This Friday at 5:30, I’ll be flying to Istanbul.
Each time I book a flight to go home, the same thing happens: suddenly I’m incredibly homesick and the date of my flight can’t arrive soon enough. I start calling all my childhood friends to make sure they put aside time to meet with me. I call my family even more often than we already talk and I think of nothing besides being there.
My family is one of the most precious things in my life. In fact them and Jake might be it for me. The rest doesn’t really matter. Of course I have close friends whom I cherish and people that have and still do significantly affect my life, but my family and Jake are the list of people for whom I’d die. (or at least alter my life significantly to fit with their needs)
So why do I live so far away from a family I adore, you may ask? And that’s a complicated question that would take so much more patience than a regular human’s limit. Let’s just say life here is more in line with the person I am and I realized long ago that without being happy yourself, you cannot spread happiness onto others. My family, although they miss me terribly, completely understands and is even happy for me as they can see the positive effects America has had on me.
Of course this doesn’t stop from making my choice to live an ocean away any easier. Each time I speak with my sister and she tells me of another change in my nephews something inside me starts telling me what a mistake I’ve made and how I’m missing some of the greatest moments of my family. Same feelings emerge on each birthday, New Years, mother’s day, father’s day, etc.
Don’t even get me started on my fears of not being there for the death of a family member should one occur. (Hopefully no time soon, or, even, ever.)
Yet I continue to live here. I continue to believe in my choice. I continue to travel back and forth every three months to show myself that I can still be an active part of my family and live miles and miles away.
In Japanese there are three common directional verbs: ikimasu (to go), kimasu (to come), and kaerimasu(to return). When you go to work and are coming back home, they use “kaerimasu” since you’re returning to your home. They also use kaerimasu if you’re returning home from a vacation. Last week in my class, I told my Japanese teacher that I was “ikimasu” home. And she said that I was supposed to use “kaerimasu” and I objected saying that then I couldn’t use “kaerimasu” for New York, which really is my home. She said I can use it in both cases, which would sound like “I am returning to Istanbul for ten days and then I shall return to New York.” Sounds funny in English but in Japanese it implies that both locations are my home. I love that the language will allow me to represent my true feelings about both locations.
Because as much as New York City is my home, Istanbul will never stop being my home.
Previously? RIP DNA.
“Life is wasted on the living.” – Douglas Noel Adams
I first came to know about Douglas Adams through a Fast Company article. His firm and ideas seemed so outstanding and fascinating that I put his novel on hold in the library. I am not and never have been much of a science fiction writer, but TheHitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy made me laugh from the first paragraph. I went on to read the rest of the five-part trilogy and even some others. I found his writing refreshing and hilarious and I wish I were half as creative as he is.
Or I should say “was” since Douglas Adams passed away yesterday, at 49, from a heart attack.
I’ve often wondered whether I’d like to meet my favorite writers. I read pretty much non-stop and have a long list of favorite authors. And Douglas Adams is definitely my favorite science-fiction writer, assuming I can categorize his work as such.
On the whole, I tend to like character-driven novels, which must be why I like the works of Anne Tyler, Salinger and Nick Hornby. The combinations of unforgettable characters and interesting plots like with John Irving or Charles Dickens are even more rewarding. And then there are the classics like Little Prince, lovingly provided by Antione deSaint Exupery. There are novels that make me think like Fahrenheit 451 or The Fountainhead. And writers like David Sedaris who makes me laugh and Harper Lee who makes me cry. There also are the nonfiction writers like Feynman who show me the wonders of the world in which we live.
All of these writers, and many more, touch my life regularly. They give me glimpses of their thoughts, knowledge and imagination. This must be why it’s common to be asked which writer you’d like to meet. Douglas Adams definitely was someone I’d love to have met. It seems he was really unique and I think he would have inspired me. I don’t feel that way about Salinger or Dickens though I adore their novels. Feynman sounds like another amazing human being, someone so incredibly fascinated with the magic of science, who loved his wife passionately and played the bongos for fun is definitely worth meeting.
