Our trip

As promised, here's some words and pics to tell you about our trip down south. (As always, if you click on a picture you get a bigger version.)

We spent about 6 days at a little place near the city of Antalya. It wasn't a big stupid anthill of a hotel, thank God, but a really nice, small group of wooden bungalows nestled between the mountains and the shore (ten bungalows spread out over 9000 square meters, or 2.2 acres). The owner is really great about keeping the place peaceful and quiet; there was no music, no TV, nothing to mar the absolutely beautiful silence. Here's what our bungalow looked like:



And here's the setting we found ourselves in (this is the view from our porch toward the mountains):



Those are citrus trees planted between the bungalows. We weren't sure what the fruits were because they weren't ripe yet; I used my tried-and-true method of rubbing the leaves and savoring the citrus aroma that wafts noseward, coming up with the idea that they were lemons; Meltem pointed out that they lacked the pointy ends of lemons and theorized that they were oranges and tangerines. There were also a lot of pomegranate trees around with big fat pomegranates hanging off them; here's Meltem to demonstrate.



As I said, the bungalows were nicely placed between the mountains and the sea. We surprised ourselves by displaying the willpower to get up at 6:00 am each morning to go down and watch the sun rise over the Mediterranean. It looks like this:



The setting was really amazingly beautiful because you really are right between dramatic mountains and beautiful blue sea. Sometimes this made the place bear an uncanny resemblance to Hawaii, a place brought to mind by views like this:



One of the mountains, the tallest in the area, was known to the ancients as Mount Olympos (not that one, another one). I took this picture of it from the beach:



Speaking of Olympos, that was the name of the local city in ancient and medieval times. It was a major harbor city in the Lycian League (a confederation of city-states in Hellenistic times) but eventually fell into obscurity. The ruins were about a half-hour walk down the beach from us. I took a morning walk over there and was just stunned at how cool it was; I totally felt like Indiana Jones as I clambered over paths in a dense forest, here and there coming across ancient and medieval ruins. Here, for example, is the entrance to the local temple from Roman times:



The Romans also left this bath with a lovely mountain for a backdrop:



There was also a nifty Byzantine structure of unknown, but probably religious, purpose. There were remnants of mosaic floors scattered around the site but I just liked the evocativeness of the building, thinking how 1600 years ago there would have been gloomy Greeks muttering their prayers under the now-fallen domes.



My jaunt over to Olympos was really the only non-lazy thing either of us did the whole time, I'm happy to report. We intended to relax, and by God did we ever relax. It was certainly easy to do so in our bungalow-amid-the-fruit-trees. Here's my better half sitting on the porch:



And here's me blissfully swinging in a hammock on the premises:



Since the "hotel" was so small, there were few other people around, which is one of my sine qua nons for a vacation worthy of the name. We did have numerous companions, though. For example, there was a cat we named Cheeky for his big sideburns:



Cheeky was impressively sanguine given the horde of chickens who constantly roamed the premises pecking and peeping:



There were other creatures too; I snapped this little guy as he lumbered toward the shade under our bungalow:



Anyway, that should give you some idea of what kind of nice vacation we had. Now we are back in the big city, getting ready for the school year to begin so Meltem can teach and I can await the hordes of SAT candidates I've been promised. Don't worry, we'll keep you up to date on all our thrilling doings!

Arteest at work

We're back from our wonderful trip to the south of Turkey, and a full-blown photo-filled travelogue will follow shortly. First, though, I wanted to share my new hobby: miniature painting. Yep, I studied illustrated manuscripts for so long, now I figure I should take the trouble to learn how to make 'em myself. (Much better than bloviating about them along with other impotent leeches on the creative heritage of humanity – but enough about academia.) And as luck would have it, Istanbul happens to have a number of people still practicing traditional-style book arts (i.e. calligraphy, miniature painting, illumination, and bookbinding), and last weekend I signed up for lessons with a very nice guy in Taksim. Here's a picture of me at my first lesson:



And here's a close-up of (my receding hairline and) what I was doing: flower motifs!



