Saturday, July 09, 2005
Nick and VH1
After months of hearing about it, and having people tell me or write to me, "Hey, I saw your brother on VH1!", tonight I finally, FINALLY got to see Nick on a VH1 Show myself. From 9-11 they aired the grand premiere of "The 40 Most Awesomely Bad Breakup Songs" and he was able to get his 2 cents in on about 30 of them. I don't think I ever would have watched the show if he weren't featured in it, but I was able to last the whole 2 hours and live to tell about it. Ironically enough, it was the first time my Mom saw Nick on VH1, too. And she has no excuse because she's been here the whole time!
Friday, July 08, 2005
Photos Galore
Here are a bunch of pictures Nick and I took when he came to visit Turkey for 10 days before I came home...
Istanbul
Izmir and Ephesus
Some Aegean/Mediterranean Beach Action
Istanbul
Izmir and Ephesus
Some Aegean/Mediterranean Beach Action
Monday, June 20, 2005
Friday, June 17, 2005
Sloshball Postponed For Now
Unfortunately, Sloshball 2005 had to be moved from July 3rd to a later date. Nick sent out a feeler email and hardly anyone responded, leading us to conclude what we already feared: don't try throwing Sloshball on July 4th Weekend. Now the date is up in the air- it could be in late July or perhaps in mid-August, but it DEFINITELY will happen sometime this summer and we'll let everyone know well in advance. It wouldn't be summer without it.
Only 4 days till Nick arrives in Turkey (Xanax ahoy!) and only 13 days until I leave Turkey. The days be movin' mighty fast.
Only 4 days till Nick arrives in Turkey (Xanax ahoy!) and only 13 days until I leave Turkey. The days be movin' mighty fast.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
I Can't Go For That (But I Will)
Sitting in a cheap diner late one night in Bruges eating a really terrible hamburger, I heard this song over the speakers that immediately caught my attention. I knew I had heard it before, sometime, somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember anything. The tune had this great, bass-heavy beat to it, and it had to be from sometime in the 80s. It stirred something inside me because it was so acutely familiar, yet my memory was failing me terribly. It took me a few days and then one morning near the end of my trip it came to me in a Eureka-like moment (although, no, I was not in a bathtub at the time).
The song was “I Can’t Go For That” by none other than the great Hall and Oates. Hot damn, I love that song! I can’t get enough of it now. Everyone remembers them for Out of Touch, Man Eater or Rich Girl (though I always favored Private Eyes), but this song is amazing. I’m surprised some hip-hop group hasn’t sampled the beat for a rap song, or maybe they already have; I wouldn’t be surprised.
Hall and Oates are making a bit of a comeback these days, and they’re touring this summer with another classic 80s band, the oft-under appreciated and overlooked Tears For Fears. Some double bill, huh? I was ecstatic when I saw that show on pollstar.com a few weeks ago. They’re swinging around the northeast in mid-to-late August, and I’ll either see them in Boston at the Bank of America Pavilion (how many name changes can one concert venue go through in 5 years? That place must have broken the record.) or I’ll go down to NY and see them with Nick at Jones Beach.
Good stuff. If you’re not familiar with the Hall and Oates oeuvre, especially I Can’t Go For That, I highly recommend a visit to Itunes post haste.
The song was “I Can’t Go For That” by none other than the great Hall and Oates. Hot damn, I love that song! I can’t get enough of it now. Everyone remembers them for Out of Touch, Man Eater or Rich Girl (though I always favored Private Eyes), but this song is amazing. I’m surprised some hip-hop group hasn’t sampled the beat for a rap song, or maybe they already have; I wouldn’t be surprised.
Hall and Oates are making a bit of a comeback these days, and they’re touring this summer with another classic 80s band, the oft-under appreciated and overlooked Tears For Fears. Some double bill, huh? I was ecstatic when I saw that show on pollstar.com a few weeks ago. They’re swinging around the northeast in mid-to-late August, and I’ll either see them in Boston at the Bank of America Pavilion (how many name changes can one concert venue go through in 5 years? That place must have broken the record.) or I’ll go down to NY and see them with Nick at Jones Beach.
Good stuff. If you’re not familiar with the Hall and Oates oeuvre, especially I Can’t Go For That, I highly recommend a visit to Itunes post haste.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
End of Year Video Daze
Exactly 3 weeks until I fly home. It's gonna go by quick.
Over the course of these last two weeks, every day has felt like the last day of school. Final grades had to be submitted 10 days ago, with 10 school days left in the year. If that doesn’t make much sense to you, you’re not alone. I think a lot of the kids, especially the middles-schoolers, realized that deadline existed for us faculty, and therefore there has been little academic activity at lssikent recently. Teachers have been jockeying for the video rooms and DVD players like mad, and if they can’t show a movie, teachers will just let their students go play basketball and volleyball outside or let them go to the library to read a book, use the internet, or make a lot of unnecessary noise and aggravate the librarian to her wit’s end.
I tried showing a movie to my 7th grade integrated arts class today, but the DVD player in the video room had been so overworked that it couldn’t even work properly. It was all hot and on its last legs. At first I thought all the skipping was being caused by some dirt or a scratch on the disk, but the player just couldn’t hack it any longer. Imagine that!
I brought School of Rock with me here and I had been saving it to show to my students at the end of the year. I showed it to my 6th graders, and they flipped for it. They loved it- it was satisfying to see them sit down, behave, and not talk during a class for once. I didn’t even have to scold anyone for talking or creating a distraction! Well, word got out on School of Rock, and soon every teacher and all the students from grades 4-8 wanted to borrow it.
I feel like a one-man video store sometimes. I have kids coming into the English office a couple times a day asking to borrow movies now, because I not only have School of Rock, but a bunch of others as well. I teach integrated arts classes and a journalism class, and usually if I showed a movie it had something to do with the subject matter we were learning in class. For instance, in journalism the last two weeks, we watched Live From Baghdad, a really good HBO movie with Michael Keaton about a group of CNN reporters who got stuck in Baghdad during the outbreak of Operation Desert Storm. Consequently, they got to be the only journalists reporting live from Iraq when the short-lived war started. That justifiably seemed like an applicable movie to show a group of 8th graders learning about journalism and good reporting. But the French class teachers showing their kids Fight Club and Aliens??? I don’t know…
The most interesting school development in the past month has been the 8th graders’ attendance records. In two weeks, all 8th graders in Turkey will take a required high school entrance exam called the LGS (lay-geh-say). It’s pretty much like an SAT exam, except it tests the kids in 4 or 5 subjects, and let’s not forget that it’s 8th graders and not 11th and 12th graders taking the exam.
Apparently, getting into a good, reputable high school is gravely important for the private school kids of Turkey. If you don’t score high enough on the LGS to get into a top high school, there’s little chance of getting into one of the top colleges- in Turkey or abroad. It’s an awfully heavy load that that Turkish educational system and the parents ask their kids to shoulder at such a young age. They’re only 13, and already they’re preparing for an exam that will, according to parents and school administrators, practically determine the course of the rest of their lives.
With so much importance stressed on this high school entrance exam, the parents enroll their 8th grade kids into private lessons (called dershanes) after school and on the weekends. Some of my kids have been going to these extra classes all year!
With the impending exam getting closer and closer, things were turned up a few notches, prep-work got kicked into a higher gear, and parents actually started pulling their kids out of school during the day so they could go to extra private LGS prep courses. I had one kid who missed my Journalism class for the last 5 weeks, and I had to end u[ failing him because he never came to class and he never contributed anything to the class paper. I know this test is important, but what does that say about the school if they have to be pulled out of class for more study time? I knew one or two kids who stayed home from school on the Friday before the SAT back home, but that was only one day!
With a month to go, more and more 8th graders started getting dismissed from school during the day, and others just stopped coming altogether unless they had a quiz scheduled in class. In that case, they'd come into school for the test, promptly get dismissed, and go back home or to a LGS prep course. For an outsider like me, this seemed like madness! And the school would just allow these kids to miss all these classes and school days because of this freakin’ LGS exam. Something like this would NEVER fly in America.
For the last two weeks, the 8th grade has shrunk from 30 students to 10. I’m amazed the 10 who come to school even bother showing up. They’re not being taught anything now- they just watch movies (to the point that they can barely stand to watch them any more), sit in the garden, or aimlessly wander around the school looking for things to occupy their time.
It’s all part of the lssikent way, I guess.
Over the course of these last two weeks, every day has felt like the last day of school. Final grades had to be submitted 10 days ago, with 10 school days left in the year. If that doesn’t make much sense to you, you’re not alone. I think a lot of the kids, especially the middles-schoolers, realized that deadline existed for us faculty, and therefore there has been little academic activity at lssikent recently. Teachers have been jockeying for the video rooms and DVD players like mad, and if they can’t show a movie, teachers will just let their students go play basketball and volleyball outside or let them go to the library to read a book, use the internet, or make a lot of unnecessary noise and aggravate the librarian to her wit’s end.
I tried showing a movie to my 7th grade integrated arts class today, but the DVD player in the video room had been so overworked that it couldn’t even work properly. It was all hot and on its last legs. At first I thought all the skipping was being caused by some dirt or a scratch on the disk, but the player just couldn’t hack it any longer. Imagine that!
I brought School of Rock with me here and I had been saving it to show to my students at the end of the year. I showed it to my 6th graders, and they flipped for it. They loved it- it was satisfying to see them sit down, behave, and not talk during a class for once. I didn’t even have to scold anyone for talking or creating a distraction! Well, word got out on School of Rock, and soon every teacher and all the students from grades 4-8 wanted to borrow it.
I feel like a one-man video store sometimes. I have kids coming into the English office a couple times a day asking to borrow movies now, because I not only have School of Rock, but a bunch of others as well. I teach integrated arts classes and a journalism class, and usually if I showed a movie it had something to do with the subject matter we were learning in class. For instance, in journalism the last two weeks, we watched Live From Baghdad, a really good HBO movie with Michael Keaton about a group of CNN reporters who got stuck in Baghdad during the outbreak of Operation Desert Storm. Consequently, they got to be the only journalists reporting live from Iraq when the short-lived war started. That justifiably seemed like an applicable movie to show a group of 8th graders learning about journalism and good reporting. But the French class teachers showing their kids Fight Club and Aliens??? I don’t know…
The most interesting school development in the past month has been the 8th graders’ attendance records. In two weeks, all 8th graders in Turkey will take a required high school entrance exam called the LGS (lay-geh-say). It’s pretty much like an SAT exam, except it tests the kids in 4 or 5 subjects, and let’s not forget that it’s 8th graders and not 11th and 12th graders taking the exam.
Apparently, getting into a good, reputable high school is gravely important for the private school kids of Turkey. If you don’t score high enough on the LGS to get into a top high school, there’s little chance of getting into one of the top colleges- in Turkey or abroad. It’s an awfully heavy load that that Turkish educational system and the parents ask their kids to shoulder at such a young age. They’re only 13, and already they’re preparing for an exam that will, according to parents and school administrators, practically determine the course of the rest of their lives.
With so much importance stressed on this high school entrance exam, the parents enroll their 8th grade kids into private lessons (called dershanes) after school and on the weekends. Some of my kids have been going to these extra classes all year!
With the impending exam getting closer and closer, things were turned up a few notches, prep-work got kicked into a higher gear, and parents actually started pulling their kids out of school during the day so they could go to extra private LGS prep courses. I had one kid who missed my Journalism class for the last 5 weeks, and I had to end u[ failing him because he never came to class and he never contributed anything to the class paper. I know this test is important, but what does that say about the school if they have to be pulled out of class for more study time? I knew one or two kids who stayed home from school on the Friday before the SAT back home, but that was only one day!
With a month to go, more and more 8th graders started getting dismissed from school during the day, and others just stopped coming altogether unless they had a quiz scheduled in class. In that case, they'd come into school for the test, promptly get dismissed, and go back home or to a LGS prep course. For an outsider like me, this seemed like madness! And the school would just allow these kids to miss all these classes and school days because of this freakin’ LGS exam. Something like this would NEVER fly in America.
For the last two weeks, the 8th grade has shrunk from 30 students to 10. I’m amazed the 10 who come to school even bother showing up. They’re not being taught anything now- they just watch movies (to the point that they can barely stand to watch them any more), sit in the garden, or aimlessly wander around the school looking for things to occupy their time.
It’s all part of the lssikent way, I guess.
Iyi Yaşa
Back in late November before I came to Turkey, one of the English teachers at my school had a shopping request- was there any way I could buy him one of those yellow Nike Live Strong bracelets? Oblivious to the massive trend, I had no idea what he was talking about until I looked it up on the internet. There, I discovered that they were pretty much sold out every where, impossible to find or buy at the moment. If you wanted one, you had to put an order in on a website and wait 4-6 weeks for your wristbands to arrive. Nevertheless, I checked 4-5 sporting goods stores and got the same response from all of them- no bracelets and no idea when they’d be stocking them again. Oh well, I tried.
Shame on Nike for not being able to make those simple yellow rubber wristbands fast enough. It’s not like they were making violins or high-precision electron microscopes- they’re glorified rubber bands!
With Nike not being able to supply them fast enough to meet the demand, I’m sure plenty of smaller companies manufactured imitation knock-offs in order to capitalize on the wristband frenzy.
In fact, they even sell knock-offs here in Turkey! The guy who originally wanted me get him a bracelet in the states- his dad found some counterfeits at a supermarket here in Izmir and bought me one. He even had to go early in the morning before they sold out. Even these iyi yasa bracelets are selling like life vests on a sinking ship here. When I go back home in a month, I’m gonna be the coolest kid of all because I won’t be sporting a simple Live Strong Bracelet like everyone else; instead I’ll have a Turkish “Iyi Yasa” (ee-yee yashA) bracelet, which translates into English as “Live Well.”
I like the idea that I can follow the massive cultural trends like a brain-washed lemming, yet I can still retain some originality and individuality. What a tempestuous misfit I can be sometimes.
Shame on Nike for not being able to make those simple yellow rubber wristbands fast enough. It’s not like they were making violins or high-precision electron microscopes- they’re glorified rubber bands!
With Nike not being able to supply them fast enough to meet the demand, I’m sure plenty of smaller companies manufactured imitation knock-offs in order to capitalize on the wristband frenzy.
In fact, they even sell knock-offs here in Turkey! The guy who originally wanted me get him a bracelet in the states- his dad found some counterfeits at a supermarket here in Izmir and bought me one. He even had to go early in the morning before they sold out. Even these iyi yasa bracelets are selling like life vests on a sinking ship here. When I go back home in a month, I’m gonna be the coolest kid of all because I won’t be sporting a simple Live Strong Bracelet like everyone else; instead I’ll have a Turkish “Iyi Yasa” (ee-yee yashA) bracelet, which translates into English as “Live Well.”
I like the idea that I can follow the massive cultural trends like a brain-washed lemming, yet I can still retain some originality and individuality. What a tempestuous misfit I can be sometimes.
Turning Around My Electronics Curse
Fortunately, I was able to get one of my two recently malfunctioning/broken playstations repaired. My original one, which I’ve had for about 5 years now, was fried in January when Maddy plugged the 110 volt plug into a 220 volt socket without a voltage converter. When I was home during the break in late-January, I got one of those new, tiny PS2s and brought it back with me. It worked great, but then it suddenly died on me without any provocation a few weeks ago. That happened a week after my laptop crashed on me (again, randomly, out of nowhere), so I was pretty angry and frustrated by this curse I had with all my electronic possessions.
I took both PS2s to a playstation store in Izmir referred to me by Peter. Normally people go to these shops so they can have an illegal chip inserted into the consoles so they can play copied games. Whatever the procedure costs, it’s worth it because copied games sell for only $5 as opposed to $80 or $90 (an original PS2 goes for 450 yeni turkish lira here, which equals $338. Bear in mind that they sell in the US for $150!). So the chip and copied games scheme is a pretty nice deal, huh? I didn’t need that, though. I just wanted mine to function again. They looked at both consoles and told me the laser eye on the new one was either dirty or broken, and it would require an extensive cleaning or a replacement. That would run me 100 euros, and it would break the US warranty, which I definitely didn’t want to do since I can get the thing fixed for free once I get back home. My older, clunkier playstation, though, they said they could fix that up easily in one day for $50. I thought burning out the electrics on it would make it a goner, but apparently it wasn’t all that hard to repair. I was elated, and on Monday I had a functional playstation again.
Now, I hardly ever play any games with it, but with my computer dead, it was the only way I could watch movies. I was going a little mad not being able to rent anything any more, plus I had the entire first season of The Wire to watch (it’s incredible, by the way- so far it’s living up to all the critical praise and then some. I can’t wait to watch season 2 when I’m home later this summer). I even brought over the 2nd season of Alias with me (plus the first two seasons of Three’s Company- given to me by Nick for Christmas), but I don’t know if I’ll have any time to get to it. I’ll be back home in a little more than three weeks, and that’s gonna go by so fast. Really, these last three months have just whizzed by.
I took both PS2s to a playstation store in Izmir referred to me by Peter. Normally people go to these shops so they can have an illegal chip inserted into the consoles so they can play copied games. Whatever the procedure costs, it’s worth it because copied games sell for only $5 as opposed to $80 or $90 (an original PS2 goes for 450 yeni turkish lira here, which equals $338. Bear in mind that they sell in the US for $150!). So the chip and copied games scheme is a pretty nice deal, huh? I didn’t need that, though. I just wanted mine to function again. They looked at both consoles and told me the laser eye on the new one was either dirty or broken, and it would require an extensive cleaning or a replacement. That would run me 100 euros, and it would break the US warranty, which I definitely didn’t want to do since I can get the thing fixed for free once I get back home. My older, clunkier playstation, though, they said they could fix that up easily in one day for $50. I thought burning out the electrics on it would make it a goner, but apparently it wasn’t all that hard to repair. I was elated, and on Monday I had a functional playstation again.
Now, I hardly ever play any games with it, but with my computer dead, it was the only way I could watch movies. I was going a little mad not being able to rent anything any more, plus I had the entire first season of The Wire to watch (it’s incredible, by the way- so far it’s living up to all the critical praise and then some. I can’t wait to watch season 2 when I’m home later this summer). I even brought over the 2nd season of Alias with me (plus the first two seasons of Three’s Company- given to me by Nick for Christmas), but I don’t know if I’ll have any time to get to it. I’ll be back home in a little more than three weeks, and that’s gonna go by so fast. Really, these last three months have just whizzed by.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Monday, June 06, 2005
File this under "Good Grief"
By the way, has anyone seen what she looks like lately? Someone should let her know that the heroin chic/protruding bones look isn't all that flattering.
_____________________________________
Teen actress Lindsay Lohan's breasts have been digitally reduced for forthcoming Disney film Herbie: Fully Loaded, to avoid offending family audiences. Test screenings for the new movie, the fourth sequel to the 1968 film The Love Bug about a Volkswagen Beetle car with a mind of its own, indicated that some parents felt Lohan's character Maggie Peyton was too raunchy for a children's film. Disney technicians were forced to plough through numerous scenes - especially those showing the busty actress jumping up and down at a motor racing track, reducing her breasts by two cup sizes and raising revealing necklines on her T-shirts. Amused at her digital bosom reduction, Lohan says, "I don't know how Renee Zellweger kept swelling and shrinking for Bridget Jones. It's no fun. Bring on the computer guys."
_____________________________________
Teen actress Lindsay Lohan's breasts have been digitally reduced for forthcoming Disney film Herbie: Fully Loaded, to avoid offending family audiences. Test screenings for the new movie, the fourth sequel to the 1968 film The Love Bug about a Volkswagen Beetle car with a mind of its own, indicated that some parents felt Lohan's character Maggie Peyton was too raunchy for a children's film. Disney technicians were forced to plough through numerous scenes - especially those showing the busty actress jumping up and down at a motor racing track, reducing her breasts by two cup sizes and raising revealing necklines on her T-shirts. Amused at her digital bosom reduction, Lohan says, "I don't know how Renee Zellweger kept swelling and shrinking for Bridget Jones. It's no fun. Bring on the computer guys."
