The 14th Case: A Tribute to Sherlock Holmes

The carriage, as it turned around the corner of Piccadilly Circus, was tearing apart the foggy pessimism of London where another murder was committed only a few hours ago, presumably by the same murderer. The two men inside the carriage, one of whom was exclusively called to the crime scene by the Scotland Yard, were as quite as stone monuments despite the unsettling rough ride. It was not earlier than three in the morning when they arrived at the so called crime scene. The police, as always, were going through the usual and dull investigative procedures while J. Williams was getting off the carriage.

One might easily judge him to be rather a fragile gentleman not because of his handsome hands and friendly gestures but simply for his unusual politeness. However, it couldn’t be far from the truth as J. Williams was raised in Liverpool as one of the six children of a porter who worked in the harbor for forty years. May be because of his so called strange thoughts – he calls them intuitive skills – or his hatred for being ordinary, he somehow managed to study human psychology and the nature of crimes because of his never ending interest in human mind and got out of that low-paying life. Money, well-deserved money, was a global constant in his life. That is why he refused to become a detective and that is also why he calls himself a generalist, a person who could see the patterns instead of thoughts and apply such intricate information to unique unrelated areas in a meticulous manner.

Dream Life: %100 Risk Guaranteed

The sound of the alarm must have been going on for sometime while Maya was almost dragging her body out of bed. It was still dark and dead silent outside. The devious morning breeze made her shiver involuntarily. “Fuckin’ awkard” she grumbled while still trying to get away from her misery. Intellectualy, she was having a mental nausea as her mind wasn’t awake yet. In the meantime, the neverending alarm was almost begging her to push its buttons as if it would go back to a timeless sleep right after then. When she did turn it off, the room went completely silent. The city, as it seemed from the open window, was as active as a brain in rem sleep. It was exactly 4.am and suddenly it occured to her that she did not set the alarm yesterday. Why would she? “Fuck” she panicked. “I don’t remember leaving the windows open, I never would”. She reached for the light and searched the room visually for a possible trace of a thief. It was a small studio and everything seemed to be in order, at least for the moment.

Lost in Cosmic Dance

It was breath taking! The air was soft as I was staring blankly at the ceiling. I was way beyond my vision, in my mind, traveling with a gentle melody in my ear. It was as if… Have you ever felt one with everything around you that no matter what happened wouldn’t bother you? Have you ever felt like living… feeling every breath, sensing each smooth touch… or enjoying a wind blowing like a soothing song in your ear perhaps?

Be a Politician Now!

Be A Politician Now!

The word politics comes from Greek and can simply be interpreted as ‘the art of telling lies’ So don’t blame the guys for their lies. They are literally doing the right thing.

Here is a simple and straight forward guide about how to be a politician.

1. One lie can save the situation, a couple can make you a hero: The average person on the street is very inexperienced in lying. The wife asks “honey, where did you spent our savings?” and the husband goes “well, Frank needed some money so I…” you know the rest. The guy gets shot by the wife and so on. For a politician though, this is just a warm up exercise. The senate questions hims “so, what happened to the money in the treasury?” and he goes “what money?” and a few minutes later he’ll be telling you about what kind of traitor you are for not letting him spend the money on education (!) and other good things. “They questioned me for investing in education” goes the headlines and you’ll be sorry in a few days.

2. Start Talking When You See The Letters P-R-E-S-S Together: If you ever see any kind of microphone being offered to you, don’t think. Let your mind go with the flow. Let it all out. Talk about the weather and then give a cake recipe or something. Anything would do. Since they’ll be editing the video, just add a few words at the end about the so called new projects and improvements in economy. You might excite people with a “the minimum wage is gonna go up! It has to” kinda style.

3. U turns in a 180 Degrees Fashion: I love these guys. They just put each other down and then suddenly end up at the same political party. When asked, be frank and tell them “we’re modern man who can meet in the middle for the sake of the nation. Don’t push Frank too much, he’s just found the right way by joining us”

4. Be A Political Poet: This is one of the most difficult to attain since it requires a master’s degree in lying. Just turn your face towards the camera (make sure you are on live tv) bend your head about ten degrees and shed some tears and then a bit more and then let it all out. Go nuts! People love this.

