Huff. This has taken about an hour to load up.

So I just about have time to type that I have had a hair-chop, finished up my pizza from Sunday, and any minute now we are going for künefe. Yay!

* posted by nat 7:56 PM

Monday, March 28, 2005

I am wondering just what I am doing with my life. I get like this sometimes, when I've spent a week sitting on the sofa (and a very nice sofa it is too, at Yasmin's), watching, in this instance, a large lack on information about Krygyzstan, and generally feeling nasty. At times like this I feel I might end up spending the rest of my life sitting on the sofa - well, okay, probably not the exact same sofa, as I can't see Yasmin putting up with that! - and feeling like crap. Which is a pretty dull prognosis, really. I could have been a correspondent on Krygyzstan and managed to posit a few more sensible utterances than the BBC managed to without moving from the sofa, so all is not lost, but ideally I would rather be leaving the sofa behind, at least for a little while yet.

I have broken up my sofa time with accompanying Yasmin in shopping for car tyres (Avon calling!), struggling through a few articles in National Geographic (my attention span hasn't been working this past week either), and, in the last few days, an awful lot of good food: mezes at Pano's on Friday with Yasmin, Loni&Jeremy and Mary-Anne; a plate and a half of delectable kalamari washed down with beer at ex-Fıçı - which I got far too overexcited about as I wouldnit stop going on about it; and then Easter Sunday which meant chocolate for breakfast, sahlep and tavla in Ortaköy, and then an evening in Pizza Pina with grilled halloumi and mushroom pizza. I love coming off Lent, even if it's still cloudy and raining!

* posted by nat 6:57 PM

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Spring is here, and everyone is out for a Saturday afternoon stroll or drive along Bagdat. Never mind the sun has disappeared.

I am attempting to contain myself on the subject of Stéphane Lambiel, but I can't, so RAHYAYRAHWORLDCHAMPIONRAHRAHRAHABOUTTIMETOOWOOWOOWOO! Olé! Now that that is out of my system I can get on...

After throwing myself whole-heartedly into the student lifestyle last Friday night, when I went to a party with Loni and Jeremy, sampled various kinds of the alcohol on offer, danced badly, made inane statements and then went home and was sick, I am fianlly feeling recovered. I put most of this down to the glass of rakı I had on Thursday night at ex-Fıçı, which also does excessively delectable kalamar. Mmm. Got home at 3am. Life is good.

Yesterday I was called by a bloke who had been at said party. I am not quite sure how (or even why) I managed to give him the right number, but managed to fend off the offer to go out in Taksim, made at 10pm in the evening when neither Yasmin nor I had bothered to even get out of our pyjamas all day.

Today I had a giggly lunch with Pınar, Tamer, Damla and a couple of other sutdents who I didn't know (but I do now), and finished up out on the balcony drinking tea and having strange conversations about weird jobs in New York, international variants of the döner, Arabic pop music (not Arabesk!) and why Garanti Bonus Cards are somewhat scammy. Then I went and surreptitiously fed the kids sweets during their break, as the man downstairs in the fish and chip shop keeps loading me up with the things, and I don't want them. I have been forcibly shown their wall work in response. Mert, who I taught in my first year here, is now almost as tall as I am. Frightening.

* posted by nat 1:36 PM

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

I am sitting in the little net cafe in Kadıköy that I used to frequent so many moons ago, waiting for Turan the Saz to phone me back so I can go off for a chin-wag and a song or two. Despite it snowing last Friday when I first got here, Spring now seems to have firmly arrived and life is very very good indeed. I can't believe I ever left here - whyever did I do it?

Anyhow, Thursday night was marked by arriving, having to plead from help with several people to change the SIM card in my mobile phone. First from the airline steward, who said, "Oooh, just a moment, I've just put moisturiser on my hands," - as I was tanked up hugely on G&Ts by this time (bless British Airways!) I then yakked on with him at length about dry air in planes. Upon landing, I had to convince the baggage handlers that my battery wasn't flat, I had just put it in backwards, but they sorted it out for me. I also now understand why they have bullet proof windows at passport control, I handed my passpot over with an "Iyi aksamlar!" and the man behind the window looked at it, leered at me and said "Do you speak Turkish, Natalie?" I gave him an evil look - but only once I had my hand back on my passport.

