November 20, 2004
Winter starts practically
November 18, 2004
'hypothesis crisis'
Our extended deadline to find an hypothesis for the term project ends tomorrow (For MED 391 class) So between 12:00 and 18:00, I was surrounded with helpless students who cannot produce acceptable hypotheses. I just felt as helpless as they are since Prof Isen rarely accepts student proposals....
Now my office is silent and i am alone and after checking my email accounts, I will start working on my weekly report for Interpress... So I will have more time tomorrow to assist student proposals...
November 15, 2004
First two days of bairam
This is the second day of Bairam. I might benefit from visiting my relatives this time. I met a guy/nephew?, Suleyman, who is a webmaster. He promised me to prepare a website related to my research and teach me how to update it... I think this will be easier than starting to learn how to design a website:)
Last night all children of the nuclear family headed by me went to see a movie: G.O.R.A. In 90 years of turkish cinema, this film is the most expensively produced one: 5 million dollars. It is a teaser movie of popular science fiction movies like Matrix, Star Wars and Fifth Element.
just to have a look [the site has english pages]:
http://www.gorafilm.com/
I am satisfied with this movie but I believe most of the humor is based on Turkish language. We had to find more than an hour to find a good seat, and while we were waiting we insisted on Hakan, my brother, to admit that he has a girl-friend. He did not admit but we are all suspicious about his constant text-messaging with a girl called Esra...
Ana, don't worry about your grammar mistakes. I feel sorry for all of you for being exposed to my English:(
November 14, 2004
Third problem: studying up
In addition to being an anthropologist and perceptions of intellectuals, I should add a third issue that makes my life difficult: �Studying-up�. I have a good past of ethnographic involvement but my current project does not look like any of my previous deeds. I am attempting to observe the �gods� of Turkish journalism in their working environment!
This evening Serkan, who is my dear friend from high school, came to visit me. He has a journalism MA degree from UT Austin and now works in Milliyet�s economy department [Milliyet is another significant and one of the oldest national newspapers in Turkey. It used to be a serious center left daily but since mid 1990s, elements of yellow journalism transformed the newspaper�s content under the ownership of Dogan Media Group]. Before starting to watch the documentary �Crumb� we chatted about lots of things including my research topic. He said it is basically impossible to attend Hurriyet�s editorial meetings! And he then began to name the editors: Ertugrul Ozkok, Oktay Eksi�.these are such big names and how they will care/ allow me to observe them? Yeah, that�s a problem. I just began to feel what I had already rationally perceived. But it is all right. There is no point to be more disappointed than I already am. I will use my best sources, Prof Ugur, who is Mr. Ozkok�s close friend, Ferhat Boratav, who is CNN-Turk�s editor, to ask for access. If this does not work, I will finally give up the Hurriyet option and I will just look for other venues. I strongly believe I will be excused for giving up Hurriyet. I give two more weeks to resolve this access problem.
![7[1].jpg](http://erkansaka.net/blog/archive/7%5B1%5D.jpg)
As I was watching 
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