Last 10 notes on ege's weblog
We had a visa appointment at the US Embassy in the capital city, Ankara, on Friday. We were supposed to go there by the sleeper train on Thursday night but unfortunately my wife, in a way very out of character for her, made a mistake and bought tickets for Friday night instead. We needed to find a bus ticket in a rush to make the appointment (very early in the morning) on time. The journey was one…
- What a week, huh? - Captain, it’s only Wednesday. This was me on Tuesday evening. Someone hit my car while it was parked and ran away. Since Tuesday, this has been the biggest thing occupying my mind. The problem is not that the car is damaged and I need to take it to the shop. The prick who hit my car has vanished. Even though I found his employer, they are denying responsibility. They know…
I got sick. I don’t know how I managed to catch a flu-like virus in the middle of the summer, but I did. Funny, in English you say “catch a virus” but in Turkish we say “get caught by a virus”. I don’t know who caught whom, but I had been under the weather since Tuesday. Despite not feeling well for the majority of the week, I managed to spend ~8 hours in the studio working on my sculpture. I…
July came and went and I didn’t write a reply post to anyone. Why? I simply haven’t read anything that I felt I could build upon. I had a few knee-jerk reactions where I could have written a condescending reply post, but what’s the point of that? To be honest, I’m not sad about missing JulyReply. I don’t like forcing things.
one day late edition. again. I spent the last week in my hometown at my grandma’s summerhouse. I didn’t take time off from work since I had a lot of commitments to meet, and couldn’t swim as much as I’d have liked. Anyway, I’m grateful to be able to swim at all! Last week I mentioned a recent addition to my personal infrastructure. This new host created an avenue for me to run custom-made…
What’s the point of putting things into my read-it-later app? Actually, I know the point: it gives me a false sense of accomplishment. I now have this essay in my possession. It makes me feel good about myself immediately—without doing the thing. Even though I wrote a somewhat negative review of Erich Fromm’s To Have or to Be? it made me remember a crucial insight about knowledge. If my…
The Frankfurt School has a special place in history. It’s an object of hatred for both ends of the political spectrum. Leftists , especially Marxists, hate them for diluting revolutionary thought and creating a version of the Left that is “compatible” with the capitalist ruling class. Rightists hate them for giving birth to identity politics and political correctness. However, it’s a mistake to…
I continued the pending repair work in the new apartment. Last week’s focus was mostly electrical infrastructure which by the way is something I understand but find horrifying, compared to water infrastructure which I don’t understand and find boring. I’ve finished 2/3 of Erich Fromm’s To Have or to Be? but recently I started to worry that I won’t finish this book in time to write a review for…
Last week was mostly spent working through the minor troubles with the new apartment. I bought two repeaters to fix the wifi coverage and a new TV. Some problematic infrastructure has been repaired but there’s still some work to do. For at least the last 6 years I’ve wanted to buy a new TV. I finally did it and I was very surprised by how hard it is to pick the brand and the model to buy. My old…
“If you can’t write it, write about it.” I read this advice to overcome writer’s block in a blog post some time ago but I didn’t attach much importance to it. I usually don’t register much of the advice I read online. I maintain a somewhat cynical view of it—I believe such advice is usually written by people who are clueless about the issue. However, I recently experienced firsthand how effective…