home alone

finally back home. i arrived yesterday morning at 9:30, a mere 13h buss ride... after which i waited 15min fr the free service bus to leave - the bus terminals for arriving busses are out of the city in the middle of the nowhere. then, the ride home was almost an hour. and then i had a sleep a bit since the night bus is not the most comfy place to nap. i think im donee with the bus traveling. thy mke it as nice as possible, with free drinks and internet, but its just slow and impossible to sleep in. end of story. and there is a 30min break every 4 hours, for the driver mostly think.

so anyway, i got a confirmation that my class for the evening was cancelled, because of the national holiday/bayram. which was to be expected, however couldnt be confirmed until the day of the class. because this is turkey. so, i had a photoshoot scheduled with kübra, its for a book cover project i was asked to work for. Fethi was kind enough to let me borrow the studio of magazine 46 for that purpose. we did the shoot and then later went out for exactly 2 drinks.


the trip was good i think if we forget about the bus trips. it was surprisingly warm in the south, 26-28 degrees. mmmm. and all the way i played with my new phone. its provided many nice surprises and only a couple downers, of which one is major though. and thats not the phones fault but my current location... and the android market i already bitched about...fuuuuck. im STILL battling to get over this. but it seems to be that if one wants to do anything to the phone, a minor tweak or so, they better be a coder. just like Arttu said. its just not ready yet. you can do anything if youre a programmer, but the rest, they better just push the buttons that are provided and be happy. i dont have much patience left when it comes to this android market thing so if it isnt solved soon, think i will indeed get another Wildfire from Finland and sell this. even then, there are a few small isues which apps seem to be a solution to, so the "not ready" critique by Arttu still stands, however, there is a lot of good in this phone. but there was plenty of good in E71 as well. i had all my important actions under the main buttons, as shortcuts, like searching for wifis... in Wildfire i needed to install an app to get a quick shorthcut to all wifis, open and protected. and im still fighting to make it work like E71 with as little effort. however there are other plusses in the wifi functions alone, so. im still looking for a simple, easy to use alarm-clock though. i want to set up alarms quickly and effortlessly.

in Mersin i met the in-laws. doctors parents live in a 3 store house in a sub urb area slighly outside the city center. there are tangerine trees all around and sheep hanging out nearby. roof terrace was a bliss when we grilled some bayram-slaughtered meat. the 2 brothers were also there, and some relatives were visiting daily, as is common during bayram. only the older brother spoke a few words of english, so i wasnt communicating much with anyone. still, it was fine. i was there for just a short while anyway. Mersin is "small town" of 2m people, although i think the actual city area is perhaps just 1m. theres skyscrapers, arabic style shops on streets and plenty of arabic tourists, modern shopping centers and a really nice beach boulevard. and plam trees everywhere. quite nice for tourists i presume. i think i only saw handful of women, 3 or so, wearing scarves...so i conclude Mersin is not very religious...

Alanya then, very touristic. finnish and swedish flags everywhere. hard to tell if i was at the canary islands or turkey. lots of germans and english speaking staff everywhere. everything was closed because of the bayram so it was a bit quiet except for all the shops selling bling-bling fake D&G bags, jeans and sweaters etc... price level was a little higher, because of the tourists i guess, so that was a minus.

the hotel was nice, all inclusive with a pool, and super comfy bed. some pics follow;







now im alone in Istanbul and waiting for doctor to return on monday. i have some work to do with the photos i took yesterday so thats fine. and i never minded being alone. but of course once you get used to someone being there... :)

on the sidenote, neither Canon nor windows 7 website em to have drivers for Canon 5D -> Windows 7. this is PATHETIC.