The first is disgusting and as someone who actually does eat at McDonalds, this link brought me a step closer to becoming vegetarian today.

The second is quite creepy. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this, yet so I will refrain from commenting further.

Btw, a few days too late for me but if you ever get the Feliz Navided virus, this page will help you fix it. Or so I'm told. No personal guarantees since I didn't fix mine that way.

Thoughts
Still in severe amounts of pain. I am so thankful to those of you who've been kind enough to send me cards and wish me well. I'm sure it will be over soon enough, I'm just dreading having to sit for three hours to take that exam on Sunday. To add to that, I haven't cracked the book open all week. Thank you so much for your thoughtful messages.

I'm awful about email. The way email works for me is that I either reply immediately or it sits in my inbox for weeks which turn into months. I folder all my mail once it's answered and so I know that anything in my Inbox is something that needs a response. I have messages there from August. That's how bad I am. Whenever I write a mail to someone, I can never wait for the answer without worrying. I want to get their answer immediately. If a full day passes, I'm already heartbroken and disappointed that the person didn't care enough to reply. And here I am doing the very same thing. It's awful and it's incredibly rude. If you sent me mail and I didn't respond and you're reading this, I apologize wholeheartedly. I've been using the Japanese exam excuse for the last few weeks but I can always come up with one cuz my life is full enough to pull one out of a list. To be honest, my life wouldn't mean anything to me without the people who do send me mail and call me and are happy to spend time with me. If I blow those people off, I deserve to be alone. People deserve better. You deserve better. I apologize. I will reply. I mean it.

I have so many thoughts dancing in my head lately. Thoughts about my life. Thoughts about who I am. Who I want to be. Who I should be. Who I will never be. I try hard to get to know myself and understand why I feel the need to do some of the things I do. More on this later, most likely.

Today, three of my workmates and I had lunch together. One girl was from Russia and the other girl and guy were from India. We started talking bout the games we played as kids, during recess, etc. It was amazing how many games we had in common. Russia, India and Turkey and the games were exactly the same. I find it fascinating that even then, before the web (and since we only had one TV channel when I was a kid and it was government regulated, you can't even say we saw them on TV) our cultures had all that in common. I think that's fascinating and wonderful.

Tomorrow is World AIDS day. Please take the time to share your stories, educate yourself, and share your knowledge.

Before?

When I mentioned that my back was broken yesterday, I meant it. Last night, I lay in bed almost crying from the pain. There was absolutely no possible position in which I could curl up and not hurt myself. I tried lying on my back, my stomach, my side, half leg off the bed, both legs under my stomach. None of it worked. Nothing. Nada!

So this morning after a few hours of walking around hunched and changing positions in my chair every few seconds, I started worrying that something might have gone seriously wrong. I have a family full of people with slipped disks, so I had reason to worry. My wonderful doctor was kind enough to give me an appointment pretty much right away and she told me, thankfully, that I hadn't injured anything permanently but that I wasn't in real good shape. She gave me some strong drugs (weee!) to take the pain away and told me that she wants me to do physical therapy. Ugh!

My experiences with physical therapy are horrendous at best. I had years of it back at home. It was okay while the guy was doing it but minutes after he'd leave the pain would start shooting up and down my spine and I'd end up, curled up on the floor, weeping. You must understand that after such magnificent memories, I am really not looking forward to these sessions. It might even be better to keep walking around hunched up.

Thanks to Heather, I had my first laugh today. Thanks for making my day, I really needed it, especially today.

I came home, all bummed out, really feeling quite miserable. About forty minutes later, I called my friend John who lives in Japan and we talked for quite a while and I am so glad we did. From December of last year to this past May, I was living in Tokyo, for work and I had no friends whatsoever. John, and his now girlfriend Liz, were two of my closest friends. John actually ate lunch with my almost every single day of those six months. We even sat at the restaurant, him reading his book and me reading mine. He listened to me whine about my job and played the typing arcade game with me until the wee hours of the morning. Liz took me to my first and second hairdresser trips. Since she knows how to speak Japanese, she talked to the funnily dressed woman who was about to change the length and color of my hair. If it weren't for her, I would have never had the opportunity to experience the hair washing machines that wash your hair on their own. Just like sticking your head in a toilet bowl. By the time I got off the phone, I missed Japan and felt thankful for my friends, no matter how much or little I get to speak to them. Thank you John and Liz for being the best! Since they are both taking the same Japanese exam as I am on Sunday (well Liz is taking the expert level but it's on the same day) I also wanted to wish them both tons of luck!

