Gustav, My Friend

Posted by Unguided on September 4th, 2008 at 07:01 am.
Category: Events-News

Have I told you that Unguided is hosted in New Orleans? Visitors of the last 24 hours only saw a message saying “Error in establishing a database connection” and possibly never guessed why. Now you know the reason. Although the main site including mail and ftp servers were up and running, the database went haywire. The staff at the hosting company, well, they all evacuated the city. They were kind enough to say at their site they would continue to give support remotely by e-mail, but I decided to wait instead. After all, the Earth would not stop turning if Unguided blog did not function a day and it would be selfish, if nothing else, to annoy them in the middle of all things they were going through, or so I thought.

Today, I am glad to see my problem solved with no intervention on my part. My best wishes go to the people of New Orleans or Louisiana I should say, and I sincerely hope they are safe and sound after Gustav’s unwanted visit.

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Renewing the Garden Furniture

Posted by Unguided on July 25th, 2008 at 07:44 am.
Category: Ueberthoughts

It was Lala who got me in this shopping frenzy. She gave a mouth drooling account of her feelings about watching the storm and enjoying nature’s symphony entitled “Falling Rain” (her words, not mine) in her post Like Mother, Like Son.

After reading the article, I peacefully went to bed. In summer we hardly see thunder storms, let alone tornadoes here. The temperature is hardly below 35 degrees (Celsius, do the math yourselves to convert to Fahrenheit), humidity always high. It has a peculiar kind of appeal, though. And I woke up to a day with dark clouds gathering and a medium northerly wind, reminding me to take two aspirins in order to prevent the expected headache to come whenever there is a sharp drop in the temperature.

I started to prepare the breakfast, and took the plates, glasses, and the tea pot (I do it, the tea I mean, very well by the way) out to the garden like I often do in this time of year. Everything was alright until halfway through the breakfast. Then, a few things started to bother me. The old wooden table, chairs I repaired a hundred times, the fading color of the umbrella on the other side, the window panes crying “Paint me,” even the birds on the now old bench were singing differently. As the wind increased its intensity, so did the itch. There was only one way to stop it.

Patio Preserve

I got back inside, fired up the PC, started googling for companies offering garden furniture, patio products, etc. Found a good looking one with really good looking patio furniture and garden decor called Patio Preserve, and picked up 5000 dollar worth of their product line for my shopping cart. When I reached the payment page, I learned that they were not shipping to Turkey but only 50 states of USA, and etc, etc. While I was muttering lovely phrases of the Turkish language one after the other (language is important in swearing; imagine doing it in French and you’ll understand. Some languages are simply not fit for the job, but Turkish is) my itch was already over.

The truth is I already knew they were not shipping to Turkey. The first thing I check in on-line shopping is the shipping policy of the company, but it’s a trick I learned from my mother and improvised for the cyber world. She used to go out for shopping whenever she felt depressed or angry, although there was really, I mean really nothing to shop for. She told me “It’s the voyage, not the destination that counts.” Apparently it works!

Garden safely and naturally with the Arbico Organics!

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Before It is Too Late

Posted by Unguided on July 23rd, 2008 at 03:28 pm.
Category: Encounters

bird in a foggy istanbul day at sunset

The Sun now rose upon the right :
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.

And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariners’ hollo !

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image: CanS ©2008

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The Final Dance of the Willow Butterflies

Posted by Unguided on July 17th, 2008 at 01:26 pm.
Category: Encounters

last dance of willow butterflies on the highway

Nature never stops amazing you. A minute in your life can be a lifetime of another creature. Just like last year, and the one before that, and who knows since when, the willow butterflies have flown along the Sakarya river, to the same bridge over the Istanbul-Ankara highway.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Blogging’s a Dangerous Business

Posted by Unguided on June 23rd, 2008 at 08:18 am.
Category: Criticism

I have first read about Japanese bloggers Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki’s arrest in Sheryadi.com. According to Greenpeace, Sato and Suzuki have been arrested for the crime of exposing the truth [greenpeace.org]. They were writing about the whale meat embezzlement in Japan.

Frankly, I am really surprised. Had this been in Turkey, I would not have been shocked, it would have been an ordinary day. After all, we have a beautiful (get used to my choice of adjectives) government, smart business people disposing of dump a spoonful at a time, and fishermen attacking the Greenpeace vessel. But you see, unlike Japan, we are poor. Even with the new calculation method of our high-IQ government, the per ca pita income can not reach usd 8,000; this being temporary, though. I have been informed that they are devising a brand new method so that the figure will effortlessly (how about this adverb?) reach usd 10,000 in no time.

But Japan? One of the richest countries in the world? No, I am not talking about the two bloggers, if you talk too much you end up in jail, right? Why does a rich country like Japan depend on whale hunting for income? We have cows (not the mad ones, ours are smart) in Turkey, they can buy some, instead.

Animal and Nature Themed Gifts from Whales & Friends
Look at Canada! They also kill those seals but nobody is arrested for blogging about it. Does whale meat taste that good that nobody can stand criticism? Apparently I’ve got to get some and taste it before I can make an objective decision about it.

No? You don’t want to taste it? Maybe you can write to bigger-than-whale-authorities for release of the two bloggers [Greenpeace].

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