Douglas Adams’s death made me realize that I need to be more active in going to my favorite writers’ events. I want to attend readings and find out more about the people behind the novels. It also made me want to go back to writing my own novel.
So long and thanks for all the novels, DNA, I hope you have your towel with you.
Who are your favorite writers? And which ones would you like to meet?
Previously? Out There.
If it’s not perfect, it’s worthless.
If you don’t completely know what you’re talking about, don’t even start talking.
Being quiet is better than being wrong.
Today, a teammate and I spent quite some time talking about the importance of voicing an opinion. It would be fair to say that he subscribes to the above beliefs. He generally doesn’t offer an opinion on matters unless he feels confident that he knows what he’s talking about. Unless he’s fully grasped the concept, he’s unwilling to take the risk of being incorrect.
As I started explaining to him that when learning something new, none of us know all there is to know about something but we just give it a try, he said, “You mean you don’t know what you’re talking about in all those meetings?” I laughed.
I don’t. I really don’t. I have some understanding of what we’re trying to do, I have a good idea of what our goals are but I’m not as familiar with the tools as I’d like to be. None of this, however, is stopping me from trying. I come up with ideas, I present suggestions, I offer my perspective. I’m not saying I make it all up. I have thought about the issue at length, but I don’t know all there is to know about it and I am making certain assumptions that might prove to be incorrect.
I guess it all boils down to the fact that I’m not scared of being wrong. I think it’s much better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all. I told him it’s like a kid trying to speak in full sentences before he can say the words correctly. If the kid was too scared to say the word incorrectly, he might never learn how to talk. Same goes for walking and most everything else we learn in life.
Sometimes you plunge into the black hole before you can discover the beauties that lie within. I also told him that for every project to become reality, someone has to make the call, the decisions. Often times, the person thinks their idea will work well but they don’t actually know it. If a team member is never willing to make the call cause they’re unsure of the likeliness of success, the project would never conclude. Life is full of uncertainty. It’s not perfect and an amazing number of people don’t know what they’re talking about.
But that’s okay.
You don’t need to know everything to have an opinion. As long as you’re willing to admit the possibility of your being wrong, I don’t think people get penalized for trying. I also think that you need to put yourself out there before you can reap the rewards of an effort. Sitting in your shell and not committing to anything might be comfy and cozy, but it won’t let you progress.
For me, one of the most important things in life is self-progress. So I put myself out there over and over again. I fail, I get hurt, I get mad, I get disappointed. And I pick myself up and do it all over again.
And in those rare times when I succeed, the feeling is beyond words.
What do you think?
Previously? Airplanes and Strangers.
The summer of 1990, my friends and I took a trip to Israel. We traveled all over the country, spending a few nights in each major city. A few weeks into the trip, we spent the night at a youth hostel right by the Masada. We were to climb the mountain early in the morning, before it got unbearably hot.
As we chitchatted in the yard of the hostel, a group of Americans joined our conversation. At 15, I already knew that I wanted to attend college in the United States and I also knew that I wanted to study computer science. As I told one of the American strangers about my life goals and dreams, he said, “If you want to study computers, you should go to Carnegie Mellon.”
I had never heard of CMU, so I ran back to my little room and scribbled the name of the university in my diary. After I returned back to Istanbul, I did some research and found out that CMU was indeed quite a well-regarded computer science college. I even flew halfway across the world to visit the campus and fell in love with it. So I spent the next few months working, praying, and begging to get in.
And I did.
The winter of 1996, a few months before I graduated college, I cut my Christmas break early and flew back from Turkey to New York. In New York, I changed planes to reach my final destination, Boston. That winter happened to be a particularly bad one so our flight sat on the ground for quite some time and we were stuck inside the plane. I’d already been flying for twelve hours so to say that I was slightly anxious to get there wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
I was thoroughly bored and trying to stay awake, so I started chatting with the gentleman seated next to me. I truly can’t remember how the subject matter came up but we started talking about programming. I started talking about interviewing. He asked me if I’d ever heard of a specific firm and I said, “Sure. They recruit heavily at CMU. They’re mostly looking for Cobol programmers, though.” We started discussing the details of several different programming languages. Our plane was still sitting on the ground.
