2005 First Half (Till June)
the last semester has been the best of all, with only 12 credits to take, a fulfilling research project to work on, hours of poker, a few "b32 style" parties and occasional crazy times...
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UVa
May 15, 2005
charlottesville = excellent food, exciting college life, lots of bars, one sucky club...
uva = great campus, hot chicks, everywhere green, bunch of turks, lots of activities, one hell of a tradition :P
the uva tradition: running naked from one end of the lawn, kissing some statue!?, running back and kissing the key hole. btw, i did it!
izzet | izzet (2) | izzet (3) | ahmet | izzet, taner & ahmet |
TextMap: The Entity Search Engine
May 9, 2005
it was a very hectic week. i am officially done with my honors thesis. my presentation was very good. i finished and submitted the paper. i think the output over the last 2 semesters is very exciting and promising.
TextMap Website | My Thesis Paper (pdf) | TextMap Team |
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5 college students at risk due to blackout and "potentially hazardous" roth pond
April 27, 2005
Roth News Agency
Published Wednesday, April 27, 2005; 7:01 a.m.
it has been reported that 4 male and 1 female cardozo residents, namely izzet, eugene, greg, andrew and julie, swam across the roth pond around midnight during the blackout. another cardozo resident called ahmet claimed to have video clips of the mentioned individuals as they decide on pursuing this activity, put down their pants and jump into the pond. as we all know, roth pond has been marked as level 3 wastage and is deemed as "potentially hazardous" by the roth community. all who have been in any contact with the mentioned individuals are requested to visit the stony brook hospital immediately. |
hectic day
April 11, 2005
it's been a hectic and very joyful day. i woke up early and worked on my research project.. implemented a few "cool" features that ppl seem to like. :D then spoke to fatos for an hour or so and felt lucky for not studying anything related to medicine, specifically not being a dentist.. got a promise for breakfast in bebek region of istanbul. they even have waffles. lol. went to play basketball with julie - the french girl who calls ahmet and i the "cipriot". she is a lot of fun to hang out with.. then had a quick squash game with manju from my lab. he is better than me, but we'll see :P after all these.. i was very tired.. it was time for some mental excercise.. yes, that's poker! after 2 weeks, i came the first and josh came the second. b32 ruled! at night, alicia - a girl i met at the party the other night - was the rsp and we chatted for a while.. then i played table tennis with 4 chinese dudes and owned them all.. the whole day i'be been busy with something i liked a lot.. (today my muscles r hurting..grrr) |
:)
April 10, 2005
yesterday was fun. woke up late. got domino's to the door. watched king arthur. went to rec room. met a few "new" cypriots cooking kofte. played poker. went to b03 party. got tipsy. went to bed at 5am. couldn't wake up at 7am to go six flags - postponed it to next week. now going to ihop..
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i-mate JAM
March 29, 2005
i bought my first pocket pc phone, xda I, in late 2003. i broke its lcd screen while dancing on wet grass at ceren's house party during summer 2004.. shame on me.. that was quite a good reason to buy an xda II though (sep '04). hehe.. i had no plans to upgrade since then... till this i-mate JAM came out!
this device is just incredible. it has the same resolution as xda II, despite being much smaller in size. the inbuilt 1.3 megapixel camera is still there and it comes with the latest windows mobile second edition.
for those of you who were complaining about xda II's size, you've got no reason now! i bought mine from expansys. |
the so-called "spring" break
March 25, 2005
today, i spoke to an old friend after a long time and it felt really good.
spring break is almost over and i haven't done any school work. it's kind of boring in cardozo, but ahmet and i found a few ways to entertain ourselves-playing table tennis while being drunk is only one of them.. it snowed yesterday and outside is nothing like "spring".. blah blah... |
cardozo's largest poker tournament
March 11, 2005
we held the largest poker tournament in cardozo since we started playing poker. it was two tables with 14 people, $5 buy-in, $45 first prize, $15 second and $10 third.
matt with 2 and 7, john the dealer, fletch, ray and walter,
fletch poker face, steve poker face...
btw, i joined to the squash club - thanks to matt! i m playing every week and it is becoming very intense - i like that! |
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the rat story
March 10, 2005
ahmet and i were discussing something when a rat-like animal rushed under ahmet's bed to the other end of the room. i was scared (i admit) and ahmet put boxes around.
