June 30, 2010

the boundries of cheating

In the movie Chloe, directed by Atom Egoyan, this is what Liam Neeson's character says to his wife, played by Julianne Moore, in a scene to the end of the movie:

-I didn't screw her. I flirted with her.

And I'm like "Yeah, right." even though it is not as catchy as "Release the Kraken," i believe this phrase should be in every husband's repertory, because when you put it this way, it suddenly becomes ok if you flirt with another woman.

to be fair to the movie, i really think it is a great story about relationships, marriage, and love, and it is one of the very rare movies with a pretty calm pace but yet keeps you watching. and yes, it is about cheating spouses. 

in the movie Knocked Up, there is this guy who has the habbit of dissappearing at odd hours and his wife rightfuly suspects that he is cheating on her. but, it turns out that the guy meets with his friends to play some kind of a nerd game. when the wife, however, finds out what is really going on, she feels dissappointed as much as she would be if she had caught the guy with another woman, claiming that what the guy has done is not any different than actually cheating.

of course both of the movies are just some portraits of real life situtations and maybe it would be misleading to consider them, especially the latter, as absolute references to the real life itself. yet, it makes me wonder what is the boundry of cheating. or, are there really any boundaries? i mean, is it ok if you flirt with a girl to some extent, but then stop at a point saying "that's it. this is where i draw the line," or maybe worse "my wife will feel im cheating on her if i go any further"?

obviously enough, i don't have the answer, and i don't believe that there is an absolute answer. it is more convenient to think that every relation has a different perception of boundaries, and what might seem totally normal to a couple might be considered as a sin for another couple.

on the other hand, it will be wise to memorize that phrase i mentioned above, just in case.

June 29, 2010

how to debate NOT

maybe it is just me because i see this kind of approach almost everywhere as if this is the standard. when i try to debate on something, make a stand about anything, people immediatly make a point which is actually not directly related to the topic itself but yet they feel they have a stronger hand with that.

today, i read a twit from an old friend of mine regarding Kurdish terrorists. the thing is, he didnt call them terrorrists but fighters. maybe this wasnt really his intention but this jargon sort of legalizes the PKK terrorists, as if they are something else other than bloody murderers.


Turkish politics is as complicated as it can be, and you can bet it is full of errors, millions of them. and if i spot a mistake, i dont hesitate to call it a mistake. and i can assure you that Turkish Republic made very serious mistakes regarding the Kurdish issue. but this is something else. now, trying to put this to the table to justify not calling a terrorist a terrorist is just lame. and even trying to make link with the recent policies of PM Erdogan -especially reagarding Hamas- is even lamer. first of all, we were not even talking about Palestenians or Israel. we were simply talking about terrorists, and you cant make your judgment based on the actions of PM Erdogan, or anybody else, on a issue which is irrelevant.

a terrorist is a terrorist and naming them fighters or rebels or something else is nothing but a PR campaign.

i dont know, it doesnt have to be about politics at all. i see this kind of an aporoach everywhere, even in this very office,  and i dont know if anybody else but me can see this is totally lame.

June 28, 2010

women who can't open the can

in the movie Hancock, there is a scene when Charlize Theron's character Mary tries to open a can but she can't so she hands it to her husband Ray, played by Jason Bateman.

***SPOLIER ALERT***

Later on, it turns out that Mary has super powers and she can break walls. It is really not a big deal for her to open the can. But she pretends as if she can't. Why? Does she doing a great job in hiding her secret identity, or does she trying to do something more subtle such as feeding her husband's ego.

***END OF SPOILER***

This particular scene has been a joke between my wife and me when ever she hands me a can to open when she can't. I ask if she is doing this to feed my ego. Actually, there is a philosophy here: Treat your husband as if he is the king of the world, especially if he has a wounded ego in the real world. It might ne archaic, but i am telling you, it is the secret formula.

Of course, in order to make this golden formula work, it needs a traditional family in which men go to work and women stay at home and take care of the house work. otherwise, if the woman is working too, as in our family, she will also have a equally wounded ego in the outer world, and asking her to do what her mother had advised will become a torment. 

