' music for example or like in e=mc2.

Incredible India or Spice Goldenshot

2009-01-04T19:54:00.000+02:00

You certainly know about India's TV commercials which end with county's tourism slogan: Incredible India. In those commercials, the distinct variety of possibilities that exist in India is underlined with a strong emphasis on the colorfulness of the country.

This may be very much true. But to a business traveler, the experience seems to be slightly different.

Just arrived a few hours ago after a long trip with a massive 8 hours of layover in Dubai. I'm currently in Kolkata, or Calcutta as still known to most of us. Calcutta's name had always have an exotic echo in my soul - first time I heard about the city was in Jules Verne's "Around The World in 80 Days". As a 10 years old kid, for some reason I was fascinated by the name of the city and by the strange exotics it had to be offering.

The Indian parliament had changed the city's name from the better known former version to Kolkata about couple of years ago mainly in an attempt to return to the original version which was distorted under the British colonial rule.

The city is massive - depending on different accounts 14-17 million people live here making it India's second, world's 14Th. biggest city.

On the Emirates flight I took from Dubai to Kolkata I started to make some observations about this fascinating country. Here is a summary;

1- Before the take-off there was a rather unusual extension added to the usual in-cabin announcement which I actually hoped to have misheard. The cabin crew was informing us that they were going to spray us with chemicals -supposedly- against insects! A measure taken at all international flights arriving in India as I was informed.

The stewardesses started smoke bomb like things and toured with them in their hands all around the cabin which resembled a bit the passing of the Olympic torch. "Free Tibet!". Ehm... A quite ill-timed habit; but still fashionable amongst intellectual circles. ;)

Now - I don't know about the possibility of importing insects to India in my luggage - or maybe in my hair? - but this is surely some of the most stupid things that was ever done to me. Ever.

2- On the plane the food was incredibly spicy. I mean it was spicy. Maybe I should disclose here again that I'm from Istanbul - a city that has a extensive cuisine culture where a quite big portion of it comes from Middle East. So I know what spice is all about. But this was something different.

The appetizer was a package of mixed spices fried in palm oil and rather than appetizing the thing has started the "party" in my stomach.

Then there was two kinds of salad - both of them were of course spiced. Then came fish fried in creamy curry sauce accompanied by rice cooked with saffron. Then came dessert - something I couldn't eat that was done with something called -I'm quoting- saffron milk.

As digestive, there was another package of mixed spices which I only could dare to have a smell at.

Result: A stomach completely paralyzed . As Peter Sellers in Pink Panther would say: "There is a "beump" in my stomach".

3- The customs was pretty straight forward - except for the form that needed to be filled out by everyone - including the Indians. Why would a country want detailed information from its citizens about where they are coming from, how long they are going to stay in India, whether they still work abroad or not?..

Result: A few desperate looking Indian guys, probably construction workers returning from Dubai, who are not able to read or write asking people in the line to fill out their forms.

4- The airport is really small if you consider the city's size. Just 3 lanes for luggage collection if I'm not wrong. The procedure overall was quite slow and bureaucracy wise complicated.

The airport is very much run down; reminding you about what you hear about India rather that what you see on TV commercials about India.

The car park was a mess - the sections in the car park was lined with cut and bound together bamboo trees (are they called "tree" indeed?) where the -again from bamboo tree made- primitive gates was opened and closed by dedicated men beneath.

Result: I know that India isn't very rich if you consider the revenue per capita. But given its sheer size and industries developing at a mind numbing speed, it certainly has the money. Is it really that difficult and expensive to build and maintain a good airport?

The airport is where the first impression about a country is established and first impressions are difficult to break.

5- The city looks very desperate and poor. The driver that was sent by our host to pick us up drove us through such an odd route - which must be the best route anyway - that if we had taken a taxi, I would have been really really suspicious about the driver's honesty. Such run down streets that go narrow and then wide and then again narrow and then become high way like with no obvious system.

Also what is significant is the constant feeling as if you are walking in a dust cloud. There is dust everywhere. It is very evident. The air is foggy and it smells like dust. And your throat soon gets uncomfortable.

6- Taxis: Their designs must be at least 40 years old. There are also taxi like carriages drawn by a bicycle.

7- The "Cold" - today it is about 21 degree Celsius in Kolkata. Yet most of the people are wrapped in warm clothes. There are even quite a few people with all kinds of warm hats. This strange sight becomes less surprising when I remember about the article I saw in an Indian daily on the plane to here. The article was about the cold wave in India and 50 people frozen to death in the last week. The article mentioned that the temperatures dropped to as low as 4 degrees. (above zero - Celsius). Well - this certainly is a point where relativity matters.