"how the f*ck a rat came to the 3rd floor &?!%@"
it didn't take long for us to figure out that it was *not* a rat. the RA has already come and it was quite embarrassing when she told us that this was someone's hamster. we were like "emm.. yeahh... okeeeeyyyy" |
la la la
March 04, 2005
nothing much.. school is keeping me busy with graduation stuff. nowadays, i m getting excited about the whole idea of going back to Cyprus and starting to work full time. afterall, it would be the end of 4 sweet years in america.
i finished reading "How to Become CEO" - it was an interesting read with only a few sittings. i am now reading "Permission Marketing" by Seth Godin. i watched the "Coral Reef Adventure" high definition wmv edition - the IMAX camera was absolutely amazing! the phantom of the opera, the broadway show, was sold out and goods seats for the knicks game on sunday was taken.. here is the lesson, if u wait till the last minute, 'u suck!' as jane'd say :P
that'll give me some extra time to brainstorm on my new project, Why Cyprus?. it's going to be a huge informative website. it'll first convince different audiances why they should choose Cyprus as their holiday destination, will then provide interesting useful facts about Cyprus, will give them a guide on what to do on our island and will finally offer them the option to book hotels and car hire online. i officially began my project and will hopefully publish it late september. |
G.O.R.A. - A Space Movie
February 16, 2005
i wasn't gonna comment on the movie on my website, but after reading/hearing so many conflicting reviews, i felt the urge.
i don't understand ppl who heavily criticize the movie. It clearly wasn't meant to be a stand-up show - it's a movie and i liked the storyline. u shouldn't expect to laugh every few seconds, but surely every few minutes.
some ppl say that cem yilmaz is repeating himself and has lost his creativity. i think he took the big step by writing the screenplay of the movie and overall i believe he has been very successful.
i must admit that the english translation was bad and the producers should have paid more attention to the details. ur non-turkish friends will enjoy this movie, but to a certain degree.
if u haven't seen the movie, u may order the GORA DVD edition from Tulumba. |
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ahmet dervis caught!
February 14, 2005
Source: Paparazzi Taner
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blackout
February 13, 2005
we had a campus-wide blackout for approximately an hour around 11pm. well, ppl who live in north cyprus are accustomed to this, so ahmet and i had no problem. lol. it was an interesting experience as ppl formed crowds around the buildings and inside the hallways...
we got to enjoy some jazz from those two saxophone players.
it was rumoured that there was an explosion in stony brook's power station.. but u know how ppl get fancy about things :P |
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No.1 out of 136 Poker Players
February 10, 2005
Damn right! I won the Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament organized by Campus Recreation. It was tough and I was very lucky. I did scare some players with my all-ins though. hehe..
they gave me a crappy dvd player in the end, but it's the title i really care :) |
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purple cow
February 7, 2005
got time to read a book? are you in *any way* related to marketing? if not, it's still okey. this books proves why you need to be "remarkable" in life. the examples are carefully selected and if you happen to have a entrepreneur like position, they will inspire you. :)
throw your white cows away.. get a purple one!
also, turkish fellows check this out too: "büyüyünce e-ticaretçi oldum". |
i was hypnotized - no kidding!
January 27, 2005
every semester we have a hypnosis show in our school and volunteers are students. they sometimes be people who you know, then the show is more funny.
today; i was not one of the volunteers that went up on the stage and was in the audience. you can still get hypnotized if you want to and concentrate enough on the "magic" bulb.
i was hypnotized and then went on stage. i remember everything i did and it felt incredible. lol. the hypnotist made me believe i was a hiphop artist and the rest of the hypnotized people were to follow my moves. then i was in american idol, on a beach in jamaica, sharks came.. at the end, i was collecting pieces of paper as money from the floor without the hypnotist noticing it...