Just don't make a mistake. im not supporting -or unsupporting- the idea. i am only talking about an observation which i have seen working. now, this is actually a very superficial way of approaching marriage, i know that, because it doesn't deal with the real emotions and it is totally based on the art of faking. but again, the world is about faking, and we all have to sacrifice something in order to get something. your wife might be brownnosing you just as you are bronwnosing your boss, just as your boss is brownosing to the clients.everybody fakes, and everybody knows that. but if you want things to work in this world, this is the rule you have to obey, and im willing to appreciate any exceptional examples if you want to share with me.

i dunno, i wanted to talk about this when i read a twit in turkish about men who can't realize when women intentionally play the dumb when in fact they are just wiser. it was a joking tweet, but i think it involves a serious amount of reality.

June 24, 2010

countdown to my extended weekend

tomorrow morning i will be joining to my wife in a hoiday resort in which my father-in-law has an time share apartment.

the wether is not sunny and it is supposed to be not sunny the entire weekend. and even though this is not a very desired atmosphere for a holiday resort, when i think about it, i like it better. well, the thing is, i dont really enjoy swimming and i dont definitely enjoy sun bathing or spending the entire day at the beach trying to protect myself from the sun while my wife just lies for hours. in fact she cant sun bath either because she is slightly allergic to the direct sun light, but this never seems to stop her.

but a rainy weather with dark clouds covering the sun even in mid summer? thats my day - of course unless im not too unlucky to get exposed to the collosal rains. i domt know why, but i really love the kind of weather istanbul is having nowadays. i can really live with it for the rest of my life, not necessarily needing to feel the sun.

on the other hand, this turned out to be a very busy week, even busier than i thought it would be, and i have no idea how fast the time past. and i couldnt finish some of the projects in time. this is not a big deal in the sense that the client agreed on the extended deadline, but it is indeed a big deal because there are already other projects i have to handle when i come back to office on monday.

but before that is the big day: sonisphere iastanbul. hell yeah. even though our seats are for 3 days, my wife and i are only interested in the last day because we will be watching antrax, megadeth, slayer, and metallica in that order on the same stage. and this is really going to be fantastic.

June 23, 2010

it is better to listen to the universe

there is no need to push it. i knew my wing-tzun classes wouldn't get me anywhere and my main motive wasn't really about becoming a kung-fu master but to give my body a chance to move it. but, i quickly reaized that it was a rather expensive hobby for me. i admit that it was the friendliest environment for a sports complex ive seen so far, but i guess i have to be reasonabl about it. missing a class costs me a significant amount of money and there is really no need for that, at least not now, not before i get insanely rich. and i keep skipping classes.

yesterday morning i didnt go to the class partially because i didnt feel good and partially because i had another translation to finish until friday morning. that translation thing isnt going at the speed i would like to see it, because there are some other projects came out which had to take the short-term priority. but that's another story. to keep the long story short, the universe simply tells me to quit wing-tzun classes and this time im going to listen to it.

June 22, 2010

sick and back

that rain i mentioned in my last entry came only sundat afternoon, giving my wife and me a sunny saturday to enjoy before she left for her vacation. im supposed to join her this friday for an extended weekend, but it is getting harder and harder with pop up jobs coming from everywhere. i knew this was going to be a busy week but this is more than busy, simply because it is always a last minute job and i am the only one who is asked to keep the deadline which nobody else did.

and i was so sick yesterday, proving that im really not getting any younger. a friend of mine got married last sunday and we went to drinking after the ceremony. i dont know if it was the drinking part or the exhausting sun we were exposed to, but i got really sick yesterday. now im ok.

i had some ideas ro write to my blog but i guess they will have to wait because i really dont have much time to spend on anything else if i want to be in that seabus this friday morning.

June 18, 2010

i (don't) know kung fu

when i first started wing-tzun classes i knew that i wouldn't be able to attend all the lessons. i am not talking about the sunday class -which i can't attend anyway because sunday is dedicated to my wife. so i totally learnt to live with the fact that the universe holds a grudge on me and it is pretty much determined to stop me from my plans. thar's ok. yet, i dared to take the course.

i was expecting the universe to hit me with my job. i love my job, that is for sure, but it is very demanding and there are always last minute projects which also happen to be the most urgent ones. so i expected to skip  class or two because of my job.


but it hit me with my family and other personal affairs. tomorrow my wife is going out of city for her vacation. this is the first part of her vacation where she goes to her father's time-share apartment. i may talk about that later on. sometimes i find a chance to join her and rest of her family there, but not this year. our calender is pretty much occupied with tasks in the office. yet, i will try to join her next weekend. anyway, so she is going tomorrow eveninig and i rather spend the day with her other than wing-tzun class. so, you might think that i can go to the wing-tzun classs this sunday, instead of saturday. but no, that is impossible because a very old friend of mine is getting married this sunday and i just have to be there.

so lets try to stay positive, right? i will be spending the day with my wife and it is more valuable than trying to be the next Bruce Lee. well, that would be really great only if the weather report didn't say that it would be raining tomorrow. so i and my wife will be stuck indoors when in fact we already had made some good plans about how we should spend the day. so i told you, the universe is against me.

