Er, where is little pup’s torso hiding?

Honestly, I don’t think it would take much.

Er, when exactly am I supposed to be there?

The sixteenth of July of January, at either seven in the morning or six in the evening.

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while:

Two boiled eggs, a kiwi/banana smoothie (homemade), and a simit with cheese. Now, the simit thing— every morning in every Turkish neighbourhood across the land, a couple of kids come around with huge trays of simit balanced on their heads. Think bagel-meets-croissant and you’ll be vaguely in the right ballpark. They also sell these little spreadable cheese triangles, which are particularly popular in Turkey, but I think you can get them in other countries, too (don’t Laughing Cow make them?). Anyway, the kids come around two or three times every morning, once about seven, and again about nine, and maybe once more at tennish. They walk through the streets shouting “simitçi!” at the top of their lungs, and if you want some simit you just go out on your balcony and shout or whistle to get their attention.

Now, many people have a bucket on a string that they lower down from the balcony… when the simit boy gets to your building you shout what you want, he shouts the price, you lower the money down in the bucket, he puts your order in the bucket, and you haul it back up. We need to get a bucket, because I feel really bad that every time we order from our simit kid, he has to come all the way up to the ninth floor with that huge tray. Granted, we do have an elevator, but it would just be easier for everyone if we got a bucket like normal people.

Not sure why, but the buckets always seem to be either red or blue.

Anyway, you’re either a with-cheese person or not, and I am definitely a with-cheese person. Also, sometimes when Emirhan’s not looking I’ll do a very American thing and toast mine and put butter on it, or strawberry jam. I only do it when he’s not here, though, because it’s sort of un-Turkish to eat it any other way than plain or with cheese, and he gets panicky when his heritage is challenged and I blaze through with total disregard.

So that was breakfast this morning.

Best logo ever for a forest reserve: two axes.

Chase to run bear? Chase bear to run? To run, chase bear? We just don’t know. It’s one of the mysteries of the universe.

Or maybe the bear’s name is Cha-sé.

Category: great lessons for your child

We went out for a very lazy, extremely casual dinner tonight, because the weather was nice and I wanted to sit outside somewhere. Within five minutes of sitting down at the kumrucu, however, we saw two highly amusing things that I just had to share with you. Forgive the crappy cameraphone photos— it was all I had with me at the time.

Extra apologies for the quality of this one; this guy walked in close to where we were, but then he sat down about four tables away from us, so I had to use the ultra-zoom function in night mode, which is never a good combo on a cameraphone. But the shirt says, “coming of age serial code next identity town community.” Something for everyone there.

Not two minutes after that guy sat down, this car pulled up beside us:

I have no idea what to make of this— as far as I can tell, it appears to be a jumpy watermelon car. Which… makes perfect sense.

Anyway, thought I’d share. Just another Friday evening in Turkey.

Because there’s nothing better on a windy day than chicken wings in a bucket of sand:

Steve in Ankara has sent in a fantastic link to this chilling tale (link in Turkish) of a local Antalya man and his sad, sad plight. I got Steve to put together a little translated summary for those of us who don’t read Turkish so well:

It’s about a chap who is suing an Antalya clothing seller for selling him a top that says “Mod Pimp, Fetish Machine.” He claims he wasn’t warned what it meant and that his honour has been tainted. He discovered something was wrong when foreigners came up to him in the street asking to buy women, it says.

Hmm. Interesting.

Okay, first of all, clothing in Antalya with inappropriate messages… that never happens. Never.

Seriously though, this falls into the same category as people who get one of those ridiculous Chinese tattoos, thinking it means something deeply philosophical, and then when they find out their tattoo actually says “demon bird mothballs,” they want to sue the tattoo artist. Because of course, all tattoo artists should also be expected to be fluent in Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Korean. And furthermore, they should be responsible for any decisions you make about what you put on your body.

The reason the clothing seller did not warn this guy about the meaning of the shirt is because he doesn’t read English himself, and has no clue what any of his shirts say. He just displays what he has on offer, which is whatever he got in bulk this week from his distributor (who also doesn’t speak English). If you choose to buy something, frankly, that’s your problem. No one is forcing anyone to purchase a t-shirt.

If you insist on putting something on your body with words in a language other than your own, you either need to do the appropriate research, or you need to accept the possibility that there might be mistakes that will make you look silly. T-shirts with “English” on them are very popular here, and even though I often point out to Turks what their shirts really say, more often than not they don’t care— they just giggle and shrug. And that’s exactly the attitude you have to take if you’re going to pay two dollars for a “Nike” shirt with English writing on it because you think English makes you look cool.

On a side note, I’d like to express my disappointment that a Turk is suing another Turk over something so silly. Normally people in this part of the world aren’t as ridiculous as we are about frivolous law suits. Next stop: someone will probably sue a restaurant because he wasn’t warned the hot tea was hot, and it burned his tongue. Link, much thanks to Steve in Ankara