does someone look for some adventure?

Yesterday I met with one of my old acquaintance friends. He complained about staying in Turkey and he said that he is like a slave in Turkey. As he said, he is not so satisfied and pleased with his life. ''My life would be same here in this country for a lifetime and it never change, I know'' he said. He is obviously looking for something adventure. 'So, do you have a plan to change this fate?' I asked. 'I dont know, maybe!' he said. 'İt seems that there is a ray of hope for you!' I respond. 'Actually,' he said with a murmuring sound, 'there is a way.' 'I met a girl from Brazil and she is 7 years older than me and she loves me, I think I love her too.' he began to explain. 'Since last year' he told me when I asked 'Since when you talked to her?'.

He said 'No one knows this but you, Arif', and went on as saying 'not even my family'. 'How do you know she a trusted one?' I asked. 'She told me everything about herself and she is ready to send me money to buy a ticket to fly to Brazil.' he said. 'Wow!' I said, 'go to see her then!'

'She wants me to stay with her and work in brazil!' he continued. 'What about the language? You are not even able to speak English, let aside the language of Brazil!' I asked with curious eyes. He doubtfully responded that 'She told me that she will send me a language course to learn portuguese, she said that learning portuguese is not so hard if you live in Brazil.'

'That s so nice then!' I said, 'I would try if I was you!' I said. 'Look Arif' he went on after I encouraged him, 'you are an educated person, you could be faced with such situations or maybe know more people have such experiences, so I am so happy to have a chance to take your advices here' he said.'Please dont make fun of this serious situation, ok?'

'Why should I have do that?, I am so serious when I said I would try' I said by making it clear for him.

'But I still have some hesitations ' he said. 'I dont know I could be happy with her.'

'As I understood from your words, she loves you so much' I started to recount, 'İf you believe that you love her too, then what could be the obstacle before your happiness?' I asked her.

'Difference of culture?' he stated with an undecided sound. 'I am afraid that the difference of cultures could cause a miserable end to this love!' he said.

'Go to try Şakir, go to be happy with her!' I said.

We both looked each others and I think we both thought the same things: Marriage is not a matter of trying! So you have to know opposite pretty well and internet is not a good way to do it.

My advice to him was that he should go to Brazil and meet that girl in a closer way to know her better. If they can sense that they can get along well and can do it for a lifetime, then they should not think more to marry.

İnternet is a common way of dating and meeting of couples today and it will be more common in the future. I think no one will find this way of meeting so strange in the near future.

Green fingers Şekernaz and her lovely garden

If you live in a metropolis, you have less chance to eat natural and organic foods, and you have to pay much more Money to purchase it. It is harder to buy such foods for those who earn a bare living in a big city. That is why most of people who have to live in metropolises prefer to buy in unhealthy hormonal and cheap fruits and vegetables.

Some urbanites are more lucky to possess a small garden for farming and planting. They love farming, because they came from such a peasant culture. My mom is one of them. She spent her 20 years at village and 10 years by farming before we migrated from Tatvan. Sometimes I have been asking her for which place is more likeable among countryside and city, and her respond mostly in favor of city but of course she couldnt prevent herself to put her countrysid

e yearning into words. What she desires is to leave from the city during all summertime and spent her hot summer days in the chilly nights of the village. She wants to stay in the city during winter times. She longs for the fresh air beneath branches of the trees near the river. We have two piece of lands in Tatvan and both are down by the river and have a great location if we compare to the other lands in the village. My mom misses the walnut, apple, pear and plum trees on the mids of the land and misses planting and watering natural vegetables.

We used to live in Güngören in İstanbul in a flat without even a small garden. We lived there more than ten years and we moved to another district named Esenyurt. Esenyurt is a bit far from the city center but it is still a nice place to live. It is a new developing district and apartments a bit cheaper here, so many people begin to buy flats and move to this place. Apart from transportation, I have no other complaint. And I got used tol ive here.

We have a small garden in back of the apartment and my mom uses the place for planting and watering. She look after pepper, tomato and green beans plants in the garden. Aside from the plants in the patch, she has various flowers planting in the eaten yogurt buckets at home. She puts them on the windowsill and on the marble stones of balconies. She grows pepper plants at home and my dad thinks that his wife has green fingers. We are all give him right to say so. he loves to

Several days ago, I was at home and my mom again went down to water flowes and trees in the garden. She asked me to help her and It was my pleasure to do. When I saw her that she closes everything with a great tenderness, I said inside that I should not let this opportunity slip away and I took my camera to shot her while she was busy with. I took her pictures to publish on my blog.

Like to reminisce about last summer in Taipei

It s been almost one month that I ve left from Taiwan. And this time, I am afraid to say that it has been a perminant leaving.  I dont have any plan on getting back to Taiwan for now and I already miss the days I had with my friends on the island.