June 17, 2010

frustration with windows 7

as an end user, i really enjoy my windows 7. well, i really do. but as a professional translator who needs his box foe some spesific kind of job, it turned out to be very frusttating. because, there are several softwares i need to run on my machine to do my job, but i cant. ok, i know there is a compability thing, but unfortunataly it is not good at my video editing softwares as much as it is at with some old pc games.

of course there are some professiomal solutions for my problems, but unfortunately they are not free. i mean, i can find tons of software to do the job in xp, but most of them wont work in windows 7 even if i run them in the compability mode.


so it is a frustration for me. but i am already working on a way to solve it.

June 15, 2010

karate kid and the mouse clicks

in the first karate kid movie, it was about painting the fence and waxing the car. i won't reveal what the kid did in the new version but you can bet there is a repetetive action which he repeats thousands of times. and today, it was my turn for an extremely repetetive job: i clicked the mouse button. and im telling you it was not for a hundred times or two hundresds times. it was more than 1000 times. well im sort of in a hurry now so let me talk about this repetitve job later on. but you can bet it was more than 1000 times even maybe 1500 times.

and did it help me with anything -of course other than finishing the job? well, i dont think my sifu in the wing-tzun class will find a way for me to benefit from it. but maybe, just maybe, i can do slightly better in street fighter game in the next play staion party.

June 14, 2010

universe hears me

i think universe, or the Force, or even maybe Allah himself heard me when i said i dont have much to do and i feel rather clueless when i dont have a job to do. so he blessed me with new projects, all of which are urgent as ever, as usual.

do i complain? not exactly. i mean, it is better to have a job than not having any, right? and it is even better when you do something you really like. but the things is, i really would prefer a more organized life, a life where i dont have to rush from one project to another. when i go home, i would really prefer to spend some quality time with my wife not worrying the deadline as soon as the next morning. yet, this is the consequences of what i have chosen earlier, and even though it is getting tiresome as i get older, i sort of like it, and perhaps i am really blessed for i get what ive asked for.

June 13, 2010

focus. concentrate

focus and concentrate must be the two of the most frequently used words in the movie Karate Kid. I think this new one is also as cool as the one we adored back in the 80s. and i really appreciated Jackie Chan playing the master and almost never fighting. I think that is a good step for him to prove his acting skills rather than his no-proof-needed fighting skills.

so anyway, "focus and concentrate" can be two words i may benefit myself. i mentioned about how i keep forgetting things in a previous post. so this time, i just wanted to make sure that i didnt forget anything while packing for my wing-tzun class. so i made sure i got everything today. towel, extra underpants, extra socks, my roll on and all that stuff. this time i made sure i took everything with me.

it is just that i forgot when the class started. i dont know why in the hell i thought it started at 3:30 pm while in fact i was there at 3 pm last week. i have no idea how come i thought it was at 3:30 pm. so skipped the entire 30 minutes and sifu was good enough to accept me to the class.

June 11, 2010

one thousand ordinary people

yesterday we went to a pub with some friends after the office to celebrate an insignificant occasion. the pub was in a very busy district in istanbul, and in fact it was in the middle of a very busy intersection point. it makes you feel like you are sitting in the center point of istanbul.

and we were there, sitting, having our beers and looking outside, to people. in that 1,5 hour i sat there, i must have watched more than one thousand people passing by, all of whom were busy with their own business. ugly people, beautiful people, atteactive people, fancy people, repulsive people, short people, tall people, fat people, thin people... you name it and. they were all there.

and each of that one thousand people occupied my focus for like 5 seconds, maybe 10, never more than 30 seconds. so we see a fat girl, we think she is fat and ugly and that fancy dress she has cant change this fact. than bam, she is gone. so we see that young girl with yellow sneakers matching her yellow tshirt, and we think girls spend to much time to find accessories that match, and bam. she is gone. we see that fat guy in a expensive suit with a cigar in his hand, walking as if he owns the fucking world, and bam, he is gone too.

at least, it is what it looks like from that window we looked through. however, that fat girl, that young girl, that fat guy and the remaining 998 people, they are all there living in their own universe. we glimpsed that blonde hair for 5 seconds but that girl is going to see it like forever whenever she looks at the mirror. that ugly girl probably knows that guys find her ugly. and there is nothnig she can do about it. she was born that way. she is that ugly girl, and this is what she will be carrying for the rest of her life. she is not a five-second detail. she is an entire universe of her own.

and we are there, at a pub, enjoying ourselves, probably not even realizing that we are 5-second details too. i dont know, this concept of why am i me and you are you has always amazed me since i was a kid, and i think im born this way so it will keep amazing me like forever.

