Easter

Is it Easter this weekend? I had no idea.

Have some form of egg for me. Preferably not one of the big molded milk chocolate ones, but something in the dark chocolate ouvre. Or some mini-eggs, I love me some mini-eggs. Or oo, one of those birds nest cakes with mini-eggs on top! I love those.

Ps this utterly redundant post was brought to you courtesy of the fact I just noticed that I have a nice symmetrical record of 4 posts a month, and my vague even-numbers-only! peccadillo kicked in sufficiently to not want to spoil it.

General update

I was going to say 'Random' then, but after the overuse of the word in the early 2000s by yoof (and me) it still leaves a slightly bad taste in the mouth, and I couldn't bring myself to. Despite the fact that what follows is...assorted, various, multifaceted, unconnected, um ahh rrrrraaandom.

I went to a Greek class the other day. (Which strikes me as a bit of a distraction from my primary purpose of learning the language of, yanno, the country I actually find myself in.) See, there's this community group jobby on the island that runs voluntary courses for those who want it. I've volunteered myself as their English teacher, but thought for shits and giggles I'd go along to the Greek. IT'S WEIRD. Plus, despite being all snotty and 'yes I know the letters because I used them in science', completely lost, because everything's pronounced different and anyway, every time you glue letters together you get a different sound. Six different two letter combinations to make the sound 'ee', for instance, which is just unnecessary if you ask me.

So screw that for a game of tin soldiers. Anyway, I will still be giving English classes. Had my first lesson yesterday, which was a bit of a farce as only two people turned up because big Istanbul derby match was on. (Imagine Arsenal/Spurs, except with either one of them in with an actual shot of winning the league.) (Ha! Gooner baiting. Ha!) But reasonably enjoyable nonetheless - corrupting my charges into horrible bastardised London English with no discernible 'r' sound. Aces.

Anyway, should be good. I don't get paid, but am doing it out of the goodness of my heart [ah ha ha hollow laughter of course bloody not] because it would be good cv points in the increasingly likely situation that I can't get accountancy work (have sent, like, a *gazillion* applications and heard nowt) and end up teaching english. Gah.

Anyway, whatever. Piccies!

The sun has finally put its hat on here THANK FUCK, and so it's all looking rather nice. The following from wander round the island:

Sun dappled wotsit, With Lampost

Greek cemetery (what's with the greek theme all of a sudden. ?)

Generic Heybeli prettiness

And some from house and home:

When I was working at Southwark, they had this jargon about 'new ways of working'. Basically seemed to boil down to banishing you home and using your own heating and electricity instead of theirs during the day. Anyway, this is S's version - she was bored of spending her whole time on the computer indoors. So...

Then it got cold, so she rearranged. Poor little computer, look at it all left out in the dark.

Here is some fish being barbequed, having been recently bought (note - BOUGHT not SOURCED. Because that is the apt and sensible word for when you, like, *buy* shit.) flipping and jumping from the local fishmonger. Not at all unusual our end, but these, THESE, I gutted myself. Ha! Ra, you'd be proud of me - although I'm sure the sainsbury's techniques involved more in the way of knives and hygiene, and less in the way of ripping innards out with bare hands. Badly.

And finally, oh go on then, a nice hazy sunny unfocussed "oo lookee at the skyline!" Istanbul one. (I'm boring myself now with these ones, and so promise to stop soon. But lookee!)

Drunk and disorderly

Saturday just gone there was a mini-party at one of S's friends house. Not a party really, just a few of us, and a lot of meze and raki. Early on, one of them asked me what I thought of the turkish, what my impressions so far was. I trotted out some cliched tripe about how everybody is different, about how you can't judge a nation by dint of the few people you've met, generalisations are unfair, yada yada blah blah bore.

After that we proceeded to down something like a bottle of raki each, chaos ensued, two days later I've just made it through the resultant mansized hangover - and I'm about ready to go back on that. Here then is what I think of the turkish: like the british they can go a bit bleeding bonkers upon drinking too much; unlike the british they don't seem to have developed coping mechanisms for the morning after.

You see, after a mostly pleasant time, the evening had veered off into drunken idiocy territory. Words were said, hissy fits were had(*), injuries of the beery nature were sustained, combatants were held apart and counselled to "Leave it Gary, it's not worf it!"(**).

(*) and for once it wasn't by me. Hurrah!

(**) this may not have been the exact wording used.

So when I woke up the next day, I was thinking to myself blimey, what a night - but to be honest was giggling somewhat. It was kinda funny, actually, the amateur dramatics included. But bloody hell, the others would Not Shut Up about it. Whose fault was it that the badness occurred, who started it, what could've happened, and so on and so forth until my head exploded.

I couldn't understand it - we were all ok, all alive and in one piece, a few bruises to remember the night by maybe but nothing to write home about. The worst thing I thought about the night was that someone lost their bag - but it turns out the next day that she had found it again. So, you know, jobs a good 'un.

But this attitude not shared by my friends, who were all varying degrees of distraught. The fighting had admittedly started over a particularly petty issue (although personally I suspect A Girl is actually behind it somewhere...), so I suppose a bit of "did it really kick off over that?!" chat is to be expected. But really I couldn't understand why they couldn't just chalk this one up to the party gods, and forget about it.

On reflection however I'm wondering (***) if this is just a British habit, and when you think about it, not a very nice one. That anything can happen when you're drinking and it doesn't matter, it's all explained away by saying 'we were drunk'. I don't know, what do you think this attitude is - useful pragmatism or unhealthy denial?

*** I'm writing like Sex and the City, aren't I? How vile, I do apologise.

Perhaps a teenagerhood spent chucking yourself and your friends down the stairs in sleeping bags and a motorcycle helmet isn't, as I've always thought, a natural and good piece of harmless fun, but a mark of dysfunction.

Nah, bollocks, that time *was* funny. But you take my point?

Anyway, whatever. This post is getting increasingly introspective and tedious, so I'll stop now, and show you a photo of the kebab I had to deal with the hangover instead. (Continuing my fine tradition of *literally* telling you what I had for tea last night.)

Quickie don't get excited. Like you would.

You know I said there were a limited number of ways that butter could be packaged?

Well, apparently not:

I am very pleased with this. It looks like a cross between the simpsons aliens, and a nice buttery popsicle*.

And no, I haven't got a job yet. TAKING PHOTOS OF BUTTER IS *VERY* IMPORTANT, AND CLEARLY TAKES PRECEDENCE!

*I am not american. I have only the vaguest conception of what a popsicle is. However, it seems to me that the appropriate style when blogging is to use only american pop-culture references. This is a sad state of affairs which I must correct post haste. Right, Grange Hill, egg and chips twice, middle order batting collapses, Jeremy Paxman, Accrington Stanley, who are they?! Ah, much better now...