blog

Lights, lights, lights

Today we went and ordered most (though not all) of the lights for the flat. The place the GF had discovered seemed to have good quality and was certainly a slick operation, very helpful folks. So we have ordered single and double spots for the side lights, rod-shaped hallway lights, pendants for the kitchen, and […]

Watching history

Watching Afghanistan gives a true sense of history unfolding, even in my lifetime. I was born around the time the Soviets entered Afghanistan. In my earliest memories the war next door was a fact of life and its effects were barely noticed because they just were. Then there are the memories of the Soviets leaving, […]

Bad order

I placed a poor order from the supermarket today. The only good thing in it was the yoghurt and a few sticks of lemongrass which I hope to grow. Other than that, there was a handful of unpromising raspberries, a funny knobbly fruit that cost 20 lira, a half-rotten bok choi, laundry detergent and a […]

Despair

The new IPCC report has been released, and the desire to just roll over and close my eyes and pretend to be asleep till I die is very great. The one cheerful thing today was listening to a podcast about Emmy Noether and while I can’t say I really understood her breakthroughs it was a […]

Horrors returning

Afghanistan falls, bit by bit to the Taliban. What was the point of the past 20 years? Pakistan bears so much guilt which will never be acknowledged or accepted. It was a bad situation, yes, but I can’t believe the decisions made were the right ones for anyone – not Pakistan, not Afghanistan. There is […]

Saturday brunch

We continued our exploration of nice Istanbul neighbourhoods, this time taking the ferry over to Kadikoy (and establishing along the way that the smaller pier has the better and more direct ferries) and walking through to Yeldeğirmeni, which I had just skirted a few weeks ago when I went to get my computer fixed and […]

Again, unexpected

To my surprise, my negotiation was successful and I received an offer very close to what I asked for – in addition to an increased number of working days. So, hurrah! In the evening the GF and I went to a part of Besiktas we had not yet visited, a quiet, trendy bit with a […]

Unexpected

This afternoon I had a call with a potential client to discuss the work and found, to my surprise, it was actually a job interview complete with questions beginning ‘Could you describe a time when…’. Maybe I am more confident than I used to be, or I don’t need the work as much as I […]