… And Erkan is in the year he could not figure out if he is 41 or 42

A sweet Poltio survey. How well you know Erkan? 

In fact, I did have a system for that but this year I forgot. This year I did not care to remember. However, just a little ago, when I was having a shower, I decided I am definitely 42 now. After achieving most of my life goals, and after living through a tumultuous year in Turkey I have settled for a future in which I live in tranquility working on my writings/ research or hobbies. I have lost interest living in Istanbul, I would prefer to have a smaller but a more humane city. However, my search for a better place to work and to live has not given fruits yet. As I stated months ago, I have decided to move abroad and I feel I am in my prime in academic production, but this could not be conveyed to the interested parties. I have been so out of job market that it is hard to adapt again. By the way, I still believe I was super lucky to work in Istanbul Bilgi University; my reasons to move forward are different and I will write in another post- including my job searches. Let me not distract myself from the fact that today is my birthday.

Many years I go I posted … And Erkan is 34. Before being aware of the term “quantified self”. I do not like increasing quantification emphasis on social research but for the fun of it I will update the post!

Erkan has spent 27 years as a student (5 primary school+7 secondary and high school+4 college+ 3 MA+ 8 Phd). [This did not change] He has been teaching for 8 [16] years in various levels at university (not including a year of teaching English at a primary school), has been blogging for 5,5 [13.5] years and his blog has been visited a little more than 850,000 times [1,500,000] and it has 252 RSS subscribers now 91 at Feedly, 228 at WordPress], he has 326 [13,921] twitter followers, he has 3 beloved siblings [still same, but 2 nieces added now],  he has 1239 [3022] Facebook friends (but of course only a couple of’em are really close ones), and he has (only) three academic publications (so far)[oh this seems to have improved and also check out my Google Scholar profile]. Erkan has voted 2516 [7751] movie and episode titles in IMDB. He has spent 157 days as a soldier, stayed in Houston, TX for three years. He was born in Trabzon, spent a year there then since 2 he has been living in Istanbul (excluding Houston years, that is 38 years). [Although officially he was born in Bayburt, which has become a troll city in recent past]. He has driven more than 30,000 kms in 4 years [more than 100,000 I guess now and he has had his second car], he has 7-8 kilos he has to get rid of [still same], he could do 20-25 push ups just after he left the service [not a new success at at that front], he visited 5 European cities, visited 9 American cities [I could not find an exact stats for that but Swarm says I have visited 25 countries so far!], he has more than 100 [300, I have even curated an exhibition!] items in his local newspaper collection, he is an academic advisor for 45 students, he has 134 students registered in his 4 courses [I did not bother to collect new stats but there are definitely more].

[And I have more stats, new ones: 3579 connections in Linkedin. In every 7.76 days I finish a book. Since I finished up my military service, I calculate how much I read. My Klout rating is around 65. [I have deleted the last parts, it seems I was more desperate and depressed at that time although the future seemed to be more optimistic. However, I might still end up in my favorite metal bar to drink alone, which has become a ritual. I have thought of getting married twice in those years but it did not work and I do not care. I might get married one day but if not, not a big deal. In my own way, I challenge and may succeed the family ideology around here.