I spent most of time of last summer in Taiwan and at end of the summer, I just could return to Turkey for my summer vacation. Because there was some works which I had to finish at that time.  I thought it would be a terrible summer due to the hot and wet bad weather of the city but I had a great summer instead.

What makes that summer unforgettable was to meet to  Mr. Atilla Kahveci who is working for our sister institute in USA and came to Taiwan to visit us. He stayed more than two months and we hosted him at our home. Because some of our friends were in Turkey for their vacation, so, our home was appropriate to stay for him. We asked him to stay with us and he didnt refuse.

There are three ways to know a person well: Travel with him/her, trust him/her with something  and live  with him/her at the same place for a certain time…

If you want to know a person well,  apply one of those ways, and no doubt that you will know that person pretty well if you use one of those ways..

I stayed with Mr. Kahveci more than two moths and I got know him pretty well.  Mr. Kahveci was at his 36 and had experienced many thing to share with us.. We loved to listen his experiences he had both in Taiwan and in USA. He had been in many countries, not only in USA and Taiwan, and he had many things to share.  

He used to live in Taiwan for almost  9 years and  he had many friends in Taiwan. During his stay, He has toured around the island to visit his old friends.

Mr. Kahveci loved to drink Mango milk beverage and Mango smoothie like we do. If you live in Taiwan, you have chance to drink any kind beverages throughout the four seasons. Almost every evening, we went out to buy drinks and got back to home to watch something while sipping our amazing mango smoothies. Passion fruit smoothie is also one of the best beverages you can drink in Taiwan. But here, I should admit that the most famous drink in Taiwan is Pearl Milk Tea (珍珠奶茶), not passion fruit and mango smoothie.

We always eat passion fruit  in a special way. We prepared a special mixture of ice-cream, passion fruit and banana.  It is so easy to prepare.

At first, getting a plate and cut the banana into small pieces and put them on the plate. Then cut the Turkish ice-cream (being sold in Taiwan) and put on the banana you placed on the plate and then pour the passion fruit on the top. It is ready to taste now.

I wish to have chance to spend such beautiful days one more time in the future. Of course, It would be a great time only if we could be in Taiwan in another summer time. Greetings to Kahveci from İstanbul and wish success to him in his life.

It is Taiwan, not Tailand

Have you ever been to Taiwan? Have you ever heard this country before? If your answer is yes, then can you say the exact location of this country? You may need to check the world map to discover the certain location of this island. Or, let me ask another further question if you don’t get me wrong, would you please tell me honestly, did you know that Taiwan is an island? Did you know it?

Do you know the native language of Taiwan? What do people speak in this island? If I say Chinese, what would be your reaction? What would you say? Go along with you, or you ve got to be kidding me?  

If you ask those questions to yourself, you will almost understand how well you know Taiwan!.

Honestly, Western people don’t know Taiwan so well, sometimes they even could confuse Taiwan with Tailand, at least that is situation in Turkey.

I think the reason of this situation is the long distance between territories. Taiwan is a small Island when we compare with the western countries and if the economic power of Taiwan was not exist, less people would be familiar with the name of this island. In the world, Taiwan is known as the tiger of Asia because of its economy. Gross National Wellfare is so high in Taiwan and people live pretty well on the island which is one of the safest countries in the world.

Taiwanese are so honest, especially when they do business. Customer satisfaction is more important than earning money for them. Today, I went to buy shoelace and after looking half an hour for to find a place to buy, ultimately a shop caught my eyes and entered to ask if she sell shoelace. She showed me some products but they were suitable for sneakers, not suit for leather shoes. I told the owner that I want to buy but she said it would be better if I don’t buy it, coz it is not the type I asked. She told me that she could sell the shoelace to me but the matter here is not earning money, it is getting the suitable product you want. I said I want to buy it coz of her honesty and I bought of course.

In Taiwan, the most important and common mean of transportation is scooter. It is estimated that the number of scooters on Island is more than the total population. If you write Taiwan and google it, what you see would be a lot pictures of 101 building and pictures of Taiwanese on scooters. Scooters in traffic cause traffic jam many times. Driving is not so enjoyable in Taiwan because of those motorcycles. And most of foreigners prefer to ride bikes instead of scooters. 

Daan Park Outdoor Amphitheater-a concert in a forest

Last evening, I received a call from a close friend to be informed for an outstanding concert in Daan Park which is located on a huge area in midst of the city and very near to the place I live. I just got off the work when he called me and was very exhausted at that time. I didnt want to walk even one step but that was a great opportunity to listen a gorgeous concert after a long time. So I accepted his kindly invitation and set off immediately to arrive Daan Park Outdoor Amphitheater on time. I didnt want to miss the concert.

