After emerging, with some difficulty, from nearly a year of extreme overwork, I find myself in nearly the same place as a year ago. Nearly agreed to a work assignment that will eat up the winter (but comes with travel), nearly agreed to joining a committee that nearly killed me last year, and have rejoined […]
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Strawberries in winter
A good article on changing seasons, or rather on unchanging seasons, and on the harms of 24/7 convenience stores. We eat our strawberries, not knowing where they came from or at what cost, but they do taste nice. And if they spoil, we throw them out and buy more. Indeed, the increasingly superficial celebration of […]
Mall aesthetic
Today we decided to go and explore the Camlica mosque, the immense structure built on a hill on the Asian side, dominating that view. It required a ferry to Uskudar and then a metro and then a climb up a hill past a place where we had lunch (kuru fasulye) and up through a large […]
Market day
This morning, or rather early afternoon, the GF and I went off to the Ferikoy organic market, though first to the small restaurant nearby which only serves one meal, breakfast, consisting of freshly baked naan, eggs, honey, cheese, butter and salad, all sourced from their village in Erzincan. It’s a nice breakfast, but it was […]
Movie night
A rare movie night last night – rare for me, as the GF watche something almost every night, while I find it hard to do so. We watched Into the spiderverse, probably the Marvel film I’ve liked best though admittedly that is not the highest bar ever as they just don’t resonate with me. It […]
Murder on the floor of the senate
A good piece by Uzair Younus. Today’s food for despair.
Climb down jump off
Having bashed through an obscene amount of work the last few days, and missed more deadlines than I probably have in years, today was, finally, a quieter day. Well, I say quieter as I did finish an article and then go off with the GF to run a series of errands, most of which had […]
Post office lunch
Strolled down to the post office today, which has been converted into a sort of community space with a low key zero-waste restaurant. Pleasingly, the food was good and it wasn’t too expensive, so I think I will be going back there. Work remains overwhelming, though I’m slowly making my way through it. A few […]
Dipping a toe
I started dipping a toe back in Istanbul life yesterday by going down to the best local coffee followed by a stop at the best local cake/antiques shop which sadly doesn’t have the best coffee otherwise I would be there all the time. For dinner we went to the neighbourhood manti shop in Cihangir, which […]
Back
I flew from London to Istanbul yesterday. It was a very long day for a flight that was less than four hours long. I left in the morning at 9 London time and didn’t reach the flat until 10 Istanbul time. In between I travelled to Gatwick, remembered what a terrible airport it is to […]