Second half

So I passed the milestone. Half time here in Trabzon, the referee blows his whistle. Shaken and tired I want to withdraw. But ain't no break for the broken.

I lost my everything in a month. It wasn't easy. I could have suffered less but I made it more unbearable. It's like a perverted hobby of mine. Deep inside, that's how I like myself maybe.

There is no bitter taste. No lingering on the moments I screwed up, the memories I demolished. Just fear, plain fear. The fear of not finding her again. Anymore. Because eventually, finding the right person is the goal. To hell with arts! With politics, with job and everything else. To hell with my life...

She is my only aim. My only desire. And if found, never leaving.. never hurting her. Never letting my child see us separating. May I die under the veil of animosity; the cover of mediocrity; but I'd be buried as a happy man. The man who saw his son and daughter grow up and find their own ways. The man whose hand is held until the last moment.

Loneliness is the thing this man fights against the most but he doesn't have the tools. He blows himself in the wrong direction.

Now is forever...

So where am I now?

Trabzon. Surrounded by love and care taking but blinded by the lens of self-loathing and pity.

 Second half: the referee blows his whistle...

god.

Which was going to be a short intermezzo has become a lenghty break in the blog's history: not counting the Rosetta videos, I haven't written a word since... well, since a long time.

Reason (a): I broke my laptop. Literally. It's in pieces.

Reason (b): Besides working, the only things filling up my free time: drawing, taking photos (ordered a new lens, ridiculously cheap), and -sigh- sleeping.

Reason (c): No clue what to write about. Two great persons in my life taught me the following lines:

The amateur's motivation is inspiration, the professional's is the deadline.

AND

If you don't have anything to write about, don't force it. Don't publish every shitty thought you have, or the real treasure will be lost. (ok, I modified it a bit)

Keeping these in mind, now it seems plausible enough that I hadn't been writing anything recently. Until now.

I'm just quarter way through the book 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins but my brain is already crowded with all the ideas about the topic. The matter of God has always been a supreme issue in my life (special thanks to New Acropolis, the philosophy school I attended when I was 18), though since August I kinda dropped the topic. Now the book just resurrected the enthusiasm: little summary of what I've read.

First of all, the hardest thing is to be a scientist. As long as you are a believer (creationist, moslim, christian etc.), all you do is following without questioning. When you hit the brick wall, when logic just can't describe the world and your experiences, the ultimate answer solving your riddle: it's God.
Now, the believer can easily question the evolution theory, Darwin, Newton and all the guys who revolutionized our world.

For instance, the believer may say, the evolution theory is nonsense, how can you believe that we are coming from little unicellular entities? The main issue is that while asking these questions are really easy, answering them -if we are taking them serious- needs time and well-supported reasoning. The difference between the believer and the non-believer (I'm not using the term 'atheist' on purpose) is explained brilliantly by Dawkins, as follows (modified, again a bit).

Our knowledge of world is a huge blanket, let's say. It has tons of holes on it: the questions we can't answer. Now, the believer has an infinite resource of patches called 'God'. He covers and fills the holes with this mighty God-stuffing. Meanwhile, the non-believer finds himself in a real mess at each hole. But he stops and examines, and after a lengthy process he chooses the most appropriate filling for the hole.

Christianity calls this stuff as (otherwise utter nonsense) Bible, Jesus, Holy Trinity etc, moslims identify this with Allah, and so on.

So what is my opinion? The stuff I fill the holes with?

I call it god. Without capitals.

I do believe that all the great accomplishments and discoveries, feats in arts etc. humankind has done are due to one sole thing: the god who dwells in all of us. This intangible thing is the voice in your head that never lets you down. It can leave you for weeks and months, but as long as your faith in yourself stays alive, this god will be there. It will help you, push you to your very limits, when you realize that nothing is really beyond your grasp.

So, even scientists can't fill in those gaps with science without the very base of motivation, of trusting themselves. That's the god I mean, the god I'm always talking about. For me, I find this inner god while I'm walking in the nature, when I look out the window and the sun illuminates a dirty sidewall, highlighting a woman cleaning the carpet... and so on. All these small thing, around me are crying to be noticed. And then, it's up to me whether I make an attempt on immortalizing it somehow.

Luckily, the number of these tiny phenomenons is infinite or at least, vast enough that all of us can enjoy them. Well, as long as we are walking eyes wide open.

Why force god in the temple or the mosque? Why pretend it's a privilege for the followers of the religion? It's like selling oxygen. It's all around us but some act as if god and faith were special things, that doesn't really entitle to all of us.

God!

I already wrote a lot and I'm far from finished. What's worse, I don't feel that I'm even halfway through... Anyways, take care people, try to survive without the far-from-amazing Rosetta videos until the next time!