A Belated Travelogue: DAY 1- Monday, April 11th
I touched down in Amsterdam early Monday afternoon after catching a connecting flight from Istanbul. The weather report for the week had not been promising, but it was beautiful today so I decided to capitalize on the sun and spend most of the day outside.
I took the train from Schiphol Airport to Central Station (knew enough to get off this time!) which is surprisingly easy and convenient, but then again, this is Europe, not America we’re talking about. My hostel was extremely close to Central Station- a lot closer than I thought it was, so I ended up walking around with my luggage for an extra 20 minutes before I found it- The Flying Pig Downtown Hostel, one of the top ranked hostels in the world.
I walked in and the front desk was staffed by several cute but tough looking Dutch and Aussie girls. For a while they couldn’t find any record of my reservation (could any more go wrong already at this point? Talk about ill-fated) but after a 5 minute scare, they were able to find a vacant bed for me. The lobby of the hostel included 3 computers, a fully stocked bar, a pool table, a DJ station, and a stage stocked with overstuff pillows for those needing to relax and lie down from all their heavy-duty vacationing ways.
Unfortunately the hostel was in the middle of a massive renovation, so there was a lot of construction work being done everywhere. It made some parts of the hostel crowded, but it was no big deal. I was walked down a series of long hallways and shown to my bunk bed. The trunks are underneath the beds and all of them were easy to access- except mine Just the way the beds were positioned, half of mine was blocked, but after some creative positioning (and pushing) I was able to squeeze my borrowed traveler suitcase in there.
With the sun out and spring in full bloom, I ambled on down to the Central and East Canal Rings, and a spot known as The Golden Bend due to the fancy, ornate town houses stretching along the canals. Later, I ventured further south down to the Leidseplein neighborhood and bought a Tuesday night ticket for an improv comedy show performed by a troupe called Boom Chicago.
Bicycles and the people who ride them- the silent killers. Amsterdam is a very busy, heavily trafficked city. There are cars and trams (good near-death tram story from my last day) all over the place, but at least you can hear them if they’re coming near you. But the bikes? Oh, man. Amsterdam may be the most heavily biked area of the world outside of the Tour De France race path. And the cyclists pedal around like they have right of way over everyone else in the city. They’re all equipped with those dingy, trebly bells, but who can hear a miniscule bell over the din of this city? Over the span of my trip, I was probably nearly hit or run over by a bicyclist at least twice a day. I mean, seriously close calls here, people.
While it was relatively warm’ around 60 degrees F, and sunny it was still rather windy. My hair, it was blowing everywhere. I know my hair’s pretty messy, but as long as I’m not in a speeding car with the window down or walking around outside when it’s really windy, I can usually tame it slightly and keep it under control. Not today- it looked like I hadn’t touched a hairbrush in weeks. But I was in Amsterdam- nobody cares about things like that here.
On this first day, I was sure to get a large helping of french fries, and they’re served and eaten just like John Travolta told Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. They’re fried to delicious, golden, juicy perfection, dumped into a paper cone, and DROWNED in mayonnaise, catsup, or both. Now, I’m a boy who loves his french fries, but these may have been the best I’d ever tasted. My only complaint was that all the fries places made you pay extra for mayo or catsup. They really get you there, because you can’t have these fries with nothing on them- that would be straight-out sacrilegious.
I had gotten only a few hours sleep the night before since I had to get up for that 3am airport shuttle in Izmir, so I passed out, exhausted, at 8:30 before even having the chance to eat dinner. The lack of sleep coupled with all the urban miles (sorry, kilometers) of walking I logged translated into a very early night for Geoffers.
I took the train from Schiphol Airport to Central Station (knew enough to get off this time!) which is surprisingly easy and convenient, but then again, this is Europe, not America we’re talking about. My hostel was extremely close to Central Station- a lot closer than I thought it was, so I ended up walking around with my luggage for an extra 20 minutes before I found it- The Flying Pig Downtown Hostel, one of the top ranked hostels in the world.
I walked in and the front desk was staffed by several cute but tough looking Dutch and Aussie girls. For a while they couldn’t find any record of my reservation (could any more go wrong already at this point? Talk about ill-fated) but after a 5 minute scare, they were able to find a vacant bed for me. The lobby of the hostel included 3 computers, a fully stocked bar, a pool table, a DJ station, and a stage stocked with overstuff pillows for those needing to relax and lie down from all their heavy-duty vacationing ways.
Unfortunately the hostel was in the middle of a massive renovation, so there was a lot of construction work being done everywhere. It made some parts of the hostel crowded, but it was no big deal. I was walked down a series of long hallways and shown to my bunk bed. The trunks are underneath the beds and all of them were easy to access- except mine Just the way the beds were positioned, half of mine was blocked, but after some creative positioning (and pushing) I was able to squeeze my borrowed traveler suitcase in there.
With the sun out and spring in full bloom, I ambled on down to the Central and East Canal Rings, and a spot known as The Golden Bend due to the fancy, ornate town houses stretching along the canals. Later, I ventured further south down to the Leidseplein neighborhood and bought a Tuesday night ticket for an improv comedy show performed by a troupe called Boom Chicago.
Bicycles and the people who ride them- the silent killers. Amsterdam is a very busy, heavily trafficked city. There are cars and trams (good near-death tram story from my last day) all over the place, but at least you can hear them if they’re coming near you. But the bikes? Oh, man. Amsterdam may be the most heavily biked area of the world outside of the Tour De France race path. And the cyclists pedal around like they have right of way over everyone else in the city. They’re all equipped with those dingy, trebly bells, but who can hear a miniscule bell over the din of this city? Over the span of my trip, I was probably nearly hit or run over by a bicyclist at least twice a day. I mean, seriously close calls here, people.
While it was relatively warm’ around 60 degrees F, and sunny it was still rather windy. My hair, it was blowing everywhere. I know my hair’s pretty messy, but as long as I’m not in a speeding car with the window down or walking around outside when it’s really windy, I can usually tame it slightly and keep it under control. Not today- it looked like I hadn’t touched a hairbrush in weeks. But I was in Amsterdam- nobody cares about things like that here.
On this first day, I was sure to get a large helping of french fries, and they’re served and eaten just like John Travolta told Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. They’re fried to delicious, golden, juicy perfection, dumped into a paper cone, and DROWNED in mayonnaise, catsup, or both. Now, I’m a boy who loves his french fries, but these may have been the best I’d ever tasted. My only complaint was that all the fries places made you pay extra for mayo or catsup. They really get you there, because you can’t have these fries with nothing on them- that would be straight-out sacrilegious.
I had gotten only a few hours sleep the night before since I had to get up for that 3am airport shuttle in Izmir, so I passed out, exhausted, at 8:30 before even having the chance to eat dinner. The lack of sleep coupled with all the urban miles (sorry, kilometers) of walking I logged translated into a very early night for Geoffers.
DAY 2- Tuesday, April 12th
After I woke up this morning, I quickly concluded that I am not the world’s best hostel patron. I slept like a log, but where you’re staying in a room with 12 other people, 12 strangers, things start to feel very cramped. Due to its unfortunate location and position, to get stuff our of my lockbox trunk, I had to pull EVERYTHING out, which made for a hassle and a time-waster. And of course, once you find what you need, whether it’s your toothpaste, your hairbrush, or your Ipod charger, everything’s gotta go back into the lockbox afterwards. At the time I had the urge to spread everything out and just leave it that way, which, I guess I could have done, as long as I didn’t mind returning later to see all my belongings taken and then belonging to someone else. For a few moments I wished I had my own hotel room, but then I knocked that silly, costly notion out of my head. I would deal.
I walked down to the unisex bathroom and showers, which were brand new thanks to the renovations. There were a bunch of shower stalls and a few toilet stalls, but where were we supposed to change, I wondered. I guess everyone just gets dressed in the shower stall after bathing. I required great concentration when taking my shower, taking great pains not to get my clothes wet. Drying off and getting dressed in those tight quarters was a lot harder than it should have been- I kept thinking, "This should not be such a complicated production- what on earth am I doing wrong here?" I’m just a hostel spaz, I guess. I’d gotten WAY too used to the cavernous, limitless confines of my Izmir apartment.
After breakfast, and several consultations with the map (I can’t tell you how hard it is navigating this city sometimes), I trekked southwest on over to the Anne Frank House. The middle school kids at lsikkent had recently read a simplified version for English class. I had read parts of it back in the day, plus I had seen the Natalie Portman Anne Frank play when it ran in Boston before going to NY during my junior year of high school (back in the dreadlocks and wearing-shorts-in-the-middle-of November days. Boy, was I a nut). There were very few people out front when I arrived, save for a large group Italian high schoolers, many of the girls unabashedly beautiful and glamorous. I got there around noon and I was afraid of encountering a crowd, but I got there at just the right time because there was no line whatsoever. Finally, a lucky break! (When I left the museum later on, there was a gigantic crowd outside with the ticket line sprawling across the whole block.)
The house and the museum made for quite an intense, emotional experience for me. Something about it really touched me, because halfway through my eyes got all watery and I had a lump in my throat until I left. I got to walk through the very house and secret annex in which Anne Frank and her family lived (well, "hid" is a more proper term). You get to go through the secret passage way, climb up the steep stairs, and look out her bedroom window to see what Anne Frank saw when she sneaked a peak outside. Actual pages of her hand-written diary were on display, and they even had Anne’s and all her family’s concentration camp registration cards on the wall, housed in glass cases. It all had a profound impact on me, and I could barely tear myself away once I was done absorbing everything I could from the house and the museum. I was so glad I had the chance to go. I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in DC, but this Anne Frank House hit me harder than anything I saw or heard there. It’ all so personal, and it puts such a human face on everything that happened before and during World War II. If you’re ever in Amsterdam, you have to take a few hours and check this place out. It would be a disservice if you missed it.
Later that day, I pecked around and eventually found the coffeeshop, Dampkring, where they filmed a scene for Ocean’s 12 (the scene where George Clooney and Brad Pitt talk to Robbie Coltrane in a gibberish code and Matt Damon says all the wrong things). I walked in, got a fresh orange juice (you could see the machine split the oranges in half and then squeeze the juice directly into the cup- very cool and entertaining to watch) and immediately spotted the table they used in the movie. It was occupied by two stoned, middle-aged America couples, so I sat at the table next to them, which was fine by me (KLM showed, you guessed it, Oceans’s 12, on the flight back to Istanbul, so I got to reconfirm everything I just saw in Amsterdam and watch it for the 3rd time in less than a month).
That night I went to the Boom Chicago improv comedy show. The entire company is comprised of young, funny Americans, and while it was billed as an improv show, I’d only half of the show is improv- the rest was pre-written, well-prepared sketch. It was like an episode of SNL that would occasionally take suggestions for the audience, and it was highly entertaining and incredibly funny. I’m usually not much of a laugh-out-loud sort of audience member, but I was cracking up all night long. Again, if you ever find yourself in Amsterdam looking for something to do one night, go see this show. It’s worth every penny. The cast even came out after the show and did an extra 30 minutes of material they’re still workshopping.
I walked down to the unisex bathroom and showers, which were brand new thanks to the renovations. There were a bunch of shower stalls and a few toilet stalls, but where were we supposed to change, I wondered. I guess everyone just gets dressed in the shower stall after bathing. I required great concentration when taking my shower, taking great pains not to get my clothes wet. Drying off and getting dressed in those tight quarters was a lot harder than it should have been- I kept thinking, "This should not be such a complicated production- what on earth am I doing wrong here?" I’m just a hostel spaz, I guess. I’d gotten WAY too used to the cavernous, limitless confines of my Izmir apartment.
After breakfast, and several consultations with the map (I can’t tell you how hard it is navigating this city sometimes), I trekked southwest on over to the Anne Frank House. The middle school kids at lsikkent had recently read a simplified version for English class. I had read parts of it back in the day, plus I had seen the Natalie Portman Anne Frank play when it ran in Boston before going to NY during my junior year of high school (back in the dreadlocks and wearing-shorts-in-the-middle-of November days. Boy, was I a nut). There were very few people out front when I arrived, save for a large group Italian high schoolers, many of the girls unabashedly beautiful and glamorous. I got there around noon and I was afraid of encountering a crowd, but I got there at just the right time because there was no line whatsoever. Finally, a lucky break! (When I left the museum later on, there was a gigantic crowd outside with the ticket line sprawling across the whole block.)
The house and the museum made for quite an intense, emotional experience for me. Something about it really touched me, because halfway through my eyes got all watery and I had a lump in my throat until I left. I got to walk through the very house and secret annex in which Anne Frank and her family lived (well, "hid" is a more proper term). You get to go through the secret passage way, climb up the steep stairs, and look out her bedroom window to see what Anne Frank saw when she sneaked a peak outside. Actual pages of her hand-written diary were on display, and they even had Anne’s and all her family’s concentration camp registration cards on the wall, housed in glass cases. It all had a profound impact on me, and I could barely tear myself away once I was done absorbing everything I could from the house and the museum. I was so glad I had the chance to go. I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in DC, but this Anne Frank House hit me harder than anything I saw or heard there. It’ all so personal, and it puts such a human face on everything that happened before and during World War II. If you’re ever in Amsterdam, you have to take a few hours and check this place out. It would be a disservice if you missed it.
Later that day, I pecked around and eventually found the coffeeshop, Dampkring, where they filmed a scene for Ocean’s 12 (the scene where George Clooney and Brad Pitt talk to Robbie Coltrane in a gibberish code and Matt Damon says all the wrong things). I walked in, got a fresh orange juice (you could see the machine split the oranges in half and then squeeze the juice directly into the cup- very cool and entertaining to watch) and immediately spotted the table they used in the movie. It was occupied by two stoned, middle-aged America couples, so I sat at the table next to them, which was fine by me (KLM showed, you guessed it, Oceans’s 12, on the flight back to Istanbul, so I got to reconfirm everything I just saw in Amsterdam and watch it for the 3rd time in less than a month).
That night I went to the Boom Chicago improv comedy show. The entire company is comprised of young, funny Americans, and while it was billed as an improv show, I’d only half of the show is improv- the rest was pre-written, well-prepared sketch. It was like an episode of SNL that would occasionally take suggestions for the audience, and it was highly entertaining and incredibly funny. I’m usually not much of a laugh-out-loud sort of audience member, but I was cracking up all night long. Again, if you ever find yourself in Amsterdam looking for something to do one night, go see this show. It’s worth every penny. The cast even came out after the show and did an extra 30 minutes of material they’re still workshopping.
DAY 3- Wednesday, April 13th
I woke up really late today. I might have even missed breakfast; I can’t remember. It was dark outside and the forecast was less than promising for outdoor activity. Sounded like a good day for taking in some of the museums, so I hoofed it on down to the museum district before it started downpouring.
Unfortunately, a lot of the big museums were closed or partially closed for renovations. Why they all decided to renovate and to close at the same time, I’ll never figure out. And it wasn’t until I got down to modern art museum, the Stejdelik, that I realized it had closed and moved to another part of the city. The Van Gogh Musuem was renovating as well, but at least they still had their full collection on display, albeit in a tighter, more constricted space.
I had a wonderful time at the Van Gogh. Seeing so many of his works at once, in chronological order, I had the chance to track his work, to see how it developed and changed over the years. And I was surprised to see how much work he did in such a short amount of time- his efficiency was astounding. And, of course, there’s nothing like seeing original works of art. So many of those painting I had seen in big, glossy page art books, and here they were now, hanging on a wall directly in front of me- the texture and the brush strokes more visible than ever. Look at the painting from afar’ then walk in real close, as close as you can go, and it’s as if they are two entirely different paintings. You can’t do that with a book or a slide.
It really poured while I was in the Van Gogh museum, and it continued to do so when I left, so I hopped on one of the seemingly millions of trams that run throughout the city and got a ride back to the hostel. No time for manifest tourism in that fickle, inclement weather.
I took it easy the rest of the night downstairs in the so-called "chill-out room" which had a big screen TV. I watched all sorts of stuff with the other people camped out down there- Gilmore Girls, Will and Grace, and get this- an episode of Dinosuars! Talk about a blast from all our collective TGIF pasts. Quickly, though, we realized the show was a lot funnier when we were in elementary school.
I had brought a bunch of DVDs with me, but the DVD player was Region 2 only, so all my discs were unreadable, unwatchable. We went upstairs to the lobby to borrow one from the front desk, but their selection left much to be desired. From the lesser of the evils we selected The Beach. I had seen most of it on TV about 4 years ago, but upon watching it a second time, I didn’t think it was all that bad, or as bad as I thought it was the first time (and of course I enjoyed Darius Khondji’s cinematography as usual).
Near the end of the night, a young American guy with a heavy NY accent came downstairs and sat on one of the couched with all of us. As half of the people seated around me are lighting up pipes and smoking pot, he makes a loud declaration across the room: he’s a New York City police officer! This freaks everyone out, of course, and nobody feels comfortable even thinking about smoking until he leaves the room. He told us how he couldn’t smoke any marijuana while on vacation here because the force has random drug testing every now and again, and he couldn’t take the risk. But he did inform us that a lot of the drugs that are impounded in drug raids are taken by the NYC cops and enjoyed in their private time. Big surprise!
Unfortunately, a lot of the big museums were closed or partially closed for renovations. Why they all decided to renovate and to close at the same time, I’ll never figure out. And it wasn’t until I got down to modern art museum, the Stejdelik, that I realized it had closed and moved to another part of the city. The Van Gogh Musuem was renovating as well, but at least they still had their full collection on display, albeit in a tighter, more constricted space.
I had a wonderful time at the Van Gogh. Seeing so many of his works at once, in chronological order, I had the chance to track his work, to see how it developed and changed over the years. And I was surprised to see how much work he did in such a short amount of time- his efficiency was astounding. And, of course, there’s nothing like seeing original works of art. So many of those painting I had seen in big, glossy page art books, and here they were now, hanging on a wall directly in front of me- the texture and the brush strokes more visible than ever. Look at the painting from afar’ then walk in real close, as close as you can go, and it’s as if they are two entirely different paintings. You can’t do that with a book or a slide.
It really poured while I was in the Van Gogh museum, and it continued to do so when I left, so I hopped on one of the seemingly millions of trams that run throughout the city and got a ride back to the hostel. No time for manifest tourism in that fickle, inclement weather.
I took it easy the rest of the night downstairs in the so-called "chill-out room" which had a big screen TV. I watched all sorts of stuff with the other people camped out down there- Gilmore Girls, Will and Grace, and get this- an episode of Dinosuars! Talk about a blast from all our collective TGIF pasts. Quickly, though, we realized the show was a lot funnier when we were in elementary school.
I had brought a bunch of DVDs with me, but the DVD player was Region 2 only, so all my discs were unreadable, unwatchable. We went upstairs to the lobby to borrow one from the front desk, but their selection left much to be desired. From the lesser of the evils we selected The Beach. I had seen most of it on TV about 4 years ago, but upon watching it a second time, I didn’t think it was all that bad, or as bad as I thought it was the first time (and of course I enjoyed Darius Khondji’s cinematography as usual).
Near the end of the night, a young American guy with a heavy NY accent came downstairs and sat on one of the couched with all of us. As half of the people seated around me are lighting up pipes and smoking pot, he makes a loud declaration across the room: he’s a New York City police officer! This freaks everyone out, of course, and nobody feels comfortable even thinking about smoking until he leaves the room. He told us how he couldn’t smoke any marijuana while on vacation here because the force has random drug testing every now and again, and he couldn’t take the risk. But he did inform us that a lot of the drugs that are impounded in drug raids are taken by the NYC cops and enjoyed in their private time. Big surprise!
DAY 4- Thursday, April 14th
Time for some more culture and a look into the Netherlands of old, so I hopped a train from Central Station and visited Zaanse Schans, an old, preserved Dutch village marketed to tourists. About the name- it’s not at all pronounced like it’s spelled. I still don’t know how to pronounce it- I just know it definitely ain’t phonetic.
