I've been busy, and I have been trying to get this blog migrated over to ChickenTurkish.com, which hasn't happened yet because, well, there's a lot to learn. Anyhow, it's gotten in the way of my writing, but here is a quick story about my day.
I bought fresh fruits and vegetables from the manav, the produce grocer, on my street. I always go to these guys for whatever I need. The produce is always fresh and tasty... the tomatoes remind me of those that came from my grandfather's garden.
In any event, I bought an assortment of things, and then didn't have the cash to pay for it all. "Sonra vereceksen," (bring it by later), was all the man running the store said. This is something I love about this country, I come up three bucks short for anything, anywhere in the states, and I'm putting items back on the shelf.
Then, when I arrived at the house, two children (who may be twins) were playing on the stairs. They belong to our kapıcı, which means "doorman", but is really more the building manager. I hate the guy, he's a bit of a hack and he only comes around when he wants the money for his services which are poorly performed... wait, the kids.
So, the kids were playing işçilik and evcilik, worker and housekeeper. They're adorable, and I don't say that about very many children, having worked with them for too long. The boy was pretending to be a shoe seller, and his sister encouraged him to sell me a pair.
For three lira (a steal) I got a great pair of completely imaginary shoes, that I took for a jog up the stairs to my place.
All the way home I had been thinking about a bowl of cornflakes. I realized long ago that certain comforts really fucking matter... they mean the whole world to me, and this is mine. I obsess about the taste and texture of cornflakes.
One of my room mates observed to me a few days ago, that whenever American films convey a feeling of monotony, of the mundane and completely normal, they run a scene of a misanthropic male eating a bowl of cereal. I, on the other hand, get a raging hard-on for corn flakes.
In any event, when I got home, said room mate had already warmed up börek, which is a kind of savory Turkish pastry (this one had spinach in it). It's tasty, but I wasn't about to let it get in the way of my hearts true desire.
As Murphy would have it, on opening the fridge, I noticed that we were out of milk.
All in all, it was still an amazing 20 minutes of life in Istanbul.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Teaching Moment...
I have never been happy with the English language as the global standard. A half-billion people get a pass on learning a second language, and everywhere else, those with a sufficient education in it will get a shot at middle-management in a foreign-owned conglomerate. It just seems a waste of human industry and creativity, but thus is the efficiency of capitalism, and I decry it.
Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that, as a teacher of English, I'm a beneficiary and fountainhead of this problem. I field questions and requests to teach from people in all walks of life, who sincerely and desperately want to improve their English as a means of improving their livelihood. I learn Turkish as a hobby, but these people need English... or think they do.
Spend a few months in Istanbul, and surely you will get a request to teach. A superficial look at the Istanbul Craigslist illustrates the demand for "teachers" of the language.
Fluency in a language is really, not as easy as most people think.
This happened a few years ago.
A room mate, who at the time was very interested in popular American hip-hop, yelled from his bedroom one evening a very pointed question: "Sean, what is this 'rim job' they are singing about?"
It's a fair question, and I was certain Erdem would encounter the phrase again. American pop-culture is littered with a wealth of scatological terms, and while Erdem's English is, grammatically speaking, near flawless, this wasn't the first time I had played consultant on matters of English jargon or slang.
I explained...
I encouraged him to note that it is a noun, not a verb, and provided verbal derivatives...
I even helped with a few example sentences, so he could practice correct use of the phrase...
Teaching moment, end of story.
Three days later, Erdem and I were on a bus together. It was mid-morning, and I have no memory of where we were heading, probably the Akmerkez. We caught a bus and sat in a forward section, where two pairs of seats face each other. Our stop was close to the bus terminal, and finding the seat and space to spread out wasn't difficult, but at the next stop, most of the seats filled up and a middle-aged woman sat down next to Erdem.
We had been quiet, still waking up, and suddenly Erdem's brain reanimated, as it were.
He let out a big laugh, and said, "Rim job, rim job, rim job. Isn't that kind of dirty?"
As he did so, I could see what he couldn't: the eyes of a horrified, middle-aged woman growing wider with each mention of the phrase. Apparently, she knew some American slang, too.
Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that, as a teacher of English, I'm a beneficiary and fountainhead of this problem. I field questions and requests to teach from people in all walks of life, who sincerely and desperately want to improve their English as a means of improving their livelihood. I learn Turkish as a hobby, but these people need English... or think they do.
