From Black Friday to Good Friday

Erkan in a modest but excellent fish restaurant- another hidden secret of Istanbul- with his colleagues from Child Studies and Youth Studies units at Istanbul Bilgi University.

Last Friday was another down moment in Erkan’s life. It started with exchanging civilized words with a girl who first flirted with me and then backed down. Since I am experienced with that, this moment of seeing the girl wouldn’t upset me but it was the first small ring of a chain of events to come. Then came time for the lecture for my course on Intellectual Heritage- a history of thought course for PR students that covers from Enlightenment era to Semiology. It was a disaster. In my five years of teaching at Bilgi, I have the most indifferent audience. So I left the lecture with anger, coming back with making a quiz, intending to lower grades. A threatening tool I never used before and I don’t believe it will really work.
then came Beşiktaş game. Good play but we lost two valuable points at home against Sivasspor. It was a terrible moment of despair. And finally I got back home and saw that Blogger was banned.

By Sunday night these happened to make feel better:
Beşiktaş was still at the top of Super League. Galatasaray, Trabzonspor, Bursaspor and Gaziantepspor all lost points and we could still remain at the top.
I talked to Milliyet about Blogger ban. It was published on Monday. I would later be interviewed by CS Monitor correspondent Yigal Schleifer whose articles are frequently quoted in this blog. I am quoted in Turkey tightens controls on Internet speech. I might be the only one in Turkey who benefitted from this ban:)

 In the mean time, I had some correspondence with Carole, Rice Antro coordinator. It is now something even more tangible. My defense will be on 8 December. I bought my plane ticket. I will be hanging around in Houston between 1-22 December. I am still expecting to hear from my readers whose feedback will sweat me in the remaining days. But I can handle that.

Blogger ban lifted temporarily.

I had some good lectures during this week, did some work for the thesis and did lots of reading. I am expecting to have a Good Friday tomorrow.

Beşiktaş fans from a previous European Cup game. Source: Milliyet daily.