May you always be surrounded with friends (and no backache).

Before?

That's my current situation. Thanks to a very cold Thanksgiving weekend and a warm cat, I am unable to breathe and unable to stand up straight. My throat is irritated from my continually dripping nose and I can't open my mouth without some form of phlegm interfering (I know you wanted to know that). Four days in a row of this and five days away from my exam, I can guarantee you wouldn't want to be in the same room as me today. I am grouchy, I am sick and I am miserable.

To top it off I got my first virus in the eight years I've had computers. Thanks to my wonderful mother and my stupid laziness to check each mail, my computer was infected with the stupid ass Feliz Navidad virus two nights ago. It took me several hours to even realize the stupid thing was in my machine. Yesterday, I woke up to realize I was unable to run any executables. This stupid virus changes the association of .exe files for your computer. Nicely enough, that's the one file type association that cannot be edited or deleted. So, in my very unconscious state, I kept trying to find a solution and decided that, short of manually updating my registry, I had no choice but to reinstall NT on my machine. I'm sure there must have been other options but I really couldn't think of one, mostly cause I am pretty much unable to think in my current state. Even if I had had the balls to screw with the registry, regedit is an executable and therefore wouldn't run. Neither would DOS. I'm telling you, it wasn't funny. To add to my fun, I couldn't find my copy of NT. Much to the chagrin of my backache, I started going thru all my boxes and came up empty.

Thanks to this joyful situation, I was up till after 3am last night, reinstalling NT, reinstalling Windows Office, and reinstalling all sorts of other programs without which I seem to be unable to function. Jake, rightfully so, kept yelling at me about how I should just install Linux and get all my troubles over with. I must tell you, if it hadn't meant reformatting my entire drive, I very well might have done that. If I haven't said so before, let me say it loud and clear now, I hate Microsoft products. They suck! As soon as I get a decent amount of time off, I am freeing my life off any of those.

Life is just not at its best for me right this minute.

Before?

We watched Raising Arizona two nights ago. I know it's supposed to be one the greatest movies. I must tell you, I thought the movie is okay but it certainly wasn't anything amazing. The acting was fine but the story was stupid. I'm sorry but I just didn't get it.

On the other hand, The 400 Blows, or with its original name, Les Quatre cents coups, was wonderful. It's about a 12-year-old boy who is very mischievous to compensate for the terrible life he has at home. The movie made me think a lot about my family and how lucky I was to have parents who actually cared about me and paid attention to my life and feelings. It made me take a moment to thank them for being as amazing as they've been.

I love the recent HP ads about how amazon changed the way people shop. The one with the donut store where they talk about other people who enjoy the same type of donut is my favorite. I also like how they have many varieties. It stops them from getting boring and overplayed.

So Bush, as expected, won. Tho, again as expected, we're nowhere near the end. We've got about two more weeks before the absolute deadline comes and I wonder who will actually decide the next president of the United States. Sorry I keep talking about it but it totally fascinates me.

By this time next week, I will be done with my Japanese exam and will officially be in a one-month vacation from classes. Yeay!

Before?

I spent most of the day studying Japanese. It seem that the more I study, the more I forget. I can't even remember basic words anymore. Maybe it's time to stop. Not yet. Only one week left.

I used to avoid reposting links that are commonly available at the most popular logs and metafilter to not repeat the obvious, but I decided against that. A few months down the road, I might want to revisit a certain link and might not remember where I'd seen it and since this is my log, I figure it's only fair that I put links that I enjoy. Just letting you know in case you notice the appearance of those.

I am totally addicted to Cosi sandwiches. I eat a real plain one with just cheddar cheese, lettuce and tomato, but I can eat this sandwich for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's incredibly delicious. I'm not sure if the stores are only in New York City, but if there's one near you, I highly recommend you give it a try (or maybe not since they are so addictive.)

Before?

One more week and I will get to relax for a few weeks. Yum.

I finished Mean Genes. If you're interested in genetic behavior and whether our genetic makeup can be connected to the lack of ability to save money or lose weight, you might find this book interesting. For some reason, it was a long read for me but I really enjoyed the book. I can't vouch for its accuracy or the data's validity but it did give me some to think about so it was well worth my time.