And here's a little number I've been working on for a few hours now (click on the picture for a larger version):



OK, it's not mine, but you get the idea...

Authority and its abusers

Around here the traffic police have a nifty gadget: kind of a side-mounted forklift on their truck. It's used for scooping up cars that are illegally parallel parked on the side of the road. Were they to use them regularly and scrupulously, they could conceivably make a dent in the infuriating congestion in our neighborhood, where people park where'er they dern well please and choke up the roads for the rest of us. Alas, the police are neither regular nor scrupulous, and you can imagine our surprise when Meltem and I emerged from a shop this morning to see our beloved Bernie (who had not been illegally parked, thank you very much) hoisted up on the traffic scooper! We hustled over and Meltem tried to reason with the cop, drawing his attention to the conspicuous lack of any "No Parking" signs in the area. He wasn't moved, though, and it took all her negotiating skills plus a judicious invocation of her pregnant state just to get him to put the car back on the ground and settle for a 66-lira "picking up and putting back down" fee. Sheesh! As Meltem put it, he and his partner were just out "shopping" for fines to extort from people. (In fact as we were getting back into Bernie a guy stopped his car next to us and said the cops had just done the same thing to him.) I've read enough about arbitrary abuses of authority, but now I can attest from experience that living through it genuinely sucks.

Photo catch-up

Hi! We're still here! I thought I'd share a couple of photos that have been sitting in my phone, unretrieved. Our first theme is: Nature's wild kingdom.

Behold the savage Coffeehouse-dwelling Chair Cat, photographed in his natural habitat:



Here, too, is the local equivalent of Garfield. (Note to keen-eyed readers: the "SexEn" on the plaque is a naughty play on the word "seksen," meaning 80, as in Class of '80.)



Here's one I took ages ago, on the campus of Yeditepe. This is one of the numerous puppies spawned by the strays who lived high on the hog on campus. You can tell this is a work of my early period by the thumb across the bottom of the picture...



Finally, here's one of Sirma and her special friend. Sirma, I may have mentioned, is a lazybones dog who apparently feels it her duty to monitor the goings-on in our parking lot by lying around all day. In recent weeks another dog has shown up, a true fatbody (apparently obesity afflicts canines as well). Obviously they're close, because Sirma is licking Tubby's ear.



Enough with the cats and dogs, here is a nice view of the Bosphorus from the campus of Meltem's university:



And I hope you've enjoyed this photographic romp.

Our anniversary celebration(s)

As mentioned, yesterday was our sixth wedding anniversary. Thought you might like to see a picture of the éclairs and "6"-candle I so cunningly purchased, so here's the moment we sat down to enjoy them:



In the evening we decided to go to a nice restaurant Meltem knows on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus (here's their website). That sounds far away, but actually we just went down the hill on our side to catch the restaurant's private boat for customers. Complimentary wine was served on board, always a big hit with me:



The restaurant itself is right on the water directly underneath the second bridge (i.e. the one further up the Bosphorus, closer to the Black Sea). The traffic noise therefrom actually isn't as bad as you might think; in fact, it recedes into kind of a background hum and isn't really obtrusive at all. The location makes for nice shots of the setting sun in our fair continent-spanning city:



Here's another shot I like:



The food was a bit pricey but utterly fantastic (you do indeed get what you pay for!). So we had a wonderful anniversary dinner; here's to many more!

The travels of Meltem's mom

Last night we went to Meltem's parents' place to welcome her mom and aunt back from their recent 11-day trip to Russia. This was the first time Meltem's mom had been outside Turkey since coming here from Yugoslavia (Kosovo, in fact) in the 1950s, so we were really happy for her. The trip was basically a river cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and both ladies were very pleased with the whole thing.

