Balcony miscellanea

I am pleased to present the petunias I nursed back from shriveled near-oblivion.



Also, I couldn't resist getting a shot of the gathering audience for yesterday's Bogaziçi graduation. These people are lucky – the brutally hot weather had abated a little bit. Meltem and I missed the ceremony itself as we had gone off to a classical music concert (held in a Byzantine church with amazing acoustics), but we had gotten to savor the tests of the stadium's speaker system all day. I have to say, Pomp and Circumstance still gets me all choked up.

Behold the new teacher

A happy day job-wise! In quick succession, I got a phone call from TIPPS asking if I felt ready to start teaching (seems there's a student champing at the bit to get going; I said yes) and Meltem noticed that they've put my profile up on their web page. Huzzah!

Workin' Turks

OK, it's Africa hot around here. And I mean that literally – it seems a hot-weather pattern has come from Africa across the eastern Mediterranean to torment us in Turkey for a while. So say the Turkish meteorologists, anyway. Wherever it came from, it sucks. It's just nauseatingly hot. In fact several regions of Turkey have given public servants today and tomorrow off, since they're supposed to be the hottest days yet. Supposedly things will cool down toward the weekend.

And yet, if you look off either of our balconies at midday, you see manly men displaying what is either an awe-inspiring work ethic or mulish stupidity in the face of really dangerous heat. Here's one guy doing roof repairs across the street (there were others with him earlier, but they may have evaporated):



Just nearby, at the Bogaziçi stadium, they're setting up for the upcoming graduation festivities, blazing sun or no:



As for your humble Melbablog hosts, we're perfectly happy to cower in air-conditioned splendor. Call us spoiled (or civilized).

The chronicles of Elvin continue

For newcomers, or those who have forgotten: Elvin isn't some Tolkien reference, she's the daughter of Meltem's friends Durul and Şehnaz (who also happen to be our dentists!). We went to see them a couple of days ago and had a very nice time playing with Elvin, who will be 2 in October. Here's a recent snap.



I had been getting worried about Elvin for a while there. She has vast reserves of energy and a mighty pair of lungs, and when you combine that with an incentive structure like this:

Elvin: Aaaa!
Şehnaz: No.
Elvin: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Şehnaz: OK, OK, fine!

... you get a recipe for trouble. Which is exactly what was brewing, as Elvin got more and more spoiled and demanding and her poor mother gradually got ground into powder. But things have turned around, and now Elvin is once again well-nigh 100% cuteness. I was playing with her on the couch at one point when she climbed down on the floor, patted the carpet with one hand and said "Otu!" (otur = sit!). So I sat on the floor – and she climbed up on me, wrapped her arms around my neck and just hugged me silently for like a minute and a half. I just about melted.

Sidewalk art

Now this is just cool. I'd heard of this guy before, but this photo essay captures his appeal particularly nicely as it builds up to the final image.

Just an update

...'cause I feel bad about posting so infrequently. I'm afraid we'll lose our fans!

The weather is turning nice and HOT. Not quite brutal enough yet to warrant turning on the air conditioner (with the attendant jump in the electric bill), but getting there. It's also regrettably dry. When Meltem and I drive out to our family's summer place on the outskirts of Istanbul we pass by the city's main water reservoir, and hoo boy, it's a scary sight. Despite the heat, though, this week there appears to be some kind of football camp going on at the stadium across the street. (And again, when I say "football" I mean the REAL kind, not this girly-man soccer aberration.) Morning and afternoon the field fills up with young guys wearing helmets, running around to the orders of a couple of middle-aged men who are probably imported coaches. Hell, fine by me; anything to get a he-man sport recognized around here.

Speaking of he-men, or wanna-bes anyway, I don't know if it's the heat, but in the past week I've witnessed three fights. One we watched from the balcony of a restaurant downtown; some worthless jackass shoved a woman (his girlfriend?) across the hood of a cab, and was promptly given what-for by a nearby Galahad (not before the woman threw her high-heeled shoe at his head though!). Then, the other day, Meltem and I were running for a bus when the doors opened and WHAM, a couple of peasant-looking ruffians burst out the door, one chasing the other. The chasee tripped over me, so the chaser caught him; hope I didn't accidentally trip the wrong guy! Finally, I was coming home from somewhere yesterday and noticed that a crowd had gathered outside our local mini-mart. Right as I passed by the tension snapped as two guys lunged at each other. It's a regular Dodge City around here! (Weird thing: No one around here seems to know how to take a swing; they all go for the straightforward frontal choke. Maybe I've been watching too many kung fu movies, so my entertainment expectations are inappropriately elevated.)

