September 25, 2017

trip down memory lane

Istanbul trip done. certainly a first world prob but it made me so tired... its the conundrum of wanting to see all my friends but that requires scheduling and makes things busy and exhausting. anyway, met friends, old neighbors, ate some nice foods and enjoyed the sceneries and weather. kadiköy was pretty much the way we left it, it was lovely to be back. Arttu also joined us for 5 days, its not just us who missed istanbul :D

our our home has become a  studio for dance, music etc. i bet the landlady gets much better rent from a business, too.

late high cholesterol lunch with Cansu

 Kadiköy cats = love




the night life of kadiköy... sitting on the terrace at 10pm when its still 25C at least. loooovely. for Arttu's visit, we had an airbnb booked on this street.




turkish breakfast an Zeytin

bought a few nail polishes from istanbul...  


i was surprised the mail depot was open on sunday, i had a note from Royal Mail to pick up a package so i went to get it. my usual mail man was there behind the desk, so he said he knows me, i dont need to show ID. reminded me of turkey, the friendliness. in istanbul, one of my favorite things was the neighboring shops and going and saying hello, and it warmed my heart how excited they were to see me/us. asking how life in 'ingiltere' is and so forth. i missed those people a lot.

istanbul (sultanahmet in the bg) from our friends place. 



a while ago me and doctor were celebrating our month-versary at a nearby turkish-middle eastern restaurant.

at our local Ethiopian restaurant with Can when he visited.



 when not eating out, i sometimes enjoy the delicacies prepared by our in-house chef, doctor. he just whipped this up the other day when i was crying for a snack. he is easy to love :)
i figured i should have proper rain boots ie wellingtons if i live in London. these fit the description well. 

 yesterday i had an interesting luncheon with some british ladies. ive been a member of this fb group for maybe 2 years now, it's for (loosely described) alternative women, most of who live in the UK. occasionally some arrange local meetings so i actually stepped up and put together a London meetup. i would say it was a success. but also, being surrpunded by brits only, it was a culture shock, when the discussion goes into school memories and other local things, and keeping alone with accents alone is hard... not to mention local things you just dont know about...  well, it was interesting. overall very positive. 


Imperial War Museum was surprisingly good. i am not really into the subject, not very interested in history or fighter jets...but the museum had come up highly recommended and i wanted to go somewhere with Niina. the exhibitions we saw (WW1 and Holocaust) were both very 'artsy' and imaginative. WW1 had well done video visuals, and both exhibitions were full of stories of invidual people, civilians mostly. if u dont become a pacifist by visiting this museum, i dunno whats wrong. so while good, it was also quite depressing, no surprises there.

interesting article on Cuba's really good hurricane preparedness in Jacobin.

going to see The National tonight with Jessica's bf Ollie. 

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