We almost saw them, too. Meltem and her mom regularly communicated by cell phone or text message, and so we knew the travelers' itinerary. One day we knew they were going to be on an island called Kizhi, home to a remarkable 18th-century church with 22 domes. The building is made entirely out of carved and joined wood – not a single nail in the whole darn thing. Anyway, it turns out the place not only has a website, but also a continuously-updated webcam. So we hovered over the web page hoping to catch a glimpse of our intrepid travelers (and even thought we had 'em at one point, but it turned out to be a false alarm). Talk about a small world!

A dual reason for celebration

Today, August 11, is a day for celebrating twice over. Number one, it's our sixth wedding anniversary. And number two, it's Meltem's first day of freedom after working practically nonstop since February – first the spring semester, and then right into the summer Turkish course, which ended yesterday to the palpable relief of all.

I was hoping that the latter would degrade Meltem's capacity to remember the former, so that I could surprise her with an anniversary gesture. Almost worked, too. The morning began with nary a mention of the anniversary. At one point Meltem said she was going to phone in a delivery order to the pastry shop across the street, so naturally I jumped at the chance to go out and get her a yummy little surprise: éclairs plus a birthday candle shaped like the number 6 to stick in one of 'em. Alas, by the time I got back with my Secret Cargo of Loooooove Meltem had checked her e-mail and received a nice anniversary e-card from my mom (as had I). So the surprise was semi-blown, but it couldn't have happened in a nicer way!

That sizzling sound

... you hear is Turkey baking in one of the worst summers in memory. A day or two ago we did get this:



– but it lasted almost exactly as long as it took Meltem to run inside, fetch the camera and take this photo. Then it was back to more of the same hot-n-sunny. At least we don't (yet) have it as bad as Ankara; they're in a hot dry region and at a high altitude to boot, so their water shortage has hit the critical level (reservoir below 5% capacity) and the public water supply is now on a 48 hours on, 48 hours off cycle. Can you imagine, 48 hours with nary a drop from the tap? We were promised thunderstorms today but naturally they didn't materialize. Now I like sunshine as much as the next guy, but this is getting to be a little much. So I like talking to Mom and Dad on Skype and hearing them talk about all the rain they're getting.

Snip!

It being the last day of the month, I checked my bank account and lo and behold, Yeditepe paid me my July salary – pro-rated to take into account the resignation letter I couriered to them last week. So it appears they got the message, and I am now officially outta there. The cord has been cut, as it were. Phew. What a saga that was.

My teaching schedule is gossamer-light this week, and next week (ceteris paribus) I have no students at all. I have been taking advantage of this to get some of my own work done in the Bogaziçi library. And it's been going great. It got me thinking how I did not leave Yeditepe (solely) because of the students' alarming inability to reason; nor, more generally, did I bail on academia because I lost interest in the intellectual life. Quite the opposite: There is a certain kind of work I want to do, a certain stamp I want to leave on the world, and it's intellectual work; but academia was proving to be exactly the wrong environment I needed in which to do it. So I shoved off. Spinoza ground lenses, I can teach the SAT for a while.

Summertime blues

Greetings from the world's largest sauna. It's not actually that hot temperature-wise – as I write this it's about 84 degrees Fahrenheit – but the humidity is unbelievable. Looking off our balcony you can see the Asian side blanketed in steamy clouds. In short, yuck. Meltem and I have no class today (some would say I never have any!), so we're safely ensconced in air-conditioned splendor here in our living room, only daring to dart out into the soupy air for purposes of micturation and suchlike.

When the weather is less hideous, though, we do make the most of the summer. I try to get out and practice tai chi whenever I can, and my sly minx of a wife caught me with the camera the other day:



Also, last weekend we escaped to the shore, as mentioned in our last post. Here's a view of yours truly contemplating the Sea of Marmara:



This is a view across the street, to give you an idea of what kind of building our "summer place" is:



And, finally, a view down to the stairs which lead to the "beach." The water was particularly nice that day; sometimes it fills up with seaweed and jellyfish, but other times it's crystal-clear and the perfect temperature for a refreshing dip.

