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Using Moodle for Teaching Writing to Prep Students Bilgi University hosted a great ELT event.

The exhibition at İstanbul Modern was very interesting indeed.  In the entrance Van Gogh’s famous paintings with their titles and explanations welcome you.  You read and pass to the dark corridor which is lightened by little lamps on the floor. The sound of music catches your ears and then you are in the exhibition.Ooops.. There are a lot of screens around and pictures are going up and down, right to left.. In fact, there are 40 projectors which display Van Gogh’s paintings on the screen. There is also one screen where you can read about Van Gogh’s writing about love, drawing, his insanity, etc. How are we going to see these things at the same time. We found a place that we can see  both the paintings and the writing and started to watch…We were watching the paintings, listening to the selected nice music and reading Van Gogh’s ideas …

I think it was good because there were some effects in some paintings. Some parts were added one by one  or birds were flying on the screen. It lasts approximately 25-30 minutes. Like many people I was hoping to see more paintings than that were exhibited. Anyway, it was an interesting experience to see Van Gogh Alive ..

Dali tekrar İstanbul’da…Sabancı Muzesi’ndeki muhteşem sergiden sonra Tophane-i Amire’de bu kez.

Eserleri böylesine mistik bir yerde görmek  çok güzeldi. Sergide ‘Gala ile Akşam Yemeği’, ‘İlahi Komedya’ ve ‘Sürrealizmin İzleri’ başlığı altında eserler vardı. Yine Dali’nin bilinçaltını, düşlerini, yaratıcılığını hayranlıkla izledim. Bazı resimlerine tekrar tekrar baktım, çünkü her baktığınızda resimde kaçırdığınız bir noktayı görebiliyorsunuz.

Beni en çok etkileyen kısım ‘Gala ile Akşam Yemeği’ oldu. Özellikle  eşi Gala’ya duyduğu aşk gerçekten resimlerinde de görülüyor. Gala’ya duyduğu arzuyu pek çok resimde kullandığı ‘kelebek’lerle ifade etmiş. Bir resimde onun başının yerine bir gül çizip, vücuduna pek çok kuş yumurtası koymuş, üzerlerinde de rakamlar var. İlginç tablolardan birisinin adı da ‘yerim seni Gala’ idi. Bu tabloda Gala’yı bir yemek tabağının içinde, masanın üstünde çizmiş. Aynı tablonun içinde bir başka masa var ve bunun üzerinde de kafasız bebek figürleri, birbirlerinin kafalarını ellerinde tutuyorlar..Rehberin anlattığına göre Dali insanların sevdiklerine  ‘seni çok seviyorum’ demeleri gibi Gala’ya ‘yerim seni Gala’ diyor. Ve bir sürrealist ressam olarak bilinçaltında böyle bir manzara düşleyip çiziyor.

Matematiğe de çok meraklı olan Dali’nin resimlerinde sayıları ve DNA şekillerini de görmek mümkün. Bugün gördüğüm semboller arasında koltuk değnekleri de vardı meseala..Dali’nin resimlerinde yumuşak formlar ve keskin şekiller pek çok kereler görünüyor, mesela küpler, küplerin içimde figürler, kenarında eriyen objeler..

Dali Freud’la da tanışmış ve ondan çok etkilenmiş. Eserlerinde Freud etkileri de var, gölgeler, içiçe geçmiş pek çok karışık figür, insanın bilinçaltı gibi..İlginç bir nokta da Dali’nin tablolarının  çoğunun ufkunda ya bir bozkır ya da bir deniz olması..Bu Freud’un büyüdüğü İspanyol kasabasından etkilendiği içinmiş…

Bu sergide Dali’nin en önemli eseri olan ‘Belleğin İzleri’ de var. Bu resimde , bir kaç diğer resiminde de görülen eriyen cep saatleri var. Dali bu saatlerle aslında zamanın ilerlemediğini ama eridiğini düşündüğünü gösteriyor. Hatta bir röportajında bu resimleri güneşin altında eriyen bir peynirden ilham alarak çizdiğini söylemiş.

