title, what title?

It is certain now. I will buy Ps3. The reason is this... The best computer game ever, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will be followed by GTA IV, whose first trailer was released yesterday: The trailer can be downloaded here . The trailer is a real time capture from the actual game, i.e. what you see is what you get. What we understand is the game will be based (partially) in -almost real- New York City, Liberty City. The main charachter sounds Russian. I cannot wait... PS: The music is from Philip Glass' Koyaanisqatsi.

This Norwegian freestyle skier skied down a London tube station, and filmed it all. This has encouraged me to go ahead with my long time plan of skiing down from home in Ankara to Kugulu Park next winter when it snows.

Much effort, and sometimes blood, has gone into efforts of proving the existence of God, without much success. But when it comes to God of Football, there is no doubt, who he is. This picture from 86 World Cup game against Belgium is one of many such proof of existence: This week I gave this picture to my sister to make a poster out of it for my living room, she came up with this great work: Then this morning OnurKa broke me the sad news that D10S was hospitalized after over-indulgence, which is merely an euphonism for eating a lot... I hope D10s recovers soon, or a new wave of atheism is to take a hold of the world...

Besiktas is on the march. The supporters, the players, the technical staff are all eying at the championship... However some are showing their strength out of the field, not on the field. They know who they are. They are the managers of a club, who somehow managed to avoid a fine after their supporters stabbed each other (for the second time this season), swore continuously... For a similar stabbing incident, which was not organized, whereas this time it was their supporters clubs who were fighting over free tickets and money, Besiktas had a 3 game closure penalty. Last week we had to play in front of emty seats, after 52 seconds of swearing the game before... I had lost faith in justice a long time ago. Acts of injustice makes us only stronger. And to those who are behind this injustice we say: Stultum Est Timere Quod Vitare Non Potes* * It is stupid to be afraid of that which you cannot avoid , Cicero

The weather's perfect, spring is here. I feel good. While sifting through the Mp3's i copied from my sister , I came across a perfect song for my mood from way back... The lyrics should cheer up Nuri , who is celebrating his official Birthday today: " But we are young, we run green, Keep our teeth, nice and clean, See our friends, see the sights, feel alright,"

Spent the Monday home. Devoted the the whole day (well almost the whole, I woke up at 2pm) to spring clean-up. I did not know my apartment could house so much garbage without me knowing. Anyway I found some time to surf the web for interesting music news. I wanna share two... Queen is my first musical obsession, to whom I owe a great deal for the appreciation for multi-layered polyphonic music I grew by listening to them, and helped me appreciating music across the spectrum. Dubbed the first "Stadium Rock"ers, their stage performances had always been great. More than their show on the stage, thanks to flamboyance of Freddie Mercury, they distinguished themselves by getting through to the guy sitting on the last row. People could relate to Queen, composed of the only true male rock diva, the scientist turned guitarist Brian May, the true rocker Roger Taylor and the shy guy on the street John Deacon who plays most of his sets facing Roger Taylor... Their brilliance on stage pea...

It's the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the founding agreement which lead to what is now known as the European Union. Leaving the sour -layed on ice would be more appropriate actually- relationships between Turkey and EU, and the European Mid-Age crisis news on the media I celebrated EU's birthday with a great organization.The presidency of EU, which alternated every 6 months, is at Germany's hand's (next is Slovenia). The celebrations take place in Berlin, where the Federal Government organized the European Club Night , where DJ's and bands from 20 countries played on 30 or so Berlin clubs. All accessible with a single ticket. We visited 4 clubs, but spent most time in Oxymoron (inside Hakescher Höfe) where a Finnish DJ played one of the most entertaining sets I've heard. When I learned that it was time to switch to the Daylight Savings Time, I was very excited that we could party for an extra hour. Unfortunately, it was the other way around, and I am ...

My computer was giving me the blue-screen pretty often lately. After the blue-screen Windows was giving me the extremely informative problem messages (Problem at 0xaddf50329923092302, yes I can speak machine language). I clicked more info button for a change. I was directed to a web-page which told me that the problem was due to an out-of-date IBM application running on my computer and I could solve it if I download an update. What a wonderful surprise. Windows was being user friendly. So I did what I was told to do. For some reason, during the install phase the installer asked me to run the Windows defragmenter. For those who don't speak Geekish defragmeter is a hard-disk re-organizer. Windows does not store the parts of a single application next to each other on the hard disk. So when the an application runs, the hard-disk reader has to jump from one position on the hard-disk to another, which slows the system. Defragmenter tries to put the parts of applications close on the ha...

Seckin, a.k.a Diego , pictured above enjoying a sweet nap in U-Bahnhof Gesundbrunnen, was suffering from abdominal hernia. He had an operation this morning. I've called him today after his operation this morning. The operation was successful and he is doing fine. I wish him a quick recovery.

I am not an avid house-furnisher. As a matter of fact I bought the furnitures for my apartment with my dad, and organized them with my mom. Various ornaments in the apartment are either presents or stuff that my mum brought with her when she came to visit. Everything was fine until I came back from Turkey after the New Years break. I had not noticed how empty my walls were until I was back home in Turkey. It took another 3 months for me to take action, but I am proud of the result. What I did was to download the poster from Battlestar Galactica Website, get a print out on a A1 Paper and buy a passing frame from Ikea. Here is the result: Last weekend was a great sporting weekend for me. I haven't compiled a statistics, but the number of weekends, on which Ferrari won a GP and Besiktas won, is not very large. This weekend was in this sense a nice exception. Kimi Raikkonen drove a commanding race leading from start to finish. It was obvious that Ferrari was a a good .5 seconds fast...