After an hour or so, the gentleman took out his business card and handed it over to me. Of course, he worked at the firm I’d just dissed and he was a Vice President. He got my email address and asked me to come down to New Jersey for an interview. Which I did, and after presenting me a book on Cobol, he offered me a job.
And I took it. (Actually I didn’t, but wouldn’t my story be neater if I had?)
I’ve had many incredible coincidences, random strangers who completely changed my life.
Sometimes life works in magical ways.
And if you’re sitting on a plane, make sure to talk to the person next to you.
Previously? Crappy Men.
Dura è la stella mia, maggior durezza
è quella del mio conte: egli mi fugge,
i’ seguo lui; altri per me si strugge,
i’ non posso mirar altra bellezza.
Odio chi m’ama, ed amo chi mi sprezza;
verso chi m’è umile il mio cor rugge,
e son umil con chi mia speme adugge;
a così stranio cibo ho alma avezza.
Egli ognor dà cagione a novo sdegno,
essi mi cercan dar conforto e pace:
i’ lasso questi, ed a quell’un m’attegno.
Così ne la tua scola, Amor, si face
sempre il contrario di quell ch’egli è dagno:
l’umil si sprezza, e l’empio si compiace.
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Harsh is my fortune, but harsher still is the fate
dealt me by my count: he flees from me,
I follow him; others long for me,
I cannot look at another man’s face.
I hate him who loves me,love him who scorns me;
against the humble lover, my heart rebels,
but I am humble to him who kill my hope;
my soul longs for such harmful food.
He constantly gives me cause for anger,
while others seek to give me comfort and peace;
these I ignore, and I cling instead to him.
Thus in your school, Love, we receive
always the opposite of what we deserve:
the humble are despised, the heartless rewarded.
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The above sonnet is Sonnet 43 by Gaspara Stampa. She was influenced by the well known poet Petrarch.
Reading this poem reminded me of a pattern I frequently observed in my female friends since high school. For some reason most of my female friends were attracted to typical “bad boys” and quickly got bored with the nice, caring men who liked them. I never fully understood the fascination of the ‘bad’ but I noticed it with enough consistency that I can be sure Gaspara wasn’t the only one who suffered from this phenomenon.
It seems the nice men have a low dangerousness quotient and are therefore less interesting to be around. They often make great friends but are rarely ever picked as a potential boyfriend. Of course, choosing the guy who makes your life more challenging becomes a major hazard in the long term. Invariably the guy cheats on you, abuses you verbally or, worse, physically or just ups and leaves. If he didn’t do any of the above, he wouldn’t qualify as the dangerous and exciting partner to have.
Almost all of my friends were acutely aware of the stupidity of their decisions, but yet they kept making the same choice over and over again, falling to pieces at the end of each one.
I remember a friend who kept turning down really wonderful guys who were interested in her. Guys who cared about who she was and what her thoughts and feelings might be. Instead she’d go for the good-looking guy who chose her for her looks and never really cared about her words. For some inexplicable reason being with this guy would make her feel good about herself. Even if the guy drank too much and trashed her place, she was dating the cool guy and that’s all that mattered.
I’ve made a few misjudgments of character in my life, held on to people for a little too long but I can easily say I never went for the type who was obviously going to break my heart. I guess the biggest reason must be cause I was never really good looking enough to be chosen by such men and also cause I’m not really any fun: I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t smoke and I rarely dance. I’d much rather spend the night reading a book. So I guess in this case, it all worked out to my advantage as I ended up with the nice men and in durable relationships.
But I still don’t understand why a person would knowingly go for someone who is obviously going to be disappointing. Isn’t that sabotaging a relationship before it even begins?
Previously? Behind.
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden painted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” from Fahrenheit 451
When I read passages like the above, I try to look at my life and figure out what I plan to leave behind. Having children is an obvious answer. Assuming everything turns out okay biologically, I plan to have children and, hopefully, I plan to have them outlive me. So even if I accomplish nothing else, I can have that as a backup.
