The Devil Wears Prada: Turkish Edition

There’s been a whirlwind of activity in the past few days and I will do my best to recap the events. I thought I would start off by describing the most boring activity. It also happens to be the inspiration for the title of this post.

I give part-time English lessons to businesses and last wear I started giving them to designers at a fashion company called Silk Road. I walked into the sleek, high-tech building of overly fashionable males and females doing overly fashionable things. My mind was instantly filled with scenes from “The Devil Wears Prada” (I swear I saw this on a plane and didn’t go out of my way to do so). I expected to find the entry-level Turkish version of Anne Hathaway being berated by her despotic Turkish version of Meryl Streep demanding she get her a steak. Unfortunately, I did not.

In other news, last week my good friend Derek and his pregnant wife Kim came to Turkey to visit. Kim also happens to be my girlfriend Melissa’s best friend so we had some sweet double date incidents around the city.

 

Tonight Melissa and I had dinner at the house of a Turkish guy who goes to my church. It was a great time fellowshiping with him and his family for a few hours. I played translator for much of the evening, but Melissa has a tremendous amount of gumption for learning foreign languages and wasn’t afraid to dive right in. We spent much of the evening talking about the trials and tribulations of the Turkish church, which is a reminder that the American church isn’t the only one that has problems in the world. But it’s always an encouragement to see such passion in another believer here.

Any other news? Can’t think of any. And make sure that the twins have their bound copies of the forthcoming Harry Potter book by 5:00 p.m. or you’re fired.

Islamic creation science is down for the count

After a year of being blocked from WordPress I finally have access once again! It appears that our Islamic creation science friend (who had nasty posts written about him on wordpress and decided to do the civil thing by obtaining a court order and blocking access to the site for everyone in Turkey) has eaten his just desserts and access has been restored to everyone in the country. 

So what has been going on with me in the last year? Here are the main bullet points, and I will include more detailed information in the future

1) I started grad school in Ottoman History (it’s hard but enjoyable)

2) I began dating a lovely young woman named Melissa, who is a graduate student in TESOL (teaching english as a second language) and has a best friend who married one of my long-time roommates, which is how we go to know each other. We’ve been doing the long-distance relationship for the last year and logged on hundreds of hours on our Vonage phone. When I decided to take things to the next level I included Skype video chat in our relationship, which made things far more e-mantic. She is living here this summer and working as an EFL teacher so you’ll be hearing more about her.

3) I still attend my same church, but I go to a different service that is mostly Turkish in structure. All of the hymns and most of the preaching is in Turkish. The congregation is an eclectic mix of Turks, Koreans, Iranians and a few Westerners. It’s a small congregation but those who attend are committed and faithful.

4) I’m basically reading all the time. Not so much for enjoyment, but for digging into my master’s thesis. I read, read, and then read some more. I’m also having to learn Ottoman Turkish, which is is very difficult to learn for a non-Turk. And since it is a dead language it has a small payoff since the only thing it can be used for is reading old documents.

 

So that’s all for now. I’ll try to fill in the gaps of major events in the last year. I just got back from a trip to American to see my family (and Melissa, while she was there), and we went to this awesome conference called the Acton institute. I’ll touch on that one more later. 

Islamic creationism isn’t down for the count yet

Hey all,

It turns out that the moratorium on blogging through WordPress in Turkey is still in effect. I thought that access had been regranted, but it turns out there are only a few ISPs that managed to escape Turkey’s court order to shut down WordPress.

In the meantime I set up a temporary blog at blogspot. The address is http://istanbullseye.blogspot.com/. I haven’t posted anything yet but content will be coming shortly.

Hopefully this ridiculous situation will blow over soon (see previous post for more information). Once it does then I will blog on this site regularly. The crappy thing is lots of people I know use wordpress so I can’t see their blogs. But they can see mine. This situation is not disimilar to being a focus group that is test tasting a new soda, unknowingly being watched by greedy corporate executives throug one-way glass. You, my friends, are those executives. I hope the new soda I am tasting sells well and causes your company’s quarterly earnings to go through the roof.

Islamic creationism can’t stop the Mechanical Turk!

You may have noticed that I didn’t update this site for the last week and a half. The reason is not because I forgot, but because WordPress.com was completely blocked for all users in Turkey.

Why, you may ask? Well, there is a very silly man in Turkey named Adnan Oktar, a leading figure in Islamic creation science. I used the word “science” very loosely because he makes crackpot American creation scientists who argue that Satan left dinosaur bones on earth 6,000 years ago to trick humanity look like Neils Bohr. He has also published an 800-page book called “The Atlas of Creation,” full of glossy pages that “prove” the truth about the natural word can be found in the Qu’ran. His minions have distributed his book all over America and have actually stuck it in the mailboxes of scientists in universities throughout the states.

Anyway, this month Mr. Oktar stumbled across some stuff on a WordPress blog about him that he found to be “libelous” (read about it here). So he did the sensible thing and got his lawyer to file a complaint with the Turkish Court of First Instance in order to block access to WordPress for everyone in Turkey.

Dang, who knew crackpot Islamic creationists couldn’t take a joke? But the important thing is the site is back up now. Feel free to leave comments that talk smack about Mr. Oktar below.