It was a bit of a walk after I got off the train, but I didn’t have any trouble finding it. It was quaint, kind of cute, but still a bit of a tourist trap. There were some old windmills there- the oldest ones in Holland, according to them. There lots of goats and sheep hanging around grazing and doing what they do, plus there was a cheese factory (I always thought gouda was pronounced "goo-da" but it’s actually pronounced more like "gow-da". Who knew?!) The best store there, by far, was the clog factory. For some reason, I was transfixed and mesmerized by the clogs. All these different clogs were on display, and you could watch them make a sample clog in their factory, which, for me, was utterly fascinating. I so wanted to buy a pair at the shop, but I knew there would be no way they could fit in my suitcase on the way back to Turkey. A pair of size 11 clogs looked like they would have fit a 7 foot Nigerian man.
When I got back to the hostel I watched the 2nd half of Jackie Brown in the "Chill Out Room" downstairs and then I more or less called it a night. Every night the lobby in my hostel would be turned into a gigantic alcohol and marijuana-fueled party that would go far into the crevices of the night, but it didn’t interest me all that much
It was a bit of a walk after I got off the train, but I didn’t have any trouble finding it. It was quaint, kind of cute, but still a bit of a tourist trap. There were some old windmills there- the oldest ones in Holland, according to them. There lots of goats and sheep hanging around grazing and doing what they do, plus there was a cheese factory (I always thought gouda was pronounced "goo-da" but it’s actually pronounced more like "gow-da". Who knew?!) The best store there, by far, was the clog factory. For some reason, I was transfixed and mesmerized by the clogs. All these different clogs were on display, and you could watch them make a sample clog in their factory, which, for me, was utterly fascinating. I so wanted to buy a pair at the shop, but I knew there would be no way they could fit in my suitcase on the way back to Turkey. A pair of size 11 clogs looked like they would have fit a 7 foot Nigerian man.
When I got back to the hostel I watched the 2nd half of Jackie Brown in the "Chill Out Room" downstairs and then I more or less called it a night. Every night the lobby in my hostel would be turned into a gigantic alcohol and marijuana-fueled party that would go far into the crevices of the night, but it didn’t interest me all that much
DAY 5- Friday, April 15th
Amsterdam was so yesterday man. It was time to take the 11:23 train to Bruges, Belgium. I arrived at my destination at 3, and the weather had taken another turn for the worst- cold, dark, rainy. Yup, my three favorite. It took me a while to figure out which bus to take from the station in order to get to a stop near my hostel, and after (literally) standing in the rain for a while, my common sense prevailed and I found the correct bus. What I would do without the detailed instructions inside my Let’s Go guidebook, I do not know. I’d probably still be stuck in Bruges somewhere.
By the time my bus arrived near the Bauhaus Hostel after a 10 minute ride, the rain had curtailed and the sun was peeking through the storm clouds. Once I checked in, it took me a good 10 minutes to find a toilet on the premises. I found one on the top floor, and I didn’t find the one on my floor, which was very well hidden a half a level down from me, until the next morning.
It was already too late to visit any museums- they all close by 4 or 5pm, so I walked around the city and tried to take in as much as I could. Bruges is known as one of the most romantic cities in all of Europe, but it didn’t do a decent job romancing me, that’s for sure. It’s also renowned for its lace and, well, you must all know how much I love and appreciate fine lace. Some of the architecture was interesting, and there were plenty of gothic looking castles in the area, but it didn’t blow me away by any means. Perhaps I was already a tad travel-weary from my stay in Amsterdam, but I enjoyed the change of scenery from Turkey. Almost no building in Izmir is older than 30 or 40 years old- either the old architecture was damaged in earthquakes or they tore them down to build duplexes and high-rise apartment buildings made of concrete and cement. The whole city, it’s just cement as far as the eye can see. And in still-developing neighborhoods (and there are many), there’s rebar all over the place.
I had some savoury beef stew and fries at a small restaurant recommended by Let’s Go called Chips and Ice. I was the only customer in the joint. It was the first time I had meat since I landed in Europe. The previous 4 days I had subsisted on the hostel breakfast, french fries, and falafel sandwiches from this inexpensive chain restaurant called Maoz Falafel. Everything was so expensive in Amsterdam so I stuck to two meals a day and didn’t eat all that much.
After the meal, which I found more than filling, I just walked around some more, snapped a few photos of interesting looking buildings, and made my way back to the hostel to call it a night (I know, real thrilling, huh?). I was a little bored myself. It didn’t get dark in Amsterdam or Bruges until 9pm, which threw me, since it was only the middle of April. If it’s bright this late at night now, how late is sundown in the middle of June?! Anyway, I started reading my highly entertaining book about the 1986 Mets and called it a night.
By the time my bus arrived near the Bauhaus Hostel after a 10 minute ride, the rain had curtailed and the sun was peeking through the storm clouds. Once I checked in, it took me a good 10 minutes to find a toilet on the premises. I found one on the top floor, and I didn’t find the one on my floor, which was very well hidden a half a level down from me, until the next morning.
It was already too late to visit any museums- they all close by 4 or 5pm, so I walked around the city and tried to take in as much as I could. Bruges is known as one of the most romantic cities in all of Europe, but it didn’t do a decent job romancing me, that’s for sure. It’s also renowned for its lace and, well, you must all know how much I love and appreciate fine lace. Some of the architecture was interesting, and there were plenty of gothic looking castles in the area, but it didn’t blow me away by any means. Perhaps I was already a tad travel-weary from my stay in Amsterdam, but I enjoyed the change of scenery from Turkey. Almost no building in Izmir is older than 30 or 40 years old- either the old architecture was damaged in earthquakes or they tore them down to build duplexes and high-rise apartment buildings made of concrete and cement. The whole city, it’s just cement as far as the eye can see. And in still-developing neighborhoods (and there are many), there’s rebar all over the place.
I had some savoury beef stew and fries at a small restaurant recommended by Let’s Go called Chips and Ice. I was the only customer in the joint. It was the first time I had meat since I landed in Europe. The previous 4 days I had subsisted on the hostel breakfast, french fries, and falafel sandwiches from this inexpensive chain restaurant called Maoz Falafel. Everything was so expensive in Amsterdam so I stuck to two meals a day and didn’t eat all that much.
After the meal, which I found more than filling, I just walked around some more, snapped a few photos of interesting looking buildings, and made my way back to the hostel to call it a night (I know, real thrilling, huh?). I was a little bored myself. It didn’t get dark in Amsterdam or Bruges until 9pm, which threw me, since it was only the middle of April. If it’s bright this late at night now, how late is sundown in the middle of June?! Anyway, I started reading my highly entertaining book about the 1986 Mets and called it a night.
DAY 6- Saturday, April 16th
I woke up this morning and found two female roommates in my hostel room. Their luggage had been there the day before, but they were out all day and came home long after I had fallen asleep. They had both taken classes at Oxford for a semester and they were travelling around Europe for a while before going home. One girl, Ivana, who graduated from UCLA, was also a San Francisco high school classmate of Jen’s, my roommate in Turkey. What a small world- I couldn’t believe it. The other girl, Catherine, had gone to William and Mary. They had been out drinking the night before, and they told me a lot of the beer here has double the alcohol content of normal beer (10 or 11 percent as opposed to 5%- is that right?).
We were all heading to Brussels that morning, so we decided to go there together. I was thrilled to have some people to talk to after going 5 days pretty much all by myself. And they were American, no less! Oh Fortuna, you smiled down on me that day.
On the train en route to Brussels, we met an eccentric woman who told us she was heading to a big flower show in Ghent (If memory serves correct, wasn’t the treaty that ended one of the World Wars signed there? Did I really get a 5 in AP US History and now I can’t even remember the specifics of Ghent in modern world history? Shame on me and my shrinking memory). Anyway, Catherine mentioned how she lives in Austin, Texas, and then this older woman oh so casually dropped into the conversation that she was once incarcerated there. If you weren’t paying close attention to her words, you would have missed it entirely. She said it as if she was telling us she once visited the Alamo and thought it was swell. After she disembarked, Catherine and Ivana immediately turned to me and asked, "Did she say she was incarcerated???" I think we were all a little stunned and amused by it.
Once we got near Brussels, we didn’t know at which train station to get out. There were 2 or 3 options, and sometimes it’s difficult to know which one is the right one, even with a guidebook in hand. A young Belgian woman on the train who knew English helped us out and directed us in the right direction. Once we got off the train, she was kind enough to show us where to store our luggage, and even walked us out of the station and told us where to go for the museums and how to get to Grand Place, which is more or less the epicenter of Brussels. People’s generosity and kindness to baffled tourists and travelers never ceases to amaze me.
It was raining a lot today, so we donned our umbrellas and made our way over to Grand Place. There wasn’t a whole lot to do there, and it was raining heavily, so we thought it best to get inside a museum for a while. I recommended the Royal Belgian Art Museum, which was high on my list of priorities, so that’s where he went. The museum was enormous. We spent a few hours there and barely scratched its surface. We ended up in a lot of the older wings. I didn’t get to see any of the modern collections, but I still saw a lot of interesting work.
The low point (well, one of two) of the trip happened here at the museum, though. My 22 month old Canon A70 digital camera decided to malfunction and break on me when I turned it on to take a shot of a painting inside the museum. The retractable lens got stuck, and then I saw the message I always dreaded seeing on the screen, E18.
Once I got the camera as a college graduation present from my Mom and Dad, I looked up user reviews for the camera online, and noticed a few people had gotten this same E18 message where the gears responsible for opening and closing the camera would malfunction. I checked reviews for my camera a year later and saw hundreds of people complaining about this E18 error and how Canon would offer them no help in fixing it if the one year warranty had expired. They could fix it, but the repair costs would be nearly as much as buying a new camera, so it wasn’t really worth getting fixed. When I read about this, I just prayed that I would be one of the lucky customers who never had a problem with their model, especially when I’d be over in a foreign country where digital cameras cost almost twice what they charge in the US.
Well, 10 months after my warranty expired, I got the E18 message, and I knew immediately that my camera was toast. I never dropped the camera once, always treated it with great care, but some things, malfunctions like these, you just can’t control no matter how many precautions you take. I was just glad it died near the end of my trip and not on the first day before I had a chance to take most of the pictures I wanted.
After the museum, us three walked back to Grand Place. We went to an extremely restaurant in Grand Place and got waffles covered in powdered sugar and chocolate sauce. While I did not have a beer in Belgium, at least I got to eat an authentic Belgian waffle (although a little maple syrup on it would have made a world of difference!) After waffles, I said my goodbyes to Ivana and Catherine- they were catching an afternoon to Paris.
Now, the reason I chose to come to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Belgium for my vacation was because I knew someone living in Brussels- Sophia, a Cypriot woman I worked with at the Cyprus Mail back in the summer of ’03 after I graduating college. I wanted to be able to visit someone and not go somewhere alone, by myself for the week. She was the only friend of mine that I knew in Europe at the time, so I emailed her a month before coming, telling here I’d be in and around Brussels that week, maybe we could meet up for a day.
Well, it turned out to be a busy weekend for her and she had other, closer friends to entertain, so all could she could do was meet up with me for lunch while accompanied by another friend of hers who was visiting from out of town. This was someone I hadn’t seen for almost 2 years- I was really looking forward to hanging out with her for a while, and all I could get was a cursory lunch in a crowded, overprices restaurant. For a while, I felt like an idiot, flying all the way here, spending my vacation time on this- a dank, rainy day in Brussels. Jen was off visiting friends in Dubai, hanging out on the beach and touring desert in a LandCruiser while Maddy was meeting up with her Mom in Crete for the week. As I paid for my $14 turkey sandwich and said goodbye to Sophia, who had to run because she had tickets to an exclusive Brussels nightclub for her and her friend, I began doubting my trip a little bit. I’m not sure what I expected from her, but I expected a little more than that. Maybe a mini-tour of the city, a few hours hanging out, perhaps a floor or couch to sleep on for the night. I was disappointed.
I collected my luggage at the train station and took the subway out of downtown to my hostel. Still raining, it was a bad time for my poor navigational skills and lack of travel-sense to kick in. I got off at the correct stop, and the directions from the hostel’s website said there would be a sign that said "Youth Hostel" pointing in the right direction. Well, I saw no "Youth Hostel" sign of any kind, and discerned no sign bearing the hostel’s name.
Dreary and still raining out, I started wandering around, hoping I’d happen upon it or at least ask someone for directions. I tried calling the hostel on a public phone, but dialing the number as given on their website would not make the call go through. Did I have to dial a zero or a one before the number or add in an area code? I had no idea. I tried all sorts of combinations, but none worked.
I tried asking people on the street and shopkeepers for directions, but not one of them understood or spoke English. The entire neighborhood spoke and only understood French. I couldn’t believe my luck. I figured someone had to know English or at least recognize the name of the hostel or the street the hostel was on, but nobody did. Nobody! I walked around some more, cursing my destination and muttering nonsensical ramblings through gritted teeth as I walked around the neighborhood awaiting some kind of divine intervention to show me the way to my hostel. I wasn’t pouting or being depressed, mind you, but rather I was highly agitated, exasperated, and frustrated- "exagistrated" we’ll call it.
Almost an hour into this hopeless quest for shelter from the elements, again, I tried working the phones, and eventually I was able to get through to the hostel. The front desk clerk explained to me that there were signs for the hostel posted, but they were all in French. That explained it! Me, I don’t know a lick of French, so of course I didn’t recognize or notice the French-language signs. The signs had the word "Auberge" on them, which meant nothing to me other than remembering that there was a French movie released last year called L’Auberge Espagnole.
Once I found the hostel, which was extraordinarily large and clean for a hostel, I had nothing left in the tank. I watched a few minutes of "The Siege" on the common room TV and then I flat out expired on my bottom bunk bed for the evening.
We were all heading to Brussels that morning, so we decided to go there together. I was thrilled to have some people to talk to after going 5 days pretty much all by myself. And they were American, no less! Oh Fortuna, you smiled down on me that day.
On the train en route to Brussels, we met an eccentric woman who told us she was heading to a big flower show in Ghent (If memory serves correct, wasn’t the treaty that ended one of the World Wars signed there? Did I really get a 5 in AP US History and now I can’t even remember the specifics of Ghent in modern world history? Shame on me and my shrinking memory). Anyway, Catherine mentioned how she lives in Austin, Texas, and then this older woman oh so casually dropped into the conversation that she was once incarcerated there. If you weren’t paying close attention to her words, you would have missed it entirely. She said it as if she was telling us she once visited the Alamo and thought it was swell. After she disembarked, Catherine and Ivana immediately turned to me and asked, "Did she say she was incarcerated???" I think we were all a little stunned and amused by it.
Once we got near Brussels, we didn’t know at which train station to get out. There were 2 or 3 options, and sometimes it’s difficult to know which one is the right one, even with a guidebook in hand. A young Belgian woman on the train who knew English helped us out and directed us in the right direction. Once we got off the train, she was kind enough to show us where to store our luggage, and even walked us out of the station and told us where to go for the museums and how to get to Grand Place, which is more or less the epicenter of Brussels. People’s generosity and kindness to baffled tourists and travelers never ceases to amaze me.
It was raining a lot today, so we donned our umbrellas and made our way over to Grand Place. There wasn’t a whole lot to do there, and it was raining heavily, so we thought it best to get inside a museum for a while. I recommended the Royal Belgian Art Museum, which was high on my list of priorities, so that’s where he went. The museum was enormous. We spent a few hours there and barely scratched its surface. We ended up in a lot of the older wings. I didn’t get to see any of the modern collections, but I still saw a lot of interesting work.
The low point (well, one of two) of the trip happened here at the museum, though. My 22 month old Canon A70 digital camera decided to malfunction and break on me when I turned it on to take a shot of a painting inside the museum. The retractable lens got stuck, and then I saw the message I always dreaded seeing on the screen, E18.
Once I got the camera as a college graduation present from my Mom and Dad, I looked up user reviews for the camera online, and noticed a few people had gotten this same E18 message where the gears responsible for opening and closing the camera would malfunction. I checked reviews for my camera a year later and saw hundreds of people complaining about this E18 error and how Canon would offer them no help in fixing it if the one year warranty had expired. They could fix it, but the repair costs would be nearly as much as buying a new camera, so it wasn’t really worth getting fixed. When I read about this, I just prayed that I would be one of the lucky customers who never had a problem with their model, especially when I’d be over in a foreign country where digital cameras cost almost twice what they charge in the US.
Well, 10 months after my warranty expired, I got the E18 message, and I knew immediately that my camera was toast. I never dropped the camera once, always treated it with great care, but some things, malfunctions like these, you just can’t control no matter how many precautions you take. I was just glad it died near the end of my trip and not on the first day before I had a chance to take most of the pictures I wanted.
After the museum, us three walked back to Grand Place. We went to an extremely restaurant in Grand Place and got waffles covered in powdered sugar and chocolate sauce. While I did not have a beer in Belgium, at least I got to eat an authentic Belgian waffle (although a little maple syrup on it would have made a world of difference!) After waffles, I said my goodbyes to Ivana and Catherine- they were catching an afternoon to Paris.
Now, the reason I chose to come to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Belgium for my vacation was because I knew someone living in Brussels- Sophia, a Cypriot woman I worked with at the Cyprus Mail back in the summer of ’03 after I graduating college. I wanted to be able to visit someone and not go somewhere alone, by myself for the week. She was the only friend of mine that I knew in Europe at the time, so I emailed her a month before coming, telling here I’d be in and around Brussels that week, maybe we could meet up for a day.
Well, it turned out to be a busy weekend for her and she had other, closer friends to entertain, so all could she could do was meet up with me for lunch while accompanied by another friend of hers who was visiting from out of town. This was someone I hadn’t seen for almost 2 years- I was really looking forward to hanging out with her for a while, and all I could get was a cursory lunch in a crowded, overprices restaurant. For a while, I felt like an idiot, flying all the way here, spending my vacation time on this- a dank, rainy day in Brussels. Jen was off visiting friends in Dubai, hanging out on the beach and touring desert in a LandCruiser while Maddy was meeting up with her Mom in Crete for the week. As I paid for my $14 turkey sandwich and said goodbye to Sophia, who had to run because she had tickets to an exclusive Brussels nightclub for her and her friend, I began doubting my trip a little bit. I’m not sure what I expected from her, but I expected a little more than that. Maybe a mini-tour of the city, a few hours hanging out, perhaps a floor or couch to sleep on for the night. I was disappointed.
I collected my luggage at the train station and took the subway out of downtown to my hostel. Still raining, it was a bad time for my poor navigational skills and lack of travel-sense to kick in. I got off at the correct stop, and the directions from the hostel’s website said there would be a sign that said "Youth Hostel" pointing in the right direction. Well, I saw no "Youth Hostel" sign of any kind, and discerned no sign bearing the hostel’s name.
Dreary and still raining out, I started wandering around, hoping I’d happen upon it or at least ask someone for directions. I tried calling the hostel on a public phone, but dialing the number as given on their website would not make the call go through. Did I have to dial a zero or a one before the number or add in an area code? I had no idea. I tried all sorts of combinations, but none worked.
I tried asking people on the street and shopkeepers for directions, but not one of them understood or spoke English. The entire neighborhood spoke and only understood French. I couldn’t believe my luck. I figured someone had to know English or at least recognize the name of the hostel or the street the hostel was on, but nobody did. Nobody! I walked around some more, cursing my destination and muttering nonsensical ramblings through gritted teeth as I walked around the neighborhood awaiting some kind of divine intervention to show me the way to my hostel. I wasn’t pouting or being depressed, mind you, but rather I was highly agitated, exasperated, and frustrated- "exagistrated" we’ll call it.