Spend a few months in Istanbul, and surely you will get a request to teach. A superficial look at the Istanbul Craigslist illustrates the demand for "teachers" of the language.
Fluency in a language is really, not as easy as most people think.
This happened a few years ago.
A room mate, who at the time was very interested in popular American hip-hop, yelled from his bedroom one evening a very pointed question: "Sean, what is this 'rim job' they are singing about?"
It's a fair question, and I was certain Erdem would encounter the phrase again. American pop-culture is littered with a wealth of scatological terms, and while Erdem's English is, grammatically speaking, near flawless, this wasn't the first time I had played consultant on matters of English jargon or slang.
I explained...
I encouraged him to note that it is a noun, not a verb, and provided verbal derivatives...
I even helped with a few example sentences, so he could practice correct use of the phrase...
Teaching moment, end of story.
Three days later, Erdem and I were on a bus together. It was mid-morning, and I have no memory of where we were heading, probably the Akmerkez. We caught a bus and sat in a forward section, where two pairs of seats face each other. Our stop was close to the bus terminal, and finding the seat and space to spread out wasn't difficult, but at the next stop, most of the seats filled up and a middle-aged woman sat down next to Erdem.
We had been quiet, still waking up, and suddenly Erdem's brain reanimated, as it were.
He let out a big laugh, and said, "Rim job, rim job, rim job. Isn't that kind of dirty?"
As he did so, I could see what he couldn't: the eyes of a horrified, middle-aged woman growing wider with each mention of the phrase. Apparently, she knew some American slang, too.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
So get this...
As stupid as my ACL injury is, I heard a better story, yesterday.
There are a lot of ACL injuries at the clinic where I go for therapy. Mostly football and basketball players. Some professionals, others who are just generally athletic, but all are in their mid-twenties (which is kinda interesting, statistically).
A little further along in his recovery than myself, is a massive Turkish man, about my age. He must be close to seven feet tall, and he is a husky fella, probably weighing over 350 pounds. He is clearly not an athlete.
We had to share an elevator yesterday, and it felt like a very small small space. I swear he was ducking to fit inside.
He tore his ACL (same ligament and same right knee as mine) about a month before I did. We were chatting about our injuries, and after explaining how mine had happened, he began to relay his story.
So get this, the kid tore his ACL playing virtual ping pong on his Nintendo Wii.
WTF!?!
There are a lot of ACL injuries at the clinic where I go for therapy. Mostly football and basketball players. Some professionals, others who are just generally athletic, but all are in their mid-twenties (which is kinda interesting, statistically).
A little further along in his recovery than myself, is a massive Turkish man, about my age. He must be close to seven feet tall, and he is a husky fella, probably weighing over 350 pounds. He is clearly not an athlete.
We had to share an elevator yesterday, and it felt like a very small small space. I swear he was ducking to fit inside.
He tore his ACL (same ligament and same right knee as mine) about a month before I did. We were chatting about our injuries, and after explaining how mine had happened, he began to relay his story.
So get this, the kid tore his ACL playing virtual ping pong on his Nintendo Wii.
WTF!?!
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
My therapist has a "kekekekeke..."
... a stutter.
This is not a therapist of the sofa variety, but a physical therapist, so we don't actually have to talk very much. The word, in Turkish, is kekelemek, and it is pronounced just as his stutter sounds.
I feel really bad, because I already have to work hard to understand Turkish, a language of many syllables. So, while I am desperately working to follow his directions, I now have the additional task of preventing my face from twisting into a grimace, or a smirk... worse yet, I'm also holding in the desire to laugh at the situation.
I mean come on... this is way over the top, and my poor sense of irony can't handle it. It's not his stutter that is funny, rather me, in the situation, trying to follow what he is saying. This is the kind of scenario that language school simply cannot prepare a person for.
This is not a therapist of the sofa variety, but a physical therapist, so we don't actually have to talk very much. The word, in Turkish, is kekelemek, and it is pronounced just as his stutter sounds.
I feel really bad, because I already have to work hard to understand Turkish, a language of many syllables. So, while I am desperately working to follow his directions, I now have the additional task of preventing my face from twisting into a grimace, or a smirk... worse yet, I'm also holding in the desire to laugh at the situation.
