Covid-19 - The Novel Wuhan Virus 2019

I am not scared of Covid-19. I am concerned about the implications of a novel infectious agent that has spread the world over and continues to find new footholds in different soil. I am rightly concerned for the welfare of those who are elderly, in frail health or disenfranchised who stand to suffer mostly, and disproportionately, at the hands of this new scourge. But I am not scared of Covid-19.

What I am scared about is the loss of reason and wave of fear that has induced the masses of society into a spellbinding spiral of panic, stockpiling obscene quantities of anything that could fill a bomb shelter adequately in a post- apocalyptic world.

I am scared of the N95 masks that are stolen from hospitals and urgent care clinics where they are actually needed for front line healthcare providers and instead are being donned in airports, malls, and coffee lounges, perpetuating even more fear and suspicion of others. I am scared that our hospitals will be overwhelmed with anyone who thinks they " probably don't have it but may as well get checked out no matter what because you just never know..." and those with heart failure, emphysema, pneumonia and strokes will pay the price for overfilled ER waiting rooms with only so many doctors and nurses to assess.

I am scared that travel restrictions will become so far reaching that weddings will be canceled, graduations missed and family reunions will not materialize. And well, even that big party called the Olympic Games...that could be kyboshed too. Can you even imagine?

I'm scared those same epidemic fears will limit trade, harm partnerships in multiple sectors, business and otherwise and ultimately culminate in a global recession.

But mostly, I'm scared about what message we are telling our kids when faced with a threat. Instead of reason, rationality, openmindedness and altruism, we are telling them to panic, be fearful, suspicious, reactionary and self-interested.

Covid-19 is nowhere near over. It will be coming to a city, a hospital, a friend, even a family member near you at some point. Expect it. Stop waiting to be surprised further. The fact is the virus itself will not likely do much harm when it arrives. But our own behaviors and "fight for yourself above all else" attitude could prove disastrous.

I implore you all. Temper fear with reason, panic with patience and uncertainty with education. We have an opportunity to learn a great deal about health hygiene and limiting the spread of innumerable transmissible diseases in our society. Let's meet this challenge together in the best spirit of compassion for others, patience, and above all, an unfailing effort to seek truth, facts and knowledge as opposed to conjecture, speculation and "catastrophizing".

Facts not fear. Clean hands. Open hearts. Our children will thank us for it. #Covid_19 #washyourhands #scrubyourhands #getyourflushot #avoidcrowdedplaces #respect #patiencenotpanic

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME

As an English teacher, my take is that the “what” question is asking for criticism or praise. I’ll use this narrative to bring home my response, as blunt and direct as I possibly can.

 There is an estimate of 108 million humans to ever walk this planet earth and at least 7 billion living today. Think of it this way. If you had to live 108 billion times all over again, I earnestly doubt you would still be stuttering with no confidence.

Literally no one cares. No one cares if you made a mistake once,

Or twice.

No one cares if you tripped over a step in public as long as you brush it off, get up and walk again (even if your heart is pouring and your palms are sweaty).

No one cares about your eyes or voice. Here’s the bitter truth.

You are pretty/handsome. You might be smart, kind or even rude. You might have a talent of absolutely nothing or excel in a subject. At the end of the day, you are average until you prove yourself to be otherwise. Whether It is to five people or ten thousand people.

So next time you walk up, put aside and focus on the bigger pictures because these strangers won’t remember you in a few months, and that is the harsh fact. 

Thank you!

The Harshest Truth You Will learn

1) Physically attractive people will get respect, even if they did nothing to earn that respect.

2) Money is the only way to solve a great number of life's problems.

3) Heartbreak isn't a possibility, it's guaranteed.

4) Sooner or later you will have to stop caring. Not about your physical and mental health, but about other people. It doesn’t make sense to hang around those who aren't interested in cheering for you.

5) Teachers will love some students and won’t hesitate to criticize/insult others, and you might fall into the latter category (it happened to me). I wouldn't count on an explanation.

6) You have to honor yourself and your wishes. Nobody else will.

7) Time is running out, and it passes a lot faster as you age. Think twenty years is a long time? It isn’t.

8) There’s a reason older people keep cats and dogs as pets. These animals really are the best company in the world.

9) Haters will hate, even at the best of times. It’s the only job they can find.