5. Smile: I’m talking about feeling fake and putting a genuine smile on your face at the same time. Sounds complicated isn’t it? Don’t show all you teeth while smiling. You are not smiling for something really funny. You are smiling because you love the people, you love the press and everything else about the whole nation. You are a real lover! You are a blessing!

6. From Nothing to Everything: People love to hear that their leaders went through hard times. Of course, you don’t have to have real memories of your own but it is quite handy to make up a few. “I remember my mother working 26 hours a day and bringing a piece of bread for my sick brother while I was having a brain surgery…”

Go into politics unless you acquire a proficient level in each of these. If you want to improve such skills, turn on your tv and watch the best ones.

A Deadly Miracle

“I hate mondays” murmured Dr. Robinson while getting into his ten year old Chevrolet under the overcast monday sky. “Mondays should be included in weekends so we can have longer weekends” thought doc and reluctantly started his car. The day started like a usual monday but it wasn’t going to be one. The doc wasn’t aware of it yet.

Everyday he’d take the second right from his house and get on the highway, take Exit 5 and drive directly to the hospital for over twenty minutes. It was said that he was the best oncologist in town. Even though he had held hands with many dying cancer patients, death was always a common, empty word for him and he’d always been afraid of it. It was quite surprising to see how people would talk about the God, heaven, feeling good and all when they were about to die. He felt sorry for those people. A rational man would know that death was the end of it, finito, caput.

“Oh, mondays…” he murmured again just before hearing an incredibly loud crash and hitting his head one or many times. The highway disappeared and then reappeared and then… he was feeling his body was moving involuntarily. Everything was out of sync. His so called survival mechanisms couldn’t get any useful information except the “you must be in trouble” fact. It felt like a hurricane but he couldn’t figure out what it was until everything stopped all of a sudden. A deadly silence followed. A few minutes later his brain was beginning to synchronize with the external world by sending a huge amount of pain signals coming from all over his body.

“Are you all right?” asked a male voice.

He wanted to shout but couldn’t move a muscle.

“It’s all right” said the same voice. “It’s all right now. You are doing fine.”

A while later, he found him self lying on a soft ground with a man standing right next to him.

“It’s a miracle… that you haven’t got any broken bones, just a few bruises though” the man said.
“What…”
“An accident. You were hit from behind by a car. Now, you wait here till we get an ambulance and I’ll take a look at the others in the other car”

The man was out of sight and Dr. Robson was left lying under the beautiful blue sky which seemed to be quite depressing in the morning.

“There you go” he heard the other man saying to someone else. Despite the increasing pain in his legs and back, he felt that he could be of help to them as a doctor. When he held up his head, he saw a little boy trying to help the other man get the passenger(s) out of the car.

“Please dad, please wake up” he cried sounding rather desperate.

By the time he went near the car, he knew that the passengers in the car, a man and presumably his wife, were already dead. He could almost smell death after having so many cases at the hospital but this time wasn’t able to leave the situation or let the nurse do the “everyone dies” talking.

“They are dead, aren’t they?” the kid asked realistically despite the terror in his face.

Dr. Robinson felt like he had to do something to get out of his helplessness. He was assuring the kid that everything was going to be all right and he’d be taken care of soon. It was surprising how late the ambulance was coming considering the fact that they were quite close to the hospital.

“Finally” said Dr. trying to walk with the terrible pain in his leg.

The medics immediately got out of the ambulance.

“He’s alive” said one of them.

“Alive” murmured Dr. Robinson. “How come? But didn’t he…”

“Sir? Sir, your head is all red” said the kid pointing at the back of his head.

“What…? Oh, my head” replied Dr. Robinson rather confused. His back and trousers were all covered with blood. It was a miracle that he was still alive after that much bleeding.