Almost an hour into this hopeless quest for shelter from the elements, again, I tried working the phones, and eventually I was able to get through to the hostel. The front desk clerk explained to me that there were signs for the hostel posted, but they were all in French. That explained it! Me, I don’t know a lick of French, so of course I didn’t recognize or notice the French-language signs. The signs had the word "Auberge" on them, which meant nothing to me other than remembering that there was a French movie released last year called L’Auberge Espagnole.
Once I found the hostel, which was extraordinarily large and clean for a hostel, I had nothing left in the tank. I watched a few minutes of "The Siege" on the common room TV and then I flat out expired on my bottom bunk bed for the evening.
DAY 7- Sunday, April 17th (final day)
-I stayed in three different hostels and the breakfast they offered was more or less the same at each one- cornflakes with milk, wheat and white bread (sliced) with butter, coffee, tea, orange juice, and maybe some hard-boiled eggs. Is this the standard international hostel menu?
-There’s a car model in Belgium either called the Schittur or the Schitter. No matter how you spell it, that’s some name. Are they going to release the Schittur Box next season?
So day 7, this was the last day; it was time to head home. Like Steve Martin and John Candy, it was "Trains, Planes, and Automobiles" for me, in that order, in my 15 hour journey back to Izmir.
I took the train from Brussels back to Central Station in Amsterdam and I had a little bit of time before I needed to get to the airport, so I thought it would be best to savor one last Maoz Falafel for the road. With my bags, I scurried across the street and stopped at what I thought was a sidewalk median in the middle of a big street, but it turned out to be tram tracks instead. I was waiting for some cars to pass when I hear a loud horn blast at me to my right. I turned my head and saw a tram coming at me at full speed. It must have been 15-20 feet away from me, so I had just enough time to jump out of the way and back into the street I had just crossed. Luckily, there were no oncoming cars at the moment- otherwise I wouldn’t be alive to write this travelogue now. But really, that would have been a terrible way to go, death by tram. Who gets killed by a tram these days? And to get run over by a public transportation vehicle because I wanted one last plate of falafel and mayo-drenched fries? What an obituary that would have made. The incident sort of knocked the wind out of me for a moment, but I soon recovered and got that last falafel for the train ride into the airport.
Even though I tried my best to get rid of them, I still had a bunch of Euro coins when I made it to the airport. Since you can’t exchange them for US dollars later, or at least at the time that’s what I though, so I treated myself to some Haggen Daaz ice cream to get rid of my change. I must admit- I didn’t eat very well on thus trip (I went five days without a piece of fruit), yet I still managed to lose weight. I did some major walking during the week, so that must have done it.
Both flights home, to Istanbul and the one to Izmir especially, were very turbulent. There were some serious drops and shakes and shimmies, and landing in Izmir turned into a bit of a white knuckle-fest for a few moments. Apparently, there was some rare giant windstorm phenomena in action across most of southeastern Europe that day. I had never heard of it, but Maddy said it’s called a siroco (sp?). She would know, since her flight home from Crete was cancelled, and she had to take a far more expensive and circuitous route in order to make it home in time for school Monday morning. The running joke for the next few days was that it was not the sirocco winds that did us all in, but rather the far fiercer rococo winds. Yes, I’m a very silly fellow.
I made it back to the apartment a little bit past 1am. Our place was trashed. I thought to myself, "What the heck happened, and whose is all this stuff strewn all over the place?" Turned out that James stayed at our place while we were gone with his friend/sort-of-girlfriend Alanna, who was interning at another school near Istanbul. I couldn’t believe how messy the place was. Were they moonlighting as rock stars? Alanna's clothes and possessions were spread all over the living room, and in the kitchen there were plates and glasses and pots and pans all over the place. And a bunch of unwrapped food, including homemade cookies, left out on the counter to go stale. It was strange. Why go through all the trouble to make cookies and then just leave them out on the counter all night?
Well, thus ends my spring break 2005 Travel Diaries. Until my next journey…
-There’s a car model in Belgium either called the Schittur or the Schitter. No matter how you spell it, that’s some name. Are they going to release the Schittur Box next season?
So day 7, this was the last day; it was time to head home. Like Steve Martin and John Candy, it was "Trains, Planes, and Automobiles" for me, in that order, in my 15 hour journey back to Izmir.
I took the train from Brussels back to Central Station in Amsterdam and I had a little bit of time before I needed to get to the airport, so I thought it would be best to savor one last Maoz Falafel for the road. With my bags, I scurried across the street and stopped at what I thought was a sidewalk median in the middle of a big street, but it turned out to be tram tracks instead. I was waiting for some cars to pass when I hear a loud horn blast at me to my right. I turned my head and saw a tram coming at me at full speed. It must have been 15-20 feet away from me, so I had just enough time to jump out of the way and back into the street I had just crossed. Luckily, there were no oncoming cars at the moment- otherwise I wouldn’t be alive to write this travelogue now. But really, that would have been a terrible way to go, death by tram. Who gets killed by a tram these days? And to get run over by a public transportation vehicle because I wanted one last plate of falafel and mayo-drenched fries? What an obituary that would have made. The incident sort of knocked the wind out of me for a moment, but I soon recovered and got that last falafel for the train ride into the airport.
Even though I tried my best to get rid of them, I still had a bunch of Euro coins when I made it to the airport. Since you can’t exchange them for US dollars later, or at least at the time that’s what I though, so I treated myself to some Haggen Daaz ice cream to get rid of my change. I must admit- I didn’t eat very well on thus trip (I went five days without a piece of fruit), yet I still managed to lose weight. I did some major walking during the week, so that must have done it.
Both flights home, to Istanbul and the one to Izmir especially, were very turbulent. There were some serious drops and shakes and shimmies, and landing in Izmir turned into a bit of a white knuckle-fest for a few moments. Apparently, there was some rare giant windstorm phenomena in action across most of southeastern Europe that day. I had never heard of it, but Maddy said it’s called a siroco (sp?). She would know, since her flight home from Crete was cancelled, and she had to take a far more expensive and circuitous route in order to make it home in time for school Monday morning. The running joke for the next few days was that it was not the sirocco winds that did us all in, but rather the far fiercer rococo winds. Yes, I’m a very silly fellow.
I made it back to the apartment a little bit past 1am. Our place was trashed. I thought to myself, "What the heck happened, and whose is all this stuff strewn all over the place?" Turned out that James stayed at our place while we were gone with his friend/sort-of-girlfriend Alanna, who was interning at another school near Istanbul. I couldn’t believe how messy the place was. Were they moonlighting as rock stars? Alanna's clothes and possessions were spread all over the living room, and in the kitchen there were plates and glasses and pots and pans all over the place. And a bunch of unwrapped food, including homemade cookies, left out on the counter to go stale. It was strange. Why go through all the trouble to make cookies and then just leave them out on the counter all night?
Well, thus ends my spring break 2005 Travel Diaries. Until my next journey…
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
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Tuesday, May 24, 2005
NY Times Upfront Blog
This is a great running blog written during the TV network presentations where they show advertisers clips and previews from the upcominbg fall season. If you're at all interested in TV or what goes on behind the screen, it's definitely worth a gander. Funny, too!
http://nytimes.com/ref/arts/television/tv-upfronts-journal.html
http://nytimes.com/ref/arts/television/tv-upfronts-journal.html
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Ante Meridian Food Consumption, aka Breakfast
A couple of weeks ago one of Americans was remarking how Turks will eat anything for breakfast, even if it’s a dessert- cakes, brownies, etc. Occasionally the morning breakfast for the students at school will be chocolate cake or something rich and sugary and nobody bats an eye. They also serve the kids, even those in 1st grade, this strange tea drink in the morning. What, these kids don’t bounce off the walls with hyperactivity already? We have to go and serve them Gummi Bear-like elixir to get their motor running, too?
In regards to the food, after thinking about if for a few minutes, Americans eat some pretty sugary, high-fat content food in the morning, too. You know what I’m talking about---doughnuts. To me doughnuts and muffins aren’t real breakfast foods, but millions of us pop them in our mouths (some dunk them in coffee before ingestion) every morning. We don’t bat an eye at all those crullers (or in Dunkin Doughnuts’ case, machine-made chocolate sticks) and jelly-filled concoctions and don’t bat an eye, so I don’t think I can crack down on the Turks for slipping a little cake onto their breakfast menu now and again.
While on a school sponsored trip this weekend to Bodrum, a party/resort town about a 4 hour bus ride from Izmir, my roommate, Cem, the school computer guru, told me that there are probably 5 Dunkin Doughnuts in Istanbul. Dunkin Doughnuts in freakin’ Istanbul???! I couldn’t believe it, though I think Cem was equally taken aback when I told him Dunkin Doughnuts was started in the town right next to mine back in America, and that the South Shore sported at least 5-6 Dunkin Doughnuts per town. But I really wasn’t expecting someone from Izmir to say they had been to a Dunkin Doughnuts in Turkey before. They really are gonna rule the world one of these days.
The breakfast/snack I enjoy here is called simit, though it can also be called gevrek. Same thing. The best way to describe it is a cross between a sesame seed bagel and a think’ unsalted pretzel. It has a circular shape, though it’s a lot thinner than a bagel. You don’t spread anything on it, but you usually eat it with a slice or two of salty cheese. The people here, they just love ‘em. In the marketplaces and the bazaars, there are guys trying to sell you fresh simit seemingly on every corner.
In regards to the food, after thinking about if for a few minutes, Americans eat some pretty sugary, high-fat content food in the morning, too. You know what I’m talking about---doughnuts. To me doughnuts and muffins aren’t real breakfast foods, but millions of us pop them in our mouths (some dunk them in coffee before ingestion) every morning. We don’t bat an eye at all those crullers (or in Dunkin Doughnuts’ case, machine-made chocolate sticks) and jelly-filled concoctions and don’t bat an eye, so I don’t think I can crack down on the Turks for slipping a little cake onto their breakfast menu now and again.
While on a school sponsored trip this weekend to Bodrum, a party/resort town about a 4 hour bus ride from Izmir, my roommate, Cem, the school computer guru, told me that there are probably 5 Dunkin Doughnuts in Istanbul. Dunkin Doughnuts in freakin’ Istanbul???! I couldn’t believe it, though I think Cem was equally taken aback when I told him Dunkin Doughnuts was started in the town right next to mine back in America, and that the South Shore sported at least 5-6 Dunkin Doughnuts per town. But I really wasn’t expecting someone from Izmir to say they had been to a Dunkin Doughnuts in Turkey before. They really are gonna rule the world one of these days.
The breakfast/snack I enjoy here is called simit, though it can also be called gevrek. Same thing. The best way to describe it is a cross between a sesame seed bagel and a think’ unsalted pretzel. It has a circular shape, though it’s a lot thinner than a bagel. You don’t spread anything on it, but you usually eat it with a slice or two of salty cheese. The people here, they just love ‘em. In the marketplaces and the bazaars, there are guys trying to sell you fresh simit seemingly on every corner.
A half-decent Star Wars film?
The reviews for the latest Star Wars installment are coming in...and they're actually very good! USA Today gave it 3.5 stars and even AO Scott of the NY Times relented, calling it easily the best of the three prequels, and even better than A New Hope. Now I'm getting excited that this film will be worth watching. Read the Times review here:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/movies/16star.html
Friday, May 13, 2005
Electronically Challenged
My digital camera, my IBM laptop, AND my 4-month old Playstation 2 have all managed to malfunction and break within the last month. Can you believe it? I'm only asking because I definitely can't. And I treat my stuff WELL. Not like I throw them around, drop them, or spill grande coffees on them. Aside from a 2nd hand stereo receiver I found for a steal at a yard sale that still lasted a good 5 years, I haven't had anything electronic break or fail me in years. And now all my stuff's breaking down all at once. And the worst of it is I can't get any of it fixed or repaired under warranties while I'm here overseas,
I can't figure it out. All I have left with me now electronics-wise is my Ipod, and I can only wonder how much time that device has left...
Very frustrated and angry at the moment.
I can't figure it out. All I have left with me now electronics-wise is my Ipod, and I can only wonder how much time that device has left...
Very frustrated and angry at the moment.
Getting to My Spring Break AKA Bonehead Decisions All Around
Ahh, School Spring Break. I never thought I’d experience one of those again, but our school took a holiday from April 11th-15th. We didn’t have any random holidays, half-days, or days off during March, so we had worked straight from the 2nd week of February to April 8th. It was time for a vacation, time for an extended leave away from school and those darling little wonder-children.
Maddy decided to venture off to Crete for the week and meet up with her mother, who was flying in from New York. Jen, she had a friend from college who lived and worked in Dubai (a former Currier House resident!), so that’s where she went for the week. Maddy left Friday afternoon (but not before forgetting her wallet and having to come all the way back home across the city from the bus station). Jen left Friday night, and I didn’t leave on my trip until Sunday morning because I mixed up the days and thought I was buying a ticket for Saturday when it was actually Sunday.
I didn’t want to go somewhere alone- I wanted at least to be able to meet up with someone I knew for at least a part of the trip. Wary of repeating the mistakes I made on my Athens/Greek isle trip of a few years ago, I brainstormed all the places I could go when I realized I only knew one person in Europe that I could visit, and she lived in Belgium.
Sofia, who I worked with at the Cyprus Mail for the summer in 2003, had gotten a trainee-ship at the UN Headquarters in Brussels, so I thought, hey, let’s go to Belgium for the week! I emailed her a month in advance and told her I wanted to come during that week and hang out for at least a day, maybe two. I did some research on Belgium, and found that it wasn’t very exciting and there wasn’t a whole lot to see beyond a day in Brussels and a day in Bruges. Reconsidering, I decided to spend the rest of my time in Amsterdam, which seemed to offer more than enough to do for a weeklong holiday. I had spent a night there when I got stuck on my 52 hour journey home back in January. It seemed like a cool place for the hour or two I had a chance to walk around the downtown area that night, so I figured my itinerary had the makings of a quality spring break.
I stayed at school late on Friday doing some last-minute travel planning- booking hostel rooms, and figuring out more or less what to see and how to get around once I was there. I had wanted to get my hair trimmed on Saturday, since it was getting pretty long and generally unmanageable, but with all the last-minute errands I had to do, I didn’t have time to walk around during business hours and find a barbershop. That evening, I decided to cut my own hair, which is never a brilliant idea, but I thought I could trim a little off the back and clean it up a little.
I start cutting it in the bathroom using 2 mirrors, and of course it’s more difficult than I thought it would be. I only ended up making three cuts in the back, but holding the hair in my hand while trying to guide the scissors around the hair while looking in the mirror proved to be a serious challenge. You see it one way and you have to tell your brain and your hand to move in the opposite direction and, and while you’re concentrating on that you almost go Van Gogh and cut your ear off.
So while I’m doing this, I work up a terrible sweat, and I have giant beads of sweat rolling over my sweat-saturated eyebrows into my eyes and all over my glasses. I go to take my glasses off with my right hand while holding my hair in place with the left when the right arm on my glasses snaps off. My frames tumble to the floor and I’m left holding the skinny black arm with a broken hinge at one end.
Wonderful time for my glasses to break- at 1am when I have an international flight taking off in 10 hours. Fortunately, I brought my backup pair with me and they served me well on the trip, but having my glasses randomly break like that (I wasn’t rough with them) seemed like a foreboding sign. ***Note- I took them to an eyeglass shop here in izmir after the break. They told me they couldn’t fix them without a new arm, so I’m just going to have to make due with my spare pair for the rest of my time here and hope nothing freakish happens to them. Otherwise, I’ll have to bust out the black duct tape as a last resort.
I took forever to pack, as I stressed over what clothes I’d need. It was quite colder there and it rains off and on a lot, so I didn’t want to be caught shorthanded. First time through, I packed WAY too much. Ever so slowly I whittled it down so it could all fit into a small suitcase and my backpack. After some Ipod updating and more essential putzinfraffin, I got to bed around 5am.
I got up at 8:25 to catch the airport shuttle bus that picks people up at the mall nearby my apartment. Jen and Maddy had left some dirty dishes in the kitchen which I had done the night before because I didn’t want them strinking up the place or growing mold while we were gone all wee, but as I was walking out the door (literally, at least half my body crossed the threshold and made it into the hallway) I noticed that nobody had emptied out two garbage cans in a while. The one under our sink had lots of food and vegetables in it and it stunk to high heaven. I couldn’t leave them there for to fester for another 8 days, so I emptied them both. Stuff had seeped through the bags into the barrels, so I had to wash them out as well. By the time I finished all the housekeeping, it was 9am, so I ran downstairs to the Shuttle pickup spot.
The last time I took the bus to the airport, it came at a really strange time in the middle of the hour, so I wasn’t nervous when it wasn’t there. 9:15 rolled by, no problem. Suddenly it was 9:30 and I started to get nervous. I resigned myself to stay there and wait for the bus because last time I lost my nerve and when I started walking to the main road to catch a cab or a city bus, the shuttle came. Plus, I didn’t want to take a cab because I knew the airport was far away and it would have cost a fair amount of money as opposed to the shuttle, which was $6.50.
Well, the shuttle gets there at 9:45 and I was the first to hop on, but it waited around, not pulling out onto the road until 10am. By now, I was really nervous, thinking I was going to miss my flight. It was a long trip, but I knew it wouldn’t take an hour, and Izmir is such a small airport that you can walk inside and the check-in desk is right in front of you. Unfortunately, the trip was very slow. We had plenty of time, but we made a pick up at the main tourist office downtown and ended up waiting around parked on the side of the road for a good 10 minutes. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the front row, my heart pounding, trying my best to will the bus to pull away from the curb and get to the airport so I wouldn’t miss my flight.
We pulled into the terminal at 10:53. I flew off the bus, grabbed my bag hastily from the porter and dashed into the airport. Just my luck, a giant tour bus pulled in right before us, so there’s a gigantic line of travelers waiting to screen their luggage before they can enter the terminal. At this point, I finally accepted the truth- I was too late, and I was definitely missing my plane as my vacation time was fizzling away in front of my eyes.
I walked up to the desk and explained to them that I missed my flight. They tried getting me on another Turkish Airlines flight and even other competitors’ flights so I could get to Istanbul on time to make my connection to Amsterdam, but there weren’t any flights to Istanbul for at least another 2 hours. So, yup, connection was missed. I feared they were going to charge me an arm and a leg to re-book my ticket, but hallelujah, they didn’t charge me a cent! I was astounded and relieved. I thought they could get me on a flight later that day, but they didn’t have any more flight from Istanbul to Amsterdam that day, so they booked me on a 5am flight the next day.
I wasn’t happy, but what else was I gonna do? I had no alternative. That’s what I got for missing the 9am bus because I felt compelled to empty and clean up the stinky garbage. I won’t make that mistake ever again. And that’s what I get for trying to save money by not taking a taxi. If they ended up charging me to rebook the ticket, and that price were higher than what the cab fee would have been, mad, I would have really been angry at myself (not that I wasn’t already, mind you).
I left the airport in a dejected state as I realized I just lost the first day of my spring break in Holland. I ended up taking the same shuttle bus back to Mavisehir at noon, and when I got home I emailed my family, emailed my Amsterdam hostel, and proceeded to pass out on my bed for a good 5 hours. My nerved has been so worked up, and I had gotten little to no sleep the night before, so I was exhausted.
You’re darn straight I made sure I was outside waiting for that 3am shuttle bus a good 20 minutes early.
Maddy decided to venture off to Crete for the week and meet up with her mother, who was flying in from New York. Jen, she had a friend from college who lived and worked in Dubai (a former Currier House resident!), so that’s where she went for the week. Maddy left Friday afternoon (but not before forgetting her wallet and having to come all the way back home across the city from the bus station). Jen left Friday night, and I didn’t leave on my trip until Sunday morning because I mixed up the days and thought I was buying a ticket for Saturday when it was actually Sunday.
I didn’t want to go somewhere alone- I wanted at least to be able to meet up with someone I knew for at least a part of the trip. Wary of repeating the mistakes I made on my Athens/Greek isle trip of a few years ago, I brainstormed all the places I could go when I realized I only knew one person in Europe that I could visit, and she lived in Belgium.