Almost 20 days after the election and we still don't have a president. I think the situation has gotten so ridiculous that the outcome doesn't even matter anymore. Either way, people are going to whine and argue for the next four years. On the other hand, I'm delighted about the 50-50 senate. Especially if the presidency is gonna end up the way it looks like it will. I think it's wonderful that the American public has been completely calm and willing to wait things out. Considering all the mess going on in the courts, I think the public has been amazing. If this were Turkey, I can't say the public would have been equally sane. I'm still crossing my fingers for my candidate, tho...

Before?

Jake and I are at Martha's Vineyard and while it's freezing here, I still feel the delight of being far away and relaxed. This is my fifth (or maybe sixth) Thanksgiving here with Jake and his family. Thanksgiving here is nothing like what American television depicts. Jake and his two brothers get along quite well with their parents. We spend most of the day in front of the fire (since it's always freezing cold this time of year) and we chit chat, read, and mostly doze off. Often, a bunch of them go for a walk on one of the beaches and then we lazy around for a while more till we all sit for dinner. No TV here (actually they don't have a TV in any house) so no football. Just good old fashioned family chats.

I remember these Thanksgivings always as calming and low key. Each time, I have an enormous amount of homework to do since Thanksgiving is about two weeks before finals time. Actually, last year, I remember thinking that one of the greatest things about working is that I didn't have any homework over thanksgiving. But, this year, I do. Next week Sunday is my Japanese exam and once that's over I'm all done for this semester. Pass or fail, I can take some time off and I must admit I need it.

I passed my Sign Language test! I'm on to level 7, except for they don't offer it on a day I can take it next semester so it might have to wait till Spring. I have already started looking at next semester's classes tho and I'm thrilled about this class on the human brain that NYU is offering. I'm so excited that such neat classes are offered and I can take them! I think I will prolly take the next level in Japanese too, but no more exams for a few more years.

Till then, I'm off to memorize those new words. I hope you have a most wonderful Thanksgiving and even if you're not American, take a moment to notice things that you would give thanks for. We often take things for granted so it's good to ponder for a moment or two.

Before?

Since graduation, I took classes in Italian, French, Sign Language, Yoga, 3-D graphics, Art History, Novel Writing, Alexander Technique, and Japanese. At least six of those were subjects I'd never previously been exposed to. The neat thing is that the more classes I took, the more I got inspired to take. Next semester, I want to start learning how to play the saxophone, and take cooking and ballroom dancing classes. A few years ago, all of these would have sounded implausible to me. I have no ear, I am extremely clumsy, and I definitely can't cook. The difference is that less than a year ago I felt equally hopeless about Japanese. When I got the offer to go to Tokyo, Jake and I opened the language portion of Encarta and listened to a voice pronouncing the first ten digits and I told him, "There's absolutely no way I'm gonna learn that language." Today, numbers are the least of my problem.

The more I learn, the less I fear learning. I feel powerful and invincible. I feel like the only difference between me and a doctor is that he chose to go to medical school and I didn't. I feel that these options are available to me. If I wanted, I could be a lawyer or a doctor or a pilot. With the right amount of time and practice, I could be whatever my heart desires. Anything.

Isn't that a neat feeling?

Before?

Let me get to my point. At one point Abby, the wife, tells her best friend that she doesn't want to be with Buddy she'd be with him cause her husband died and she doesn't want to be doing that. Her friend, quite wisely, says, "Whether it's Buddy now or another man one year later, you'll be with him cause Greg died." To me, that was one of the most brilliant lines of the movie, cause while her friend was totally right, I'd never thought about it that way. It made me realize how shortsighted I'd been.

The movie sparked up a lot of interesting thoughts in me about how every single choice we make affects our life. Most importantly, the choices we don't make do, too. The path we decide not to travel and the options we pass on. Every single thing we do and don't do has a bearing not only on our lives but possibly on many other people's as well. Kinda freaky when you think about it...

My friend, Steven, emphasized a sad fact about my personality, recently, when we talked about my upcoming Japanese exam.

He asked, "So, what happens if you fail this exam?"

"Nothing."

"So what happens if you pass?"

"Nothing."

Talk about self-inflicted stress...

Before?

The greatest thing about having written years of diaries is that I can now go back and read them all. Amidst the childish blabber, I find some gems.

During the last years of high school and in the beginning of college, I used to ask people to write me letters. Handwritten ones. As much as they whined about it, I have all these amazing letters now. Trust me when I say that they are much more precious than email. I had this theory (which I still believe in) that people feel more comfortable writing things down as opposed to vocalizing them. Somehow when we write them down, things become easier to say. We can talk about our feelings and our disappointments, etc.

