Such a part of the skyline that I can’t imagine a sunset without them.

I have always said that I’d be happy living anywhere as long as there was a Krispy Kreme and a sushi restaruant. I was ecstatic last March when Antalya got its first sushi restaurant, and it was only five minutes up the road from me. Unfortunately, not many people in Antalya share my enthusiasm for raw fish, it seems, and within a year the sushi restaurant went out of business.

But like I mentioned yesterday, turnover in Antalya is high. If something disappears, wait five minutes and something else will pop up in its place. Istanbul chain SushiCo has opened up a branch in Antalya. It looks great, but I have two issues with it: one, it’s clear on the other side of town from me; two, the prices are jaw-dropping. I think people in Istanbul are used to paying a little more for their food than people down here are. The prices at SushiCo are about double what they were at the now-defunct other sushi restaurant, which means I probably won’t be able to afford to eat there anytime soon.

But I think it’s a good trend that Istanbul restaurants and even international chains are considering Antalya as a viable place to open up new branches. Perhaps we’ll get a Wagamama or a Schlotzsky’s soon. As for Krispy Kreme, they opened up their first branch in Turkey only a few months ago, and now they’ve already got twelve more branches open, so hopefully they’ll be spidering out into other cities soon. I haven’t had a Krispy Kreme doughnut in about eight years, but I’m not desperate enough to go to Istanbul to get one.

Making friends takes on a different meaning when you move to a country where the local culture is so very different from your own. While I’m all about learning new things and living a different kind of life from what I’m used to, sometimes you just want to hang out with someone who gets your pop culture references without a lengthy explanation, and watched the same cartoons you watched as a kid.

Anika was only here for a year, but we’ve known each other for nearly three years, and this was not her first time living in Antalya. I guess I had a delusion that she would be here forever, even though I saw her applying for medical schools in the United States, and I knew full well what that meant. Now she’s been accepted into the medical programme at Pittsburgh, and like that, she’s gone. It was a very bittersweet moment to know that she was getting exactly what she wanted, and at the same time she was going to have to give up her life here, and we would have an Anika-sized hole in our day-to-day existence.

So, there’s that weird mixture of sadness and pride to deal with, but also things can move very quickly here. Almost as soon as we knew Anika would be moving away, another friend from the United States made the decision to wrap up her life there and make the move to Antalya, so now there’s her arrival to look forward to. There’s a huge turnover in a place like this— people coming and going all the time. Some stay for many years, some only a few months. You would think that it would pay not to get too attached to people, but sometimes you just can’t help it. Thank god for the internet and 4G technology, keeping us all in touch.

We get the nicest summer produce. I love melon when it’s so ripe that it melts in your mouth. We’re even starting to get mangos this season, which is something I hadn’t seen much of in previous years.

I know I’ve said it before, but the weather we’ve been having this summer is truly crazy. Floods in late June, chilly evenings in the middle of July… frankly, it’s wonderful. A typical summer in Antalya consists of heat stroke warnings from May until September, and being trapped indoors during daylight hours for three months straight, stewing in a puddle of your own sweat and praying for a quick death. This, by contrast, has been a most unexpected and welcome change. I’m actually enjoying a Turkish summer, for once.

More photos of the June floods here.

I can hardly believe the wonderfully mild weather we’re having. This is the first summer I’ve spent in Antalya that’s actually been reasonable enough to enjoy.

Hürriyet has a fantastic gallery of Turkish oil wrestling photos. If you’ve never seen this sport before, trust me, it’s worth a look. Link

I recently downloaded the pilot of Pioneer One, the first-ever made-for-torrent dramatic series. Given the paltry budget and the fact that it was just some random people making it, I thought it probably had the potential to be total crap, but I felt like I needed to give it a chance and support the ideas behind it. Governments and media companies need to understand that p2p is not the enemy— it’s a powerful tool that benefits everyone. And even if they insist on telling themselves p2p is the enemy, they need to know that we’re not going to stop doing it, end of story, and they either need to find a way to play along and be a part of the game, or get used to disappointment. You would have thought they would have learned this lesson after the now-hilarious incident where they shut down Napster ten years ago, dusted their hands off with satisfaction and said, “there, that’ll stop those pesky file-sharers.”

Anyway, I shocked myself by absolutely loving Pioneer One. Okay, yes, it’s low-budget. I’m prepared for growing pains, that’s not a problem. The important thing is that the storyline is there. It’s an unbelievably magnetic plot, and the twist at the end of the pilot sent chills down my spine. I donated to the project so that the rest of the first season’s episodes can get made, and in return I got a great mp3 of the Pioneer One theme music, which was one of my favourite aspects of the show. Consider me a fan of Bracey Smith’s and Josh Bernhard’s work. If you haven’t already seen the show, go and download it now. Free is my favourite price. Link

Yesterday I ran across this photo of some kind of tomato dessert. The photo is by Levent Şen, one of Antalya’s most prominent photographers, and it’s a gorgeous capture of a dish I’ve never even heard of before. I have no idea if this kind of dessert is common or not around these parts— I’ve certainly never seen it on a menu. Many of the best Turkish dishes, though, are things that are normally only made at home.