Sergideki ‘İlahi Komedya’ bölümü  Dali’nin Dante’den etkilenerek onun eserinin pek çok bölümünü resmetmesine neden olmuş. Bu resimler diğerlerinden farklı bir tarzda daha çok karalamalar ve suluboyalarla yapılmış. Eseri  okuyup bu tablolar incelenirse belki  daha da zevkli olur.

Uçuk kaçık, dahi bir ressam..yaratıcı, zeki ve aşık (karısı Gala öldükten sonra resim çizmemiş, ‘artık ne anlamı var? ilhamım yaşam kaynağım yok’ demiş..

1500den fazla eser, resimle geçen 85 yıl..Resimlerin içinde kaybolmak için Dali tablolarını mutlaka görün.

Sometimes life can take you to some places where you have never thought of. It means to start everything from the beginning…very very difficult as you can imagine. You should get used to your new house, new job, new colleagues, new neighbours, etc. Human beings can sometimes be stronger than they expect themselves to be in such difficult situations. When you find yourself in the middle of a difficulty  you have to do something. That’s what happened to me..

.I am in a new city, Istanbul, where I never wanted to come and live !!! When I  last came in October 2010 I was telling mum’ a wonderful city to wander around but how can they live here???’  Now I understand how they live here…One can get used to anything…It’s difficult, but there are lots of surprises in the city everyday…I like it though !

Here everybody is in a hurry, life is moving very fast ..in fact it is everywhere, but here there is the traffic problem.Everybody is trying to go from somewhere to somewhere by using the fastest transportation. Buses, metrobus, trams are all crowded. There is a line in most public places.  Besides, something I have noticed here is people are addicted to their mobile phones (listening to music, playing games, talking) and are smoking a lot on the streets (which I hate the most). Another interesting thing for me is that you can live in your house without going out for a long time because you can call the market, grocery, fast food rest or any kind of rest and ask for something until late hours.This makes your life easy.

Another thing to be mentioned about the city is its stairs, especially at the district where I am living. Istanbul is on  seven hills and I think I am living on one of them, as there are stairs everywhere..They are sometimes so steep and tiring that you can’t breathe while climbing them. Every day I use those stairs to take my daughter to her school (to and fro). I think I will get fit I even stopped driving as finding a parking place is very difficult and very steep roads around it was my freedom. I sometimes feel I am back to my university days in Ankara as I used to get on the bus there. It doesn’t take me a lot of time to go to school though, it is ok. You can also witness some interesting events in the bus,too..

these are my first impressions about living in this big marvellous city ….

After preparing for a month for the new semester, the time has come, and the school started. How happy we are ! (Unfortunately nooo !) Before the school started I was busy with some official things like preparing the departmental schedule with a friend. It was so tiring that you can’t help getting angry at people who want some changes at the last moment. After two attempts to do the same thing, I decided that you can never please everybody, even if you struggle to do that. Some people are programmed to create problems. Anyway, it is over now.

 Then the problems with the registration of the students start. An electronic registration system which can’t work at the registration week. The lists are mixed, students are afraid that they won’t be able to finish their school registration, they are visiting their advisors everyday to check if it is ok or not. The teachers (who are advisors) are trying to prepare new lesson plans for the new semester but frequently interrupted by these visits…It’s so hectic.

 By the way, I forgot the Erasmus students. They are anxious, too. They also want to check if their lessons are entered to the system here. It also takes time to compare the lessons they got at other universities with the ones here. The ones who come from other countries want to learn about the system here. They are definitely right. They have no one else to consult apart from the Erasmus coordinator.

Can you think of a teacher working at a university with such bundle of work following academic world, researching and producing ??? It’s so difficult. When you think they also have private lives, you can feel sad about them..However, you can still hear some teachers laughing at the corridor in spite of these difficulties. Why ?  Let me answer, because they are used to that. Every year the same things happen, teachers complain and nothing changes..I think it will be the same.. If you look from the positive side, the teachers become stronger and  practical, if you look from the negative side, they will give up  struggling with these difficulties. They will end up finding some easy solutions (maybe ignoring some of their duties) one day…Let’s hope positive things to happen in the future…

I watched this terrific movie last week. I think this is Leanordo’s best performance. He really acts well. He looks so convincing while saying that he can manage dreams of people.