When you write things down, you don't have to worry about the opposite party's reaction. You don't have to worry about their disappointment, lack of excitement, disapproval, anger, bewilderment or anything else. You just pour things out, writing to a faceless entity. I've found that this process makes people more honest, more open and more at ease. Don't believe me? Give it a try!

Before?

Too tired to have pithy thoughts tonight. I think I am going to go to bed so I can get up and get some work done tomorrow.

I have some strong opinions about what weblogs are and are not but I will have to save them until I have time to sit down and type legibly. Let me just say that no one is allowed to tell you what you can or should put on your web page. It's yours dammit. You get to decide all of its contents.

Before?

I was going to write a long diatribe about this but I decided not to. I am not on any list and I don't personally know any of the people who are mentioned and I'm not sure I want to start some major thing, so I will keep my thoughts on the matter for now. But I might come back to it. If you have an opinion you want to share, you can post on the MetaFilter thread or mail me and I'll be happy to share my thoughts privately.

I have an oral exam in my sign language class on Monday. (Yes, I do see the humor in that sentence.) It's my final class for this level and my little story will decide whether I pass or fail. I am to come up with a 3-minute talk using the vocabulary learned in this class. The subjects we learned are; years (telling a life story thru years), different countries, describing shapes of objects, cooking related signs, and food related signs. If you can come up with a story using those, please please mail me. I will be eternally grateful.

Before?

Millions of people have already linked to this 13 Myths About the Results of the 2000 Election story that Derek originally linked to at MetaFilter but in case you haven't seen it, I wanted to make sure to point it out. One of the most interesting points, to me, was the 13th. I never really thought of that and it's an interesting point. The entire piece is quite thought provoking actually.

I'm still reading the political issue of the New Yorker from a few weeks ago. Today, I read the Joseph P. Kennedy letters. They were beautiful. The two I found most touching were the ones relating to the deaths of Joe Kennedy, Jr.and Kathleen Kennedy Hartington. It seems he was quite religious. Even though I'm not, I liked his strong emotions and eloquent wording. Here's the one he wrote to Kick (Kathleen) 30 minutes after he found out about her death:

All in all, a very interesting read.

Before?

While writing the next scene in my novel, I started thinking about shrinks and how the relationship is so one-sided. Here you are pouring your heart to a person whom you know very little about. You don't even know if this person is married or has children. They never relay any personal stories of their own, yet you sit there and tell them every little thing about your soul. You pay them to listen and, hopefully, give you some clues into your problems and ways to find resolution. I'm sure this is no news to anyone, but it just made me think today.

In my art class, we looked at different paintings depicting the same story. It was interesting to see how the same biblical story was shown in so many different ways. Actually, the similarities were more interesting. The pose in which a character stood over and over again regardless of painter or period is really fascinating to me.

Before?

I can happily say that this has been a good weekend so far. I've written over 4,000 words of my novel and studied quite a bit of Japanese (not as much as I should have but still, I'm not complaining) and I got to do some of my redesign. On top of that, I went out to dinner with Jake and his parents last night and we got to see Mike and Steve today. All in all, a very successful weekend.

Last night, after dinner, the four of us walked over to the Empire State Building which is a few blocks from our house. If you ever visit New York, I highly recommend going there at night. Most tourists go to the building during the day, but the view is much better at night. Actually, it's breathtaking. From that level, all the lights look like candles and the moving cars make a beautiful picture. I remember the first time Jake and I went up there and I saw the enormous Pepsi-Cola add. It's so large that there is no way to ignore this terribly distasteful ad.

Checkout CNN's election page. They took New Mexico's electoral votes away from Gore but they forgot to decrement his "states won" section. It still says 19 states when it should say 18. Heh.

Apologies for not having an excerpt today, I still have several hours of writing and studying to do and it's already almost 11pm here.

Before?

I spent the entire day writing my novel, literally. I started at 10am and wrote all the way till 5pm. It was draining but I wrote the most important chapter. I figure if I can write this chapter, I can write this book. So I think I can say that the day was successful. Yeay.

We also watched Microcosmos an amazing movie about insects. If you like animals as much as I do, you can't miss this movie. I first saw it with my mother in London and I was so awestruck by it that I've been recommending it ever since. It's truly a work of art. Trust me, you'll love it.

I was talking to a friend the other day about the elections and he mentioned how different life would have turned out if Nixon hadn't conceded in 1960. What would that have meant about Vietnam? Could Kennedy possibly still be alive if he hadn't been president?