The medics went right past them and headed to his car while he was watching them astonished.

“Hey, over here! Hey!” he shouted rather desperately but they were dragging someone else out of the car.

The medics looked at each other hopelessly and asked for backup for the bodies.

“Hey, you! I’m a doctor. I’m bleeding here for God’s sake!” Dr. Robinson was almost screaming but his voice began to fade away when he was the man’s face lying on the ground. It was himself lying peacefully on the grass.

“Surprising isn’t it?” said the man who’s helped him.
“But… did you just see..?”

There was a deadly silence.

“Time go to old man”
“To go? To go where?” replied Doctor honestly wandering about the man’s answer.
“This is the end of the road… Remember? The end, finito, caput?”
“So… You mean I’m dead?” then started laughing out loud.

The man was watching him with a friendly smile on his face.

“Don’t worry. This is the usual first reaction.” The man said while walking towards the kid.

“So we are dead?” the kid asked.
“Didn’t you miss your Bonnie, your dog, and grandpa?” asked the man.
“Are they…? Really? But how?”

The man held his hands and the kid looked very peaceful and sleepy in a few seconds. Then he smiled back to the man as if he were saying “I understand”.

The sun was shining like a bright star. The nature seemed beautiful more than ever. Different tones of green and yellow were blending smoothly and bringing a tranquility with each breath.

The man patted on Dr.’s shoulder and said “you see, it’s not the end of it Doc. It’s just a transition or a beginning you might say.”

Dr. Robinson was still surprised saying “I still don’t believe you”.
“You don’t have to my dear doctor but you’d if you had seen your father”

“Over here young man!” Dr. Robinson was stunned by his father’s voice coming from his back. There he was standing in his favorite good looking suit with his hair combed perfectly.
“Are you coming or not young man?”
“Dad?” he asked still suspicious but amazed at the same time.
“Oh, put that famous skepticism of yours aside young man. Come along.”

The Robinsons were hugging each other in no time and the man was holding the kid’s hand and leading them towards the shining light.

“And you shall be the…?” Dr. Robinson couldn’t put an end to his question.
“I’m the angel of death” he said with a beautiful smile and bowed respectfully.
“So, what’s next?” asked the doc.
“It’s just another beginning doc” replied the angel of death. “A beautiful one”.

What’s up in Turkey mama?

A gas mask, a bottle of milk and vinegar solution and a helmet. No, there is no nuclear war coming up but these are among the regular necessities of daily life in Istanbul nowadays. People are now fed up by the dictatorship of the prime minister Erdogan who has been telling them how many kids to have(!), what to wear, what to drink (or not!) and even what to do!

The Very Famous Mrs. Brown

I was on a plane to Istanbul from London and just as I was getting ready to go into a relaxing trance the flight attendent held out a cup of coffee to the lady sitting right next to me and said “here you go Mrs. Brown”. Then, looking rather surprised, I turned to the lady and said “are you really Mrs. Brown?” She stared at me in confusion and said “well, yes. Do I know you?”. Still smiling I replied. “you probably don’t know you but I certainly do know you”.

After a few seconds of pause she asked “from London perhaps?”

“Well Mrs. Brown, don’t push it too hard cause you ain’t never gonna believe how I know you” I said and she was beginning to look restless for some reason. May be the good old Mrs. Brown was having an affair, who knows? So, I told her the real thing.

I said “I know you from my English books in elementary school”.

“What books?” she asked rather shocked.

“Well, we always had a Mrs. Brown in our English books. She’d go to shopping, she’d go to Liverpool to visit her nephew. She had a wonderful backyard where she’d sing all day. I mean I know all about you…” and we started laughing real loud together. We had such a great time with my childhood hero (!). That was probably one of the most unusual plane rides for Mrs. Brown I believe.

Upon leaving the plane, I made it up to her and said “I never had the chance to see you in person. You are way beautiful in reality Mrs Brown. Please tell my regards to our friendly Mr Brown.”