10) Lying, gossiping, cheating, and stealing happen all the time in the world of work. People will spread lies about you, even though you’ve done nothing wrong (it happened to me).

Good Dreams Are Nightmares

“From the shards of tattered dreams I rose, unwilling. Tossed upon tides of pain that flowed and ebbed, leaving me searingly awake. And more revoltingly... alive”

Nightmares are bearable, for they die when you wake up. Good dreams, on the other hand, are unbearable. They take you to the pinnacle of your desires and then when you wake up, drop you into the abyss that is everyday life.

~I've fallen in love so many times and had the love reciprocated in dreams, and woke up alone and too terrified to talk to anyone. Good dreams are horrible.

LIFE IN TURKEY - THE THREAD 5

It's just splendidly amazing !

You know the special thing about turkey that you can't get bored too easily

Turkey has a 81 Governorate you can see in every one of them a different thing , different food some different traditions , different weather and nature , go to Trabzon and you will have a bearthtaking nature alot of forests and splendid mountains

Leave Trabzon and go down to Şanlıurfa and you will just be transferred to another kind of nature and hot weather 

Leave Şanlıurfa and go to Antalya and it's great beaches 

Go up to Eskişehir and Sazova park 

You know what it's not just about places it's about food too

Every governorate in turkey got its speical food

Urfa kebap 

Eskişehir çiğbörek 

İzmir köfte 

It will seem like a normal city but it's definitely not !

With it's amazing çiğköfte which is basically some kind of vegetarian kofte it used to be with meat but it's now vegetarian

And of course Adıyaman tobacco which will be a great new taste for you if you smoke 

Maybe turkey is not the richest country in the world

Or the most developed super power yet

But what's great about turkey that it's full of taste

Your senses are going to smell , see , hear and touch alot of new things

And you don't need to be a tourist for all of this

I have moved here one year ago and I live as a 100% Turk now !

The locals and the Turkish people are great

They are very special , it's not like everyone say oh these people are very hospitable and great to anyone

I mean it !

To summerize turkey of course as any country in the world got it's good and ugly

But the good in turkey tastes more genuine and real than any country I have visited to before

I have visited around 12 different countries

And I can assure you that I have never felt such a desire to stay in a country and never leave as in Turkey

Greetings mate!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LIFE IN TURKEY - THE THREAD 4

It depends on who you are, where you live and which education you got.

Let's say you are an uneducated Kurd from the south east, from a family of poor workers. Life is going to be hard. Your chances of going up in the social pyramid are very few. If you move to a big city everybody will look down at you because you are Kurdish and poor, and probably you will end up working as a slave for a doner shop for 2000–2500 tl. Chances of finding a girlfriend that is not in your social level are close to zero.

Keep in mind that into order to get good education, you need first a good high school, and for that you need to pass the high school access exam, and for that either you go to a private school or invest a lot of money on preparation schools. Public schools don’t get you ready for the exams, or at least not as good as private ones do.

If you are an educated “white” Turk from one of the big cities, I dare to say that life is going to be easier than it would have been if you were born in Europe or America. Finding a job after university is easier than in the West, and salaries go from 4000tl up. You can afford a nice house, nice social life and your only preoccupation will be complaining about Erdogan and how Turkish lira is losing value against dollar and euro.

It's also important whether you family is conservative or not. Even most liberal Turks are conservative for European standards, so having a real conservative family can be a real pain in the ass, with them telling you how to dress, what to do and who to marry. Liberal families often expect the same, but they keep it to themselves.

If you are a foreigner and somehow you manage to live outside the Turkish messed up labor market and be paid in euros or dollars, you will be the new sultan of Turkey. Prices and rents are low, food is great and the country is very safe. If you also manage to get a bunch of friends that don't consider you a circus freak, then you will have a great time (normally Turks don't really like hanging out with foreigners, whatever they say). Language is also a barrier hard to break, but it isn't impossible.

LIFE IN TURKEY - THE THREAD 3

Oh wow where to begin, let’s see. I wanna do this politics-free because I for one try to keep politics from affecting my everyday life.

Life in Turkey isn’t very easy. Everything is so monotonous yet unorganized. I don’t know how this is possible. I really don’t. Your future is pretty much predicted by both yourself and people around you yet your way to your predicted future isn’t clear. When you wake up in the morning, you know how your day is going to be and where you’ll be when it ends but things rarely go as planned however things always end up the way they were planned. Idk if that’s good or bad, you decide.