Recapping America

I arrived back in Istanbul on Monday. Here are a few photos of highlights during the week. Unfortunately the photos are loaded on the side of my first week (California) and fourth week (Washington, D.C.) and few from the second week (Iowa) and third (Kansas City) since I don’t have a camera and pictures weren’t emailed to me from those weeks.

Here is Kim and Derek, the happy couple whose wedding I had the privelage of standing in. Derek is cool. You should meet him if you haven’t.

Kim is also cool, but she doesn’t like moustaches. Here is us groomsmen, flaunting the moustache sexiness as much as possible.

Have you ever dreamed that you were in one of those ’80s teen movies, where the nerdy high school protagonist manages to dethrone the high school quarterback from his throne at the top of the high school hierarchy, and then does a C jump to celebrate? We do. And we lived out our fantasy here:

Here is one of the highlights of my week in Iowa. While there, a quartet of females from California who were also in the wedding party took a roadtrip from Cali to Chicago to see off their good friend, Melissa Chapman, who will begin studies at Wheaton. I wanted to show them Iowa, so I took them to the Jasper County Fair:

Here Ms. Chapman and I are enjoying a delicious Tropical Sno at the said county fair

Let’s jump ahead a week to my conference in Washington, D.C. Here’s a picture of the gang and I at National Public Radio. We’re quite an international bunch:

This picture here is a good example of irony. The one picture that is taken of me during a session is when I am about to fall asleep. Whoever took that picture of me was trying to ruin my professional cred.

This picture below is a good sample of what a typical day would look like — the group of us sitting around a conference table, figure out a thing or two about journalism. At this particular session an Egyptian Coptic bishop was talking to us about religious freedoms in the Middle East. He was probably the most religiously passionate man I ever saw in person. Bummer he’s not in the picture.

But it wasn’t all sessions at the conference. One of our cultural excursions was to Baltimore for an Orioles-Mariners game. The fellow next to me was my roommate for the week. He is a Romanian journalist who works as a broadcaster for the state television. I did my best to explain the rules of baseball to him, which he found to like cricket, but slower. But at least our game isn’t so long that there is a break for dinner in the middle.

At the end of the week I saw my very good friend from college, Daniel, and his wife Sara. We went to Turkey together as exchange students way back in the day. Now he is exceptionally professional and living it up at an engineering consulting firm for acoustics. Yeah, I don’t understand it either.

But Daniel’s professional gig doesn’t stop him from dispensing an occasional noogie. Normally I am the one who gives noogies. This isn’t right.

So there is my trip. I’m back in Turkey and will have some time off until my grad program begins in September. A couple of projects include reading a book in Turkish, learning the basics of ultimate frisbee and laying down some other groundwork for the fall. But that info must wait for another blog post.

Conference, Day 2

Things are going full speed ahead here. The journalism conference is myself and 14 other journalists from around the globe. We have people from Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and India (don’t know which continent that technically fits into). We are also represented by nearly every ethnicity on earth, except for Aleutian-Americans, which is fine because nobody wants those whale-eaters around to ruin the party.

Yesterday we were at NPR and today we went to the Heritage Foundation, a think tank, and a prominent DC newspaper. We are also hearing each other’s presentations on the state of the media in our respective countries.

Last night we went out to a very American restaurant that had burgers, ribs and the like. The others asked me what an American meal would consist of, so I told them to completely ignore salad or anything even remotely healthy on the menu. When it came time to order drinks a few of them tried to get white or red wine. I hung my head in frustration and thought to myself “This must be what its like for Turks when us Americans order a Coke with a kepab and not an ayran.”

More to come later.

Touched down in DC

I arrived in DC today after wrapping up my week in Kansas City with my sister, mother and brother-in-law. It was a good week. I got some new threads (see 2 blog entries ago) I wrapped up my newspaper job in Istanbul (see 1 blog entry ago) and saw Bourne Ultimatium, which was tremendous.

This morning I spoke at my mom’s church in KC, which has a class on Christians and Culture which went well. Today I arrived in DC where I will be for the next week for a journalism conference that is staffed by a group of religion reporters from around the world. I feel like a Tiger Cub in an Eagle Scout meeting here — many of those here have 15-20 years of experience and have written several books. To top it off, one of my bags was lost by the airport that had all my dress shoes in it. So I showed up to the first session wearing business casual and flip flops. But the color matches my sports coat, so I should be fine for tomorrow. If somebody asks about it, I’ll switch to a Turkish accent and say “But in my country, wearing the sandals is so important for my people. Why do you dishonor my father?” Or I could not do that, since I don’t want to get kicked out yet.

Anyway, its good to be back at my former temporary home. DC is awesome if you’ve never been here. More to come…

RIP, Zaman

Yesterday was my last day of work at my Turkish newspaper. Now you may be thinking to yourself “Hey self, isn’t Scott in America now? How would he be working at his Turkish newspaper?”

Do not get strung up on this, my simple friend. You see, thanks to the power of the Information Superhighway (aka the “Internet”), computers now have the ability to connect to other computers through the power 2400 baud telephone modems, providers such as Prodigy and Compuserve, and Windows 93 software.