The fact is, I want more than that. I want to change the world. I want to touch people’s lives, I want to save the planet, I want to create things, I want to make a difference. I think that’s one of the main reasons I am displeased with my job. While it makes my financial life smooth sailing, programming applications for an investment bank isn’t what I’d call ‘saving the world.’
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I need to start a movement to save the world. On the contrary, I believe a tiny thing is all it takes. If everyone did a tiny bit, we’d all be so much better off. I’ve talked about this before and I still believe in what I said. But I also have this urge to do something great. Something bigger than I am. Something that isn’t selfish and all about making my own life better. Something that will make me and my family proud of who I am. Something that will show the world that if I can, so can everyone else.
The question is what? Of course, I have no clue, cause if I did I’d be out there doing it instead of here, writing about it. But I promise you here and now that I shall leave something behind.
What will you leave behind?
Previously? I Am.
One of the main reasons I tend to not like personality tests is that they seem to mostly test who you think you are as opposed to who you really are. After all, you’re the one sitting there answering all the questions. If the question says, “When at a party, are you more likely to mingle or sit at a corner and avoid getting noticed?” you can say “I’m the life of any party” and no one would know whether you actually told the truth or not.
Not you’re thinking, “Why would I lie?” right?
I’m not trying to imply that you’d purposefully try to affect the results of the test, but I think that many of us have an incorrect notion of who we really are. I can think of several reasons for this imbalance. One can be because we tend to pay more attention to our personality when we’re young and being judged by others and then as time goes on and other people voice their opinions less, we tend to not notice changes in ourselves. Or maybe we concentrate so much on whom we want to be that we don’t notice who we actually are. Or maybe we don’t like who we are so we don’t even want to admit to ourselves the sad truth. And possibly a million other reasons.
There have been times in my life when I’d call up a close friend and ask him what he thought of me in reference to a specific scenario. I’d wonder whether I’m sociable or if I’m caring and compassionate. Obviously since he was my friend his answers were biased but hopefully a little less then my own were. I wonder how widely our answers would differ if I took a standard personality test and asked a few close friends to take it for me. Do I come across the way I think I do? Am I really the person I think I am?
There are psychologists who believe you are only who others think you are. To me, that’s a really sad thought and I can’t yet fully articulate why.
I know that, like many people, I act differently around varying groups of friends. A girl I’ve known since birth will differ in her ideas of my personality from the guy I met in college or my classmates in my sign language class. I also know that who I am is more complicated than a test category. We all are. But I still wonder whether who I am is who I think I am. In the end, what makes me who I am, my thoughts or other people’s assessments of me?
Add to that mix the incessant conversations that occupy our lives about who we should be. Parents, teachers, managers, siblings, friends and many other people that have been in our lives pass judgment on some of our actions. They influence our thoughts, our behavior patterns and even our actions. Think of all the things you do to please your family and loved ones. How much of that defines who we are?
I’m afraid I don’t have a point or conclusion today, just many questions. However, I’d be delighted to know your thoughts.
Previously? Facing my Face.
I was always the ugliest child among my friends.
The girls in my group were nothing short of drop dead gorgeous and they’d make sure to remind me of the difference in the quality of our looks. Ever since the time I heard a guy mention how I was the only ugly person they hung out with, I couldn’t look myself in the mirror without the word ‘ugly’ sprinting to my mind.
About two years ago, I cut my hair. I’d been growing it since the fifth grade and it was weak and difficult to manage. Since then, I cut my hair maybe twenty times. I dyed it to dark brown, auburn, orangish red, dirty blonde, deep red and now I’m once again trying to become blonde. And I’ve decided to start a peace process between my face and me.
Now I stare at the mirror for a while and try to see what my face tells me. My eyes remind me of my dad. They are a light brown with darker tones on the edges, a sign of my middle eastern heritage. The little lines on the corner of my eyes are getting deeper: a sign of my increasing happiness. I see lines across my forehead, a sign of my continuous worrying. When I smile, thick lines form around my nose and a tiny dimple appears on the left side of my face.
