jmoiron.net

Typing on my good old dell keyboard, the one without the non-dotted "i", the "c" or "s" with the cedillia, and without the "g" with the curved bar on top, is something that I enjoy very much. So much so in fact, that I think I'll type for a while, right now. I hope you have as much fun as I do.

As is no secret, I went to Istanbul (impropper English spelling) and spent 9 days in Turkey last week and the week previous. The city is viewtiful, and sports many more mosques than I really care to talk about. To my great surprise, I gazed o'er the strait disconnecting one side of Istanbul to another and learned that it also disconnected Europe from Asia. So quite to my surprise, more than half of my trip to Turkey was spent in Asia.

Lots of good things come from Asia. For instance, Japan. We can strike "ayran" from that list; an odd yoghurt concoction that tastes like salted sour milk, but we can add Turkish Coffee, Apple Tea, and the best damned oranges this side of mars (which not coincidentally has been in the news of late). There were also quite a bit of Roman, Greek, and Byzantine ruins in Turkey that I had the pleasure of visiting and peeking around. Pictures of my travels are are lying around here somewhere.

Unfortunately, besides running around the grand bazaar, drinking tons of coffee, being in 3 continents and moving my life 5 meters upward, I haven't really been up to much. I'm very comfortable in my new position and I think I can get lots of work done here; but we'll see when the rest of my clutter eventually makes its way towards my person (which will still be firmly planted in front of my keyboard). Wei's freshman year excuse to spend $800 on a monitor (that LCD's were light) was heard loud and clear; I'm glad I didn't have to carry any CRT's up the long flight of stairs from 3 to 6.

My new life in my new room involves a new method of listening to music; one that I am not sure will be successful. The headphones that I purchased for either way too much or a good price (I still haven't been able to find them for cheaper so I'm just going to assume temporary insanity) sound great, and are very comfortable, but it's just not the same atmosphere as speakers filling my room with music. My opinion might change when I have Christian, George, and Krupnick filling the room with music and me wanting to escape their music. We'll see.

7 Turkish students who arrived in America about 16 hours ago were supposed to call me yesterday when they got here, but didn't. I'm not sure what that means; If they were tired and fell asleep, or if they decided that I suck and they can go it alone. I assure you, I don't suck that much, but I would understand if they didn't want any help getting to know hoboken or NYC (or did not care to travel or do anything in 10 degree farenheit weather). Either way, I am awake now only to await their call and to await the arrival of my brother, who should be coming around noon.

It appears as if Jerumu has been a bit busy with the ladies recently. I can't say I share his pain; god forbid of a friend tried to hook me up with someone I found attractive. Even so, I've been in a continuous process of making and then cancelling appointments to go have lunch with Wendy, either because of the weather or my dislike for real people. The bitter, inclement cold also shot down plans to make plans involving some people back home.

To those of you who who believe that I am the cause of such cold in bold denial of the facts presented herein; that is, to believe that I would want to cancel plans (or plans to make them) involving women, I extend my middle finger and a statistic: It has raised 20 degrees in room 6 since I started moving in.

I might get around to digitizing the volumes of literature I wrote about my trip to Turkey, but I probably won't, just like my Portuguese travel log that lies in my home directory, unformatted and beautifully serenely untouched by the prying eyes of others. I wanted to write something about the pictures I took, and some experiences I had, so something might show up sometime, if only to serve as a reminder to how much enjoyment can be packed into 9 days. Finaly, my survival of said 9 days has proved to everyone once again that those who proclaim my prophetic nature do so in bold denial of cold hard fact.