In the meantime, I am getting used to the bare banknotes, with the lack of millions on them, and the fact that a few buildings have been built and knocked down since I was last here. Life is ever changing. I spent Friday in the snow catching up with Jeremy and Loni in Besiktas, Saturday loafing, Sunday driving up along the Bosphorus to Cengelkoy in the company of Yasmin and Mary Anne, and then loafing at Mary Anne's friend Iman's house, up on the hill with a wonderful view down the sparkling Bosphorus, with wine and nibbles. That took us all day. Monday was spent loafing (sense a pattern here?) until late, when Yasmin and I made a mad dash to the cinema in Altunizade, but failed to get there in time, so instead we went and played tavla in a cafe very near K?z Kulesi, and watched the Bosphurus all lit up at night.

Aaah, the Bosphorus. Off I go to Turan's, then.

* posted by nat 12:13 PM

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

No, of course I am not packed. Time to start the traditional panic!

* posted by nat 11:46 PM

I tried to pay by Solo in WHSmith today and was told "We only take Switch."

"I haven't got Switch," I grumbled.

"Oh well," said the cashier, "Once you're 18 they'll give it to you."

I said indignantly, "I /am/ 18!" And then I said, "No, no, actually, I'm not."

Bleh.

I suppose I should start packing.

* posted by nat 4:59 PM

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

I notice I have not written much of substance in here lately; for this I blame the fact that I have spent much of the time sober. While this in itself is hardly a bad thing, it does not in any way reflect the fact that I've been having a boring time. However much of it is un-blogworthy: there is only so much I can write about cooking curry, disposing of old socks (I swear, I had the equivalent of 3 drawers' worth of socks!), freezing in the damp cold grey weather, and yelling at my brother/mother/culinary non-achievements/lack of motivation.

Anyhow, more interesting matters: it's nearly three months since I left Turkey, and despite it being the middle of Lent, which means I am still avoiding all dairy (though I have cheated slightly in discovering Yofu, the product with one of the silliest names ever) - I am off on Thursday back to the land of lokum.

No plan, as ever, apart from get out of England. This has nothing to do with the weekend of camera abuse I recieved at the hands of the Mornington Crescent Pilgrims, even less to do with arriving at Vanessa's that evening to discover her, as usual, cooking up a storm while insisting that she wasn't cooking, and it was only snacks, while whizzing up roasted cherry tomatoes, yellow peppers and garlic into a dip to go with the nachos and a big bowl of tasty chilli. And once we had had a few drinks the singing came on very nicely indeed - not to mention the in-sofa chorus line dancing and semaphore practice - naturally we encored!

Yesterday I continued to be cultural, mother and I went to see The Hollow Crown (fun if, like me, you like history, and know your Kings and Queens; most likely incomprehensible else). Poetry, letters, speeches, songs, short tracts (like Jane Austen's on the Lancastrians, Yorks, and the Tudors). Woo for primary resources and Harriet Walter; Boo for the fact that it ends at Queen Victoria - how very irrelevant to the modern era it is, not that I really minded. I did my best by lowering the average age of the audience but raising the average difficult in negotiating the stairs.

Today I have written my MA application for SOAS. Frightening.

* posted by nat 10:31 PM

Friday, March 04, 2005

So I have spent much of this week in the freezing house of freezingness, which actually means I have not been in the house all that much. I have been up in London having a random lunch with Vanessa in Vauxhall; dropping in to SSEES; going to the cinema to see Duvara karsı, which is really titled Gegen die Wand, and it is half in German and half in Turkish, and it is very funny and also very sad, has slightly Brechtian musical interludes, and killed my brain trying to follow it; spending five hours in the Turks exhibition at the RA, and only just getting round it before they shut - if you are in London GO; wandering round in the not-quite-snow discovering places that sell jacket potatoes with a curried spinach and lentil filling that will put soyaspread on the jacket potato, hurrah!; constantly having to tell baristi in Caffe Nero that when I order an Americano, obviously I do not want milk in it, duh; finding a picture of Freya Stark in the National Portrait Gallery (This is a sign! It's a sign! It says travel!); and finally this evening with Annabelle and I squeaking loudly and overexcitedly at each other in the Belgian beer place on Kingsway. Woo.

This has all been very cool, apart from the cold weather which means I am horribly stiff and walking is Not Fun. Stairs are even less fun. Running for trains is right out. Cancelled trains are unfortunately right in, which leads to freezingness at Charing Cross and a primordial urge to buy yet more chips on the way home. Tsk.

Tomorrow there will be Pilgrimage, yay - can't remember the last time I went on one(!), and then down to Vanessa's for group singalonga Bugsy Malone. Just because it should be done. It will be fabulous.

* posted by nat 8:59 PM