OK, enough geek hubris. I was working from my laptop in America these past three weeks and yesterday was my last day working. This marks the end of a job that I held for a solid year. While it definintely had its perks, it also had enough downsides to make me not regret leaving. But the principle reason I’m not there anymore is that I will be starting grad school in the fall. The school that I will be attending is Bilgi University, located in Istanbul. I will spend my time with 9 other graduate students, doing our best to dissect the complicated animal that is the Ottoman Empire. As long as I don’t get too lackidaisical, I should be out of there in two years, and will have one of those diplomas that qualifies to do precisely two things: 1) teach the subject that you just learned 2) go to yet more school to learn more about the subject so I can teach it.

So there you go. If I were a more licentious person I would have an Irish wake for my job. Instead, I will do the next best thing and use a frown emoticon if I am ever instant messaging my former co-workers

Are Iowans God’s chosen people?

Technically no, since that would be ancient Israel, but when you consider the wholesomeness of Iowans, I believe that a strong case can be made. Similar to the N’SYNC song “God must have spent a little more time on you,” it is not at all implausible to think that God must have spent a little more time on Iowans.

Why do I write such an ostentacious post? Because my aunt, who is the matriarch of a farming family in Chariton, Iowa, was down to visit us in Kansas City and she exemplifies all the cardinal Iowan virtues of thrift and resourcefulness. I’ll give you a brief summary: Next week I am going to a journalism conference in Washington, D.C. and needed to pick up some new clothes. When I mentioned going to get them at a cheap outlet store, she nearly swerved the car off the road and said “No, we’re going to Goodwill.”

 I was skeptical at first. After all, I shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill and Salvation Army in high school — not because the clothes were any good, but because I loved spending my money ironically. However, my aunt has a stronger bloodlust for quality clothes at Goodwill than a grizzly bear at Cub Scout camp. Two stops at a two different thrift stores and less than an hour were all she needed to create an entire professional wardrobe for me — and it cost about $20.

On top of that she just so happened to have her haircutting equipment in the car and gave me a trim. Can you comprehend the resourcefulness of all that? Let’s just say it’s no accident that Iowa has the highest ACT scores in the United States, is home to the first and greatest land-grant university in the world (Iowa State University) and is on the cutting edge of ethanol research. We also have accent-less English, which is why most radio broadcasters are from Iowa (Ronald Reagan worked for WHO Radio before he went to California to launch his acting career), and are the home of the Iowa State Fair — the leviathon of America’s state fairs, which attracts nearly 2 million people annually.

 I respect the other 49 states, truly I do. But it’s that little more time that God spent on us which make Iowans special.

Done with Iowa; down to KC

I just wrapped up an excellent week in Iowa, except for the lame-o bit about rising at 4 a.m. to edit articles for my Turkish newspaper, and not touching base with Nathaniel or John.

Here’s a run-down of the high points: On Wednesday I rendevoused with four of the girls who were in party for Derek’s wedding. They were traveling from California to Chicago to see off one of the girls who is starting a Master’s degree at Wheaton, so I met up with them in Newton. From there I took the bonnie lasses on a short Iowa cultural immersion project which included a trip to the Jasper County Fair. They were a bit out of their element with being up close to all the hogs and cattle, but still enjoyed it enormously. Us Mid Westerners are incredible, aren’t we?

On Friday some friends from Iowa State came down to Knoxville. This was both a cool and bitersweet time, as most of them are either wrapping up their Master’s Degree and/or leaving Iowa, which means that get-togethers like this likely won’t happen on the same scale again. My college friendships will go the distance (I believe) but i’ll probably only see 1 or 2 at a time, not 4 or 6. But to commemorate the occasion we drowned it in pork and fired a ridiculously high-powered potato gun (about 50 pounds of pressure) multiple times.

I stayed at the childhood homestead in Knoxville. My dad built an impressive new deck in the back which looks perfect for smoking nargile, but on a sadder note he has also surrender in a long-term land war between himself and the deer in teh backyard that would eat his hostas. Some of his methods used in the past to keep the deer away included low-lying fences, automatic sprinkler systems and even electrical fences. But the deer’s sheer appetite and willingness to be on the wrong end of an animal cruelty law meant they won out in the long term.

The weekend was spent up in Ames. My friends Peter, Greg and I played croquet at Iowa State in front of the campanile. A picture of us in action would have been worthy of an ISU brochure. That evening a group of us watched a document called Into Great Silence, which is about the lives of an order of Carthusian monks that live in a monastery in the French Alps. The guys live an extremely austere life and never talk except for chanting and bits of conversation that are allowed on the weekends. The best part of the film is that it focuses on the monks humanity, and rather than be empty shells of a person whose humanity has been robbed by endless silence, they actually appear more human, and refined by the joy that comes with a life of contemplation and meditation.

So its Monday and I’m in Kansas City for the week. A few highlights might included kicking with my mom, sister and brother-in-law, seeing a Royals game and shooting guns. That’s all I know.

p.s. — While in America I’ve met lots of random people who read this blog that I never imagined would. Don’t be shy — write a post!