Sofia, who I worked with at the Cyprus Mail for the summer in 2003, had gotten a trainee-ship at the UN Headquarters in Brussels, so I thought, hey, let’s go to Belgium for the week! I emailed her a month in advance and told her I wanted to come during that week and hang out for at least a day, maybe two. I did some research on Belgium, and found that it wasn’t very exciting and there wasn’t a whole lot to see beyond a day in Brussels and a day in Bruges. Reconsidering, I decided to spend the rest of my time in Amsterdam, which seemed to offer more than enough to do for a weeklong holiday. I had spent a night there when I got stuck on my 52 hour journey home back in January. It seemed like a cool place for the hour or two I had a chance to walk around the downtown area that night, so I figured my itinerary had the makings of a quality spring break.
I stayed at school late on Friday doing some last-minute travel planning- booking hostel rooms, and figuring out more or less what to see and how to get around once I was there. I had wanted to get my hair trimmed on Saturday, since it was getting pretty long and generally unmanageable, but with all the last-minute errands I had to do, I didn’t have time to walk around during business hours and find a barbershop. That evening, I decided to cut my own hair, which is never a brilliant idea, but I thought I could trim a little off the back and clean it up a little.
I start cutting it in the bathroom using 2 mirrors, and of course it’s more difficult than I thought it would be. I only ended up making three cuts in the back, but holding the hair in my hand while trying to guide the scissors around the hair while looking in the mirror proved to be a serious challenge. You see it one way and you have to tell your brain and your hand to move in the opposite direction and, and while you’re concentrating on that you almost go Van Gogh and cut your ear off.
So while I’m doing this, I work up a terrible sweat, and I have giant beads of sweat rolling over my sweat-saturated eyebrows into my eyes and all over my glasses. I go to take my glasses off with my right hand while holding my hair in place with the left when the right arm on my glasses snaps off. My frames tumble to the floor and I’m left holding the skinny black arm with a broken hinge at one end.
Wonderful time for my glasses to break- at 1am when I have an international flight taking off in 10 hours. Fortunately, I brought my backup pair with me and they served me well on the trip, but having my glasses randomly break like that (I wasn’t rough with them) seemed like a foreboding sign. ***Note- I took them to an eyeglass shop here in izmir after the break. They told me they couldn’t fix them without a new arm, so I’m just going to have to make due with my spare pair for the rest of my time here and hope nothing freakish happens to them. Otherwise, I’ll have to bust out the black duct tape as a last resort.
I took forever to pack, as I stressed over what clothes I’d need. It was quite colder there and it rains off and on a lot, so I didn’t want to be caught shorthanded. First time through, I packed WAY too much. Ever so slowly I whittled it down so it could all fit into a small suitcase and my backpack. After some Ipod updating and more essential putzinfraffin, I got to bed around 5am.
I got up at 8:25 to catch the airport shuttle bus that picks people up at the mall nearby my apartment. Jen and Maddy had left some dirty dishes in the kitchen which I had done the night before because I didn’t want them strinking up the place or growing mold while we were gone all wee, but as I was walking out the door (literally, at least half my body crossed the threshold and made it into the hallway) I noticed that nobody had emptied out two garbage cans in a while. The one under our sink had lots of food and vegetables in it and it stunk to high heaven. I couldn’t leave them there for to fester for another 8 days, so I emptied them both. Stuff had seeped through the bags into the barrels, so I had to wash them out as well. By the time I finished all the housekeeping, it was 9am, so I ran downstairs to the Shuttle pickup spot.
The last time I took the bus to the airport, it came at a really strange time in the middle of the hour, so I wasn’t nervous when it wasn’t there. 9:15 rolled by, no problem. Suddenly it was 9:30 and I started to get nervous. I resigned myself to stay there and wait for the bus because last time I lost my nerve and when I started walking to the main road to catch a cab or a city bus, the shuttle came. Plus, I didn’t want to take a cab because I knew the airport was far away and it would have cost a fair amount of money as opposed to the shuttle, which was $6.50.
Well, the shuttle gets there at 9:45 and I was the first to hop on, but it waited around, not pulling out onto the road until 10am. By now, I was really nervous, thinking I was going to miss my flight. It was a long trip, but I knew it wouldn’t take an hour, and Izmir is such a small airport that you can walk inside and the check-in desk is right in front of you. Unfortunately, the trip was very slow. We had plenty of time, but we made a pick up at the main tourist office downtown and ended up waiting around parked on the side of the road for a good 10 minutes. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the front row, my heart pounding, trying my best to will the bus to pull away from the curb and get to the airport so I wouldn’t miss my flight.
We pulled into the terminal at 10:53. I flew off the bus, grabbed my bag hastily from the porter and dashed into the airport. Just my luck, a giant tour bus pulled in right before us, so there’s a gigantic line of travelers waiting to screen their luggage before they can enter the terminal. At this point, I finally accepted the truth- I was too late, and I was definitely missing my plane as my vacation time was fizzling away in front of my eyes.
I walked up to the desk and explained to them that I missed my flight. They tried getting me on another Turkish Airlines flight and even other competitors’ flights so I could get to Istanbul on time to make my connection to Amsterdam, but there weren’t any flights to Istanbul for at least another 2 hours. So, yup, connection was missed. I feared they were going to charge me an arm and a leg to re-book my ticket, but hallelujah, they didn’t charge me a cent! I was astounded and relieved. I thought they could get me on a flight later that day, but they didn’t have any more flight from Istanbul to Amsterdam that day, so they booked me on a 5am flight the next day.
I wasn’t happy, but what else was I gonna do? I had no alternative. That’s what I got for missing the 9am bus because I felt compelled to empty and clean up the stinky garbage. I won’t make that mistake ever again. And that’s what I get for trying to save money by not taking a taxi. If they ended up charging me to rebook the ticket, and that price were higher than what the cab fee would have been, mad, I would have really been angry at myself (not that I wasn’t already, mind you).
I left the airport in a dejected state as I realized I just lost the first day of my spring break in Holland. I ended up taking the same shuttle bus back to Mavisehir at noon, and when I got home I emailed my family, emailed my Amsterdam hostel, and proceeded to pass out on my bed for a good 5 hours. My nerved has been so worked up, and I had gotten little to no sleep the night before, so I was exhausted.
You’re darn straight I made sure I was outside waiting for that 3am shuttle bus a good 20 minutes early.
Bite Me (no, really, they do...a lot)
Just for the record, Schlock+Glitz= Schlitz
_________________________
The part of Izmir where I live, Mavisehir, is the swankiest, most upscale part of the city in which to reside (and they only have 1 ATM in a 2 mile radius?). While I do enjoy a gorgeous view of the bay from my bedroom window, the problem lies in Mavesehir’s true identity- it’s more or less a large swamp. And when you combine warm weather (it’s finally gonna hit the 80s and stay there tomorrow, though I can’t complain because the last month has been nothing short of ideal) with even traces of what used to be a swamp (before it was built up), that can usually lead to one very common, inevitable problem- MOSQUITOS! They are everywhere, and they refuse to leave me alone. The Turkish word for mosquito sounds something like "sivresinik." They’re feisty little suckers here, literally!
Now, I always get more bites than the average victim, and here’s I’m a sitting duck, practically begging to be bitten in their eyes. Sleeping with the window open at night is out of the question, but they still manage to get inside the apartment during the day when the windows are open. They bide their time, stake me out, and feast on me while I’m asleep. I wake up every morning with an average of 4-6 new bites a day. I try to keep my entire body covered, but I can’t always control what I do while I’m asleep.
One night my foot was exposed and I woke up the next morning with itchy welts all over it. I thought I must have had a giant spider in bed with me. You try scratching the bites through your sneaker all day and find out how ineffective that is. Friday morning I woke up with a slew of them on the underside of my left arm- around 8 or 9, I can’t quite count them all accurately. This needs to stop.
I was told that if I get a fan, that will keep me cool AND keep the bugs away simultaneously, so that’s my main goal for the week- procure a fan at all costs! And in the meantime, I need to get my hands on some calamine lotion and some industrial strength OFF. And I was informed by some of the English staff that I can buy some anti-mosquito tablets (called boksavar) that will ward them off. I need all the help I can get right now’ so I’ll try it all.
Last summer I read a report that advised us all not to squash or smack mosquitoes, but rather to flick them away. The reason being that by flicking them we don’t squash their previous victims’ blood all over ourselves while they’re busy biting us. So when in danger of being bitten, remember to flick and not to squash. Me, if I see a mosquito on my arm, I don’t have the time to think strategy- I just whack it and hope I make contact before it flies away. But I did have a friend who got really sick from a mosquito bite while conducting thesis research in Haiti. He even had to miss the first month of school because it was the sort of sickness that made your muscles and joints all stiff while zapping you of all your energy. Makes me a little extra paranoid everytime I get a bite nowadays, especially now when I have too many to count all over my body.
So yeah, let that be a lesson to you. Be extra alert the next time you’re in the backwoods of Haiti.
_________________________
The part of Izmir where I live, Mavisehir, is the swankiest, most upscale part of the city in which to reside (and they only have 1 ATM in a 2 mile radius?). While I do enjoy a gorgeous view of the bay from my bedroom window, the problem lies in Mavesehir’s true identity- it’s more or less a large swamp. And when you combine warm weather (it’s finally gonna hit the 80s and stay there tomorrow, though I can’t complain because the last month has been nothing short of ideal) with even traces of what used to be a swamp (before it was built up), that can usually lead to one very common, inevitable problem- MOSQUITOS! They are everywhere, and they refuse to leave me alone. The Turkish word for mosquito sounds something like "sivresinik." They’re feisty little suckers here, literally!
Now, I always get more bites than the average victim, and here’s I’m a sitting duck, practically begging to be bitten in their eyes. Sleeping with the window open at night is out of the question, but they still manage to get inside the apartment during the day when the windows are open. They bide their time, stake me out, and feast on me while I’m asleep. I wake up every morning with an average of 4-6 new bites a day. I try to keep my entire body covered, but I can’t always control what I do while I’m asleep.
One night my foot was exposed and I woke up the next morning with itchy welts all over it. I thought I must have had a giant spider in bed with me. You try scratching the bites through your sneaker all day and find out how ineffective that is. Friday morning I woke up with a slew of them on the underside of my left arm- around 8 or 9, I can’t quite count them all accurately. This needs to stop.
I was told that if I get a fan, that will keep me cool AND keep the bugs away simultaneously, so that’s my main goal for the week- procure a fan at all costs! And in the meantime, I need to get my hands on some calamine lotion and some industrial strength OFF. And I was informed by some of the English staff that I can buy some anti-mosquito tablets (called boksavar) that will ward them off. I need all the help I can get right now’ so I’ll try it all.
Last summer I read a report that advised us all not to squash or smack mosquitoes, but rather to flick them away. The reason being that by flicking them we don’t squash their previous victims’ blood all over ourselves while they’re busy biting us. So when in danger of being bitten, remember to flick and not to squash. Me, if I see a mosquito on my arm, I don’t have the time to think strategy- I just whack it and hope I make contact before it flies away. But I did have a friend who got really sick from a mosquito bite while conducting thesis research in Haiti. He even had to miss the first month of school because it was the sort of sickness that made your muscles and joints all stiff while zapping you of all your energy. Makes me a little extra paranoid everytime I get a bite nowadays, especially now when I have too many to count all over my body.
So yeah, let that be a lesson to you. Be extra alert the next time you’re in the backwoods of Haiti.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Bookin' It
I’ve had the pleasure and the time to read a fair amount of literature since I came to Turkey in December. Here’s a list of the good stuff I’ve made my way through so far with my own two cents of an opinion thrown in.
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.
Really good book about a 14 year old girl from Indiana who spends her four, formative high school years at a Massachusetts Prep School. I never thought I’d identify so well with a highschool teenaged girl. It gets bogged down at times, but it’s an enjoyable read and one I recommend.
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
A sardonic, venemously comical book about a 16 year old kid in Martirio, TX whose friend kills 16 students at their high school, and then the lead character gets blamed for it all. I know, the premise doesn’t sound too promising on the humor-scale, but this book is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s told from a first person perspective, which makes all the difference in the world. If you’ve ever lived in the south or know anyone who has, you’ll get a kick out of this one.
The Bad Guys Won: A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball With Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put On A New York Uniform, and Maybe the Best by Jeff Pearlman
I haven’t read a lot of sports-related books, but this is definitely the best I’ve ever read. If you have any interest in baseball, the 1980’s sports scene, or even the ’86 Red Sox, you’ll love this. The stuff these guys tell the writer in their interviews is priceless.
The Best American Essays, 2003- I had never read anything from the Best American Series, but Maddy had gotten this sent to her by her Mom or a friend, and she referred one of the stories to me. I liked it so much, I went ahead and read the rest of them. Now I want to get the Best American Essays from other years, along with some of the other series that the publishers put out, like Best American Short Stories, Sports Writing, and Non-Required Reading. And each year these series get a new guest editor, which makes them all unique from one another. Of course, there will always be a few that don’t tickle your fancy and you end up skipping or skimming, but there are some truly great pieces of writing in this one.
A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
I know I might get some backlash for this, but I wasn’t too crazy about this one. When I started it, I loved all the little details and funny minutiae that Eggers put into the book, even messing with the title and publisher’s pages, but the novelty faded quickly, and I lost interest quickly after the first 100 pages. I read on, and then I just started getting annoyed by his character. I got tired of reading about how he’s worried about his little brother every time he’s not with him. We got it already, Dave! I was glad when this one finished, whereas with most books I hate to see them end.
Bibliophilia by Michael Griffith
A wonderful novella set in and around Louisiana State University told from multiple points of view of an aging female librarian who’s put in charge of stopping college kids from having sex in the library and a young foreign college student from Egypt who works part-time at the library while studying water irrigation. Doesn’t exactly sound like a barn burner, I know, but it’s very entertaining and whimsical. While this isn’t exactly first-person, the author does an impressive job of getting inside his 2 main characters’ heads. The short stories that follow are excellent as well.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Written by the guy responsible for The Tipping Point, this isn’t quite as good as his first book, but that’s probably because I was familiar with or knew most of what he brought up already from the social psychology research I did in college. I think he referenced the professor I worked for within the first 10 pages, and he bases most of his theories on research I’ve already read about ad nauseum. I liked the way he applied all the information to varying situations, but it was nothing new that made me go, “Wow!” like in The Tipping Point. I’m probably not the best person to ask regarding this book.
The DaVinci Code and Deception Point by Dan Brown
I wrote about the DaVinci Code already about what a sinfully guilty pleasure it was. My roommate Jen also had Deception Point lying around, so I gave that one a quick read as well, but I didn’t like it nearly as much. When you read a 2nd Dan Brown book, the formula for his plots, characters, and constructions become all too apparent and…similar. I almost didn’t want to finish Deception Point, but I figured I got that far, I might as well go the distance. The first 100 pages were intriguing, but it slowed down in the middle, and it had one character, a wacky, eccentric scientist that just about drove me up the wall. Dan Brown really needs to work on writing dialogue, because sometimes it sounds like a microwave oven instruction manual…or a George Lucas movie.
Elements of Style by Strunk and White
No explanation needed. I could probably benefit from reading it again, though.
currently reading The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup by Susan Orlean
Yeah, she wrote The Orchid Thief, and Meryl Streep played her in Adaptation. This is a collection of a bunch of her character profiles that ran in different magazines over the years. She’s a damn good writer and she profiles the most interesting people, or at least her observatory skills are so keen that she makes them interesting even if they seem boring, typical or mundane on the surface. I’ll recommend this one to a lot of people.
I know I read another book or two before I took them home when I went back to the states at the end of January, but I can’t remember them now.
******Books To Read While I’m Still Here (any comments?)
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Stiffed by Susan Faludi
Re-read Catcher in the Rye by JD Sallinger
Mailman by J Robert Lennon
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
When The Nines Roll by David Benioff
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Somewhere In America by Mark Singer
Wonderland by Michael Bamberger
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.
Really good book about a 14 year old girl from Indiana who spends her four, formative high school years at a Massachusetts Prep School. I never thought I’d identify so well with a highschool teenaged girl. It gets bogged down at times, but it’s an enjoyable read and one I recommend.
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
A sardonic, venemously comical book about a 16 year old kid in Martirio, TX whose friend kills 16 students at their high school, and then the lead character gets blamed for it all. I know, the premise doesn’t sound too promising on the humor-scale, but this book is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s told from a first person perspective, which makes all the difference in the world. If you’ve ever lived in the south or know anyone who has, you’ll get a kick out of this one.
The Bad Guys Won: A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball With Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put On A New York Uniform, and Maybe the Best by Jeff Pearlman
I haven’t read a lot of sports-related books, but this is definitely the best I’ve ever read. If you have any interest in baseball, the 1980’s sports scene, or even the ’86 Red Sox, you’ll love this. The stuff these guys tell the writer in their interviews is priceless.
The Best American Essays, 2003- I had never read anything from the Best American Series, but Maddy had gotten this sent to her by her Mom or a friend, and she referred one of the stories to me. I liked it so much, I went ahead and read the rest of them. Now I want to get the Best American Essays from other years, along with some of the other series that the publishers put out, like Best American Short Stories, Sports Writing, and Non-Required Reading. And each year these series get a new guest editor, which makes them all unique from one another. Of course, there will always be a few that don’t tickle your fancy and you end up skipping or skimming, but there are some truly great pieces of writing in this one.
A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
I know I might get some backlash for this, but I wasn’t too crazy about this one. When I started it, I loved all the little details and funny minutiae that Eggers put into the book, even messing with the title and publisher’s pages, but the novelty faded quickly, and I lost interest quickly after the first 100 pages. I read on, and then I just started getting annoyed by his character. I got tired of reading about how he’s worried about his little brother every time he’s not with him. We got it already, Dave! I was glad when this one finished, whereas with most books I hate to see them end.
Bibliophilia by Michael Griffith
A wonderful novella set in and around Louisiana State University told from multiple points of view of an aging female librarian who’s put in charge of stopping college kids from having sex in the library and a young foreign college student from Egypt who works part-time at the library while studying water irrigation. Doesn’t exactly sound like a barn burner, I know, but it’s very entertaining and whimsical. While this isn’t exactly first-person, the author does an impressive job of getting inside his 2 main characters’ heads. The short stories that follow are excellent as well.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Written by the guy responsible for The Tipping Point, this isn’t quite as good as his first book, but that’s probably because I was familiar with or knew most of what he brought up already from the social psychology research I did in college. I think he referenced the professor I worked for within the first 10 pages, and he bases most of his theories on research I’ve already read about ad nauseum. I liked the way he applied all the information to varying situations, but it was nothing new that made me go, “Wow!” like in The Tipping Point. I’m probably not the best person to ask regarding this book.
The DaVinci Code and Deception Point by Dan Brown
I wrote about the DaVinci Code already about what a sinfully guilty pleasure it was. My roommate Jen also had Deception Point lying around, so I gave that one a quick read as well, but I didn’t like it nearly as much. When you read a 2nd Dan Brown book, the formula for his plots, characters, and constructions become all too apparent and…similar. I almost didn’t want to finish Deception Point, but I figured I got that far, I might as well go the distance. The first 100 pages were intriguing, but it slowed down in the middle, and it had one character, a wacky, eccentric scientist that just about drove me up the wall. Dan Brown really needs to work on writing dialogue, because sometimes it sounds like a microwave oven instruction manual…or a George Lucas movie.
Elements of Style by Strunk and White
No explanation needed. I could probably benefit from reading it again, though.
currently reading The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup by Susan Orlean
Yeah, she wrote The Orchid Thief, and Meryl Streep played her in Adaptation. This is a collection of a bunch of her character profiles that ran in different magazines over the years. She’s a damn good writer and she profiles the most interesting people, or at least her observatory skills are so keen that she makes them interesting even if they seem boring, typical or mundane on the surface. I’ll recommend this one to a lot of people.