I mean come on... this is way over the top, and my poor sense of irony can't handle it. It's not his stutter that is funny, rather me, in the situation, trying to follow what he is saying. This is the kind of scenario that language school simply cannot prepare a person for.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
When I say "gimmick"...
... you say "cheap".
50 Cent is in Turkey this week. Curtis Jackson, in the middle of a performance in the Aegean summer resort of Çeşme, draped himself in a Turkish flag and began holler'in at the crowd:
"When I say Atatürk, you will say respect."
He also went on to ask audience members where he could find some weed.
Hayatimda bu kadar aptal bir hedefi benim memleketimden buraya gelebilecektiğini inanamiyordum.
Or in English, "Why do only douche bags have passports?"
Atatürk is a debatable figure, particularly among the audience that would want to see 50 Cent in concert here. It's hip-hop for god's sake, anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and lots of shiny. Bling... bling... come on!
Is it poor planning on the part of his handlers? I seriously doubt Curtis Jackson would knowingly go to Spain and pay his respects to Franco, or give a shout-out to Mussolini in Italy.
It's crap like this that makes it distincly embarrassing for me to be an American living in Turkey. In general, Americans know two things about Turkey:
1. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (by that I mean his name)
2. A problem with Kurdish people is happening somewhere near here
Many would be hard pressed to find it on a map, because we haven't ever formally declared war on the country, so there's been little media interest.
Just as when Hillary, and later Obama, came to visit, I'll hear about this event for months; from taxi drivers and pastry sellers, and all sorts of people, generally on the right wing of Turkish politics that I prefer not to speak with because most of them will probably echo the same damn opinion. Somehow, this will get sucked into the nationalist rhetoric that I so frequently run into, and I'll be the ass (or worse, really offend someone) for pointing out that Curtis Jackson, in point of fact, is just an ignorant hip-hop star and not really the sort of person a proper Kemalist wants waving the flag around.
Seriously, every time an American gets a hold of a microphone in this country, they take a shot at exposing how fundamentally retarded and ill-informed we can be. I need my insulated, self-righteous indignation and sense of cultural superiority in order to justify continuing to live here. It's just too easy to connect the dots: Curtis Jackson = Tard, and Curtis Jackson = American, thus American = Tard, and in conclusion Sean = Tard.
Thanks a lot Curtis, keep on rockin.
50 Cent is in Turkey this week. Curtis Jackson, in the middle of a performance in the Aegean summer resort of Çeşme, draped himself in a Turkish flag and began holler'in at the crowd:
"When I say Atatürk, you will say respect."
He also went on to ask audience members where he could find some weed.
Hayatimda bu kadar aptal bir hedefi benim memleketimden buraya gelebilecektiğini inanamiyordum.
Or in English, "Why do only douche bags have passports?"
Atatürk is a debatable figure, particularly among the audience that would want to see 50 Cent in concert here. It's hip-hop for god's sake, anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and lots of shiny. Bling... bling... come on!
Is it poor planning on the part of his handlers? I seriously doubt Curtis Jackson would knowingly go to Spain and pay his respects to Franco, or give a shout-out to Mussolini in Italy.
It's crap like this that makes it distincly embarrassing for me to be an American living in Turkey. In general, Americans know two things about Turkey:
1. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (by that I mean his name)
2. A problem with Kurdish people is happening somewhere near here
Many would be hard pressed to find it on a map, because we haven't ever formally declared war on the country, so there's been little media interest.
Just as when Hillary, and later Obama, came to visit, I'll hear about this event for months; from taxi drivers and pastry sellers, and all sorts of people, generally on the right wing of Turkish politics that I prefer not to speak with because most of them will probably echo the same damn opinion. Somehow, this will get sucked into the nationalist rhetoric that I so frequently run into, and I'll be the ass (or worse, really offend someone) for pointing out that Curtis Jackson, in point of fact, is just an ignorant hip-hop star and not really the sort of person a proper Kemalist wants waving the flag around.
Seriously, every time an American gets a hold of a microphone in this country, they take a shot at exposing how fundamentally retarded and ill-informed we can be. I need my insulated, self-righteous indignation and sense of cultural superiority in order to justify continuing to live here. It's just too easy to connect the dots: Curtis Jackson = Tard, and Curtis Jackson = American, thus American = Tard, and in conclusion Sean = Tard.
Thanks a lot Curtis, keep on rockin.
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