Before?

One of the reasons I love living in New York City is cause you can hail cabs here. I'm used to being able to go out in the street, stick out my arm and have a yellow one stop right in front of me. When I moved from Istanbul to Pittsburgh, that was one of the things I missed most. In Pittsburgh, you call a cab and start praying for it to show. Anyhow, back to New York. The thing that baffles me is how few people know the simple taxi system. All cabs in New York use the same strategy to symbolize whether they are free or not. If the sign on top of the cab is not lit, it's Occupied. If it's totally lit, it's Off Duty and if the mid section is lit, it's Available. When hailing for a cab, all you need to do is look for the cabs whose middle light is on. How complicated is that? (And if my explanation sounds complicated, it's only cause I suck at explaining not cause it's actually confusing.) It took me all of a day or two to figure this out. For some reason, New York is full of people who have not. It really baffles me.

Thank God it's Friday. This week has been long and draining so I am really glad it's over. I'm tired of coming home with a whole set of ideas on what I need to do and how I'm going to get it all done and ending up on the couch, unable to move. I'm planning to use this weekend to recharge. And accomplish the millions of things on my list.

Before?

Everyone's talking about voting. It's all over the Fray ( you can even read my little comment) and all over MetaFilter. I know there are many people who are sick of all this talk, but I am still totally obsessed. I can't think of anything else. I have MetaFilter and CNN up on my screens at work and I keep refreshing to get the most recent updates. Kinda freaky, I know, but I can't stop myself. I promise to go back to normal as soon as Gore wins. Heh.

So much to do and so little time. I'm still feeling overwhelmed about this weekend. Trying to get my arms around all the Japanese I need to master in the next three weeks. I also need to produce some literary sounding scenes for my novel class on Monday. This one will go to the entire class so they can critique it, so it needs to be extra good. Let alone all the TiVo catching up I'm gonna have to do. Argh.

Before?

My excuse? I went to the Opera baby! Not just any opera, it was Carmen, the queen of operas. I'd seen Carmen many years ago in Turkey and loved it. It's a great opera to bring first-timers to since so many of the songs will sound familiar. Anyhow, it was magnificent and I'm glad I went.

If you ever wondered where the ideas for soap operas came from, here's the culprit. When I was little, we never had subtitles in the opera. I would read the story and try to guess the point I was at. Three years ago, when I went to see my first Met Opera, La Traviata, I got to actually follow the story line by line for the first time. I bawled. I cried so hard that people were staring. Operas are so sad and they're always about love. But the pace of the change of emotion is almost hilariously fast. There's a scene where Don Jose says, "I will never leave you, Carmen. I will never leave you. All right, you win, I'm leaving." All in one breath. We watch these operas with awe and excitement and yet we laugh at the soaps? Sure sounds inconsistent to me.

I stayed up till 2am last night. I heard Florida called for Gore, I heard it taken back. Jake woke me up at 3am, telling me that Bush won. I woke up at 6 to find out that Bush hadn't won, yet. This year's election is a historical one in so many ways that it was the perfect year to get obsessed with politics. This year, it all comes down to a single state. It possibly even comes down to the international absentee ballots in that state. We have a First Lady senator, a possible equality in the senate, a senator winning posthumously, and a case where the popular vote might be different than the electoral one. Too many incredible statistics all in one. How can you possibly not care? I'm just pissed I didn't get to vote.

Before?

Thanks to Stewart I tracked down the double issue of The New Yorker and I am so glad I did. I don't know why I suddenly became so fascinated with politics, but here I am yelling at my TV while Jake's surfing the net. Maybe it is cause I can't vote.

One of the articles in the New Yorker, titled The Word Lab, is about what language the candidates use and how they get selected. It has quite a few interesting points. For the article, they created a focus group and one of the things they discussed was death tax. People's opinion of the amount you're allowed to pass on after you die was a lot more than people had originally guessed. But even after the facts were given, almost none of the participants changed their opinion on whether to abolish to tax or not. "The point here was that if you introduce a subject using language that will produce a strong opinion no subsequent information will get people to change their minds."

Another thing they did during the focus group was to make them put these five words in order of what matters most in their life. The list was opportunity, community, responsibility, accountability, and society. (I listed them in the same order as the magazine) What would be your order?

I gotta go back and yell at my TV some more.

Before?