Election day

Meltem and I just came back from a very nice, relaxing weekend at her family's summer place about 45 minutes outside the city. I even worked up a tan of sorts. We were hoping that the place would be near-deserted today, because it's election day in Turkey and people would presumably leave early to make it to the polls on time. (Not only is it an important election, what with people being all nervous about returning the ruling party to power, but voting in Turkey is compulsory.) Alas, the place was still somewhat populated, but it certainly didn't detract from the quality of our chill-out time.

Driving back this evening, we noticed an unusual number of cars with European license plates on the road into the city. Meltem thinks they were Gastarbeiter, i.e. Turks who work in Europe, coming back to vote and visit their families while they're at it. Impressive to see how seriously people take voting around here. Not like there's really anyone worth voting for, but I digress!

My Proustian moment

The oddest things make you homesick. At work last week I was chatting with my colleagues at lunch when one of them, Selma, commented that as a graduate student in Massachusetts many years ago, she was grossed out when her residence served cottage cheese with pineapple. Bam! All of a sudden I had really vivid memories of eating cottage cheese with pineapple, and let me assure you they are blissful memories indeed. Naturally I piped up in favor of my beloved delicacy, but Selma was not to be moved. No matter – I was off down memory lane, an especially bittersweet inner journey in light of the fact that as far as I am aware, you can't get cottage cheese here in Turkey. So now there are, officially, two things I desperately miss about the States: autumn in New England, and cottage cheese with pineapple.

A MelbaBlog Milestone!

I was just gonna post something about my day, but I realized when I logged in that this is the 100th post on MelbaBlog! So, happy anniversary to us.

My new job continues to go well. It's a very interesting change from the kind of lecturing I'm used to. I used to have a body of material in my brain (e.g. "Islamic art from the 7th to the 14th century") which I then had to transmit, over the course of a semester or so, into the brains of my students. Teaching the SAT is different, because the body of material is, well, the English language and how to use it right. I have 3 students so far. Usually they come for 2 hours at a time, twice a week, but one of them is only in Istanbul for a month, so I've been teaching her 4 hours a day, 3 times a week – whew! Tiring, especially because I'm sorta learning by doing, but it's a good change for me. Plus, today was my first payday (ka-ching)!

Otherwise, summer continues to drag along with no rain in sight. Pretty sad to see the hay-brown lawn outside our balcony. Since there's an election coming up on July 22, the government doesn't dare mess with the water supply, but rumor has it that after the election they will start shutting off the water for some hours each day. Yuck. And speaking of elections, I will be glad when they're over if only because that will mean the various political parties will stop driving amplifier-laden vans around town blaring the lousy pop songs they commissioned for themselves...

Happy Fourth

Beh!

(More Elvin treacle follows hereupon, so scroll down if you're not interested.)

This was passed on to me by Meltem: The other day, out of the blue, Elvin looked at her mother and said "Beh!" (her version of "Barry") and made a hugging gesture. For those of you unfamiliar with Elvinese, this may be translated as "I love Barry!" And, of course, I'm flattered as all bug-out. I may only have a fan club of one, but she is surely a cutie!

Moving right along

It feels like things are moving right along around here. For one thing, I have started teaching – with a vengeance; they've already given me three students! This may not sound like a lot, but each one gets my time in two-hour blocks, twice a week, and one of them is only in Istanbul for a month so she's doing four hours a day three times a week. So my schedule is filling up (and my bank account will shortly follow!).

Also, today Meltem and I went to the Istanbul police to renew my residence permit. We were expecting a hellish bureaucratic experience, but actually it went much more smoothly than all that, I'm happy to report. We paid for a three-year extension, so I am legal until just after my fortieth birthday. Yes, fortieth. Middle age, here I come. Talk about moving right along...

Can't resist

...posting a picture of a graduation. God, I'm such a sucker for academic regalia and ceremony. We missed the main shindig, but yesterday a separate graduation was held for (I think) students of the Faculty of Administrative Sciences, and I got a snap of the professors coming onto the field. So here you are. (Cue "Pomp and Circumstance"!)

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.)