I know I read another book or two before I took them home when I went back to the states at the end of January, but I can’t remember them now.
******Books To Read While I’m Still Here (any comments?)
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Stiffed by Susan Faludi
Re-read Catcher in the Rye by JD Sallinger
Mailman by J Robert Lennon
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
When The Nines Roll by David Benioff
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Somewhere In America by Mark Singer
Wonderland by Michael Bamberger
Reggio Emilia Meltdown
The first weekend of April, my school hosted some teachers from a progressive kindergarten school based in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Two female teachers arrived at the school on Friday and they had some meetings, demonstrations, and talks with the kindergarten dept. I teach second grade, so I didn’t have to go. That night there was a big Reggio Emilia exhibit (sponsored by my school, with their banners plastered everywhere for good advertising) that premiered at the Konak Pier Mall in downtown Izmir. Fortunately, I didn’t have to attend that, either, but from what I heard it was very Izmir- lots of wealthy education and arts patrons parading around an evening gala…in a mall. In 10 years, maybe everyone will realize that malls aren’t the coolest places to spend all your free time.
Our school planned another all-day event around Reggio Emilia on Saturday, and they made a lot of the teachers come and work the event. Somehow, I was able to get out of that, too. I think I got a pardon from the headmaster since it was all going to be in Italian and Turkish. Unfortunately, Jen, who teaches kindergarten and 1st grade, got sucked into all of it- Friday afternoon, Friday night, all day Saturday, and then on Sunday as well.
Yes, Sunday. Our school (I’m no longer using its name in these entries, and I went back and purposefully misspelled its name in archived entries for reasons I’ll go into in a later entry.) made the entire teaching staff come in Sunday morning for another Reggio Emilia lecture, demonstration, and Q+A session.
Now, Reggio Emilia has some very interesting kindergarten education philosophies, but why did people who teach middle school (enter school subject here) have to come in and sit in an auditorium for 6 hours on a Sunday to listen to Italian women speak in broken English (which then has to be translated into Turkish- reminded me a lot of that dreadful court case I juried back in November) about something that doesn’t apply to them in the slightest? And everyone teaching in the younger grades who it did apply to had already OD’d on Reggio Emilia the last 2 days.
So we all sat there for a few hours, and the Italian lady even started out the morning by admitting she had no idea what we wanted her to talk about, since she had already given her spiel several times over during the weekend. Promising start, huh? I spent the morning fighting off falling asleep in my chair. I wasn’t even that tired, but what they were talking about bored me so much, I couldn’t keep my eyelids from closing and my head nodding and bobbing up and down. And when I did actually try paying attention to what this woman was trying to talk about, I couldn’t understand a thing, so I just went back to zoning out and watching the big clock on the wall behind her.
Then for lunch, they had this BBQ outside in the big garden, but they failed to supply utensils or chairs. Plus, it was so windy outside nobody could stay there after they grabbed their food. Nothing like watching a bunch of people standing around the school hallways with paper plates in their hands as they attempt to eat salad with their hands. I looked in people’s eyes and you could tell we were all thinking the same thing, “Get me out of here!”
Maddy and Jen were surreptitiously able to sneak off to the kindergarten during the lunch hour and stay there for the afternoon session. Maddy and james had been out late the night before and Maddy was still feeling the effects of the previous night. Somehow james was able to stay awake and alert. Don’t ask me how, because usually that guy’s semi-narcoleptic. So Maddy and Jen were able to escape, and during the second half they napped on oversized pillows and read about the Pope’s death online. Lucky girls, I thought.
After they called us back into the auditorium, we watched an unnecessarily long and detailed slide show about some project they did with the kids to demonstrate the wonders of Reggio Emilia. I sat on the floor and lean against the wall, thinking that if I nodded off it would be a slightly less noticeable. I turned to my right and I could see the 2nd grade teachers whispering to each other- they were actually discussing lesson plans for the coming month, so at least some substantive work was accomplished that day.
When the presentations mercifully concluded, we limped out of that school. I felt half-dead, and upset that I was robbed of a Sunday where I had to listen about something for 6 hours that didn’t concern me in the least. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Reggio Emilia program is really cool, but it’s not cool on a Sunday afternoon when I can’t use or do anything they’re talking about with my own students.
Afterwards, everyone kept wondering and asking WHY we all had to come in and be subjected to that. Responsibility went to the kindergarten director, who thought it would be a good idea for the entire staff to learn about it, but she made a critical error. It was pure overkill, and even the Reggio Emilia ladies didn’t seem like they wanted to be there, let alone all of us.
Just another example of dysfunction, mismanagement, and ill-advised decision making at school. It seemed ridiculous at the time, and writing about it now 5 weeks after the fact, you know what? My feelings have not changed nor have they faded. It’s still ridiculous.
Our school planned another all-day event around Reggio Emilia on Saturday, and they made a lot of the teachers come and work the event. Somehow, I was able to get out of that, too. I think I got a pardon from the headmaster since it was all going to be in Italian and Turkish. Unfortunately, Jen, who teaches kindergarten and 1st grade, got sucked into all of it- Friday afternoon, Friday night, all day Saturday, and then on Sunday as well.
Yes, Sunday. Our school (I’m no longer using its name in these entries, and I went back and purposefully misspelled its name in archived entries for reasons I’ll go into in a later entry.) made the entire teaching staff come in Sunday morning for another Reggio Emilia lecture, demonstration, and Q+A session.
Now, Reggio Emilia has some very interesting kindergarten education philosophies, but why did people who teach middle school (enter school subject here) have to come in and sit in an auditorium for 6 hours on a Sunday to listen to Italian women speak in broken English (which then has to be translated into Turkish- reminded me a lot of that dreadful court case I juried back in November) about something that doesn’t apply to them in the slightest? And everyone teaching in the younger grades who it did apply to had already OD’d on Reggio Emilia the last 2 days.
So we all sat there for a few hours, and the Italian lady even started out the morning by admitting she had no idea what we wanted her to talk about, since she had already given her spiel several times over during the weekend. Promising start, huh? I spent the morning fighting off falling asleep in my chair. I wasn’t even that tired, but what they were talking about bored me so much, I couldn’t keep my eyelids from closing and my head nodding and bobbing up and down. And when I did actually try paying attention to what this woman was trying to talk about, I couldn’t understand a thing, so I just went back to zoning out and watching the big clock on the wall behind her.
Then for lunch, they had this BBQ outside in the big garden, but they failed to supply utensils or chairs. Plus, it was so windy outside nobody could stay there after they grabbed their food. Nothing like watching a bunch of people standing around the school hallways with paper plates in their hands as they attempt to eat salad with their hands. I looked in people’s eyes and you could tell we were all thinking the same thing, “Get me out of here!”
Maddy and Jen were surreptitiously able to sneak off to the kindergarten during the lunch hour and stay there for the afternoon session. Maddy and james had been out late the night before and Maddy was still feeling the effects of the previous night. Somehow james was able to stay awake and alert. Don’t ask me how, because usually that guy’s semi-narcoleptic. So Maddy and Jen were able to escape, and during the second half they napped on oversized pillows and read about the Pope’s death online. Lucky girls, I thought.
After they called us back into the auditorium, we watched an unnecessarily long and detailed slide show about some project they did with the kids to demonstrate the wonders of Reggio Emilia. I sat on the floor and lean against the wall, thinking that if I nodded off it would be a slightly less noticeable. I turned to my right and I could see the 2nd grade teachers whispering to each other- they were actually discussing lesson plans for the coming month, so at least some substantive work was accomplished that day.
When the presentations mercifully concluded, we limped out of that school. I felt half-dead, and upset that I was robbed of a Sunday where I had to listen about something for 6 hours that didn’t concern me in the least. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Reggio Emilia program is really cool, but it’s not cool on a Sunday afternoon when I can’t use or do anything they’re talking about with my own students.
Afterwards, everyone kept wondering and asking WHY we all had to come in and be subjected to that. Responsibility went to the kindergarten director, who thought it would be a good idea for the entire staff to learn about it, but she made a critical error. It was pure overkill, and even the Reggio Emilia ladies didn’t seem like they wanted to be there, let alone all of us.
Just another example of dysfunction, mismanagement, and ill-advised decision making at school. It seemed ridiculous at the time, and writing about it now 5 weeks after the fact, you know what? My feelings have not changed nor have they faded. It’s still ridiculous.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Nothin' but Star Wars
First, though, I must ask: How on earth was JAG able to stay on the air for 10 years??? Can I assign a special task force to investigate this question?
_________________________
The new Star War toys came out on April 2nd and it’s May 9th now and I still haven’t seen them. I’d write something like, “Wow, this is it guys. The final batch of Star Wars toys ever!”, but I’m sure Lucas and his marketing savvy will find some way to make more toys in the future, adding more profits to the already bulging Lucasfilm coffers. Watching the documentary that came with the Star Wars DVD Special Edition set (which is quite good, by the way) I learned how Lucas was able to wrangle total control over the marketing of the Star Wars films from the studio. Well, wrangle might be the wrong word, because back in 1976, movie studios didn’t think that much about making toys, t-shirts, and random puttzinfraffin to go with their movies. From what I gathered, Lucas asked for the control of marketing in case the studio did a bad job promoting the movie, and they sort of gave it to him without much of a hassle because at the time, Star Wars was just some random, unproven science-fiction B-film being made for $13 million. I bet the studios are kicking themselves now.
Those toys were SO popular back in the day, and Kenner couldn’t make them fast enough to meet the demand. They had to issue rain checks and IOUs to everyone because Christmas came and they still couldn’t make enough to keep them on the shelves. Imagine being a 5 year old kid and getting a rain check in your stocking Christmas morning? But I can remember a ton of Star Wars gear from when I was a kid- lunchboxes, buttons, costumes, whatever you can think of- and those profits all went back to Lucas. No wonder he had no problem financing the rest of the movies all by himself with no studio help whatsoever. And who could forget back in ’99 when every can of Pepsi and Mountain Dew had a Star Wars character on it? I was drinking Queen Amidala Diet Pepsi and Mace Windu Mountain Dew for a year!
I’ve gone back to the first three movies and watched them all over the last 2 weeks to get me primed for Revenge of the Sith, which will be released here in Turkey the same weekend as in the States, I’m happy to report. I watched the DVDs with the commentaries on them, so they have George Lucas rattling on and occasionally making no sense whatsoever, and then Carrie Fisher will pop in now and again to complain about the working conditions or what she had to do to play Leia. And this was MAJOR complaining. After a while, I just wanted to yell at the screen and say, “Will you stop being such an actress for two seconds!” I think it would have actually pained her to say something nice or positive in starring in 3 of the most famous and most recognized movies of all time. The commentary also had a special effects guy who’d talk about what a hard job they all had back in the early 80s before the advent of modern, user-friendly computers. They basically had to build their own computers and develop the technology as they went along, which is more than a little impressive. And then they threw the sound guy onto the commentary track, where he illuminates the listeners as to how they found all the sound effects for the films. In the beginning, it’s fascinating to learn what he used to get the sound of the lightsabers and the tuscan raiders, but after a while, even that got a bit too tedious and detail-oriented for the sound recording novice.
Yet because I’m a nerd, I still enjoyed it. And Empire had its director, Irvin Kirshner, on the track, who was extremely forthcoming, humorous, and a pleasure to listen to. Every time they cut back to Lucas or Carrie Fisher, I’d think, “No! Keep Irv talking!” The guy did a hell of a job on Empire, and I think he’s the reason Empire’s considered the best of the three nowadays. He added a lot of little stuff that accumulated over the course of the picture- stuff I don’t think Lucas would have done if he were still in the director’s chair.
So, getting back to the toys, I hope there aren’t any spoilers on the back of the box. With it being an explanatory prequel and all, you’d think there couldn’t be any spoilers at this point- we just want to watch it to see how it all pans out, but we all know the final outcome (or at least we think we do). But remember how upset people got 6 years ago when they bought the soundtrack for a New Hope before it was released? One of the track listings revealed that Qui Gon Jin died, and people (diehards and nerdy fanboys, most likely) created quite an angry stir. What exactly were Lucas and John Williams thinking labeling one of the tracks “The Death of Qui Gon” or “Qui Gon’s Funeral?” Oh, who knows, and really, who cares at this point? I’m not gonna waste any of my time wondering about it now.
But yet…I write about it here.
I heard Jar-Jar Binks is in the new movie, but that he has little to no dialogue this time. We can only hope that rumor is true…
_________________________
The new Star War toys came out on April 2nd and it’s May 9th now and I still haven’t seen them. I’d write something like, “Wow, this is it guys. The final batch of Star Wars toys ever!”, but I’m sure Lucas and his marketing savvy will find some way to make more toys in the future, adding more profits to the already bulging Lucasfilm coffers. Watching the documentary that came with the Star Wars DVD Special Edition set (which is quite good, by the way) I learned how Lucas was able to wrangle total control over the marketing of the Star Wars films from the studio. Well, wrangle might be the wrong word, because back in 1976, movie studios didn’t think that much about making toys, t-shirts, and random puttzinfraffin to go with their movies. From what I gathered, Lucas asked for the control of marketing in case the studio did a bad job promoting the movie, and they sort of gave it to him without much of a hassle because at the time, Star Wars was just some random, unproven science-fiction B-film being made for $13 million. I bet the studios are kicking themselves now.
Those toys were SO popular back in the day, and Kenner couldn’t make them fast enough to meet the demand. They had to issue rain checks and IOUs to everyone because Christmas came and they still couldn’t make enough to keep them on the shelves. Imagine being a 5 year old kid and getting a rain check in your stocking Christmas morning? But I can remember a ton of Star Wars gear from when I was a kid- lunchboxes, buttons, costumes, whatever you can think of- and those profits all went back to Lucas. No wonder he had no problem financing the rest of the movies all by himself with no studio help whatsoever. And who could forget back in ’99 when every can of Pepsi and Mountain Dew had a Star Wars character on it? I was drinking Queen Amidala Diet Pepsi and Mace Windu Mountain Dew for a year!
I’ve gone back to the first three movies and watched them all over the last 2 weeks to get me primed for Revenge of the Sith, which will be released here in Turkey the same weekend as in the States, I’m happy to report. I watched the DVDs with the commentaries on them, so they have George Lucas rattling on and occasionally making no sense whatsoever, and then Carrie Fisher will pop in now and again to complain about the working conditions or what she had to do to play Leia. And this was MAJOR complaining. After a while, I just wanted to yell at the screen and say, “Will you stop being such an actress for two seconds!” I think it would have actually pained her to say something nice or positive in starring in 3 of the most famous and most recognized movies of all time. The commentary also had a special effects guy who’d talk about what a hard job they all had back in the early 80s before the advent of modern, user-friendly computers. They basically had to build their own computers and develop the technology as they went along, which is more than a little impressive. And then they threw the sound guy onto the commentary track, where he illuminates the listeners as to how they found all the sound effects for the films. In the beginning, it’s fascinating to learn what he used to get the sound of the lightsabers and the tuscan raiders, but after a while, even that got a bit too tedious and detail-oriented for the sound recording novice.
Yet because I’m a nerd, I still enjoyed it. And Empire had its director, Irvin Kirshner, on the track, who was extremely forthcoming, humorous, and a pleasure to listen to. Every time they cut back to Lucas or Carrie Fisher, I’d think, “No! Keep Irv talking!” The guy did a hell of a job on Empire, and I think he’s the reason Empire’s considered the best of the three nowadays. He added a lot of little stuff that accumulated over the course of the picture- stuff I don’t think Lucas would have done if he were still in the director’s chair.
So, getting back to the toys, I hope there aren’t any spoilers on the back of the box. With it being an explanatory prequel and all, you’d think there couldn’t be any spoilers at this point- we just want to watch it to see how it all pans out, but we all know the final outcome (or at least we think we do). But remember how upset people got 6 years ago when they bought the soundtrack for a New Hope before it was released? One of the track listings revealed that Qui Gon Jin died, and people (diehards and nerdy fanboys, most likely) created quite an angry stir. What exactly were Lucas and John Williams thinking labeling one of the tracks “The Death of Qui Gon” or “Qui Gon’s Funeral?” Oh, who knows, and really, who cares at this point? I’m not gonna waste any of my time wondering about it now.
But yet…I write about it here.
I heard Jar-Jar Binks is in the new movie, but that he has little to no dialogue this time. We can only hope that rumor is true…
I'm back for a while- full throttle
I realize I’ve been quite, quite remiss in updating my journals of late. I apologize (to whom I apologize, I’m not really sure. I like to imagine I have a few quiet, faithful readers out there somewhere.) These last 40 some-odd days have been quite busy and action-packed, but I have diligently kept detailed notes and observations in the interim. We might backtrack a ways here and there, but I’ll be sure to get all the good, juicy stuff in here without any horrible memory lapses. So…shall we?
A while back I visited a barber’s shop with the middle school teacher, Peter, who’s on my service bus everyday. He lifts weights everyday after school at the big, expensive gym across the street from my apartment. He takes every Wednesday off to rest, so on the way home he suggested we go get our hair cut at the ‘kuafor.’ Having quite long and unmanageable hair, I agreed, but I only intended to get a centimeter or two taken off. Peter warned me that a trip to the barber here might be a little different from what I was used to back home, but he didn’t mention any specifics beforehand.
We found this one place with lots of awards and medals on the wall, so it looked reputable enough. We went in, sat down, and Peter was on my right. The hair washing itself was normal enough, but everything after that was quite different from the norm. The hairwashing fellow wallow waled away and another man walked up from behind me and started massaging my head. The massage continued down my neck and to my shoulders, and this was no lightweight massage. He was stimulating some deep tissue here. He proceeded to move back up to my head, but then he made his way down to my forehead, eye sockets, and the rest of my face. It was relaxing enough, but I was wondering what they were going to do to me next.
Another fellow with scissors went to work on me next. He gave me a slight trim, buzzed off the little hairs at the bottom of my neck, and he offered to give me a shave, but I declined. I thought his work was done, but he wasn’t. He grabbed an oversized Q-tip soaked in some kind of liquid off the counter in front of me. I’m thinking, where’s he gonna stick that thing? Is he gonna rub something on me? He whipped a zippo lighter out of his side pocket and proceeded to light the giant Q-tip on fire while holding it in his hand. At this point, my body tensed up and I started looking around for help, or at least some kind of explanation. I say, “Peter???”, but he’s off in some sort of trance and doesn’t hear me.
In the flash of an eye, the barber whips the flame into my ear, singeing the hair in my ear, and jerks it back out before my nerves have the time to react. Whoo, that was a close one, I thought. But then he whips it back in the same ear and pulls it back out again, burning whatever hair was left after the first go-around. The smell in my nose at this point was the pleasant aroma of burnt hair. The last time I smelled that was when I burnt some hair off my arm while attempting to light the grill on my back porch last summer when a fireball flew out of the BBQ. I certainly don’t rank the aroma up there with freshly baked brownies and recently cut grass.
The barber walked behind me and did his little ear hair flame trick on the other ear. It didn’t hurn and he didn’t burn me, but when you look ahead in the mirror and watch some guy throw a small flame into your ear, it’s hard not to get uncomfortable. I couldn’t smell anything but burnt hair for the rest of the night- the odor just refused to leave me.
Peter treated me to the haircut, and afterwards he took me out to dinner. On the way to the restaurant I asked him why he didn’t get the flame treatment as well. He told me got a haircut a few years ago before going to the airport where the guy actually burned him inside his ear. After he left the barber, he felt something hurting inside his ear. On his way to the airport, he reached inside with a finger and found a bunch of puss from the burn. So, obviously, he passes on that barbershop experience nowadays. I’m just glad he didn’t tell me that story before I went in there.
