They have these signs for toilets at tourist sites all over the country, so again I see them so often I forget they’re funny.

Or maybe they mean that 50 Cent is the only person worthy of the magic atmosphere.

Menus are ever a source of hilarity in this country. I can’t tell you how many times I have offered my editing services to correct a particularly bad menu, only to be told, “but we already have an English menu.” Usually what happens is that instead of getting a native speaker to do the translation, they just choose one of the waiters who took a two-week course in English five years ago, and get him to do the English version of the menu.

If you can read Turkish then at least you have something to refer to if you don’t understand what the English is supposed to be, but if you’re a tourist with few Turkish language skills… enjoy your dinner!

Starter:

Followed by:

Afiyet olsun.

[click for bigger and all that]

Emirhan bought me an IR remote for my camera. As you can see, it works.

Happy 8-8-8, everyone.

I’ve seen so much good Turklish online recently that I thought I’d do a week of treasures captured by other people. It’s good for me to remind myself of other people’s stuff, because often I see and hear the same Turklish so frequently that I forget it sounds weird. Take the above photo by Lukas Vermeer, for example. At least once a day someone in Antalya asks me how long I have been living in the turkey, but after four years of this, somewhere along the way it stopped sounding odd to my ears. I would have never thought to report it if it hadn’t been for Lukas.

So here we go— seven days of outsourced Turklish to freshen the place up a bit. Enjoy.

Well, I hope they expect long grass, then, because I don’t feel like getting the mower out.

This must be where Windy got her education:

What is it with the wind theme this week? It’s not intentional, I assure you.

Two evenings ago we went down to the Antalya Cultural Centre for dinner, and of course I took the camera along with me. I’ve posted a set of 24 photos from that little expedition, showing some aspects of Antalya you might not normally see in photos (i.e. I didn’t just go to the beach and stay there). They’re in reverse order, so the orange flower at the bottom is the first photo. I hope you enjoy them.

For those who were hoping I’d just go to the beach and stay there— you’ll get your wish soon. Emirhan’s planning an early morning sea trip sometime in the next couple of weeks, so I’ll be down there snapping away while he swims. Link

I’m glad the R&B gang were released— they weren’t really cut out for the Marines. Now it appears they’ve moved on to a Mexican restaurant. Bring the winds!

Do we have any choice but to face it?

Funny story— yesterday I asked Emirhan to stop by the bakery and get a cake so we could celebrate my mother’s 65th birthday in parallel with her today. I told him to get them to write “Happy Birthday Mom” on it. I figured we could take a picture of us with the cake and send it to her, and she might like that.

Well, to cut a very long story short, not only did Emirhan completely forget about the writing, we eventually learned that they don’t even do custom decorations at that bakery. Then, to make matters worse, when he was bringing the cake home he accidentally dropped the box on the ground and the cake got pretty smashed up. You can kind of see it in the photo— we faced the part that looked most like a car accident away from the camera, although you can still see some of the wonkiness in the front, and in the scuffle all the cherries on the top got thrown over to one side.

Emirhan was pretty angry with himself, and when I saw the cake my initial inclination was to give up on the picture idea. I thought we should take the (admittedly minor) disaster as a sign that the photo project wasn’t meant to be.

But then I started thinking… what we’re supposed to be celebrating here is life, and this is exactly what life is— a series of unexpected events that try their best to throw us off the course of our plans. That doesn’t mean we’re supposed to throw in the towel. We just have to modify things to learn to adapt to new situations and sets of circumstances. Okay, the cake had some cosmetic issues— so what? Which of us, through the course of our lives, comes out completely unscathed, free of the scars that mark experience? Those marks make us strong; they define our character and our humanity. I know my mom has had more than her share of life-altering surprises, but the point is she hasn’t let any of it stop her from being the best woman she can be.

So Mom, here’s your birthday photo, flaws and all. We hope you accept it and everything it stands for in the spirit we intended. Today, we gloss over life’s mishaps and the scars they leave on us, and instead focus on what’s really important— strength, perserverance, charcacter, and sponge cake with chunks of pears and peaches and a vanilla creme frosting that was really very yummy.

I love you, Mom. I hope you have a wonderful birthday.