take care, swine flu can be around you!

Recently a dangerous illness appeared in so many countries. This week, whenever i hear the news, its allways somthing to do with death or a new economic disaster . I think all of you know what I am talking about. Yeah that fucking swine flu spread all over the world unfortunately. You can hear from different countries same swine flu cases. Every passing day a new country added the list of the places where that damn flu sickness has been seen. Everyday confirmed a new case in a new place. This disaster should been prevented before being too late and spread to everywhere. Oh God. You can’t help it to be sorry. :((
Last day I talked with a Mexican girl on the net and she told me the schools had been closed because of swine flu. As all we know from the news, flu spreaded to other places from Mexico, yeah it was occurred in Mexico at first, and most of the death news comes from there. What a pity for them. L Yesterday I read a news from a Turkish paper and it said the school can be closed in Turkiye too. Today’s newspapers told that the minister of national education said there is no sign of swine flu in turkey till today but that is not mean it will not be. Yes it can be seen in Turkiye too. So everyone should be careful about it.
As I know swine flu is not infected from pigs, but I am not sure about that as well. Coz I heard too that swine flu comes from pigs and comes from people who already infected. I worried if swine flu infects by eating pork products and because of that I have done a research on the net. I saw a question on yahoo answers and the person who asked the question also worried if swine flu can be infected by eating pork.. I casted an eye on the replies and most of answerers were saying the same thing; Swine flu – also named as pig flu- is not caught from eating pig meat products. Yeah It may be not infected by eating pigs. Of course this should be asked to experts in order to be sure about that issue, but everybody says the same thing. So you don’t feel doing further researches. No matter what they say, if I had been eating pork, I never would eat it again after outbreak of influenza. I urge you to cook meat properly and kill the microbes if you cannot do without pig meat products. J
Anyway, if it is not infected by eating, then how do we protect ourselves from that serious sickness? What are the protection ways? What should we do for prevention? The most important way to protect from that sickness is washing hands thoroughly and covering the nose and mouth with a tissue during sneezing or coughing. And if you are very close to a person who is already infected, experts recommend to wear a mask for such cases.
I live in china and last years some dangerous flu cases emerged in china and the most important thing should be mentioned is that china already experienced a sars disaster in the last years. Chinese government will show a maximum effort to prevent and control swine flu if it will be seen in China. Today my mother asked me if I am safe or not. Thank God there is no sign of swine flu around me. But I am still trying to be careful. I pray for being headed off as soon as possible. Don’t say there is no sign of flu here, you should be careful no matter where do you live just like as I do.
I quoted some advices from a website in order to know how can be away from disaster and what kind of way should be followed after being infected the virus. Read and follow the advices.
-Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
-Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
-Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
-Influenza is thought to spread mainly person-to-person through coughing or sneezing of infected people.
-If you get sick, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