Being a child/teenager in Turkey isn’t that hard. People are usually understanding and helpful because you’re very young. But 18 and after is a bit of a challenge. High school begins at the age of 14 and ends at 18. On the last year of high school, there’s this lovely exam that basically determines your future. The formation of that exam has changed a lot recently so even if I tell you what it’s like right now, that might not be correct information three months later. With the result of that exam you choose a university and a department. You can choose between universities that your grade is enough to get in. The exam is hard as hell. It requires you to study for a whole year and i mean like really study. And I’ll be taking that exam this year, wish me luck and sanity.

After you take the exam while you’re looking at universities to choose, you don’t have that many choices. Especially if you want a guaranteed future in Turkey. To have a guaranteed future people usually choose to study these; engineering, law, medicine, architecture, psychology and maybe one or two more i couldn’t think of. This situation may require adjusting yourself a bit. If you want to be an astronaut, Space and Aircraft Engineering should do just fine for you. But that doesn’t mean that people should give up on what they love doing. A friend of mine is passionate about physics and he wanted to study physics for the rest of his life but there aren’t too many good opportunities in physics in Turkey, he might’ve had to move to another country, so he decided to study in engineering while also studying physics. If you’re good at and okay with adjusting and have at least standard IQ you’ll do just fine and with a little bit of hard work, you’ll do even better than fine.

Let’s talk about social life now. There’s always something for everyone.

• If you like clubbing and over 18, you can easily find clubs for your taste.
• If you’re into arts you can find many exhibitions, art galleries and workshops.
• If you’re into music, there are a lot of concerts going on. If I remember correctly Shakira is coming to Istanbul tomorrow. Local bands are really active. And they’re good. Like reaally good.
• If you like drinking you can find various pubs with various themes and various kinds of drinks.
• If you enjoy coffee, yay. There are a lot of great coffee shops. Yes there is Starbucks on every corner but local coffee shops are way better. Their interior design, the music playing there, the atmosphere are all so great.
• If you like reading books, there are so many awesome bookshops. I don’t know if anyone’s interested but there’s a bookshop in Ankara, Kızılay called Dost (Friend) and I just love there. Very nice staff, so many choices of books, albums, records. I’ve been buying nearly all of my books/albums from there since i was little.
• If you’re into working out, you can easily find a gym that suits your needs.

Basically, there’s always something for everyone.

One of my favourite things about Turkey; its natural beauty. So much to see, so much to explore and experience. The country is rounded by seas. Black Sea, Aegean Sea, Mediterranean Sea. Each has something different to offer you. You can experience different weather conditions in the same season in different cities. You can experience all four seasons in one year. My point is; you have so many vacation options! You never say something like “ugh i don’t know where to go this summer without leaving the country” because there’s always somewhere that you didn’t see.

Last but not least, Turkish people. Turkish people are nice. We’re warm, kind, caring. We’re kind of known for our hospitality which i recommend everyone to come and see themselves. This makes life easier. Just today, an old man in subway patted me on the shoulder and said my shoelaces were untied and that i might trip and fall so i should tie them. If this isn’t the nicest thing ever, i don’t know what is. Oh and just fyi when you’re a tourist here, you’ll be welcomed really sincerely. It makes Turkish people happy to see people from other countries are curious about Turkey or just wants to see Turkey. You might not get fluent English speakers everywhere tho, English is pretty different from Turkish so it’s hard to speak English, for many people.

To summarize, life in Turkey is an adventure with checkpoints and boosters and all. For example you can never make sure if the car in front of you is going to decide on stopping when the red light flashes, or you never know if a dollar will cost cheaper in Turkish Lira or not, or if the examination system’s gonna change or not. It’s full of unexpected series of events yet in the end, everything works out the way it should.

P.S: If anyone’s interested in Turkish music, I like recommending music, please contact me somehow.

Turkish cuisine is probably one of the broadest cuisines in the world. Every region’s (there are 7 regions) even every city’s local dish or beverage or even dessert is different. In East Anatolia, there’s a lot of meaty stuff going on, in Aegean (south west of Turkey) you can find many veggie dishes with olive oil. But it’s possible to eat a region’s food without actually being there, you can find every region’s food wherever you are, just as not as good as you’d find in the region. This makes travelling and life itself better. Good food means happy people.