Post Greek "Era," Pre Turkey "Epoch"
Man, it's tougher than I thought keeping up with a post. Excuse my tardiness on my post. First of all, I've posted all pictures from my trip at...
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/evindemirel/my_photos
Drink deeply of this cup of optical delight!
My Greek trip is over and I loved it. The time flew by and everybody was quite congenial. Actually, I've never seen such a large-group dynamic on a trip before -- everybody (20students) was friends with everybody. No exaggeration. Up to the very end, we wouldn't go two days in which everyone didn't gather for a meal together.
Right now, I'm in a kind of two-week limbo between this last trip and my time in Turkey working for my dad. Actually, what I look forward to most now that my trip is over is reading-time. I've been putting off a lot of fiction-reading the last few years b/c I've so eggheadishly pursued academic matters. But now -- now all my academic matters are over. I'm in Rodos right now and will explore it for a couple of days and then skip over to Marmaris in Turkey. I'll probably stay there another few days and then I'll go to the small town I'll stay in the next few months. I think it's spelled Seregerme. It'll be weird because my dad and bro-bro may not show up until July 4-5, so I'll be all by myself (with my dad's underling/helper as my "guide") for maybe over a week. I have a Berlitz Turkish phrase book and I've been working a little everyday with it. I may go visit Cappadocia. Concerning my anticipation of reading, I have four books that I'm going to tear into with the rabidity of a homeless, yet well-educated, street-dog --
1) The Selected Works of Samuel Johnson. Yeah, that's the guy who compiled the first English dictionary in the mid-1700s. He was a lot of things, one of which was a column-writing moral critic, which is pretty anachronistic. I quotes Latin authors before each of his pieces, which is awesome, and his prose is complicated, verbose, and profound. His writing bespeaks of a mind that has dealt with much Latin translation.
2) Stephen King's Different Seasons. Of the four short stories in this compilation, three became movies -- Shawhank Redemption, Stand by Me (The Body), and Apt Pupil. I've never read King before, but now I know why he's the king. He makes horror so interesting because he butresses gory episodes with a ceaseless pobing into the psyche. Reading horror is so different for me, and I am drawn to the exotic. I'm normally attuned to the light, whimsical side of things, yet this man -- he turns over the damp, shaded rocks and doesn't flinch at what crawls out. I was especially impressed with "The Body," which is one of the most beautifully written, and achingly authentic, stories I've ever read -- it's as if King was writing this semi-autobiographical narrative with not his hands, but his heart.
3) The Great Gatsby. I read it in high school and feel it's time for another go around. I've yet to read a book again that I had to read in high school and I feel I should do more of this.
4) The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. My friend, David Mane, raved about this book to me many years ago but I never finished it. I'm takin' no prisoners this time around though. This one, The Brothers Karamazov, and Moby Dick are three epics I intend to tackle in the next couple of years.
Oh, my friend Z-Murder gave me some seriously funny "bad English" quotes that I have to share you --
"My examples come from Hong Kong cinema where - due to fears of piracy - studios farm out their subtitling needs to high schoolers, providing them with an audio tape rather than the video of the movie. Some examples:"Gun wounds again?"
"I'll fire aimlessly if you don't come out."
"Beat him out of recognizable shape!"
"Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep."
"I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way!"
"Greetings, large person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some ass of the giant lizard person"
(these are due to my professor, David Bordwell, and THE INTERNET)
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/evindemirel/my_photos
Drink deeply of this cup of optical delight!
My Greek trip is over and I loved it. The time flew by and everybody was quite congenial. Actually, I've never seen such a large-group dynamic on a trip before -- everybody (20students) was friends with everybody. No exaggeration. Up to the very end, we wouldn't go two days in which everyone didn't gather for a meal together.
Right now, I'm in a kind of two-week limbo between this last trip and my time in Turkey working for my dad. Actually, what I look forward to most now that my trip is over is reading-time. I've been putting off a lot of fiction-reading the last few years b/c I've so eggheadishly pursued academic matters. But now -- now all my academic matters are over. I'm in Rodos right now and will explore it for a couple of days and then skip over to Marmaris in Turkey. I'll probably stay there another few days and then I'll go to the small town I'll stay in the next few months. I think it's spelled Seregerme. It'll be weird because my dad and bro-bro may not show up until July 4-5, so I'll be all by myself (with my dad's underling/helper as my "guide") for maybe over a week. I have a Berlitz Turkish phrase book and I've been working a little everyday with it. I may go visit Cappadocia. Concerning my anticipation of reading, I have four books that I'm going to tear into with the rabidity of a homeless, yet well-educated, street-dog --
1) The Selected Works of Samuel Johnson. Yeah, that's the guy who compiled the first English dictionary in the mid-1700s. He was a lot of things, one of which was a column-writing moral critic, which is pretty anachronistic. I quotes Latin authors before each of his pieces, which is awesome, and his prose is complicated, verbose, and profound. His writing bespeaks of a mind that has dealt with much Latin translation.
2) Stephen King's Different Seasons. Of the four short stories in this compilation, three became movies -- Shawhank Redemption, Stand by Me (The Body), and Apt Pupil. I've never read King before, but now I know why he's the king. He makes horror so interesting because he butresses gory episodes with a ceaseless pobing into the psyche. Reading horror is so different for me, and I am drawn to the exotic. I'm normally attuned to the light, whimsical side of things, yet this man -- he turns over the damp, shaded rocks and doesn't flinch at what crawls out. I was especially impressed with "The Body," which is one of the most beautifully written, and achingly authentic, stories I've ever read -- it's as if King was writing this semi-autobiographical narrative with not his hands, but his heart.
3) The Great Gatsby. I read it in high school and feel it's time for another go around. I've yet to read a book again that I had to read in high school and I feel I should do more of this.
4) The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. My friend, David Mane, raved about this book to me many years ago but I never finished it. I'm takin' no prisoners this time around though. This one, The Brothers Karamazov, and Moby Dick are three epics I intend to tackle in the next couple of years.
Oh, my friend Z-Murder gave me some seriously funny "bad English" quotes that I have to share you --
"My examples come from Hong Kong cinema where - due to fears of piracy - studios farm out their subtitling needs to high schoolers, providing them with an audio tape rather than the video of the movie. Some examples:"Gun wounds again?"
"I'll fire aimlessly if you don't come out."
"Beat him out of recognizable shape!"
"Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep."
"I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way!"
"Greetings, large person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some ass of the giant lizard person"
(these are due to my professor, David Bordwell, and THE INTERNET)
posted by Evin Demirel at 8:11 AM
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