We also talked about perception. We looked at this wooden African piece where a woman sat kneeled. On top of her is a male figure. Many of us, who have been raised in a semi-Western culture, immediately assumed this to be a subservient position. Actually, in this example, the woman symbolized the woman as the higher being, the main cause of support. She's the source of power. Isn't it interesting how much we assume?

Did I mention that there is no equivalent of "bless you" in Japanese? I have an issue with that. It's so weird to me that a society that places so much importance on being formal and correct and polite has no word for 'bless you'. Talk about cultural differences....

Tomorrow is vote-day. Please vote. I can't but if you can, please do. It makes a huge deal of difference, especially this time.

Before?

I wrote the entire outline of my novel today. Twenty chapters of three acts each. Considering the two main characters and beginning of the story had been in my mind for several months, it was neat to see whether I could form an entire book's worth of a story out of it. I think I can. I hope I can. I really love this story and I am quite attached to these people. I want to do this one. I want to do it right. May the Muses help me out.

Derek says writing a book is hard. I couldn't agree more.

I did spend some chunk of time studying for my Japanese test as well. Not as much as I would have liked to, but enough to not give up on this exam, yet. I just hope my brain holds up.

Self-confidence is a weird thing, everyone who lacks it thinks that she is the only one who does so. (I am tired of using the politically correct she or he thing. Since I am female, I am using she. If you're male, please adjust accordingly. Thanks.) I look at some people and feel like they must be amazingly happy. I see this person who looks stunning, has a great job, wonderful boyfriend and friends who seem to love her. I think to myself that this person must feel delighted with her life. And then I find out that she, too, doubts herself and feels insecure and my jaw drops. I wish I could find a way to cure self-doubt. It's such a crippling sensation and it seems that no one is spared. If you know the secret to how not to be insecure, please share with me.

Before?

It's times like these that make me reconsider my willingness to go back to school.

I wish I could tell you something pithy about today but I spent the entire day studying Japanese, desperately trying to come up with an outline for my novel and mostly running away from both chores by watching a week's worth of TiVo. I'm sure tomorrow won't be shockingly different.

I did see Charlie's Angels last night and loved it. It was funny. It was witty. It was silly. It was fun. It was the perfect Friday night movie.

Before?

I went to the museum with my class and we looked at several pieces. We surrounded a painting and played a game called the Delayed Judgement Activity. In this activity, you reserve all of your judgement and make objective statements about the piece. For example, "This woman looks happy" is subjective while "This painting has four women and a man" is objective. So we went around three times and tried making our statements as objective as possible. The neat thing about the activity is that it's a group-activity. One person makes a statement and we all ponder whether that's really objective or not. This process causes each observer to notice things that she or he hadn't paid attention to before the exercise. The painting, therefore, completely transforms right before your eyes. It's really magical.

By the way, the practice of separating objective from subjective is really difficult and requires a personal effort, especially when talking about an artistic object.

Before?

Are you nice to people? When was the last time you were rude to someone? It's really amazing how some people don't realize the importance of being nice to everyone. I'm not talking about kissing butt or faking it, but genuine cordiality. There is no reason to not be kind to everyone. It's so interesting to me how something that goes around comes around. The person you're mean to might be at the other end of an interview or might become a client. I just don't understand what causes people to be rude. To me, it makes perfect sense to try and be nice to everyone. When someone is nice to me, especially when they have no reason to be, it so makes my day and I love the idea of doing that for someone else. Wouldn't you?

Before?

I brought my camera home to take pictures of my nephews, family and friends. I also promised a friend, I'd take pictures of Turkey for him. To make sure I couldn't fulfill any of my promises, my camera broke. On top of that, the few pictures I did take were taken with the lowest quality and came out quite shitty. After I sent my camera to Kodak (who, btw, has the greatest customer service ever!) I got it back just this week. As I looked through the pictures yesterday, I was pleased to find this little gem.

Levent took this picture of both of us. I remember that day clearly. We met to take a short walk and it was the day after my Laser operation, which is why I'm wearing sunglasses. We got ice cream from Gunes (which means 'sun') which is the best ice cream I've ever had. And we walked down the seaside, taking pictures of the bridges and the sailboats by the sea. The sun was setting as we chatted about our lives. He just became a doctor and started working at a hospital and I had major changes in my life since we last saw each other, so we had a lot of catching up to do. Levent was my first boyfriend and he's the only ex I'm actually on speaking terms with (long story) and we've known each other for over 12 years. Actually we've been best friends for that long. There's something to be said for the few people who've meant so much to you for such a long time.

Love you, Levent, and I miss you!

Before?