Belated Happy Mothers' Day

In my mad scramble to please my soon-to-be-former employer, I foolishly neglected to give a public cyber-hug to Mom, who graced these shores over the weekend of Mothers' Day. A good time was had by all, including a ferry trip to the islands and even a visit to "our" Starbucks down the hill in Bebek. We even took a nice picture during a family trip to a cute little village called Polonezköy:



(left to right: Meltem's mom, Meltem, Barry, Barry's mom)

Thanks to Mom for coming, and sorry to Mom for leaving you off the blog for so long!

We're still here

Hi all, we're still around, it's just been a crazy end-of-semester period for each of us. Gradually, though, things are winding down. I've even found the time to spiff up MelbaBlog, as I'm sure you've noticed. If not, look at the top of the page...

By the way, happy Conquest Day (or whatever you'd call it). Today, May 29, was the 554th anniversary of the conquest of Constantinople, now known as Istanbul, by the Ottoman Turks. Buses are flying little Turkish flags off their rear-view mirrors, and so on. There are also billboards around the city saying "Istanbul, City of Peace – Celebrate the Great Conquest!" (The peace/conquest paradox doesn't seem to have sunk in with anyone. Like the Byzantines just handed the city over when the Ottomans asked them politely.)

Paradox or not, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous. Istanbul in the spring and early summer can be just unbearably beautiful. All this sun, though, is making people worry about water shortages. The same thing happened when I was here for the first time in 1994, prompting the Islamist mayor of the city to "officially" pray for rain. He's Prime Minister now.

Low tolerance for oppression

By the way, I decided not to go to Syria. I decided the foul odor of totalitarianism would overwhelm any enjoyment I got out of the Islamic architecture, much as was the case when I went to Iran in 2004. Oh well, the architecture isn't going anywhere, but hopefully the goons running the place are (Deo volente, to the gallows).

Love that rumor mill

Last semester I let slip to a couple of students that I had worked on the Ridley Scott movie Kingdom of Heaven. (For those of you who don't know, I acted as a consultant to the designers to ensure that the Islamic costumes, weapons, banners, etc. looked appropriate. Didn't get my name in the credits, but take my word for it.) Now it seems the word on the Yeditepe street is that I wrote Kingdom of Heaven! Didn't know I had it in me.

In other students-believe-the-darndest-things news, last week, after the class in which I taught the rise of Nazism, a student came up to me and said, "Since the Jews now control the world economy, what do you think of Hitler's ideas?" After picking my jaw up off the floor, I made it abundantly clear what I think of such things. Jeez. He seemed like such a nice boy (the student, not Hitler).

Goings-on in our fair land

For those of you who have been following the ups and downs of Turkish politics of late, here is a very sensible article from the Washington Post which, in my humble opinion, nails it.

Priorities

Last night Meltem and I decided to go to the movies. We wanted to see Spider-Man 3, but held out little hope that there would be any tickets to be had, since it had just opened the previous night. Lo and behold, not only did we get tix, but there were empty seats a-plenty in the theater, and those that were occupied were occupied by little kids and their moms. Where'd the menfolk go? Answer: The couch. There was a very important soccer match last night, pitting the favorite team of Meltem's mom against the favorite team of Meltem's dad. (Dad lost.) And since soccer is better than oxygen, most people were more interested in watching a bunch of guys kicking a ball than in watching Spidey kick butt. (They may have been right, as it happens – I found the movie to be a disappointment.) The cosmic balance was soon restored: When we left the theater, the guys were back, filling the streets, hollering and honking their horns to celebrate "their" victory.

Workers of the world, stay home!

Happy May Day, International Day of the Worker and all that. Never a big deal for me before, but apparently it's a HUGE deal around here. Combine thousands of agitated lefties and thousands more nervous police and you have a recipe for excitement. That's why the cops have clamped down on traffic in order to stem the Red tide, as it were; the bridges across the Bosphorus have been made one-lane only (!!) and the ferries have been cancelled to boot. Highly secure, I'm sure, but this brilliant exercise in preventive surveillance has also completely paralyzed the city. I've even been reading reports about people being poisoned by car/bus exhaust as they sit trapped in tunnels. So I cancelled today's class – in which, ironically enough, I was going to talk about Communism. Vive la révolution!