In the movie he is a character who has this specific talent. He can get into peoples’ dreams and learn things about them. He uses his talent for ill purposes, though. He gets into people’s dreams to get their secrets. He is also hired to plant an idea to a man’s mind in the film. This action is called ‘inception’. He will get into a young man’s dream and will plant the ideas that his father’s rival desires.  Dom (Leanordo Dı Caprio) does all these for a good aim (I won’t say what it is, because you may want to watch it).

This movie is a bit longer than other films but you even don’t notice it.  The story is so different and I think it is worth watching !

I was in Athens for a conference as I said before. It was a different experience for me to see a new country. Although it was very very hot, even hotter than Mersin, it was an exciting trip. Let me tell you about my adventures in Greece

First, we decided to go there by air and it was most convenient to fly from Izmir. After 13 hours of bus trip to İzmir, I met a friend from University, Ceyda. She took us to her home in Urla. We had a chance to rest for a night.  Besides, we had a chance to be together after 9 years.e As we had stayed in the same room at the university dormitary, I felt at home. This kind of friendship never ends, you can continue from the point you left.

 In the morning we went to the airport. By the way, we chose Pegasus airlines as it had a flight that morning with a convenient price. Surprisingly the flight took only 45 minutes. It was shorter than Adana-Istanbul flight which lasted 1.5 hours. The airport in Athens was not complicated and we could easily find the metro to our hotel. The hotel we booked gave a good description to get there on its website. At first sight, the metro lines may seem complicated but you get used to it in time. I think it is very well organized, you can easily find your way in Athens thanks to the metro.

It was nearly midday when we reached our hotel  which was  close to the metro station.  At last we were in our room at Apollo hotel, which was comfortable and clean. Apart from the breakfast we had no trouble at the hotel. (They had only cheese and eggs, cakes for us  to eat apart from other options like ham, yoghurt, boiled peach, cornflakes. No tomato , no cucumber, no olive, etc.   , they had black tea though) After a short rest we decided to wander in the city. As we were close to the city center Syntagma, we decided to go around there. Although it was 17:00 pm. it was very hot.  I don’t remember any other time that I wore a hat for that long when I was in Athens. It was very disturbing.

The city seemed like abondened at first sight. As Greece was under economic depression, most of the shops were closed. The streets were a bit dirty.  There were protests around the city. We even met protestors with their black and red balloons one day. As everybody knows Greece is experiencing an economic crisis and you can feel it in Athens.

When it comes to what I have done in Athens, I can say that I saw all the touristic places there. On our first day we went out for a walk in the city center, Syntgma. We saw a red double deck bus and tourists in front of the ‘National Gardens’. We talked to them. It looked like a good offer. They told us that with a   ticket we could see all the important places for two days. There were brochures and headphones on the bus.  By looking at the brochure and listening to the information through the headphone you learn lots of things about a place. If you like you can get off the bus from any point you like, go in that place. Then you can catch another bus that belongs to the same company at specific hours (they ara also listed in the brochure). It’s so easy. However, I recommend the travellers to buy tickets from the local company because the international company finishes the tours at 19:00, the local continues at night. When you consider the hot weather,it makes sense.

I have just finished reading this magnificient book. If you are interested in mysterious events, history ( especially Ottoman history), detective stories you must read it.  Ahmet Ümit studied a lot to write this book. He studied with the historians, architects, vets (you will understand why if you read the book), museum staff, etc. You feel this while you are following the exciting and mysterious murders in the novel. 

It was a great chance for me to be in Bodrum when he was there to sign his books. I had a chance to talk to him.  We talked about his project about the novel ‘İstanbul Hatırası’. He organized a touristic tour in Istanbul to the historical places he had mentioned in his novel. He was the tour guide. It would be marvellous to listen to him while visiting Topkapı Palace, Çemberlitaş, Beyazıt Square and all the other places. He told me that they would organize another tour in September, 2010.

Welcome  to my personal  website. In this website you can find some information about me, my interests and research. You can also find some information about the courses I’m teaching. I will also try to post my observations and comments about some specific issues under the menu ‘Personal Writings’. I will be sharing both my  academic and personal  interests with you. I hope you will enjoy it.