I could guess that the concert would be great because I ve been in the same place for another jazz concert last year. The thing you could see there was a peaceful, romantic and friendly enviroment from start to finish of the concert.

Taiwan is one of the most peaceful and secure country in the World and people are so friendly, educated and elite. Taipei city government always includes many cultural and musical activities for its citizens and there is a speacial symphony orchestra belong to Taipei City and they mostly play for the city dwellers. I cant follow their programs most of time but it is nice to have time to be with them when i get an opportunity.

I jumped on my scooter and arrived to the concert place. Concert has just started and you could see the great interest from the sea of faces. I found a place behind the crowd and started to watch and listen performers.

When you overlook to the stage, you could see the conductor of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra standing before the other performers and a foreigner musician from İtalia whose nationality has been announced later on.

During the concert, I couldnt sit in a certain place and enjoying music. It is more enjoyable for me to shoot videos and take photos on the one hand while enjoying concert at the other hand.

I found the stand where the flyer of the concert distributed and the ticket of another concert was being sold. I took a flyer and checked the name of the performers. The trumpeter was Andrea Giuffredi, and the name of Conductor of the TSO was Chih-Chin Yang. Andrea was not able to speak English apart from some basic words like ‘you dont understand, right?’ and so on!.. J and Mr. Yang didnt speak at all!.. The talker was their music, not themselves.

I am going to show you some videos and photos which I took during the concert. I can hear that you say If only I could be there and do not miss this fascinating musical.

Do you know what was another great part of that night? I didnt spend anything, not even a cent. It was totally free to the all citizens and dwellers of the city, without noticing their identity and nationality.

I love Taiwan and Taiwanese. I love to be here live with Taiwanese.

Classical Gas

I thought this was a song belongs to Mark Knopfler. Because there is a video on Youtube shows this piece of music as if it a song of Knopfler and i saw this song thanks to that video for the first time. I have always been listening this classical gas from this video without knowing even its name. But I have wondered its name from the beginning. When i was doing a little research about the name of the song, i figure out that the song belongs to Mason Williams as oppossed to Mark Knopfler. And I have learned the name of this amazing song: Classical Gas. 

I took a glance at the official website of Mason Williams as well and I saw that classical gas is the masterpiece of Williams and he has been known with this song. When he composed it, we were not even born. Thanks God we are listening now. On his website, it has been made a mention of Classical Gas as below and i think it deserves all of compliments and reputation;

It is a guitar piece like no other, 

an anthem for an era, the most influential, most played, most loved instrumental hit of all time. Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Classical Gas with legendary guitarist, Mason Williams!

Let you know a great voice: Victor Deme

What a great song and what an amazing voice!..

Victor Deme is a west African singer from Burkina. It is very difficult get some knowledge about him on the net. It seems that he is world-widely famous but it was like a Chinese torture to make a research about his life and music career on the net!..It was really made me surprise to not find his biography even in English. As i saw on the net, he has given concert even in South Korea! I dont know why but there are very few information about him. It has been given some info about him on wikipedia but it is in French and I couldn't get even a word. What i have done is using google to translate into English and trying to figure out something about him.

what i have understand about his life is that he was an amateur musician but a professional tailor. Tailoring is his family's occupation which has been passing from generation to generation and he learned to sew from his father. Let alone being world-wide, he's probably never thought to be a famous musician even in his country: Burkina Faso.

Here, i would like to add something that the meaning of Burkina Faso is 'the people who love their land'. But I can sense a bit from his voice that Victor Deme does not only love his country Burkina but also he loves all the continent of Africa and his voice cries for all Africa. You can sense it when you hear his voice at the first time.

The aim of this post is making people aware of that talent, especially about the music he is performing. Victor has got his fabulous music talent from his mother. I don't know anything about his mother but as she made Victor love music, she should be a good musician or might love music much more than anything.

Victor's talent has been discovered by a French journalist and a local hip-pop promoter as i learned. (He sings in French by the way.) He is at his age of almost 50 but he still doesn't abstain from pursuing his music career. He's recently been in the United States as for his first time in order to have his second record.

I want to add some video clips to share with the reader of this seldom updated blog. :)

In this video, you can see the good performance of Victor Deme and you can feel the melodies from Africa, even though you may be not able to understand of the language.

Lastly, I can't help to say some further things about that damn popular culture which let many useless people to be famous but keep such great talents in the background.

Deme has been known by many people on globe today but he is not a puppet of popular culture, instead, he is a real musician whose value should be known! Yes, he definitely should be treasured! Ok, I am leaving you with this unique voice.

You know what, as if the guitar cries in his hands and he wipes out its tears using his wizard fingers. I love the way he plays, I love the way he sings and I love the way he acts.

I wish Deme great success and encourage you all to know and listen his masterpieces. He deserve more fans, at least for the sake of Africa.