I have nice teeth. I never had to wear braces and they’ve always been straight. My face has somewhat grown into my large ears and my haircut mostly hides how much they stick out. Even my nose says something important. It’s a symbol of more of my roots, Jewish ones. The purple marks under my eyes insist that I don’t get any sleep no matter how many hours I may lay in bed. When I’m sad, my eyebrows curl up in the weirdest of arches. My hair reminds me that I’m learning to let go.
I’m learning to look at myself and see something besides ‘ugly’. I see my family, my background, signs of my happiness and characteristics. And I smile.
I think I’ll keep this face, even if it is ‘ugly’. It’s mine.
What does your face tell you about yourself?
Previously? Audience.
I started writing diaries at the age of eleven.
I still recall the very first day I scribbled my first words. I struggled to distort my handwriting to appear somewhat decent. I remember looking at the colored pages with small “Hello Kitty” images all over and awkwardly trying to find the pithy words the pretty pages deserved.
I kept a diary for every single day of my adolescent life. Every single day from eleven years old to eighteen. Any friend from back then could easily tell the stories of how I would never go anywhere without my overflowing diary and a can of Diet Coke. If that’s not enough, my eighteen diaries are the proof of my obsession.
By the fourth one, I’d developed a pattern for ending a diary and starting a new one. One of the private ceremonies I held at the start of a diary was naming.
If you were to open any of the pages of my diaries, you wouldn’t see any real names. Every single person in my life had a nickname that would only be used in my diaries. Most of the names were quite stupid and generally referred to a characteristic of the person. So at the beginning of each diary, I would pick the person that symbolized my mood best and name my diary after him or her.
For the rest of the diary, I would start each entry with “Dear Such-and-Such” and actually write in a tone as if I were speaking to the actual person. The things I wrote, the feelings I conveyed were possibly more honest or deep than I’d necessarily tell to the person’s face, but the attitude was right on. With each new entry, the person’s face would flash before my eyes and make me smile. She or he was my audience for the duration of that diary.
Earlier this week I started thinking about my audience for this site. Who would I have used for its nickname if it had one? Whose image flashes before my eyes as I type these entries?
I’m not sure of the answers. Certain entries definitely feel like I’m talking to a specific someone and others are mostly talking to myself.
What about you?
Previously? Beauty.
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
As always, I’m sure they’re right. Thankfully, we all have our own ideas of beauty so that the wide varieties of humans who occupy the earth are each considered beautiful by one person or another.
I spoke to my mom yesterday and she told me about an event she had attended the previous evening. The event was organized by a distant family member I dislike. My mom said that the woman’s daughter looked absolutely gorgeous and I replied, “She’s such a terrible person that it’s impossible for me to see her beauty.”
After we hung up, I thought about my words and realized they were a perfect example of my true sentiments. When I see a stranger on the street, I might think she or he is beautiful but as soon as I get to know a person, my feelings about that person fully affect how good looking I think he or she is.
This is not to say that I don’t have a “type”. Even though the men I’ve dated have a wide range of looks, there are commonalities among them and I know that I prefer scrawny to buff. I like blue or green eyes. I tend to go for men who wear glasses. That’s about it. So when I met Jake, I was attracted to him. But over the years, as I fell more and more in love, Jake got more and more handsome in my eyes.
The same goes for my close friends and people I admire and it’s one of my favorite things about the web. The fact that I don’t get influenced by the facial image before I get to know a person makes it such that I think the person is beautiful before I meet him or her and once I have that image it rarely goes away.
It’s as if the inner beauty (or lack thereof) reflects on to someone’s face and features.
I don’t know if this behavior is specific to me, but I enjoy having it. While it makes it less pleasant for me to be around people I don’t like, it makes it a total joy to be around my loved ones. I feel like I am often surrounded by beautiful humans.
What could be more wonderful?
Previously? Tearful Meetings.
I had an important meeting this morning.
I usually don’t work on Mondays but this issue had been bothering me for quite some time and I knew that the Managing Director only had a few available hours in the week and I knew the matter could not be put off another week.
Or I might have blown up.