impressions on shanghai auto show

This weekend passed so different from the usual. I was in shanghai for an event. I think most of you are aware of that event. Yeah it was shanghai 2009 auto show. Before going to shanghai international exhibition center and saw the cars with my own eyes, I had seen the autos on the papers and on the net. Except some unusual and good-looking cars, other cars were normal and can be seen on the streets in our daily life. Even I can dare to say that after leaving from the car exhibition, I saw some good-looking sport cars in front of the main gate of the exhibition center. I expected to see more luxurious and showy sport and jeep style cars but I just saw a lot of Chinese brand cars. Unfortunately I visited there at the weekend and there were a huge crowd of people. It was very difficult to close the cars. They already placed on the same section the high-quality and luxury cars like Ferrari, Jaguar, Lamborghini Land Rover and so on. Apart from the foreigners, thousands of Chinese came to visit to see such cars. they got their camera and came to take pictures of cars. I couldn't even close the such cars because of the peoples who try to take pictures of the cars and models. :) I couldn't even take a picture before Ferrari and other cars. Ferrari, Lamborghini and most of luxury cars were cordoned off and let alone to touch they didn't let to people even close to them. They were right to do so but I still didn't like it. People circled the cars and were taking pictures. I tried to to take a picture of Lamborghini but I couldn’t do it because of the crowded.
I want to say that I have never seen so many DSL camera until that day. Almost everybody have such DSLR (digital single lens reflex) cameras. Who? Me? Oh I just have a digital camera which has a charge problem. I charge it for several hours but it takes only less than an hour. So seeing so many DSLR cameras really made me so upset. :(( But it is ok coz I want to get professional camera as soon as I save enough money.
So I must admit that not only couldn’t take good and nice pictures because of the inferior quality of my camera, but also because of the crowded, I regretted to visit the fair. If I live in Shanghai I think I would not regret it but I live in another province and went from there only to visit that fair. That is craziness indeed. If a Chinese couple didn’t help me after getting out of the metro, it would be so difficult to find the place. Fortunately they also headed for fair and have showed me the way. And I almost couldn't find a ticket so I could enter, Thank God they let me to enter with the ticket belonging to another date. I wish I visited there at weekdays, it might not be so crowded. In spite of everything, I can say that I got a bit experience about fairs, so it is ok. Next time I will do better with a good timing. :)) haha
I actually only two years ago didn't interest in cars and motors. They didn't raise my curiosity at all because I couldn't drive a car, I still can’t drive but today I have a dream to buy my own car one day, and I try to find a way to get driving license at once. Most of people around me have driving license and that makes me so upset coz I don't have it yet.
When I said to some Chinese about that visiting, they always asked me if I think to buy a new car. Let alone to buy a new one, I don't even have an old one. :( Chinese people always think we foreigner have a lot of money, but that s not true of course. There are also some poor foreigner like me. J ahaha I don't have to buy a car for now but I hope to buy a good one one day. I saw a lot of cars which already sold out like the GMC I like. It seemed an expensive one but already sold out too.
After looking around the car sections, I went to the areas which exhibited the spare parts of autos. In those parts there were a few people and most of them were foreigner. So I could browse around those parts so smoothly. There were a lot of foreigners from various countries like Turkey India USA German African countries and so on.... Yeah I saw some Turkish businessmen too but unfortunately there weren’t any Turkish brand car and company. I am depressed about that case but I can’t help it too, perhaps one day I will do it, I will establish a huge car company named AG motor, who knows. In God I trust! :)) By the way AG motor can be a good name hih? :) ahaha
It has taken almost more than five hours to look around the exhibition area. When I got out from the center, it was almost five pm and I was exhausted so much. On the top of the main gate of the center, 2011 shanghai auto show was announced. I think I will be there in 2011 too if God willing.

manage your cyber world!

I saw a question on a website when I was surfing on the net yesterday. The question was (quoted the same as in the website) ‘Television, Computer, Mobile; Most Time Spent In A Day?’
I don’t know how do you spend your time before your pc. Do you play computer games for a long time, chat with people you met thanks to the net, read the news, use the net for the business, try to learn a new software, follow or write for blogs, watch the videos and movies or find new friends? For what reason do you use your computer and internet? After I saw that question on the net, I thought a while and asked myself the questions I listed below. I do many things on the net actually. I don’t use my pc for playing the games because I don’t like the computer games. But what about the others? I must admit that I use the net for the all other reasons. I like to surfing for instance and it takes a lot of time. So what do people say for that question?
When I casted an eye on the replies, I figured out that most of people spend their times before their computers just like I do. To telling the truth, I spend most of my time before my pc. It is at least four hours a day. That is not a short time actually, but it is not wasting time as well if you can make capital of internet. We should use internet properly and usefully. If you don’t use the net for training yourself or use it in order to reach information in shortest time possible, then it can be said you waste your time before your pc and stay away from the real life for nothing. For instance I have a friend, he almost spend whole day in front of the screen. Sometimes I look at him in order to check what does he do when he uses the net. Except the times when he watches the English lesson videos, movies or football matches, I usually see him as he visits the same websites. Especially socializing websites such as facebook and twitter or learning language websites like italki, livemocha and englishbaby. Yeah he may learn a lot from the learning language websites but he also spends a lot of times to visit some nonsense websites. As for me, It is not good to wasting time to visit socializing websites, but learning language websites are ok and sometimes they can help you to find an appropriate language partner.
I usually visit news websites and online newspapers. I like to read all about politician, current events, economy, and news about technology. I try to read at least ten column about various subjects from literature to sports. I can not find any Turkish book I want because of living in China. I only have the books I took along with me when coming to china and I already read all of them. So I try to follow the column from the papers in place of the books. I would prefer to read serious articles. Some columnist like Ahmet Turan Alkan use an ironic way to simplify the complicated issues for the people. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I spend most of my time to read columns. And that is so important to train myself for my future.
I also prefer to follow some good blogs. They are useful indeed and I can recommend them to everybody. My favorite blog is ‘the majority of two’ that published some easy and quality articles by a Canadian lady. Here is the link of that blog. Check it out! http://majorityoftwo.blogspot.com/
Of course everyone uses the net for the different reasons and purposes. I asked the people around me the same question and most of them say the same thing; ‘I use the computer and internet for the communication, follow the news and watching the videos and so on.’
Actually it is so obvious that internet is indispensable today. A life without internet is unimaginable.
People solve their bulk of problems by means of the net; their working difficulties, money transfers, ordering goods, buy something and so on that I am not able to remember now. Because of those reasons, internet is really indispensable.
So I actually write that article to say people to spend their valuable time for valuable things. You can encounter so many nonsense and worthless things on the net besides the valuable and precious knowledge. So it is in your own power to make use of your time. Don’t spent your time for nothing. Evaluate the internet for your own interest but properly and carefully. If you can not manage to use the net, then try to remove the computer from your life and return to real life from a cyber world. :)) Yours truly.