Rosetta Stone, chapter 3.

I'm really sorry for not updating the blog more often. No inspiration, no nothing... But here is episode three! Yeah!

Rosetta, chapter 2.

Episode two. The screen capture thingy and the camera aren't in the same resolution so sometimes the screen is cut. Sorry for that.

Mu!

Rosetta stone, chapter 1. (video)

Me vs. Rosetta Stone, a language learning software.

Next episode: more lights, less tired Peter, more memory on card (best parts of the recording are gone).

My little guide to Gangnam style

As it has just become the most popular video on youtube. It's impossible to ignore. A little summary of Gangnam Style, parodies, own experiences and more.

So the whole thing started like this. It wreaked havoc through the world, but somehow it managed to avoid my attention. Until September. By then I had to admit that it is probably the most popular thing since Thriller, Titanic and Las Ketchup song. Combined.

It's just impossible to survive a day without hearing it at least once as a ringtone on the phone, but after a month it has become a daily routine, such as going to the toilet, lamenting my life or going to bed after 2 am. However I felt that Gangnam Style should be a challenge to draw: at the end of some classes I play a drawing game at the board with the kids. Soon I had to realize that GS isn't anywhere near to the "very hard" category (where I put it earlier). Normally it takes 4 seconds for an average kid to figure it out, what's more, mostly the drawing looks like this:

Until my most recent couchsurfing experience tho I didn't dig deeper to the depths of the meme of the decade. Juan (ARG) and Sonia (ITA) comitted the mistake: they admitted that they know nothing about Gangnam Style. After introducing the video, we got totally addicted to it with Juan: we were watching how to dance the gangnam style videos, parodies from our nations (bottom line: the Hungarian is the worst piece of shit), but above all, discovered Hyuna, the Pokémon with a humanoid body:

Whose only talent is riding the waves of the PSY-tsunami. Enough to watch one video from her and we'll be sure Gangnam Style is a complicated masterpiece. Watch my brothers' reaction around 0.30:

But PSY rolls on, after stealing the show at the annual EMI awards, appearing with several celebrities in The Glamorous West Side Of The Earth, and the world just can't get tired of it. See my favorite prank below:

Days passed and Juan forgot to dance the Gangnam Style. We never listened to Hyuna's Pikachu voice; the meme has left our everydays. But not the rest of the world. If you can't get enough of it, click from new IP addresses to accomplish the goal which apparently united humanity for the first ime. And make it up to a billion.

Oppa...

Update: The best gangnam video ever.

About turkish men

There is something fascinating about Turkish men. No, not the amount of hair they generally possess, nor the endless number of tea and cigarette they consume. It's about the inexplicable change they go through during their childhood.

I always loved children but comparing them (who is more beautiful etc.) is just nonsense, they are all beautiful (just wait until mine rascals are born, I will change my mind). But I have to say Turkish little boys are the cutest on the planet. They are all small, fatty a bit, big eyes and curious nature, fooling around everywhere in the town, with or without parents. For turkish readers: the type of kid you say 'senin ağzını yerim' to.

But then something happens. While beautiful kids usually end up being beautiful adults, most turks lose their looks through puberty. It's seems impossible to me that those small white boys evolve into dark skinned, hairy and... well, something like this:

And please don't say this happens with all the kids. From around the age of 10 you can tell how an earthling will look like during his manhood, except for turks. Period.

Trabzon men (yes Turks in general but I have experience only with the first) have this nasty habit of walking together in groups of 5-10, all holding hands (arms, sorry). As I learnt it's just a sign of great friendship. My friend, Dovydas from Lithuania though committed a mistake during our erasmus and asked some of these guys whether they were gay or not, which they took as a great offense.

But let's get back to style. I have an ongoing mission during my stay: finding out why the heck do all men feel that they should all dress in suits. The answers I got so far:

- I don't know
- They want to look smart

But it's a real phenomena: from the shoe cleaner to the driver of the dolmuş, I'd say 80% of the city's male population wear suits. It's as traditional as wearing sombrero in Mexico, poncho in Peru, vodka in Russia, or women in Hungary (hope you understand the tricky composition here). My sole theory is that Atatürk was dressing smart all the time. It would make sense since the love towards the father of turks already explained the widespread rakı consumption, unkempt eyebrows and piercing looks amongst men.

Still, they are great friends and don't be surprised if after an hour they offer you things that you may never receive in Europe (any kind of help you need). So no matter how hairy they are, bushy their eyebrow is, or how often they cling on your arms, men of Turkey are reliable and excellent friends.

Except for the few motherfuckers I hate.