This is a photo I took this morning from my balcony. I wanted to capture the scene because it was a perfect example of something I noticed soon after arriving in Turkey— most cars here are white. I have no idea why.

In the above photo, there are 37 motor vehicles. It’s a little bit difficult to see details with my crappy cameraphone, so to clarify I’ve put dots on the vehicles that are not white. The dots number 12 in total, and the remaining 25 vehicles are white.

This means that according to my survey, 68% of cars in Turkey are white. That’s more than two-thirds. It seems a bit excessive to me. And I have no clue what the big deal about white is. Perhaps one of you knows and can fill me in.

Incidentally, of the 12 non-white cars, 7 were silver (which is the white of metallic colours), two were black, two were green, and one car was burgundy. There were also two cars out of frame, further down the street near point A. Both were white.

This has been a public service announcement.

This weather is unbelievable. It’s nearly 20 degrees out today, and relentlessly sunny, which would be considered summer weather in many parts of Europe and Canada. I had a great time out at the bazaar today, and as usual I present my Turklish findings for your approval.

[click on each image to see a larger version]

Yet again we start off with inappropriate children’s clothing. I could hardly believe what I was seeing, because one doesn’t need to be an English speaker to understand why this shouldn’t be on the pants of a little girl.

The outside of Baby’s pants, a quality 05. Inside, a quality 02.

And I very amused.

Plane, tree, girl… just throw in Sawyer or Jack and the episode pretty much writes itself. I mean, hey, we have to do something to occupy ourselves until February.

I wouldn’t call this Turklish, per se, because there’s actually nothing wrong with the English itself, unless they meant “contest winner” (it reads fine either way, though, if you forgive that it’s ridiculous). But there was something about this shirt that caught my eye… perhaps it was the unfortunate split of “campus” into two words that each look particularly interesting in front of the word “queen.” And I’d probably agree that the Campus Queen Contest is the best election.

Well, they nearly got this one right…

…but this one, not so much.

American & German football stories would make for an interesting book, especially since American football and German football are two different sports.

And speaking of two different sports…

I know it’s a little difficult to tell from the quality of the photo (sorry about that, I was trying to be somewhat sneaky), but this boy, who was maybe 14 or 15 years old, is indeed wearing a shirt that says “carnal pleasure” in block capitals.

That’s it from me for today— I’m going on a road trip tomorrow, so I’ll keep my eyes open and hopefully come back with an interesting report for you.

Just your average plasma TV, right?

Ah, well, more like plasma TV, Trabzon style:

Thanks to Özgür for the great link from canimgrubum.com.

Özgür sent in this great link to a new blog about street style in Istanbul. Istanbul is one of my favourite cities, and you really do see anything and everything when you’re out and about. This blog reflects that diversity beautifully.

Thanks to Jonathan Bauer for sending in this link to a fantastic and funny photoshop job at office-humour.co.uk. I’m a little bit angry now that they don’t actually do this. We should all phone Turkish Airlines and demand it.

Welcome to another installment from our weekly Turkish bazaar. Here are today’s top Turklish finds:

[click on each image to see a larger version]

This is a set of baby overalls, and I kept thinking that once I got home and studied the photo I’d work out where the clever pun was with “mjoy anothir day”… but no. The closest I got was recalling that there’s a candy bar called M-Joy, but that’s another post altogether.

This made me laugh, because not only is the truck blue, but there is nothing red on the shirt whatsoever.

Um… I’m not sure I want the implication of unidentified critters in my underwear.

I have to say, I’m not sorry I missed Engine To The Rescue 3, or indeed any of the previous films in the series.

Have you heard the history of jeans, the beginnings? Well, allow me:

Manned by Citizens, and a Woodcutter’s camp manned by two citizens, as well as a library and a city center select your city and two new citizens. When you reb sb Classical Age order a Citizen (create one if your entire population is busy) to build a University Select the University and create Scholars. The following walkthrough og the first few minutes of a multiplayer or player vs. Game is designet to get your first game of of Nations off to a great start. In this game, your goal is to capture y captial city, which is marked with a star. The game with the.

Anyone play this game Nations before? I’d be interested to know where that walkthrough was lifted from.

But wait, there’s more:

interested diste distant diskffected lexis disteessed d sappointedi distiacloeel d s o disconneeted ondent distunctional.

I’ll say.

Hello what? If you’re going to go through the motions of stealing an international trademark, why not do it all the way?

Oy, again with the kids clothes.

Produced this bags make you feel freedom. So… uh… I guess, feel the freedom.

Sure, “you are stand up to go” is remarkable, but not nearly as much as a tripping mouse named Nafitto meeting a talking camel.

Okay, I’m tired now, so I am lie down to go.

Lately I’ve been posting a lot of Turklish here, but of course I’m not the only one who has noticed and reported on the comic diamond mine that is Turkish English— Dina over at noisystreet.com has a small but entertaining gallery of Turklish delights. Pop on over and have a look if you like to giggle.

Colour me surprised— Josh Spear, a leading design trends blog, has posted an article about a new line of t-shirts called B Turk, by Turkish designer Reha Erdoğan. The shirts, in addition to looking cool, each make a cultural statement about Turkey and are well worth a look. It’s great that other countries are catching on to some of the great design talent we have here in Turkey.

[link to B Turk; link to Josh Spear article]

Recently I’ve seen a few people on “place blogs” from around the world posting about the specialty foods at their local McDonalds. In Turkey we have pretty standard fare, Big Macs and Quarter Pounders and all that, but we do have a couple of specialty items, most notably the McTurco sandwich. It comes in two varieties— etli acı soslu (with meat [i.e. lamb] and spicy sauce), or tavuklu (with chicken). I’ve tried the lamb one, and though it tastes pretty similar to other McDonalds sandwiches, it’s not half bad as fast food goes… though I’d never go so far as to put the word “Turkish” anywhere near it.

[Many thanks to Dina for the photo]

Lords of logistics! Don’t ask me how they got the car up there, or how they’re planning on getting it down. Click on the photo for the uncropped version.