move to U.S.A

I have seen a video on yappr what is a learning English website. Here is the link for you, www.yappr.com . you can visit it and I think you will like the videos on it. You can follow the words from the small box on the side of the video. That makes the videos more understandable. It is a useful website. The website informs me by sending e-mails when new videos are released. So two days ago when I opened my gmail account, I saw a new e-mail from that website. I opened the videos and casted an eye over them. One video attracted my attention. It was about the American real estate market. It mentioned the discount prices on the properties.

Chinese people start to buy properties in USA. Financial crisis affects all of the people in the world, but of course Americans are affected the most. I think because of that reason Americans sell their properties. But in America almost everybody try to sell their house. ABC news channel said there are 3.9 million houses for sale in America now. If such a huge amount of people try to sell their property, who will buy their homes in America? If you ask someone to buy your home, I think he would say that his house is also for sale. That is why experts recommend that foreigners buy property in the United States because this time of crisis is a high time to buy property in America. ABC reporter David Kerley reported that wealthy Chinese people begin to buy realty in the United States. If Chinese people can afford to buy something even in America, despite of the worldwide economic crisis, then we can understand easily the economic condition of Chinese people. In china you really can see a huge polarization between poor and rich people. Last week I read an article and according to it, in china there are two hundred million wealthy people with middle income families. Let’s suppose half of that population can afford to buy a property in China, and as for me at least one fourth of the mentioned population can afford to buy realty in America. So I guess on the future dates, the number of the people who bought realty in America will increase. Most of the buyer of the 3.9 million property will be Chinese. The video also mentioned the visit of Yin Guohua -who is a lawyer in china- to the United States in order to hunt a suitable house. And ‘It is a good time,’ he has said ‘to buy property in the U.S.’

Not only Guohua but also a few dozen other well-to-do Chinese signed up for a real estate tour of the U.S.A. Chineses are looking for good investment opportunities, around the all world. It seems that they don’t want to miss any opportunity just as this one too. In the days of old, buying a realty abroad seemed a dream for a Chinese, but today it is not, after watching the video I browsed an eye on the comments and saw that so many chineses made comment on the video and most of them say to buy a property in abroad is not dream anymore. For that matter I quoted a comment from them, it says ‘with more and more people in china are getting richer, it may be more popular to buy a property abroad. So now I am working as hard as I can, hoping to earn a lot of fortune, and to get my own piece of America one day, maybe it's not a dream, look...,it will come true.’ Yes they believe they will purchase their own place oneday and work harder to realize it. Chaim Katzap from Lion’s Property Development Group says they are down price, not down the values, so it is good for Chinese to buy now. He says they are doing good. Yes they are getting rich and know how they use the investment opportunities cleverly. I don’t know if well-to-do Turkish families are also aware of that case. I hope they also know and welcome to the opportunities. I may not say behalf of Turkish families but I think Americans will see more Chinese neighbour in their apartments. We will see it together in the future. J

AN ARTICLE ON FACEBOOK

Facebook, today you can hear that word in everywhere, it became a part of our daily conversations, or rather to say, it became a part of our life. Just two years ago we were in the dark about that socializing website, but today I think almost everyone visit that website at least once a day. It is rumored that there are more than sixty million facebook user in the world, that is a huge amount. More than that, Facebook users are gradually increasing day by day. I read on an article about facebook and it said ‘Facebook continuous to be growing at the rate of around 5 million users a week according to the latest number.’ Can you image it, 5 million users just for a week. Only consider this 5 million, you can be aware of the growing rate of facebook..