Weakness of will: A photo essay

One of the menagerie of cats who hang around the front of our building is one I call Snowball. The other day Snowball exhibited admirable gumption by making it all the way up the stairs to our fifth-floor apartment (no matter how much they like my headscratches, the cats usually give up following us by about the third-floor landing). For all our protests that it was a human-only apartment, Snowball managed to finagle an invitation in the door...



... then tested our ability to resist by attempting a jump onto the couch ...



... and finally achieved victory in the form of a perch on Meltem's lap.



We finally had to evict Snowball at dinnertime, but do hope that she'll be back to test our willpower again soon.

Heybeliada

A couple of weekends ago Meltem and I, in desperate need of a break, decided to bust loose and take a trip to Heybeliada, one of the Princes' Islands. The Princes' Islands are a group of islands off the southern coast of the Asian side; they get their name because that's where the Byzantine emperors sent their out-of-favor or "retired" family members (often after gouging their eyes out for good measure, but I digress). It's remarkably easy to get there – from our door to the dock at Heybeliada was about 2 hours total, and that's because we took the slow ferry. Boy, what a difference. You go from trafficky, congested, concrete-laden urban chaos to cool breezes among pine forests with one ferry ride. Herewith a few pix so you can be jealous. (This time I'll put the descriptions before the pictures.)

Below, a nice view of the old city as you pass it on the ferry. On the left is Hagia Sophia and on the right is the Topkapi Palace with its many chimneys. In the center, on the water, is a ferry like the one we took this picture from.



Our ferry attracted lots of seagulls, not least because people (including me) like to throw bits of bread out to them as they tag along. One or two seagulls were intrepid and quick enough to catch their tidbit in midair. This picture is also nice because you can see the many sailboats along the shoreline of the city.



When we disembarked at Heybeliada, we started strolling along the waterfront and one of the first buildings that caught our attention was a pastry shop (pastane) with a familiar name! That knockout in the red jacket is my one and only.



And speaking of familiar names, literally across the street from Meltem Pastanesi was a real estate office. One of the ads in the window had "kelepir" (Turkish for "bargain" and Meltem's maiden name) in red ink! (The ad is selling a ceramic factory in Bartin, which is the town where Meltem's father was born. Heybeliada, island of weird coincidences!)



We quickly found a street which went uphill a ways and promptly turned into a staircase (this is mainly because there are no motor vehicles on the islands except for public services). You got a nice view over the water and the far, faraway city.



And when you get to the top of the stairs, you're at the tippy-top of the island and look down on the other side.



The top of the island is pretty much forest, and there are nice trails to walk on. We went a ways but didn't want to get overcommitted, especially since we hadn't had lunch yet.



On the way back down, we saw a cute scene with a couple of seagulls waddling around right near a group of cats. Oddly, there was no inter-species tension, probably because both knew that a given seagull was big enough to kick some serious kitty butt. There was some wary eyeballing, though.



Finally, here's a picture of me in front of one of the many flower-bedecked houses. Heybeliada is a wonderful place; we semi-seriously talked about moving there when our rent-free situation ends in 3 years.

The well-tested Yard. Doç.: Coda

Remember how the bureaucracy-happy locals insisted I take a foreign language exam to prove myself worthy of the title of Asst. Prof.? Well, last weekend we got my German test results in the mail, and it seems I got a 90 out of 100. Hah! Hopefully this means I will get not only an office, but a gilded name plate on the door. (Hopefully also a cattle prod to wield on my students, but I digress.)

More Pictures!

Hi! I am back to the Blogger now that I have a computer at home again. My old one died a few weeks ago. I would like to add more pictures from our trip to Emirgan, the park with the tulips and the other flowers. Here is my hubby enjoying the serenity:



Here he is being a tulip:







Here is a view of an old, royal mansion now used as a restaurant & cafe:













And here are some more flowers: