Well, I finally took the new camera out for a test spin, and I have to say, I’m strangely intimidated. Even as gadget-prone as I am, oddly I’m the last person on earth to have a digital camera, and I’m a little overwhelmed by the easy point-and-clickness of digital. You can take a million photos if you want and throw most of them away, but in my 20th century head that would be a waste of film, so I still find myself waiting and waiting for the perfect shot. I’m sure I’ll get over it soon. In any case, I got on a bus today and took a few photos, just things I thought you might not be familiar with if you don’t live here.

Turkey, where you can have your car in any colour you want as long as it’s white.

Now this is creative— it used to be an ice cream truck, now it’s used to tow a boat.

You can buy your vegetables at the supermarket, but people rarely do because the vegetables at the corner stall are nicer-tasting and fresher and much less expensive. And the guy generally tips the scales in your favour.

Next door to the fruit and veg man: the fish guy. Again, you’ll find no fresher. These were swimming in the Med this morning.

In Turkey, we don’t have piped-in gas for stoves or heat, so if you want gas in your house (which you do, because running an electric stove would cost a fortune), then you call up the gas man and he brings a canister of gas to the house and hooks it up to your stove. It’s basically just a larger version of the gas canisters used for camping, and when it’s all used up you just call for a refill and they come again and trade it out. The cost is 35YTL (today: $26, £13, €20), and we have to refill ours about twice a year.

So there you have it, five photos of daily life in Antalya. Next time I’ll try to be a bit more free with the trigger finger.

Believe it or not, Turkish cuisine isn’t all about kebaps and Turkish coffee. Our housemate Emrah made menemen last night, and though technically I guess it’s a breakfast food, it’s one of my favourite dishes at any time of day (and from what I understand it’s “South Beach friendly,” whatever that means— are certain foods against the law in South Beach or something?).

Meneman, as Burcu over at Almost Turkish Recipes points out, “can be defined in a couple of different ways such as Turkish breakfast specialty or lazy dinner option or great summer dish.” I’ve had menemen in many different places, and it’s always made differently, but basically what we’re talking about here is scrambled eggs and vegetables. Tomatoes, onions, and peppers are the most common, but “nothing is written in stone, so you can use more or less of [any of the ingredients]. You can use finely chopped onion instead of green onions, and you can also add pitted and chopped black olives.”

Generally the way we decide what goes in our menemen at home is by opening the fridge and throwing in whatever vegetables we have. At the moment we have a surplus of tomatoes and not much else, so last night’s menemen was heavy on the tomatoes. It was heavenly, and of course it was served with cucumbers on the side (also please note newspaper tablecloth, which for me defines a Turkish table). I know it sounds weird to the Americans and to some of the Europeans, but cucumbers are pretty much required on any Turkish breakfast plate. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Turkish breakfast that didn’t include cucumbers. On the other hand, don’t try to serve a Turk sweet things for breakfast— they absolutely can’t understand how doughnuts or anything sweet from the bakery could ever be a breakfast food. But I digress.

Anyway, go check out Burcu’s recipes— she makes Turkish recipes with a twist. I like her idea of adding cheese to the mixture (and it made me giggle that she dared to suggest Greek cheese), and I love olives too, so perhaps we’ll try that next time. Link to Burcu’s menemen recipe

Note: yes, I’ve heard of the South Beach diet, I’m just being deliberately obtuse because I find it difficult to hide my raging hatred for all fad diets. In fact, I may write more on this very subject tomorrow.

Yesterday I was talking about differences across the language-culture barrier as regards what translates as funny and what doesn’t. I also said that I had some more thoughts about grammatical problems that sound humourous to native English speakers but wouldn’t necessarily seem odd to people who speak English as a second language. I have some examples of those for you today, and I’m curious to know if those of you whose native language is not English understand why these make us giggle.

One of my friends works at a large all-inclusive five-star resort here in Antalya, and the hotel has one of those guestbooks on display where you can write your comments or whatever else you like for all the world to see. The resort sees a mixture of holiday makers, convention attendees, and business guests, and the guestbook is full of entries in multiple languages written by guests from all over the world. It seems, however, that most people try to write their entries in English if they can, sometimes with results that made me chuckle. In almost every case I knew what the author meant, but what they actually said implied something completely different, or sometimes didn’t make any sense at all. Here are a couple of gems:

One of my best business vacation that I have never ever have been. Thanks a lot from everyone. And I would like to mention in particular that the paint of traveling was worth the comfort to be here. [I'm confused— did he have a good time or didn't he?]

I come with my boyfriend to your hotel two times. He made me come the first time and this time he made me come again and we had a good time at both times. [okay, gutter minds, you know what she meant. But yeah, it's still funny.]

There were also a few entries I wanted to share with you that didn’t catch my attention because of grammar, but rather because of the content itself. These are off-topic, granted, but nonetheless I think you’ll find them entertaining and enlightening:

Holiday was a good time. Bedroom broken now. Sorry about that. Thanks. [this was followed by three signatures]

[In a child's handwriting] My dad and I had a great time here at [hotel name]. I wish they wouldn’t allow girls in the pool but the rest was fun. [yeah, he'll change his mind about that soon enough.]

Your chambermaids are the BEST. I mean it. The. Best.

Please get rid of your lobby pianist, because he doesn’t understand the meaning of “that was just a one-time thing.”

I’m sure next time you’re in a fancy hotel you’ll have a look through the guestbook, right? Let me know what you find.