A while back I visited a barber’s shop with the middle school teacher, Peter, who’s on my service bus everyday. He lifts weights everyday after school at the big, expensive gym across the street from my apartment. He takes every Wednesday off to rest, so on the way home he suggested we go get our hair cut at the ‘kuafor.’ Having quite long and unmanageable hair, I agreed, but I only intended to get a centimeter or two taken off. Peter warned me that a trip to the barber here might be a little different from what I was used to back home, but he didn’t mention any specifics beforehand.
We found this one place with lots of awards and medals on the wall, so it looked reputable enough. We went in, sat down, and Peter was on my right. The hair washing itself was normal enough, but everything after that was quite different from the norm. The hairwashing fellow wallow waled away and another man walked up from behind me and started massaging my head. The massage continued down my neck and to my shoulders, and this was no lightweight massage. He was stimulating some deep tissue here. He proceeded to move back up to my head, but then he made his way down to my forehead, eye sockets, and the rest of my face. It was relaxing enough, but I was wondering what they were going to do to me next.
Another fellow with scissors went to work on me next. He gave me a slight trim, buzzed off the little hairs at the bottom of my neck, and he offered to give me a shave, but I declined. I thought his work was done, but he wasn’t. He grabbed an oversized Q-tip soaked in some kind of liquid off the counter in front of me. I’m thinking, where’s he gonna stick that thing? Is he gonna rub something on me? He whipped a zippo lighter out of his side pocket and proceeded to light the giant Q-tip on fire while holding it in his hand. At this point, my body tensed up and I started looking around for help, or at least some kind of explanation. I say, “Peter???”, but he’s off in some sort of trance and doesn’t hear me.
In the flash of an eye, the barber whips the flame into my ear, singeing the hair in my ear, and jerks it back out before my nerves have the time to react. Whoo, that was a close one, I thought. But then he whips it back in the same ear and pulls it back out again, burning whatever hair was left after the first go-around. The smell in my nose at this point was the pleasant aroma of burnt hair. The last time I smelled that was when I burnt some hair off my arm while attempting to light the grill on my back porch last summer when a fireball flew out of the BBQ. I certainly don’t rank the aroma up there with freshly baked brownies and recently cut grass.
The barber walked behind me and did his little ear hair flame trick on the other ear. It didn’t hurn and he didn’t burn me, but when you look ahead in the mirror and watch some guy throw a small flame into your ear, it’s hard not to get uncomfortable. I couldn’t smell anything but burnt hair for the rest of the night- the odor just refused to leave me.
Peter treated me to the haircut, and afterwards he took me out to dinner. On the way to the restaurant I asked him why he didn’t get the flame treatment as well. He told me got a haircut a few years ago before going to the airport where the guy actually burned him inside his ear. After he left the barber, he felt something hurting inside his ear. On his way to the airport, he reached inside with a finger and found a bunch of puss from the burn. So, obviously, he passes on that barbershop experience nowadays. I’m just glad he didn’t tell me that story before I went in there.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Daylight Savings Time
Little did we Americans know that Daylight Savings Time starts a week early in Europe. I didn't realize it until Sunday night when I went to watch a TV show only to see it ending when it should have been beginning.
Thanks heavens they make the switch on the weekend, or we definitely would have missed our bus to school. I met up with some American friends over here on vacation Monday night, and they arrived an hour late, having no idea that the clocks had been moved forward the previous day.
So for the next couple a days, I'm 8 hours ahead of EST instead of the usual 7. I'm really enjoying all this extra sunlight.
Thanks heavens they make the switch on the weekend, or we definitely would have missed our bus to school. I met up with some American friends over here on vacation Monday night, and they arrived an hour late, having no idea that the clocks had been moved forward the previous day.
So for the next couple a days, I'm 8 hours ahead of EST instead of the usual 7. I'm really enjoying all this extra sunlight.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Part of my Vacation Home- Snow, Late Night ER Action, Miller Lite, SuperBowl
OK, Part 2 of my late January/early February journal from my vacation back home in the US.
After a monster-sized Veselka breakfast fit for a king on the lower East side, Dad and I drove home to Braintree. I thought there was a lot of snow in NYC at the time, but Braintree had NY beat hands down. Snow was everywhere and it was bountiful. We pulled up to the driveway- Mom had begged someone to plow it, so it was plowed, but only ¾ of the was up to where my car was, so the Saab was basically plowed into the driveway by 4 foot high, 6 foot wide ice bank. I wouldn’t get it out of there until over a week later. There was a thin, tiny path shoveled out from the driveway to the backdoor for a walkway. I had a lot of shoveling detail to do.
The inside of the house wasn’t in its cleanest state, but it felt good to be back. All the CDs and books I had ordered over the last 7 weeks had arrived and they were waiting for me on the dining room table.
During the week I drove out to Patty’s in Arlington and had an amazing dinner with the Kelly family- it made up for the Christmas day festivities I had to miss the previous month. And we even got to have pork! Mike made my favorite baked beans and for dessert, Patty had my other favorite staple, mud pie and chocolate sauce. Both my taste buds and my stomach were in heaven.
I love spending time out there because everyone always seems so relaxed and convivial. They all seem to know how to enjoy life better than the rest of us, so any time I can hang out with them is worthwhile as I hope their “joi de vivre” can rub a little off onto me. After dinner, Joanna had a hockey game, so we all piled into Peter’s car and drove over to the rink and watched the second half, screaming out her name, trying to cheer her on and alternately embarrass her at the same time. After the game, we went back to the homestead and we all ended up talking in the living room until 11:30 or so. It felt great to be able to be back here with my family for a while. Nights like this just weren’t possible in Izmir.
Another day I went to the South Shore Plaza to pick up a few things, and I noticed that a lot of stores were still having post-Christmas, “get it out of here” sales. Men’s Express had all of these winter items thrown in big boxes, and everything in there was $5 each. $5! Even their long cashmere scarves that originally sold for $70 were priced down to $5. Unbelievable. I made out there like a bandit.
Later, I went over to the Derby Street Shops and picked up my first ever pair of Birkenstocks (still don’t have them, though- they had to stay and get the lift put on them, so I hope I can get them shipped out here eventually) and I bought a packtowl, which is this thin towel made out of a chamois material. It’s ultra-absorbent and it takes up little to no space in your bag. It’s mainly used by backpackers and campers, but anyone who wants to travel light can use them. I first saw Jen’s when I visited her in Turin two years ago, and when I saw she still had it here in Izmir, I was set on finally getting one for myself.
I saw a few movies when I was home. I went into Harvard Sq. one day to watch a double feature of Closer and A Very Long Engagement. To my disappointment, I didn’t like either of them. With Closer, I found all the main characters so despicable that I really didn’t care what happened to any of them by the time the film came to an end. And the dialogue, it just sounded forced at times. The language sounded awkward when it was spoken aloud, and I kept thinking, people wouldn’t say something that eloquent in that stressful a situation. Adapted from a play, I had high expectations from the dialogue, but it disappointed me. As for A Very Long Engagement, I just got bored with it after a while. The movie goes on some long tangents that, in the end, have no effect on the main plot or the outcome of the story. I ALMOST fell asleep, but I think I managed to stay awake until the end. When it finished, I was glad to leave the theater, which is never a good sign. I’ve really enjoyed all of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s previous films, but this one didn’t strike any sort of chord with me this time.
After a week in Braintree with Mom and Dad, Nick came home on Thursday night. Mom, Dad, Nick and I all went out for dinner at The Fours, and of course we all ate too much. Once we got home, Mom started having some chest pains, and by the time she went to bed they still hadn’t gone away.
Late in the evening, Nick and I were watching the last few minutes of Star Wars (I had just picked up the new edition set on DVD) when Mom woke up in even more pain. Both Nick and I thought it was indigestion or acid reflux, but just to err on the side of caution we drove Mom to the South Shore Hospital Emergency Room. After Nick had trouble finding the entrance to the ER, he parked the car while I went inside with Mom to check her in. Once they brought her back into an ER room, she stayed there for the rest of the night.
We didn’t know what was happening or how long she’d be there, so Nick and I waited in the waiting room. By now it was 2am and both of us were exhausted, especially Nick, who had just driven 4 hours home from NY. After a while we decided to try and get some sleep ourselves, so we tried our best to lie out on some waiting room loveseats and chairs. In the waiting room though, they had a big screen plasma television hanging from once corner of the room, and even though it was the middle of the night, the volume on the TV was ridiculously loud. At 3am, Oceans’s 11 came on. Now, I love that movie, but the last thing I want to hear when I’m desperately trying to get some sleep is George Clooney’s and Brad Pitt’s witty banter blaring in my ear.
I woke up around 7AM or so, and Nick and I, both recovering from one of the worst nights of sleep in recent memory, went back to see Mom. She was hooked up to all these machines, acting like she was half-dead. The pain in her chest still hadn’t gone away, but tests showed that she didn’t have a heart attack, thank god.
The hospital still wasn’t ready to release her, but I had to be at The Office of Career Services in Harvard Sq. at 9AM to help Ralph, the Isikkent headmaster, interview college seniors for my teaching position next year in Izmir (my attendance wasn’t mandatory by any means, but I had told him that since I’d be home at that time that I’d come, give him some company, and help him out). Nick drove me home, where I hastily changed into some decent clothes, and then back out we went to the T station, where I hopped on an inbound train.
Now, I remembered the inbound red line trains being slow before I left, but the ride into Harvard I had this day was unbearably, excruciatingly slow. From Braintree to JFK, the train never got up to full speed, averaging about 15mph, and it was constantly stopping in the middle of nowhere without a station in sight. What should have been at most a 45-minute trip slowly, and I stress “slowly”, turned into a 75-minute ride into Harvard Sq. What is wrong, MBTA? Please, your red line trains have been going at a snail-like pace since September!
Needless to say, I missed the first interview entirely, but I was able to be there for the rest of them. For lunch, I ordered a Papa Johns pizza (yay!) and walked over to William James to have lunch with Kevin, who was in the middle of advisor hours on the 2nd floor. By the end of the day, on the little, poor sleep I had gotten, my batteries were drained, so I left with one more candidate to go, but Ralph really appreciated me coming in and being there given my Mom’s circumstances.
I got back home at 6, and by that time Mom was discharged from the hospital. In fact, she had even gone grocery shopping earlier in the afternoon! We decided to stay in for the evening and Nick cooked us dinner, which he always enjoys doing immensely. Unfortunately, Mom had another attack of pain in her chest, and this time she said it was even worse than the night before. Knowing that it wasn’t a heart attack or anything a hospital could fix at the moment, we decided not to go back to the ER. I don’t think any of could have handled another night’s sleep there anyway.
On Saturday morning, Nick and I were going to drive back to NY together, but Mom was still in awful pain, and I couldn’t leave her alone in such agony. So Nick left because he had work to do and a Shark Show to perform that night, and I stayed back with Mom, with plans to take a bus to NY Sunday morning so I could watch the Superbowl with him at a big party in Brooklyn before my plane to Turkey left from JFK Airport on Monday afternoon.
Well, Sunday morning rolls around and Mom’s still in dreadful pain. So much pain that she doesn’t think she can muster the strength and concentration to drive me to the bus terminal. I tried calling Dad to see if he could drive me, but I couldn’t get a hold of him. I was going to take an 8am bus, but that soon got pushed back to an 11am bus. After a few hours, Mom thought she was well enough to be able to drive.
It’s always sad to leave your family, but even worse when your Mom is quivering from pain and constant discomfort. I stayed with her as long as I could and then I boarded the 11am Chinatown bus to NY.
To get my mind off my Mom and to get my mind focused on the Patriots-Eagles Superbowl I’d be watching that night, I fired up my laptop in the bus and threw in the DVD from the Pats’ last championship season. It chronicled every regular-season game and followed them all the way to their Superbowl victory against the Panthers. By the end, the movie had stirred up all those good memories from last year, and I was primed up and ready for another win.
By the time I got to Nick and Emily’s apartment near Union Sq., Nick was already at the party. I found Emily at a nearby nail salon where she was getting a pedicure. She gave me her keys and I let myself into the apartment. Once Emily got back, she took a while getting ready, but we eventually hopped on the subway towards Brooklyn. The party was in this really industrial Brooklyn neighborhood, but it was right on the bank of the East River, giving us a picture-perfect view of Manhattan as we walked to the party.
We arrived and the party was in full-swing. A lot of people had been there for the better part of the day playing poker. After exchanging email and phone calls for nearly two years, I finally got to meet Nick’s friend, Dan Fierman, who writes for EW, in the flesh. I was like, “Oh my god! It’s you! You actually exist!” Better yet, he told me that EW might be starting up a new monthly movie magazine this fall called “Look”, and if the magazine got the green light, they’d be looking for lots of help. Dan thought he might have a much better chance at helping me get a job there than at EW, where, even with his help, I didn’t make it past the first round. So that was great, encouraging news. I was worried about what I’d do with myself once my teaching job ended, so it was reassuring to know that I had one possible, albeit a bit farfetched, option.
There was a great group of people there to watch the game at Joe Van Ek’s house. Pretty much everyone you’d want to watch the game with was there.
Not only did the Patriots win in exciting fashion, but Nick’s Miller Lite commercial aired! Nick had just met with a new agency, one that’s fairly high up there for commercial and voice over talent. On one of the first auditions they sent him out for, Miller Lite, he actually got it! Last week he recorded 4 or 5 spots, each of them criticizing Miller Lite’s competition, Bud Light, for coming out with a new low-carb beer. Apparently Miller Lite is just going to stick with Miller Lite. Once Nick recorded them, they told him there was a chance one of them would air during the Superbowl. None of us could believe it. Sure enough, sometime during the 3rd quarter, the ad came on. After it ended, everyone cheered and clapped, and Nick started jumping up and down, yelling, “Money!!!” Then, one ad later, another one of his Miller Lite ads came on. After it ended, Nick started jumping up and down again as everyone cheered. It was a really exciting moment, and I was so happy for Nick. For voice-over and commercial talent, I guess you get paid a set amount for working on the ad, but then you get residual money each time it airs. So the more popular and effective an ad becomes, the more money the people who worked on it make.
After the game, all of us extremely happy and proud, we took a service car back to Emily’s place (now officially Nick and Emily’s place) and went to sleep. Emily has this unbelievably comfortable couch, which I was to sleep on. I had slept a night on it a year ago back during the Lobster Farm shoot, and I overslept that morning by a mere 5 hours.
The next day, Monday, Nick had four auditions (a week or two ago he had seven in a day!). We met up in the early afternoon in between casting calls. I made sure I had everything packed up and then we bought the Forum movie on DVD and the complete musical score up in Times Sq. before walking back down to Penn Station, where I was to board the LIRR, which would eventually lead me to the Airtrain heading towards JFK Airport. Before I got on the train, we stopped and had lunch at this tasty, old-school diner opposite Penn Station. I never would have even noticed it, but Nick had been there before and he thought it would be a good place for a quick burger together before I go. And he was right. The burger and fries were on the money. Then, unfortunately, it was time for me to leave. We said our goodbyes and I took the descending escalator to the Long Island rail Road while Nick hopped on the subway.
Fortunately, on my way back to Turkey, I had no problems or delays. Everything left on time, and there were no hassles of any kind. I had school early next morning and I knew I needed to sleep, but from JFK to Amsterdam I flew on this new plane with a brand-new individual entertainment center. I had seen some where you get to choose 1 of 4 movies to watch, but on this one, they had an entire library of movies, over 200 at least, and you could start, stop, and pause them whenever you wanted. If I wanted, I could have pulled out a PS2-like controller from y arm rest and played video games the entire way to Amsterdam. I was so enthralled with this thing, I didn’t sleep a wink on the flight. I watched Big Fish (more like “big disappointment and boring let-down”), followed by Casablanca. I only got into the first 10 minutes of Dumbo (yes, Dumbo) before we had to land.
When I landed in Izmir, the big white Havas bus was waiting to drive people from the airport to the city. I’m so lucky, because when I was leaving Izmir it picked me up right by my apartment and then going back home it dropped me off within 100 yards of my building. I may not always love my apartment’s location, but I sure loved it that night.
After a monster-sized Veselka breakfast fit for a king on the lower East side, Dad and I drove home to Braintree. I thought there was a lot of snow in NYC at the time, but Braintree had NY beat hands down. Snow was everywhere and it was bountiful. We pulled up to the driveway- Mom had begged someone to plow it, so it was plowed, but only ¾ of the was up to where my car was, so the Saab was basically plowed into the driveway by 4 foot high, 6 foot wide ice bank. I wouldn’t get it out of there until over a week later. There was a thin, tiny path shoveled out from the driveway to the backdoor for a walkway. I had a lot of shoveling detail to do.
The inside of the house wasn’t in its cleanest state, but it felt good to be back. All the CDs and books I had ordered over the last 7 weeks had arrived and they were waiting for me on the dining room table.
During the week I drove out to Patty’s in Arlington and had an amazing dinner with the Kelly family- it made up for the Christmas day festivities I had to miss the previous month. And we even got to have pork! Mike made my favorite baked beans and for dessert, Patty had my other favorite staple, mud pie and chocolate sauce. Both my taste buds and my stomach were in heaven.
I love spending time out there because everyone always seems so relaxed and convivial. They all seem to know how to enjoy life better than the rest of us, so any time I can hang out with them is worthwhile as I hope their “joi de vivre” can rub a little off onto me. After dinner, Joanna had a hockey game, so we all piled into Peter’s car and drove over to the rink and watched the second half, screaming out her name, trying to cheer her on and alternately embarrass her at the same time. After the game, we went back to the homestead and we all ended up talking in the living room until 11:30 or so. It felt great to be able to be back here with my family for a while. Nights like this just weren’t possible in Izmir.
Another day I went to the South Shore Plaza to pick up a few things, and I noticed that a lot of stores were still having post-Christmas, “get it out of here” sales. Men’s Express had all of these winter items thrown in big boxes, and everything in there was $5 each. $5! Even their long cashmere scarves that originally sold for $70 were priced down to $5. Unbelievable. I made out there like a bandit.
Later, I went over to the Derby Street Shops and picked up my first ever pair of Birkenstocks (still don’t have them, though- they had to stay and get the lift put on them, so I hope I can get them shipped out here eventually) and I bought a packtowl, which is this thin towel made out of a chamois material. It’s ultra-absorbent and it takes up little to no space in your bag. It’s mainly used by backpackers and campers, but anyone who wants to travel light can use them. I first saw Jen’s when I visited her in Turin two years ago, and when I saw she still had it here in Izmir, I was set on finally getting one for myself.
I saw a few movies when I was home. I went into Harvard Sq. one day to watch a double feature of Closer and A Very Long Engagement. To my disappointment, I didn’t like either of them. With Closer, I found all the main characters so despicable that I really didn’t care what happened to any of them by the time the film came to an end. And the dialogue, it just sounded forced at times. The language sounded awkward when it was spoken aloud, and I kept thinking, people wouldn’t say something that eloquent in that stressful a situation. Adapted from a play, I had high expectations from the dialogue, but it disappointed me. As for A Very Long Engagement, I just got bored with it after a while. The movie goes on some long tangents that, in the end, have no effect on the main plot or the outcome of the story. I ALMOST fell asleep, but I think I managed to stay awake until the end. When it finished, I was glad to leave the theater, which is never a good sign. I’ve really enjoyed all of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s previous films, but this one didn’t strike any sort of chord with me this time.
After a week in Braintree with Mom and Dad, Nick came home on Thursday night. Mom, Dad, Nick and I all went out for dinner at The Fours, and of course we all ate too much. Once we got home, Mom started having some chest pains, and by the time she went to bed they still hadn’t gone away.
Late in the evening, Nick and I were watching the last few minutes of Star Wars (I had just picked up the new edition set on DVD) when Mom woke up in even more pain. Both Nick and I thought it was indigestion or acid reflux, but just to err on the side of caution we drove Mom to the South Shore Hospital Emergency Room. After Nick had trouble finding the entrance to the ER, he parked the car while I went inside with Mom to check her in. Once they brought her back into an ER room, she stayed there for the rest of the night.
