Sinanation

This match will never end unless a stronger opponent pops out. One punch after the other, the two gadgets will come back with greater powers and a bigger audience. As a user of both phones, who has finally given into BlackBerry, I wish I could choose one over the other. I can’t. I miss the iPhone more than ever, but at the same time I can’t let go of the BlackBerry. Maybe with this post I can find some peace in my dilemma. Here are my bests & worsts for each phone:

iPhone:

• Great packaging (like all the other Apple products). Once you open the box you feel like you have just become an owner of something really precious and exclusive.
• The best technological partner to a Mac owner. From pictures, upgrades to music, everything is so easily taken care of on iTunes.
• Amazing downloads from unit converters to weather. I never realized how easy things were before I switched to BB.
• Great calendar and notification system.

• Writing text messages is a disaster. You fingers are never too thin to avoid pressing two letters at the same time and on top of that the phone keeps correcting your foreign language with English. For example: your Turkish “ama”s (“but” in English) annoyingly change into “AMA” for the American Medical Association.
• Being up-to-date with e-mails is though as you are required to manually update your inbox during each visit.
• The speaker is not loud enough to properly hear the person on the other side (especially in a noisy city like New York).

BlackBerry:

• BB Messenger (given that most of your network uses a BB). I guess it needs no introduction or pampering.
• Amazing with e-mails. You are completely in touch and up-to-date with your network globally from business associates to friends.
• Loud enough speaker to hear even if you are out on a loud street.
• Fast mapping and Internet search with Google.
• Easy and fast typing (in any language).

• Too many clicks to get from one place to another. This is really hard for a long time iPhone user.
• Not many good downloads to personalize the phone to your needs.
• Bad camera.
• Calculator is not user-friendly at all.
• I am still intimated to plug the BB to my Mac.

My conclusion? The winner in this case can not definitely be determined by the fighters, but the audience. Do you prefer to have an artistic gadget that gives you so much room to personalize or a generic device that will ultimately connect you with the world faster and cheaper than you can ever imagine?

I hope you can make a better judgment than I did.

That time of the year is up again and a big portion of the globe will be celebrating it with costumes, pumpkins and horror movies. Although we don’t celebrate Halloween in Turkey, it has been one of my favorite celebrations in the U.S. Let’s start with my favorite costume of all times:

And then some history…The name is derived from old English and relates to the Eve of All Stains’ Day celebrated on November 1st. Halloween, celebrated on October 31st, originated in Ireland and Scotland. It is the day the Irish and the Scottish believed marked the end of lighter half of the year and the start of the darker half. During this certain day the border between this world and the other word would become thin allowing each part to easily pass to the other side. So in order to protect themselves from the harmful spirits that might be wandering around, people would hide their true identity behind masks and costumes. They would also stock food for the upcoming winter season.

Since childhood, like many other Turkish friends, I have been a victim of superstitions. Although no real life evidence was available to support the credibility of these legends, they have been whispered into my vulnerable ears on a regular basis. From mother to babysitters, every adult around me had their own catalog of superstitions. I have found each entertaining, but also a little too scary to disregard at certain times. Here are a few I have been able to hold onto:

• Bad Luck:
• Passing underneath a staircase
• Looking at a broken mirror
• Tossing/raising glasses with a glass of water

• Disturbing the Dead:
• Cutting nails after sunset
• Chewing gum at home
• Whistling at home
• Passing by a cemetery with music on

• Miscellaneous:
• Eating the white bottom part of watermelon will make you go bald
• Not looking directly at the eyes of the person you are tossing glasses with will bring bad sex
• Eating the leftovers from the bottom of the casserole means you will get married in winter
• Pulling your hair when you see a black cat keeps away the evil
• Spitting on any sharp object before passing them over avoids fights and break-ups
• Buying soap, cuff links and belts as gifts means you are headed for a break-up (Eliminates almost half of the easiest gift ideas/packages)
• Luck will be on your side if a pigeon dumps on you

Kept coming across nunc pro tunc on bankruptcy court filings. It is the Latin expression for “now for then”. It applies to the acts that are allowed to be completed even after the stated expiration. Maybe we can also apply it to the things we should have had or done a long time ago.

Click to get a dictionary of unusual, obscure, and preposterous words at Amazon

It is a really weird feeling to go back to your parents’ home and not see it as your actual home anymore. This seems to be especially true for the ones like me, living overseas, away from family.

Up until the point you walk in through the entrance door, you assume that life here must have frozen right after you left. Yet, you see parts of the home renovated, furniture changed and neighbors moved. You can no longer find the things you are looking for, your eyes closed. There are too many people under one roof. You are not used to the crowd: too many moving particles, too many questions. You remember you were almost all alone where you came from. You had your space.

The whole house is excited to have you back. The childhood photos pop up on racks, smiling directly at you. The food you love the most is ready to be served. Everyone, including you, have taken extra time to look good for another. Besides a few gray hair and tiny wrinkles on the face, age is not there to remind you that you have been away. You are certainly not used to this much tolerance and care. Grandma does not stop you when you reach for a second round of deserts. Sister lets you borrow all her DVDs and comes  around to hug you more than once a day, something you wished you always had. You catch mom gazing into your eyes unexpectedly. You ask if something is wrong and she answers you with a kiss and a shy smile. You are pampered as if you are at a 5-star hotel. Fresh bed sheets and puffy pillows in your bed are only missing those little chocolate bars you find in hotel beds.