8- Safety - in our ivory tower - one of the Hyatt's in town- is very well maintained. So well that it raises questions about the safety in the country. Two level security when entering the hotel ground. Indian Army soldiers with automatic rifles hidden behind thick barricades. Of course, since the terrible happenings in Mumbai, merely one month has passed.

9 - When leaving the security measures behind, you seem to leave the real India behind as well. It sadly reminded of the British colonial time images where the British elites watch a polo game on a glowingly green grass ground in their royally contrasting white suites ignoring the poverty being endured just a few hundreds of meters away. A pleasantly lit garden with fountains where smiling hotel attendees are waiting for you. The dusty air however couldn't be left outside.

10- The people are extremely polite and helpful and probably related to that; very good service at the hotel.

11- The dinner; another "beump" in my stomach. An exploding kind...

Self Destructive Pleasure

2008-12-25T18:16:00.000+02:00

Best moment of the day.

Swam quite a distance - it was a good work-out. Quickly put my clothes on and went out of the locker room to sit on a street bench right beneath the door in the cold. Watching snow flakes falling in the light of street lamp, I took in a big breath of fresh air. A few junior water polo players with red cheeks left the locker room chatting cheerfully and raced to the bus station.

As their voices fade in the darkness, I took one cigarette out of my pocket and lit it. I stopped for a while to enjoy the suspension in the cold silence. Then... I inhaled the smoke into my lungs that were so ready to absorb the magic after all the swimming.

Brilliant.

Airport Blues

2008-11-17T23:21:00.001+02:00

On my way to Cape Town for a quick & crazy two days dive from my base - Istanbul.

A roughly 13 hrs flight to Cape Town via Jo'burg where the plane only stops for a while to drop some of the passengers. Just like a regular bus...

Brilliant part of this journey; Istanbul and Cape Town are in the same time zone. You fly across half the world but the time is still same as back home. Nice feeling.

First time I put foot on southern half of Africa and I had heard that Cape Town was brilliant. Let's see.

A Quick Report From My "Third City"

2008-11-01T17:44:00.000+02:00

About the time I was getting ready to leave for the airport, my business partner called to wish me a nice trip. He asked how it felt to return to my third city after so much time. When I inquired about what he meant by referring to Tbilisi as my third city, he said that it was the city where I have spent third biggest portion of my life so far. He was right, strangely as it is, Tbilisi holds a significant space in my life.

I like Georgia and I like Georgians. I like their pride and patriotism. They have won my sympathy with their struggle as a relatively small nation against and in between imperial powers in one of the most problematic geographies. That's why I find myself to be much more tolerant to problems I encounter in Tbilisi as compared in other cities I travel to frequently. Subjective? Oh yea.

Although I like this city, I must admit it gets a bit difficult to get around at times. You have to prepare yourself that people may display sudden acts of aggression as aggression seems to be a social norm in Georgia. Especially if you are a man, you have to be aggressive, speak loudly, be demanding. At any night out spent with Georgian guys, the possibility that you get involved in at least one quarrel is much more probable than any of the Murphy's rules.

Last night it was pretty mild though. I was in a night club called Night Office. A house music club that was opened in the beginning of 2006. By then it looked as if a magic hand had carried the club from space into the heart of Tbilisi. It was such a big change.

I went there out of a nostalgia lust. To remember about certain memories that still make me smile today.

At the entrance, I had to wait in a line (well; let's don't call it a line but a herd of people pushing each other near some door) with cool young crowd at their early twenties for about half an hour. The contrast between them and myself (I'm 31) gave me the chills as I remembered how much I despise the expat "working in less developed countries" stereo type. A big red nosed westerner, at his 50's, having a huge beer belly, with constant lust for local young girls, acting like god possibly due to lack of self confidence and constant repression back at home.

Anyway; the music sucked; but the drinks were fine. I made myself quickly drunk, found my way to the middle of the dance ring and danced for about an hour with my eyes closed. In Tbilisi, as a single guy, there is no way to dance on your own with your eyes open without catching an angry look from a guy who thinks you're hitting on his girl. So you have to close your eyes, look at the floor at best and dance. Quite a meditation!

I left the place at about 3 to catch an early morning flight back home after two days in this dusty but beautiful city.

I took the picture from this website by the way:

http://foto.rambler.ru/public/bakuri9/15/tbilisi/tbilisi-web.jpg.

Pity but I don't feel like taking pictures nowadays. Topic for another post maybe...

a rather indistinct start

2008-10-28T21:44:00.000+02:00

it had been quite a long time since the times i used to sit across an emptiness to tell something; if feels strange.

to touch the keyboard right now feels like the way someone who quited playing piano long time ago would feel when hitting keys bashfully in a music store after so many music less years. i'm waiting for a wave of spirit to take me away from this smoky study.

well, passer by, it's shitty; but it is a start.

a start. an indistinct one.