We didn’t know what was happening or how long she’d be there, so Nick and I waited in the waiting room. By now it was 2am and both of us were exhausted, especially Nick, who had just driven 4 hours home from NY. After a while we decided to try and get some sleep ourselves, so we tried our best to lie out on some waiting room loveseats and chairs. In the waiting room though, they had a big screen plasma television hanging from once corner of the room, and even though it was the middle of the night, the volume on the TV was ridiculously loud. At 3am, Oceans’s 11 came on. Now, I love that movie, but the last thing I want to hear when I’m desperately trying to get some sleep is George Clooney’s and Brad Pitt’s witty banter blaring in my ear.
I woke up around 7AM or so, and Nick and I, both recovering from one of the worst nights of sleep in recent memory, went back to see Mom. She was hooked up to all these machines, acting like she was half-dead. The pain in her chest still hadn’t gone away, but tests showed that she didn’t have a heart attack, thank god.
The hospital still wasn’t ready to release her, but I had to be at The Office of Career Services in Harvard Sq. at 9AM to help Ralph, the Isikkent headmaster, interview college seniors for my teaching position next year in Izmir (my attendance wasn’t mandatory by any means, but I had told him that since I’d be home at that time that I’d come, give him some company, and help him out). Nick drove me home, where I hastily changed into some decent clothes, and then back out we went to the T station, where I hopped on an inbound train.
Now, I remembered the inbound red line trains being slow before I left, but the ride into Harvard I had this day was unbearably, excruciatingly slow. From Braintree to JFK, the train never got up to full speed, averaging about 15mph, and it was constantly stopping in the middle of nowhere without a station in sight. What should have been at most a 45-minute trip slowly, and I stress “slowly”, turned into a 75-minute ride into Harvard Sq. What is wrong, MBTA? Please, your red line trains have been going at a snail-like pace since September!
Needless to say, I missed the first interview entirely, but I was able to be there for the rest of them. For lunch, I ordered a Papa Johns pizza (yay!) and walked over to William James to have lunch with Kevin, who was in the middle of advisor hours on the 2nd floor. By the end of the day, on the little, poor sleep I had gotten, my batteries were drained, so I left with one more candidate to go, but Ralph really appreciated me coming in and being there given my Mom’s circumstances.
I got back home at 6, and by that time Mom was discharged from the hospital. In fact, she had even gone grocery shopping earlier in the afternoon! We decided to stay in for the evening and Nick cooked us dinner, which he always enjoys doing immensely. Unfortunately, Mom had another attack of pain in her chest, and this time she said it was even worse than the night before. Knowing that it wasn’t a heart attack or anything a hospital could fix at the moment, we decided not to go back to the ER. I don’t think any of could have handled another night’s sleep there anyway.
On Saturday morning, Nick and I were going to drive back to NY together, but Mom was still in awful pain, and I couldn’t leave her alone in such agony. So Nick left because he had work to do and a Shark Show to perform that night, and I stayed back with Mom, with plans to take a bus to NY Sunday morning so I could watch the Superbowl with him at a big party in Brooklyn before my plane to Turkey left from JFK Airport on Monday afternoon.
Well, Sunday morning rolls around and Mom’s still in dreadful pain. So much pain that she doesn’t think she can muster the strength and concentration to drive me to the bus terminal. I tried calling Dad to see if he could drive me, but I couldn’t get a hold of him. I was going to take an 8am bus, but that soon got pushed back to an 11am bus. After a few hours, Mom thought she was well enough to be able to drive.
It’s always sad to leave your family, but even worse when your Mom is quivering from pain and constant discomfort. I stayed with her as long as I could and then I boarded the 11am Chinatown bus to NY.
To get my mind off my Mom and to get my mind focused on the Patriots-Eagles Superbowl I’d be watching that night, I fired up my laptop in the bus and threw in the DVD from the Pats’ last championship season. It chronicled every regular-season game and followed them all the way to their Superbowl victory against the Panthers. By the end, the movie had stirred up all those good memories from last year, and I was primed up and ready for another win.
By the time I got to Nick and Emily’s apartment near Union Sq., Nick was already at the party. I found Emily at a nearby nail salon where she was getting a pedicure. She gave me her keys and I let myself into the apartment. Once Emily got back, she took a while getting ready, but we eventually hopped on the subway towards Brooklyn. The party was in this really industrial Brooklyn neighborhood, but it was right on the bank of the East River, giving us a picture-perfect view of Manhattan as we walked to the party.
We arrived and the party was in full-swing. A lot of people had been there for the better part of the day playing poker. After exchanging email and phone calls for nearly two years, I finally got to meet Nick’s friend, Dan Fierman, who writes for EW, in the flesh. I was like, “Oh my god! It’s you! You actually exist!” Better yet, he told me that EW might be starting up a new monthly movie magazine this fall called “Look”, and if the magazine got the green light, they’d be looking for lots of help. Dan thought he might have a much better chance at helping me get a job there than at EW, where, even with his help, I didn’t make it past the first round. So that was great, encouraging news. I was worried about what I’d do with myself once my teaching job ended, so it was reassuring to know that I had one possible, albeit a bit farfetched, option.
There was a great group of people there to watch the game at Joe Van Ek’s house. Pretty much everyone you’d want to watch the game with was there.
Not only did the Patriots win in exciting fashion, but Nick’s Miller Lite commercial aired! Nick had just met with a new agency, one that’s fairly high up there for commercial and voice over talent. On one of the first auditions they sent him out for, Miller Lite, he actually got it! Last week he recorded 4 or 5 spots, each of them criticizing Miller Lite’s competition, Bud Light, for coming out with a new low-carb beer. Apparently Miller Lite is just going to stick with Miller Lite. Once Nick recorded them, they told him there was a chance one of them would air during the Superbowl. None of us could believe it. Sure enough, sometime during the 3rd quarter, the ad came on. After it ended, everyone cheered and clapped, and Nick started jumping up and down, yelling, “Money!!!” Then, one ad later, another one of his Miller Lite ads came on. After it ended, Nick started jumping up and down again as everyone cheered. It was a really exciting moment, and I was so happy for Nick. For voice-over and commercial talent, I guess you get paid a set amount for working on the ad, but then you get residual money each time it airs. So the more popular and effective an ad becomes, the more money the people who worked on it make.
After the game, all of us extremely happy and proud, we took a service car back to Emily’s place (now officially Nick and Emily’s place) and went to sleep. Emily has this unbelievably comfortable couch, which I was to sleep on. I had slept a night on it a year ago back during the Lobster Farm shoot, and I overslept that morning by a mere 5 hours.
The next day, Monday, Nick had four auditions (a week or two ago he had seven in a day!). We met up in the early afternoon in between casting calls. I made sure I had everything packed up and then we bought the Forum movie on DVD and the complete musical score up in Times Sq. before walking back down to Penn Station, where I was to board the LIRR, which would eventually lead me to the Airtrain heading towards JFK Airport. Before I got on the train, we stopped and had lunch at this tasty, old-school diner opposite Penn Station. I never would have even noticed it, but Nick had been there before and he thought it would be a good place for a quick burger together before I go. And he was right. The burger and fries were on the money. Then, unfortunately, it was time for me to leave. We said our goodbyes and I took the descending escalator to the Long Island rail Road while Nick hopped on the subway.
Fortunately, on my way back to Turkey, I had no problems or delays. Everything left on time, and there were no hassles of any kind. I had school early next morning and I knew I needed to sleep, but from JFK to Amsterdam I flew on this new plane with a brand-new individual entertainment center. I had seen some where you get to choose 1 of 4 movies to watch, but on this one, they had an entire library of movies, over 200 at least, and you could start, stop, and pause them whenever you wanted. If I wanted, I could have pulled out a PS2-like controller from y arm rest and played video games the entire way to Amsterdam. I was so enthralled with this thing, I didn’t sleep a wink on the flight. I watched Big Fish (more like “big disappointment and boring let-down”), followed by Casablanca. I only got into the first 10 minutes of Dumbo (yes, Dumbo) before we had to land.
When I landed in Izmir, the big white Havas bus was waiting to drive people from the airport to the city. I’m so lucky, because when I was leaving Izmir it picked me up right by my apartment and then going back home it dropped me off within 100 yards of my building. I may not always love my apartment’s location, but I sure loved it that night.
Friday, March 25, 2005
C7
Yesterday, Thursday March 24th, was simply not a good day. I woke up early in the morning and I didn’t feel quite right. I quickly noticed that the back of my head felt slightly numb, and that I had very little sensation in the fingertip of my right middle finger. I ran my hand through my hair and my fingers felt strange, like they had just been shot with Novocain. And my head, why was it all tingly? Then I remembered that my head got that weird numb feeling the day before in the middle of drama class, but it soon went away or I had stopped noticing it.
If I had slept wrong during the night, it wouldn’t make sense if my head to feel like it did the previous day. Right? Anyway, I had to get dressed and get ready for school, so I threw on my clothes and off I went to my service bus to Isikkent.
I had a lesson with my 2nd graders for the 1st two hours of the day and unfortunately I had a tough time getting through it. My finger was still numb, my head was tingly, and I was feeling very tired all of a sudden. I was lost in my head, distracted, and I was lucky to make it all the way through the lesson without incident.
I told some of the other English teachers how I was feeling and they suggested I go to the hospital to see a doctor. The ER? I thought that was a little rash- why don’t I wait a day to see if it goes away first? They insisted that I go, and one of the Turkish English teachers, Mine, came along with me so she could interpret for me at the hospital.
Once we got there, a doctor examined me and ordered an MRI of my brain, another of my neck and upper-back, and an EMG test on my arm and hand (I had no idea what an EMG was at the time, but I sure found out soon enough).
Mine had lessons to teach back at the school, so she was driven back to Isikkent and I was left there alone for a while. I waited in the waiting room for a long time after that. I started feeling really tired and eventually nodded off. A nurse woke me up sometime later and motioned that it was time for my first MRI. As I was walking downstairs, the school’s interpreter and translator, Sanem, arrived to help me out.
After that first MRI, we were told I had to go to another hospital in Izmir for the EMG. We hopped in the car and got there about a half hour later. We waited another 45 minutes or so at that hospital before they brought me in for this EMG test. The nurse had me lie down on a table and they started attaching some electrodes to my hands and arms. All of a sudden, I felt this intense, horrible electric shock in my arm. My body jumped clear off the table and I let out a yelp. The technician administering the test laughed and told Sanem that she forgot to tell me that would happen. Yeah, real funny stuff, doc.
She continued with the EMG, sending about 10-15 more shocks into my arm, and these were STRONG shocks. It felt like I was sticking a fork into an electric socket. Even on the last one, I was still yelling and my body was jumping in reaction to the pain. I noticed I had started sweating liberally, and I felt damp all over.
The nurse put the shocking tools away and I thought, “Finally, it’s over!” Boy, was I wrong. The nurse proceeded to pull out a long three-inch needle and hooked it up to the EMG machine. I asked Sanem what was going on- nobody had explained to me what the technician was going to do. The nurse told Sanem that they weren’t going to inject anything into my arm, but that they did have to stick the needle into the muscles in my arm and hand a number of times. Oh god, I thought. And suddenly I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Right before the first needle prick, the nurse told me with a smile that I wouldn’t have come here for the test if I knew how much it would hurt. I didn’t find her pithy attempt at humor amusing at this point.
They stuck the needle into my bicep, tricep, forearm, and a couple times into my hand in different spots. It really, really hurt. Looking online later, someone said an EMG is like giving birth without an epidural. I wouldn't go that far, but it gives you an idea. I grimaced and let out baritone screams into the wall next to my gurney. Every time she put the needle into my muscle, I had to flex my muscles or somehow push against her arm so they could get a reading. It was awful. I went there expecting a few passive, monitoring electrodes attached to my arm and instead I got shock treatment and long needles.
I got out of there as soon as possible, and when we arrived back to the first hospital, they informed me that I needed another MRI test. I asked them why they simply didn’t do both when I was there the first time, and they told me they wanted to break it up so I didn’t have to lie still for an interminable length of time in that thin MRI tube.
After the second MRI was over and the results sheet was handed over to us, it was nearly 4:30 in the afternoon. We went upstairs to the doctor so he could tell me if anything is seriously wrong. I was hoping he’d just say the tests came back fine and that I’d be back to normal in a day or two, but that was not the case.
Instead, I found out that the C7 (c stands for cervical) bone of my spine (the 7th bone down from the top of my spine) is somehow misaligned. It's jutting into my spinal cord and that’s what’s causing the numbness in my head and hands. I think I started to turn white at this point. So what do I have to do to fix this? Will I wake up tomorrow with my entire hand numb?
The doctor told me to go see a neurosurgeon next week (great!) and that I’d start some form of physical therapy then. If that doesn’t help, surgery would be my next option. I think ALL the color had dropped out of my cheeks at that point. Then the doctor started talking about how there’s a slight chance I might have multiple sclerosis and that later on they might have to take a spinal tap from me. Someone needs to tell this doctor to work on his bedside manner (even though, technically, I was sitting in a chair in front of his desk). Those were the last two things I wanted to hear right then.
Even with my insurance from working at Isikkent, the hospital visit set me back $200. I guess that's better than it would be back home, where I have no insurance whatsoever. Seriously, I cannot afford to get sick or have something like this happen right now. And to have something like this develop while I'm over here in Turkey, halfway across the world from my family, it's certainly not optimal conditions.
Sanem and the driver, Ismael, took me back to school, where I made it just in time to catch the service bus back home at 5 o’clock. Jen, Maddy, and I were invited over to someone’s house for dinner tonight. I had been looking forward to it all week, but I had to pass- I was just too exhausted (physically and mentally) and in too foul a mood to go to a dinner party. And I was angry. Angry that yet another malady in some way caused by or related to my leg imbalance problems has appeared out of nowhere. All last fall it was the plantar fasciitis in my left foot- when that started in September I could barely take a step without feeling pain in my left arch. That was 7 months ago and I still have to wear special shoes and I can’t jog because it would re-aggravate it all over again.
And now I have a vertebrae bone nudging into my spinal cord? Cut me some slack and give me a frickin’ break here! I read online tonight that these pinched nerves cause, along with numbness in the hands and arms, a fair amount of pain and discomfort. No sharp pangs or pain felt so far, but if that happens to surface in the next few days, I’m gonna be one angry, frustrated, and unhappy fellow.
If I had slept wrong during the night, it wouldn’t make sense if my head to feel like it did the previous day. Right? Anyway, I had to get dressed and get ready for school, so I threw on my clothes and off I went to my service bus to Isikkent.
I had a lesson with my 2nd graders for the 1st two hours of the day and unfortunately I had a tough time getting through it. My finger was still numb, my head was tingly, and I was feeling very tired all of a sudden. I was lost in my head, distracted, and I was lucky to make it all the way through the lesson without incident.
I told some of the other English teachers how I was feeling and they suggested I go to the hospital to see a doctor. The ER? I thought that was a little rash- why don’t I wait a day to see if it goes away first? They insisted that I go, and one of the Turkish English teachers, Mine, came along with me so she could interpret for me at the hospital.
Once we got there, a doctor examined me and ordered an MRI of my brain, another of my neck and upper-back, and an EMG test on my arm and hand (I had no idea what an EMG was at the time, but I sure found out soon enough).
Mine had lessons to teach back at the school, so she was driven back to Isikkent and I was left there alone for a while. I waited in the waiting room for a long time after that. I started feeling really tired and eventually nodded off. A nurse woke me up sometime later and motioned that it was time for my first MRI. As I was walking downstairs, the school’s interpreter and translator, Sanem, arrived to help me out.
After that first MRI, we were told I had to go to another hospital in Izmir for the EMG. We hopped in the car and got there about a half hour later. We waited another 45 minutes or so at that hospital before they brought me in for this EMG test. The nurse had me lie down on a table and they started attaching some electrodes to my hands and arms. All of a sudden, I felt this intense, horrible electric shock in my arm. My body jumped clear off the table and I let out a yelp. The technician administering the test laughed and told Sanem that she forgot to tell me that would happen. Yeah, real funny stuff, doc.
She continued with the EMG, sending about 10-15 more shocks into my arm, and these were STRONG shocks. It felt like I was sticking a fork into an electric socket. Even on the last one, I was still yelling and my body was jumping in reaction to the pain. I noticed I had started sweating liberally, and I felt damp all over.
The nurse put the shocking tools away and I thought, “Finally, it’s over!” Boy, was I wrong. The nurse proceeded to pull out a long three-inch needle and hooked it up to the EMG machine. I asked Sanem what was going on- nobody had explained to me what the technician was going to do. The nurse told Sanem that they weren’t going to inject anything into my arm, but that they did have to stick the needle into the muscles in my arm and hand a number of times. Oh god, I thought. And suddenly I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Right before the first needle prick, the nurse told me with a smile that I wouldn’t have come here for the test if I knew how much it would hurt. I didn’t find her pithy attempt at humor amusing at this point.
They stuck the needle into my bicep, tricep, forearm, and a couple times into my hand in different spots. It really, really hurt. Looking online later, someone said an EMG is like giving birth without an epidural. I wouldn't go that far, but it gives you an idea. I grimaced and let out baritone screams into the wall next to my gurney. Every time she put the needle into my muscle, I had to flex my muscles or somehow push against her arm so they could get a reading. It was awful. I went there expecting a few passive, monitoring electrodes attached to my arm and instead I got shock treatment and long needles.
I got out of there as soon as possible, and when we arrived back to the first hospital, they informed me that I needed another MRI test. I asked them why they simply didn’t do both when I was there the first time, and they told me they wanted to break it up so I didn’t have to lie still for an interminable length of time in that thin MRI tube.
After the second MRI was over and the results sheet was handed over to us, it was nearly 4:30 in the afternoon. We went upstairs to the doctor so he could tell me if anything is seriously wrong. I was hoping he’d just say the tests came back fine and that I’d be back to normal in a day or two, but that was not the case.
Instead, I found out that the C7 (c stands for cervical) bone of my spine (the 7th bone down from the top of my spine) is somehow misaligned. It's jutting into my spinal cord and that’s what’s causing the numbness in my head and hands. I think I started to turn white at this point. So what do I have to do to fix this? Will I wake up tomorrow with my entire hand numb?
The doctor told me to go see a neurosurgeon next week (great!) and that I’d start some form of physical therapy then. If that doesn’t help, surgery would be my next option. I think ALL the color had dropped out of my cheeks at that point. Then the doctor started talking about how there’s a slight chance I might have multiple sclerosis and that later on they might have to take a spinal tap from me. Someone needs to tell this doctor to work on his bedside manner (even though, technically, I was sitting in a chair in front of his desk). Those were the last two things I wanted to hear right then.
Even with my insurance from working at Isikkent, the hospital visit set me back $200. I guess that's better than it would be back home, where I have no insurance whatsoever. Seriously, I cannot afford to get sick or have something like this happen right now. And to have something like this develop while I'm over here in Turkey, halfway across the world from my family, it's certainly not optimal conditions.
Sanem and the driver, Ismael, took me back to school, where I made it just in time to catch the service bus back home at 5 o’clock. Jen, Maddy, and I were invited over to someone’s house for dinner tonight. I had been looking forward to it all week, but I had to pass- I was just too exhausted (physically and mentally) and in too foul a mood to go to a dinner party. And I was angry. Angry that yet another malady in some way caused by or related to my leg imbalance problems has appeared out of nowhere. All last fall it was the plantar fasciitis in my left foot- when that started in September I could barely take a step without feeling pain in my left arch. That was 7 months ago and I still have to wear special shoes and I can’t jog because it would re-aggravate it all over again.
And now I have a vertebrae bone nudging into my spinal cord? Cut me some slack and give me a frickin’ break here! I read online tonight that these pinched nerves cause, along with numbness in the hands and arms, a fair amount of pain and discomfort. No sharp pangs or pain felt so far, but if that happens to surface in the next few days, I’m gonna be one angry, frustrated, and unhappy fellow.
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