Fourth day was marked by the struggle between clouds and the sun. I had hoped I could finish up the glaciers in Val Thorens. However weather kept me from doing it, there was no snow, but the wind was amazing in high altidutes. That's why they closed the connection to Val Thorens. I decided to venture up the south slopes of Meribel. There are not many slopes on the south side, but the slopes are long and very demanding: I also recorded the video below. Next year I will find a way to attach the video camera to my helmet securely so that I can shoot more of this videos, for those awful moments during summer when my craving for skiing peaks. Fifth day was extremely windy. The cable cars were shaking in the middle of the air giving most of the ladies in the cars the creeps. I used this opportunity, I hate crowded slopes, to ski in Courchavel . Courchavel is the the rich part of the valley which is obvious when you start skiing on the well-groomed slopes. Courchavel 1850 (which i...

Visiting friends, a stint at Cebit 07 kept me from posting for a long time. It's been good in a sense, now I have lot's of things to write about. I'll start with finishing up my Meribel trip first. I've had written about my arrival and the first skiing day. I'll wrap up my skiing experience today, and end it tomorrow with general comments and tips to those who might go to the Three Valleys (something I strongly recommend!) Second day started equally snowy as the first one. My parents had gathered their strength and I guided them during the morning. We stayed in Meribel, which is actually composed of 3 villages. Meribel Village which is the original mountain village which the British entrepreneur Peter Lindsay visited in the 30s. It is very small and relatively unconnected to the slopes. Meribel (les Allues) is the main village which is filled with shops, restaurants, bars and loud tourists that come with it. For those Turkish skiers, it has the mood of Uludag, alb...

The guys at last.fm made me smile once again. Yeah, they're British.

I've been quite busy this weekend. Seckin (a.k.a Diego ) and Memo Yagli (a.k.a Yagli ) visited me. It was a weekend busy with partying, sightseeing and football. I put some pictures on my flickr . I will be in Cebit07 from Wednesday to Friday and everything is very busy. I could not finish my France Report, and also want to write about our weekend. I hope I will find some time during CeBit. Until then I want to share a great personal musical discovery I've made recently. Japanese culture is taking a grip of me. Music scene is unbelievable. Electro-Post-Rock project World's End Girlfriend is one of them:

The situation in Cyprus has been a stalemate lately. The course of the things which were leading to a possible unification of the island shattered 2004, when the Greek Cypriots rejected and the Turkish Cypriots accepted an UN-Endorsed deal based on a two state federation with a loose central government. Few days later, the Republic of Cyprus, which the Greek Cypriots claim to represent the whole island -something the Turkish side denies vehemently- joined the European Union. The stand of two sides are up to today were: The Turkish Cypriots claim that the Greek-initiated coup which lead to the Turkish military intervention obsoleted the Cyprus Republic, and a new one should be founded in order to join the European Union. They feel mistreated by the European Union and the international community, for their vote for unification -something of a miracle in a country literally run by the Turkish bureaucracy and military- being left without an answer. They believe that the Greek Cypriot side ...

I will post some pics and comments on the best skiing vacation I've ever had the coming days. This is the first part. I started early (9:20) in Berlin Tegel Airport (TXL) and arrived at Lyon St. Exupéry Airport (LYS) at 13:00 with a stopover at Munich Franz Josef Strauss International Airport (MUC) (I am interested in Airports. I think they are great indicators of the well-being as well as philosophy of their respective countries and cities , through their various property from their architecture to little details such as their toilets to ornaments. Unfortunately my collection of pictures of the airports I've been to were erased with my hard disk burned recently.) Berlin Tegel is very 70's style airport, with the one-time favorite circular format, which does not allow any extensions. Although very practical and effective in terms of boarding and public transport, it is ending its life as an international airport as it leaves its way for Berlin Brandenburg Airport to be ...

OnurKA 'ya sabah sabah kendime getiren bu blog girdisi icin tesekkur ederim. Modern Sabahlar ekibine de Ankara Misket Havasi'ni Turk muzik dunyasinda hakettigi yere getirmek icin attigi bu adimdan dolayi kutlarim. Mmmmmh... Modern Sabahlar!

My favorite author of all time, and arguably one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Gabriel Garcia Marquez turned 80 today. 2007 is also remarkably 40th anniversary of his masterpiece 100 Years of Solitude, a book where he writes the history of the human civilization while masterfully ornamenting the story with magical happenings like a beautiful girl who simply is taken back to heaven because of their beauty, or a drought lasting 8 years, and 25th anniversary of his Nobel Literature prize. A Colombian friend once told me a TV interview of the master where he likened his writings to cooking a soup of words, stirring the soup and tasting it and carefully adding words to reach the correct taste. It is exactly how I felt about his books, his words inspire complex tastes in my body... From his stories such as "Nabo, the Man Who Made the Angels Wait"- which tells of a black boy who refuses to die to sing- "Blacaman the Good, the Vendor of Miracles" - t...

After 6 days of skiing (9:30 -17:30), sleeping (18:00-20:00), eating tremendous food (20:00-22:00) and sleeping again (22:00-09:30) on the Three Valleys, visiting Lyon and meeting my old friend Saba (a.k.a Sabo, Sabatini Jabar, Sabahattin Dizdar) and watching the Galatasaray derby and celebrating I came back home to Berlin yesterday night. Overall, I can say it was the best skiing vacation I've ever been to. The snow was excellent, the slopes were challenging, my skis were in great shape, the Savoyarde food (the food from Savoy Region, where the Three Valleys is located) was simply masterpiece-grade, Besiktas won, Lyon was beautiful under the early spring weather, and for those worried friends like Umut (a.ka. Imit) I was not injured... Apart from the unpleasant experience of smelling the foul odor coming from my fridge which I forgot to empty out before leaving, everything has been great. I will post a day-by-day summary of my vacation in the coming days. Until then, I uploaded fe...