June 10, 2010

slow season

the (relatively) slow season for our business has started. thats good. i can enjoy some slow motion. however, im pretty much a workoholic -not necessariliy something i am proud of- and i pretty much have no clue what to do when i am not working. if you are following me on twitter, you might have probably caught me complaining about how hard i am working. they are not fake complaints and  i do feel like that when i have to work non stop for days (like every-normal-body else), but the thing is, i need stuff to do to keep me in a direction. otherwise i completely get lost and suddenly find myself surfing the net for the most vain things. no, i dont mean porn. well ok, i might have glimpsed porn sites once or twice, but i dont really mean that. i am talking about the endless political debates which is never proven to be helpful to anyone. i have never seen a case when anybody ever accepted my stance, or i dont really remember accepting somebody elses stance which was initially opposite to everything i believed in. so, it is better to work and make some money rather than surfing the net and chatting endlessly for a political cause i can never win.

June 09, 2010

the universe is against me

i am totally convinced that there is some sort of a force which prevents me from my plans. and whenever i dare to make a plan about anything, something pops up and it turns out to be the most urgent errand, as always. sometimes it is directly business related, or sometimes it is just a stupid errand from our clients who think that we are sitting here all the day, waiting for their call or something.

well, from a more positive point of view, this is not as bad  as it sounds. because i realized that i am very bad at coping with loose deadlines. it has to be close or i dont really do it. i mean, i do the job alright, but it takes like 10 times longer than it should. so these pop up errand come in handy, force me to do my job as fast as i normally do. 

June 08, 2010

always forgetting things

since the rain stopped, i found the courage to go to my wing-tsung studio today. a quick note to myself, i should learn how to spell that correctly. while packing my bag this morning to take it with me to the office, i dont know where my head was but i forgot to take my towel with me. ok, not a very big deal actually and i can survive without the towel i use during the practice, but i really get angry with myself when i forgot such little things. after all, it is not rocket science and all it needs to focus like 10 seconds. not more. and yet, i cant even manage that. this is actually what makes me angry. and the more i think about it, the more i get angry with myself.

so the training is at 8:30 pm, meaning i have to stay in the office for a couple of hours. and if it doesnt start raining like crazy, i will go to the studio.

colossal rains

i am suffering from the consequences of underestimating the flood alert. nothing life threatening yet, or at least not in where ive been to and not yet, but still it is extremely wet. wet as in my underpants. the rain i mentioned yesterday seems like child play when compared to what we are having. this is the kind of rain which took lives last year in istanbul. so i thought the government is now trying to be over-cautious to avoid the very hard and rightful criticism.

i should have really took my coat with me today, but trusting that we are in june, i skipped that. and that was a mistake who hates to carry umbrellas. yes, i really hate those things. and my sweatshirt with the hood was far from protecting me from the colossal rain of istanbul. and i am totally soaked in the office now. i think i will skip the wing-tsung practice for today. 

June 07, 2010

cats and dogs and parents

today, it was raining cats and dogs in istanbul. and it was really horrible. in the three minutes i walked from the bus to home i got totally soaked. it was that bad. and while walking home, right in the middle of our alley, there were two kids at ages of 5 and 7 presumably, and most probably they were brothers, playing outside.

these two kids were playing outside, and when i saw them, they had already got extremely wet. they were just two kids and they really didnt care the rain. instead, they enjoyed it. they were swimming any kind of objects on the flowing water, and they seemed to have great fun.