So how about for Turkiye? In Turkiye there are more than one million users and this amount is getting raise. Facebook is so popular in Turkiye, especially among the students.

I heard from one of my friend that the creater of facebook already became the richest young in the world, I don’t know if that information is true, but it is possible of course.

So people sign up for facebook but what kind of expectation they have? If you ask that question to a regular facebook user, he will probably say ‘I can find my old friends and get in touch with them again.’ And he will add ‘ facebook help me to stay in touch with my old and present friends.’ That is partly right, or we can say that most of people sign up for facebook because of that reason, I mean for getting in touch with their old and present friends.

On facebook you can share videos, make comments on photos and play games too. Also you let others know your favorite songs, singers, movies, writers, books and so on. So it is especially a good way to kill time for women who pass the whole day at home.

Including me so many people on facebook don’t add people if they don’t know them or don’t share the past with them, but such people just form a minority group on facebook. Especially today most of facebook user use facebook in order to make new friends. That is coming to mean FB already deviated from its aim. It was created by Mark Zuckerberg as an easy way for him and his friends to better connect with schoolmates. But it lost its aim in the long run. I also signed up for fb to better connect with my friends, and I never try to enlarge my friend list, coz I don’t accept people who I don’t know.

Mark Zuckerberg don’t think the same things as he thought before. He see facebook as his company, as a source of income. That is why facebook announced to sell the personal information of the users. So it is so important to not enter your personal information on facebook such as information of your credit card, your mailing address or some other important private information. Your carelessness about information can get you into a lot of trouble later on. I urge you to think twice before signing up for facebook. Because, besides so many advantages, there are a lot of disadvantages of it as well.

I did some researches about facebook before starting to write that article. With the result that fb users spent their one billion and one-hundred million minute (1 billion and 100 million) before facebook. People really spend their times like hell before it. For me, I just open fb in order to check my e-mails and comments, and it takes my just a few minutes. I don’t care the videos or other’s photos so much.

Facebook is useful but if you can manage to use it properly. If you waste your time as watching all videos or checking all photos on your page, then you should deactivate your account and return to the real life. Life should not be ignored by passing whole times before a deceitful screen. Life is totally different from the cyber world. Neither love nor relationship is true on the net, so you should be careful.

Don’t forget to be careful for your information as well. Don’t be friend with anyone when you use your real information. Don’t expect the others to be as good-hearted as you are. You could be deceived, so I want to push you for caution again and again. Good luck to all.

BACK TO THE UNIQUE PLACE

July is approaching. I am happy and getting excited. I think July significant because I will go back to Turkiye in the beginning of this July. Let’s hope of course! J It will be four years that I have lived in china. I have been to Turkiye just one time during that four years. With this time it will be the second time to spend my summer vacation in my hometown with my family. That is why I am happy. :-D

I know what means of missing someone very well, I know what is feeling of longing. And I also know absence from home. I never forget and always remember when my brother stayed in a boarding school and have returned to home just once a week, sometimes once a month. I was seeing everybody with their schoolbag while they had a smile on their face. I had taken a look at the students crowd but most of time I could not see my brother among the crowded. And I had headed home feeling a lot of frustration. L I think not only my parents but also my sisters wait for my return. Fortunately there are so many opportunity in order to talk and see each other despite of distance. Otherwise every second of being away from home will be a torture for me. Anyway, the time of meeting is approaching.

So many people who is away from homeland feel the absence of the foods, but today you can find any kind of food in everywhere. Even though it is a small place, but still there are a few Turkish restaurants in the city where I live. So in place of foods I miss to talk with my friends so much, reminisce about past days, miss to eat out with them. I miss to hear sounds of adhans, go to a bookshop to select some new published books, stop by a newspaper vendor and get some paper, then return to home to read them. As all we know, reading the actual newspaper is far different from reading it online. Going to bosphorus tour with my mother is also among one of the things that I missed. And of course I will sit across the beautiful scenery of maiden’s tower and Bosphorus and sip my cappuccino too. J The long and the short of it, I miss so many things and I will fulfill my longings.