Rather than testing to see if this hotel you used to call home has now a concierge service, you leap onto your bags, fresh out of the airport. You open your closets, which are now partially filled with out-of-season clothes and start decorating them with the stuff you brought back. You quickly give away all the gifts and sweets. Once done with unpacking, you run into the shower to get rid of that unique plane odor. Back in the bedroom, you feel a little relieved. The desperate attempts to win back your nest stat to work through your system. You feel you have broken the surreal dream you walked into. You instantly fight back the jet lag and the strangeness of your bed with an extra dose of sleeping pills. You fall  asleep where you grew up only to finally wake up feeling like you are home again.

The first night will be the start of a few day marathon where you will move back to what you found the hardest to leave. You will slowly get used to the  idea of finding your bed made every morning. You will be speechless to see the breakfast already prepared. You will become addicted once again to having all your clothes ironed with that irresistible homey scent. The refrigerator will always be filled with delicious food even if you skip grocery shopping. The convenience of fast-food will finally make way for home-cooked meal.

You will arrive as a tourist, but you will leave a resident. The hardest part of the transformation will be saying “goodbye” to all until you meet once again.

It was easy to spell it out in the title. Yet, when it comes to actually writing about contentment I get into a fight with the blank space on the screen. I don’t know how to put it all together. There must be hundreds of instances where I have witnessed close friends between the ages of 20 and 30 question their contentment from life. We all hope and reach for it, but have desperately failed until this point. The preparation never seems to end and we are humiliated by the fact that we are still not there. Not there after years of education, maturation and saturation. The SATs, the foreign language classes, the private tutors and the college degrees have all come and gone, but we are still not where we want to be.  We are not making the difference. The difference we thought we were ready to make. What happens now? When will we get to leap forward?

Too afraid to accept failure, some of us re-certify the preparation-to-life period by going back to school. Others insist on being partially satisfied by sticking with jobs that pay just enough to get by. A smaller group puts the generic capitalist yearnings aside to try out the voluntary non-profit work. The rest dive into the family businesses to avoid risk. One way or the other, we all wait for the day when we can look back and say “it was worth it”. “It was worth it” for my parents to spend that much money on me. “It was worth it” to dedicate that much time to education. “It was worth it” to take this job away from my loved ones.

We, the generation of 1980s, have a great task ahead just like the generations before us. Yet, with all the advanced technology and the far reach of globalization, our expectations and desires might have quadrupled. Contentment, in its true meaning, will not come easy. We first have to be persuaded that we have achieved enough in life to make our sponsors content. Then we have to be convinced that we have gotten enough from life to make ourselves content. Content spiritually. Content materialistically. We felt that we have been ready to pay our dues. Maybe we became to impatient after reading about all the others that made it. The successful entrepreneur biographies online, the published diaries, the daily articles, the fancy photos and the TV exposes have brainwashed us.  We grew envious and wanted our share of the spotlight. We became desperate for appreciation.

We have been dependent and we crave to be independent. We thought we would achieve so much in so less. Have we been fools? Have we been fooled? We keep hearing that we are still young when we confess our disappointment. We are ready to grow up. One way or the other we should get there. Let’s just hope we can soon find how to make and/or where to find the opportunity.

Yet another word that is much more valuable than it looks. The Möbius Strip is a surface with only one side and it is non-orientable. If an ant were to walk on this surface, it would traverse every point without ever crossing an edge and return to its starting point. The Möbius Strip was discovered by two German mathematicians in 1850s and takes its name from one of the inventors. I am not a big fan of multi-dimensional mathematics, but I think Möbius would be a great name for a modern speedboat or yacht. The idea of non-orientability fits perfectly to the image of open seas and secluded bays.

Think of a fat puffy thought cloud. Fill it with all the things that give you comfort. Pillows? Chocolate? Milk? Cotton? Once your cloud is full, take a sharp knife, stab the cloud and rip it apart. That is what happens when a stupid mosquito passes close to your ear while you are in deep sleep. That irritating sound slaps you so hard in the face that you don’t remember where you are or what just happened. Something must have ripped your eardrum apart. You are paralyzed with the thought of not being able to hear anymore.

Only when your brain reboots from the deep sleep do you realize that it is a tiny insect that caused all this horror.  That stupid, inconsiderate, annoying mosquito came for the open bar and you are the signature cocktail. You put the light on and grab the closest magazine, newspaper or anything else that could roll into a stick. You pick a corner and assume you are the ninja waiting for the attack.  A ninja in his/her PJs, helpless, hopeless and ashamed. You know that the mosquito is attracted to carbon dioxide, but you can’t just stop breathing. Patience is the key to victory, but sleep rules over it. The comfy bed is getting colder and your opponent has the best camouflage in the world. It can feed on sugar, but it needs your blood to make babies. Strength, size and intelligence does not matter anymore.

You are left with three options:

1. Plug the ears, go to sleep and let the mosquito enjoy your delicious blood or
2. Turn into a tree trunk while waiting for the mosquito to casually fly around the room or
3. Take out your dragonfly, which you have been looking after as a pet until this day, to take care of the business

I usually pick # 1 and let the insect have a wild night. No covers, no bouncers and all the shots are on the house. No one else can get a better deal in Manhattan.

The bites, I can live with, but that zzzBZZZzzzzzz will always be a part of my nightmares.