 

PS: Now you’re wondering whether the featured image is really Mrs Brown or not. Well, she sure isn’t but you’d love that wouldn’t you? I know you would. Yes, you definitely would.

English Me You Learn Not.

Long time ago, when I was about thirteen, my father has decided to send me off to Brighton, England for three weeks to learn proper English.  Though I am still not sure whether he really wanted me to learn English or he wanted to relax and chill for three weeks. I’d love to believe in the former.

Irrelevant Picture

So, there I was standing in the middle of the Heathrow Airport along with my thirteen year old friends. We had three teachers who were there responsible for us but they seemed more like shepherds leading a herd. Not because they were really guiding but they were quite good at making you feel that you were dumb and stupid. They’d just hold up a passport and say “this is a passport” and wait for a while and “now we turn the page. Slowly, turn the page. That’s it”.  Sometimes I believe they might have been right about treating us that way as some people in the herd would still go “what page? What passport?”

The security control was quite enjoying as we thought we were really beginning to  communicate with British People. Some friends would say “I said hello to the policeman and he said hello too” and others in the group would say “Wow! He’s really good at English” and the same guy would go and say hello to everyone really believing that he was good at it.

During the customs, they wanted to check my bag for no reason as I am usually the only guy in the group who doesn’t seem to belong to the group. As a thirteen year old, I must have had the look of a real  terrorist with no English.

“Excuse me sir, is this your bag?” asked the policemen. Then I was stunned! Being referred to as a SIR sounded way better that HEY BOY! in my own country. I had the SIR part all right but I didn’t really understand the rest so I was just smiling there and trying to be cute. For some reason(!) the guy was pointing at my handbag and my friend was saying “I think he wants money or something”. Eventually, after numerous tries my teacher came and told me about his request. “So what was that fuss about being a sir and everything?” I wondered, in my mind.

A warm British couple picked me up from the airport and we hit the road to our new home. After a good night’s sleep just as I was getting ready, the lady asked “would you like some toast?” (Toast is some kind of toasted sandwich in Turkey) and I was just so happy. Yes! Yes! Yes please! Well, it later turned out that it was just toasted bread, but that didn’t kill my spirit.

I had a French rom mate and his English was even worse then mine. In fact, I became pretty good at using sign language after a week in Brighton. We were almost able to talk about literature by using signs. Who needs English anyways?

In the evening, we’ve gathered in the living room to watch TV and the weather forecast was on. The guy was saying “it’s raining cats and dogs” and we just started smiling to each other with the French guy. “Cats and dogs? The guy must have had a long night with mushrooms and LSD” I thought.

We would just watch a movie everyday because we were told that it would help a great deal to improve our English and I’d hear the same conversations every night. The French guy would say “turn up the volume, I can’t hear it” and we would turn it up a bit and he’d go “more” and after a few minutes he’d say “I still can’t hear it” really believing that it was something about his hearing.

One advice for the British friends out there: please think about people who are not native English speakers. What the hell is white coffee? Can you just imagine my disappointment when I first bought my white coffe and figured that it was only coffee with milk???

 

Leonardo Turco: The Man Who Has Flied Over Istanbul

Yes, he’s made it! He is not only the first person who has flied from one continent to another but he is also the first man to fly.

From Seyahatname (A book of Travel by Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi who travelled for 40 years)

In the Renaissance era, the Ottoman Empire was alien to the rapid advancements in Europe and scientific studies were constantly suppressed by religion. Studying anatomy and performing operations on people were considered a sin and performers would be sentenced to death under the command of the Sultan. Drinking wine, and even coffee in some areas, were forbidden and people were conditioned to do anything but think so there were all kinds of celebrations to keep people busy and happy.