BUT, what kind of a mother allows her children play outside in that rain? i mean, i am really not talking about some light rain. they suspended the schools for god sake, this is serious. or maybe it is not that serious but the government failed big time in the flood last year, so they get alarmed in every drop of rain. but no matter what it was a heavy rain and those kids werent supposed to play outside in that weather.

so they were just two cute boys, thats for sure, but i will tell you what, i have no doubt that they will turn into some real troublemakers in ten years. if they have parents who dont care what their little children are doing in the fucking rain, then god kows what those kids will start doing in no time. damn, i am really pissed.

first entry

I am trying something new and writing this post online, using Zoho Writer. I am not really planning this to be my main blog entry option, but i just like to try new things and it is even better if i dont have to install anything to my computer. so, today was a rainy day in istanbul, but the weather is rather hot. i have to finish translating this new movie, KARATE KID, but my arms really ache because i worked too hard in the last wing-tsung practise last saturday. ok now, i dont want this to look like a childish journal, so thats enough for now. after all, all i want is to try this new zoho writer thing.

June 06, 2010

the LOST finale

Today, my wife and i watched the last episode of the highly popular tv series Lost. We're always behind the schedule with such things for two main reasons. The most important reason is, i think, we don't really feel obligated to follow thw popular culture and therefore we don't give a shit whan it was first aired. We make our own schedule. And th second reason is: i have to confess if i must that, we dont watch tv, but we do watch tv series, if you know what i mean.

One of the downsides of not following the schedule is the risk of being imposed to the spoilers, which was the case for the LOST series. of course, i couldnt avoid all those comments regarding rthe lost finale.

The interesting thing is, i was pretty much expecting a very awful finale. I didnt read any exact spoiler which told how exactly the show ended, but i pretty much got an idea. and one of the most phrases i have heard was "i lost my last six years" or such. well, i dont agree.

i really enjoyed the show and how it ended. it is true that it doesnt really expalin all of the mysteries, but it concludes well enough, or smart enough to ignore it. and after all, the show shouldnt be about "what is all about this island," but it should be about "what happened to all these people." and we now know what happened to them.

so ok, this much of spoiler is enough from me.  all i want to say is, i just liked how it ended.

June 05, 2010

what about free Turkey?

International political agenda is now full of the latest crisis over Gaza. It is pretty much complicated, and as far as i see it, nobody is right. And in a situation like this when nobody is right, it is pretty much easy to emphasize the faults of the other side so that you try to look pretty. in my opinion, this flotilla called Free Gaza was a very well staged play, and it really served its purpose. now there is a bigger public opinion against Israel for all that shit they have done to Palestinians. but as i said, this is a very complicated issue, and my humble opinion on this issue will not likely change any minds, so just skip it, at least for now.

on the other hand, while Turkish Republic is nowadays chanting for "Free Gaza", it is time that Turkey herself looks at her own problems with freedom. Today, i spent hours to find a way to access the youtube site. now, it has been very long since youtube was banned in Turkey. but it wasnt really a very strict ban and everybody could access youtube easily. and, when I say everybody, it is indeed everybody, including the Prime Minister Erdogan, who once said that he can access youtube, which was a weird thing for a prime minister to say. But, it has been extremely hard to access youtube for almost like a week. I don’t know what, but Turkey made some serious changes so it is now much harder to access youtube.

Today, I spent all my free time to find a way to access youtube. Well, my solution was to use TOR, which is indeed very efficient but also very slow. A friend of mine, thankfully, suggested me another way. He sent me a list of ips and told me how I can change the host file so that I can access any file I want to access. I tried it, and now I can access youtube and some other google sites which were banned so aggressively. but the thing is, I really spent a lot of time while trying to figure how I can fix the problem.

So, I totally support free Gaza, and those people who try to say that this is a plot of political Islam without mentioning the cruelty of Israel can go to hell or wherever else they desire to, but I want a free Turkey as well.

June 04, 2010

i need time management

it is obvious and it is proven one more time, today. im very bad at time managing. today was a true loss of time in the office for my part. well now, it is not all my fault and im pretty much dependant to third parties in doing busisnes. this means that, i have to wait for orher people to do their job before i can even start. but even though this is the case, there are several things i can do other than checking my twittter updates while waiting for others. yet i dont do that.

the thing is even worse at home. it is really  good thing i really improved my ms office macro skills so that i can handle a job in seconds which could have lasted for hours manually. yeah, thats really amazing. and what am i exactly doing with my spare time? right: blogging. and i havent even finished that job which should have never taken mpre then 10 minutes. how long has been it been now? err, like 5 hours. it is 2 AM in the morning now and there arent really any excuses why i havent finished the job yet.

June 03, 2010

i guess i am back

well, first i thought to continue with my ex blog. than, i decided to delete it ad make a fresh start. so guess this is it.