And finally, the big drama around the house is an invasion of pesky ants, who discovered our secret cache of brown sugar. The forces of goodness and light (me) have been struggling valiantly to vanquish them, but they just keep comin'. O tempora! O mores!

Who's Starbuck?

Last night Meltem and I went out with a couple we know, Kürşad and Funda. Kürşad (the husband) works in a casino, and as part of his preparation for a new placement at a casino in North Cyprus he's been "training" in sunny Suriname. Funda is about to go join him for the last leg of his stay there, and then they'll go to North Cyprus hopefully in December. (Kürşad is a high-school friend of Meltem's, and he and Funda were living in North Cyprus when we were there, so it's kind of a homecoming for them.) Anyway, after a nice meal we went out for a coffee at a place with a cool name: Mandabatmaz. In Turkish this means, ahem, "the water buffalo doesn't sink." Apparently the idea is that the foam on top of your yummy Turkish coffee is so thick a water buffalo could walk on it. (The logo of the place was even a water buffalo walking atop a cup of coffee.) Much cooler than some stupid mermaid!

MWNF update

Some of you may recall that I worked on a project called Museum With No Frontiers and its "Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean" website. Well, it's still growing, and they've just unveiled a new bunch of sections including a general introduction to the phases of Islamic art. It's divided into sections, each of which has information about the architecture and minor (decorative) arts of the respective historical periods (e.g. Abbasids, Ottomans). I wrote the sections describing the minor arts. You can plunge in here if you're so inclined.

A comparison

Lest my joyful swoon, in my last post, over the concept of "walking distance" was insufficiently convincing, here's a pictorial comparison to show you how oh-so-beautifully close to home my new job is gonna be. Courtesy Google Earth, of course.

Exhibit A: Where TIPPS is relative to our love shack.



I realize it's a bit small, but home is at the upper right, a little house-icon labeled "Home Sweet Home" right next to the compass-circle. (The big green field right next to it is the Bogaziçi sports field, where I often go to run or do tai chi.) My lovely new workplace is at the upper left, a blue pushpin marked "TIPPS." For reference I've included the large triangular complex at the bottom with two towers; this is the Akmerkez shopping mall, with which some of you are now familiar (hi Mom!).

OK, on to Exhibit B: Where my soon-to-be-erstwhile employer is located relative to all this.



Home Sweet Home and TIPPS are in the foreground; Yeditepe is the yellow pushpin in the background. I like how you can see the curvature of the earth. Any questions as to why I didn't like the commute?

(UPDATE: If you click on the pictures you get bigger and more legible versions. At least I did.)

Müjde

(That means "good news" in Turkish.)

Today I signed a contract for a New Job. Yes, that's right, I am letting my contract with my current employer run out (on August 31), and switching to a new career track, sort of. My new employer is a place called Turkish International Prep Schools, or TIPPS. (Their website is here.) They provide tutoring and consulting services to Turkish students who want to get into American universities, mainly by helping them pass the SAT and TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) tests. Officially it's a part-time job, but since the demographic that wants this service is pretty well-off, the potential for making fat wads of money is darn good. I need to "self-train" as an SAT instructor, but should get my first students next month or August at the latest. Best part: The school is in a very nice neighborhood WALKING DISTANCE from where we live. Oh, let me repeat them, the sweetest two words I have let roll off my lips and keyboard in a long, long time: walking distance. (Whence this urge for a cigarette?) Anyway, I went there today to sign the contract and have lunch with them, and I was really struck by what an incredibly friendly, even familial environment they have cultivated, at least among the staff. And judging from a Turkish bulletin board I checked out, they are intensely beloved by their students as well. So things are looking very, very up indeed, at least at this moment.

For an idea of what I'm leaving, here are some gems of knowledge I picked up from my current students' final examinations:

• The Cold War ended when Jean-Jacques Rousseau died.
• The U.S. Constitution was written by Joseph Stalin.
• In WWII, the Germans invaded other countries "directly, without foreheads." (I love this one.)

(Let me hasten to add that I had a handful of really nice, intelligent students who fully earned my respect and whom I will miss a lot. Not enough to make me want to stay, though.)