Flying has been the passion of many people but none of them were as passionate and fearless as Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi.  Hezarfen, meaning expert in a thousand sciences, was a so called scientist in the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century. In many ways, he reminds me of Leonardo Da Vinci since Hezarfen was punished for working with corpses, he was eager to learn everything about human anatomy and he was obsessed with flying. Some say that he had worked on Da Vinci’s models’ and improved them in his own ways so that he could fly over Istanbul. Based on the story, Hezarfen was also in love with an Italian slave from whom he had received Da Vinci’s notes.

In his Seyahatname, the famous traveller Evliya Çelebi tells about Hezarfen and how he made his passion dream come true. According to the story, Sultan Murad hears about Hezarfen’s plan about flying because the Sultan was capable of doing everything within his power but flying. So, Hezarfen designs two wings, probably inspired from Leonardo, and runs up to the tower of Galata while the Jannisaries were chasing him. Standing on the edge of the tower, he surrenders to the perfect wind and starts flying above the admiring looks of the Istanbullars and flies over the Bosphorus and lands on to the other side of Istanbul, which is another continent in theory.

The Sultan sent him into exile to Algeria where he died after a short while they say. Some say that he was out of his mind. I agree, that is why we don’t remember those some but only Hezarfen Ahmed.

There is a wonderful movie called “Istanbul Beneath My Wings” which tells this amazing story of the first scientist in the Ottoman Empire. There are also Evliya Celebi, Omar Khayyam and many other famous figures in the movie.

Here’s a little clip from the movie regarding the Flight of Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi(Final Scene): Istanbul Beneath My Wings

Here’s a wonderful piece of music from the movie which perfectly reflects the Ottoman Spirit of the time: Istanbul – Ud

Laughing Cure For Laughing Impaired

Isn’t it ironic that people love laughing yet they just don’t do it enough. An average baby laughs/smiles about 300 times per day and I know some adults who can get a fantastic figure like a zero with a capital Z.

In the early days of behaviorist therapy, they used to try breaking the depression pattern by telling people to laugh for no reason every morning. Seems quite out of the line at first glance, well to be honest it still looks odd even at the second glance  but it sounds much better than what most people do every day: they wake up in the morning and  say to themselves “oh, shit. The weather is terrible, haven’t slept enough, my girl friend left me, I am miserable…” and the list goes on till they feel bad enough to start another day in hell.

The best year of my life was when I was working in a mental hospital as a psychologist. Working with people with severe mental illnesses seemed like a challenging task at first but when I first went to the hospital and entered the hall, I saw dozens of smiling faces looking at me. The only one who wasn’t smiling was me because there wasn’t anything funny going on, yet. In the following days, I’ve figured that most of those people were even happier than my colleges at the hospital. In fact, many of them didn’t have any stres related problems (such as psychosomatic illnesses), no chronic pains, no heart conditions and so on.

Laughing was so common among them that after a while I felt like I didn’t need to wait for a joke or anything funny to happen to have a good laugh. As I was treating those people, I was watching them real close to get a sense of their way of happiness, which seemed to be working much better than mine. Many of them would laugh for no reason while watching tv or even in the middle of a conversation and some of them would laugh even before going to bed. Curiosity got into my blood and three weeks later after my first day at the hospital there I was laughing real hard with one of the patients in his room. We did that every day and sometimes a couple times a day. God, it felt so good as if my brain was releasing a cocktail of happiness into my blood circulation. My body was going “you crazy son of a gun, give me more”.My colleagues were quite surprised because people were feeling way better after my visits and they wondered how I managed to do it in such a short time. “Put a little smile on your face” I said. They were expecting  scientific explanation so they didn’t believe.

It’s been five years since I’ve worked for that institution and I still practice the laughing sessions.

Try it for free: find a place where you won’t be disturbed and seen (for your own sake). Then either imagine something funny or just start laughing for no reason. It may feel a bit phony at first but keep going till the laughter becomes automatic and you feel really silly doing it. Continue for ten minutes and feel how good it is to feel happy for no reason. Go nuts, go crazy, let it overwhelm you 🙂

Warning: this technique is not for normal people as most of the normal people on the planet are serious, some are depressed and many are living like zombies. So, just try this if you want to feel your high.