For someone as emotional as I, conversations about a discomfort with current project setup tend to be complicated. Most often, by the time I get to make the appointment, I’ve been obsessing about the problem for quite a long while. Since I tend to involve my emotions and make a mountain of small issues, I always need to step back and disengage my feelings. I need to make sure there is a real problem before I start asking people to notice it. Not to undermine myself, I am pretty observant and intuitive, so I do often notice real issues before they become major disasters.
The problem is, I have a real hard time turning off my feelings. I remember how my emotions totally spiraled out of control by the last year in my previous job. There were so many unfair, unprofessional and unacceptable situations that I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the problems. The lack of prevention and resolution was mind-boggling.
A most common scenario would be my walking into my manager’s office to professionally bring up an issue that needed his help. My manager was so dense and so incredibly bad at understanding people that he would choose the worst possible way to handle the situation and within minutes I would either be extremely frustrated or in tears.
The thing is, no one will take you seriously if you’re crying. People tend to take crying as a sign of weakness. While I agree that crying is not professional and should not necessarily be done in a manager’s office, often times tears don’t mean that there isn’t a real issue beneath all the strong emotion. But crying isn’t going to get you the results. And it all comes down to resolution. If you’re not in your manager’s office to get the issue resolved, you should be talking to friend, who’s going to listen to you and offer words of consolation.
I’ve learned that the best way for me to control my emotions and ensure that I stick to the problem at hand is to write things down. Now, before I go to a meeting, I make a list of points and valid complaints. I walk in with suggestions on possible tracks of resolution. I try to come up with examples to back up my arguments and recommendations. And I keep telling myself that it’s not personal. It’s not about me. It’s about the project.
So today, I walked into the office, stated my case and we had a productive and professional conversation about it.
And I didn’t shed a tear.
Previously? Unconventional.
My mother never graduated from high school.
There is a word for people like my mom in Turkish but I’ve been struggling with finding an accurate translation. If I look up the word “becerikli” in a Turkish-English dictionary, it says skillful. But I don’t think that’s an accurate translation. We mostly use it to mean a combination of capable, skillful, street-smart and several other related concepts.
My mother has worked pretty much every day of my life. At times she worked eleven-hour days and at times, she only worked a few days a week. She’s never worked in the traditional company setting. When I was a kid, she used to design jewelry and work as a consultant to individuals who wanted custom-made jewelry. She’d draw the design according to their tastes and then get it made for them. She worked with a bunch of jewelry makers, stone setters, etc. After I graduated high school, she reduced the hours she worked in order to learn to relax and enjoy life a bit more.
A few years ago, she started offering decorative advice to a few acquaintances. They would pay her to rearrange the furniture, paintings, etc. in a certain room to give it a new look. She was so good that word of mouth got her new clients. She moved from simple rearrangement to decorating. She went antique shopping. She decorated restaurants. She’s gotten to a point where she ends up having to turn down offers cause she’s too busy.
Yesterday, Jake and I walked over to Borders so that I could check out some GRE books. I’ve been contemplating getting a PhD. Most of the areas I’m interested in require a subject-GRE exam. As I leafed through the biology, literature and psychology exams, I got more and more discouraged. By the time we walked out of the bookstore, I’d almost given up on the idea of applying to college. What was the point? There was no way I was going to get accepted. I even told myself that after a BS and an MS, I had no knowledge to show for all that past education.
Several hours later, I started thinking about my mom and how she’d managed to have several successful careers without much education. Surely such careers were hard to start without the appropriate education background, but she’d done it. And if she could do it, why couldn’t I? I told myself to stop feeling depressed and start making plans. I decided to do research about several jobs I’d love to do and figure out what background the people in those positions had. I also decided to look into different research projects offered by schools in areas I am interested. I figured even if I can’t get into the program now, I might be able to get a job in the area and start learning.
I’ve always been proud of my mom for her tenacity and ability to do just about anything she wanted. But today, she taught me another valuable lesson. She taught me that life is not always conventional.
There are a plethora of paths to reach an end-goal.
Previously? Crappy Web.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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