Most of my friends study abroad like me. So it will be great to reunion with them too. I am especially planning to have an adventure with my bosom friend. Getting camping equipment and clear out of the noisy life of Istanbul will be pretty good for both of us. It is not definite for now but I might visit my buddies who live out of Istanbul as well.

It seems as if I expect a lot from that vacation but I will try to do whatever I missed. I don’t want to say if only I had been such-and-such place or I wish I did such-and-such things after get back to China again. I hope and want all my wishes will come true. :)

TRIP TO HENGDIAN

Last week one of our classmates informed us about a group tour. She said there would be a sleepover tour and asked us if we want to go. I and my other Turkish pal in the class accepted to go that trip. We are third year students now and this time could be the last tour with our classmates before graduation. Moreover we have been invited for a picnic last year and not being able to attend due to some other reasons. So we already felt debted to all class. That is why we accepted to go, if there is not, we planed to head another place with my other friends for spending the weekend. The weather was great at the week and that was the second reason for us.

The girl who informed class about that trip said;

‘it may not be available any shopping area in the place, so get your own foods and even water if you can.’

There would be no food and even water, so we thought it will be an adventure trip, and we could spent the night in a tent on a hill and when the weather getting dark and cold we could light a fire in order to get warm. We went to shopping and bought a lot of food the day before travelling.

‘I don’t want to go hungry in a hardship place, so please be sure we don’t forget anything’ I said to my friend.

On Saturday morning, everybody gathered before dining hall. The bus was belong to school and had an old and battered looking. And what is worse, there was no seat for us when we got on the bus. Fortunately some kind friends gave their own seat to us. I sit by window but what hell was that, the windows let the freezing air in the bus, I was really about the freezing if we didn’t change the seats with my buddy. I noticed that most of Chinese classmates just had a small bag. At first I didn’t get why they don’t bring more food along but when we arrived I understand why they didn’t get food with them, coz you could find everything in there. Yeah we just bought the foods unnecessarily.

More Chinese friends were playing cards all the way. I tried to read book at first but unfortunately didn’t manage to read more than five pages, because in a such bus very hard to read something, so I decided to sleep. Actually I was really sleepy at that time, so when I got up, we already reached the destination. Chinese friends rised against the guide when she said you can eat your lunch at 11:00 am in the morning. It is actually not in the morning especially for Chineses, but they also didn’t want to eat at least before mid-day. But there was no way but go to eat, because if it was not eaten at that time, there would be no eating place until 16:30. So everybody went to eat halfheartedly.

After eating something, we set off to enter the closed area called Hengdian. Because a lot of Chinese movie are shot in that place. So it is known as Zhejiang Hengdian World Studios. Tickets have been bought before, so we just showed our ID cards and went into the place. And it was said to us the bus would be back four thirty. We went into it and began to walk around. In three hours, we almost saw the whole studio and took beautiful pictures. But there was no meaning to stay anymore. So we got out of the area and sit in the restaurant for the bus.

I asked the guide if there was any other place for visit, she said no. We set off such early just for visiting one place? That was really ridiculous. I was really angry but our main purpose was being with our classmates, not having lot of fun., so thanks God that consoled us.

We headed for hotel after having dinner. As soon as we reached hotel, I had a rest because of my headache tiredness and restlessness. There was Turkish and Spain football match in the small hours of the morning and we missed to watch it unfortunately. We got up 8 o’clock in the morning and went to another place. It was like an amusement park but like a simple one. Before arrived that park, there was a small lake and on that lake with a Chinese style medium-sized touristic ship, there were some small boats too. We parted from the group with some buddies and rented a rowing-boat. But the weather was very cold so it also not became so enjoyable. We reached the group when they were at park.. I was already boring and wanted to back as soon as possible. We walk around the park in less than two hours. There was no special there, excluding some Buddhist temples.

That was the last stop of the tour. It was the time to hit the road. That tour could be completed in only one day, we spent the night in the hotel in vain. Thanks God we would get back. now. One of the most enjoyable parts of the trip was the game we played in the bus when we were on the way. We imaged a great adventure indeed, but it happened totally different. It became a simple and boring group tour. But being with classmates is more importantly of course, so I do not regret it and never will.