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stuck in boston coz of blizzard '05 & turkish airlines
January 25, 2005
it tooks 4 days to travel from my home in cyprus to my dorm in new york. we couldn't land on JFK due to the blizzard and were directed to Boston Logan. we landed in Logan and stayed in the plane for 5 hours. the turkish airlines pilot barely informed us. the crew said that even the pilot does not know anything. well, he could have said this to more than 200 people in the plane. we only have 4-5 announcements in 5-hour period.
finally, we got out the plane and was placed in copley square hotel. Boston Logan was closed the next day and it was still snowing hard, so we ended up staying at the hotel, talking and watching movies. for next day, we were told to wake up at 7am and a bus will take us to the airport. it was 11am when bus came and we were finally at Boston Logan waiting for our flight to New York, just to realize that we were not the only people waiting for our flights. then the electricity shut down and although the generator was on after half an hour, it was not powerful enough to move the baggages. that's 3 hours wait there!
we happily checked in our baggages by 3pm, but the flight was not ready coz turkish airlines had not informed the Logan Airport that they wanted fly. i was starting to hate bureaucracy by then. they heated the internal engines and did de-iceing process. we were pushed into the plane around 4pm while waiting for all these to happen.
by 6pm, de-iceing was done and we were ready to go. but guess what? one of the four engines did not start and turkish airlines do not have a technician in boston. they said that lufthansa technicians will help us. a sudden like of german ppl occured that time. it went away after 2 hours when they said that they can't do much and they need to change the engine. so guess what? we waited 4 hours to get our baggages back. it was around 1am and we had no food in the plane because turkish airlines do not have any catering agreement in boston and the food courts were closed in boston airport. i thanked to the times when eating was a luxury at stony brook. lol
it was 3am when they placed us at hilton. they said they'll send us to New York by bus the next day. well.. after all these i wasn't gonna wait for turkish airlines to screw up again. a couple of people and i decided to take amtrak at 6am. we needed to take a taxi to the station, so we talked to the receptionist. they said that there was a bus that leaves hilton at 6am and goes to Hilton New York. both the train and the bus would take 4 hours, so we changed our plans to take the bus. what a bad change of plans! it was 6:10am when the receptionist told us that the bus was not going that day and there will be a bus at 10am. after all these, i wasn't angry at all. it came so natural. :P
anyway, we finally took the hilton bus at 10am, paid it ourselves. i'll get a reimbursement. we were in our lovely cardozo by 6pm and the 4-day journey was over.
end of story.
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cyprus
January 12, 2005 - January 22, 2005
nobody except ahmet knew that i was coming to cyprus - even my parents. simply put, i shocked them all. hehe
my dad had to look at me for a couple of seconds before he believed his eyes and i made my mom jumped off the bed. thank god that they don't have heart problems. :)
life in cyprus was dull in winter.. i filled up my time visiting friends and catching up with work at NCP. |
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cancun, mexico
January 04, 2005 - January 11, 2005
cancun is a man-made place with 95% tourists and 5% mexicans who work at the hotels. ahmet dervis and i had booked an all-inclusive package to Royal Solaris Cancun through Priceline. We have been placed into a newer establishment, Grand Solaris. The hotel was superb and with the all-inclusive package, everything including drinks was free! Yeyy for mexico where drinking age is 18 and yeyyy for all the bartenders! They will make you drink as soon as you're outside your hotel room. view from our balcony. me near the pool at night.
i had my best clubbing experience in Bulldog ;) ppl say i look like a mexican and in mexico, almost everyone started talking in spanish first.. i was not really happy about that.. till a mexican chick (blue eyes) hit me... we had so much fun till the early hours of the morning. The City is the second best club - as it gets late, tables are the places to dance on.. you should drop by the Coco Bongo just once to see the spiderman and the mask, fight in the middle of the club all of a sudden.
we usually woke up late and were clubbing by 11. between those time, we went to Chichen Itza. Ahmet and Izzet in front of the pyramid. climbing up took only 2 minutes. funny shot of me at the top of Chichen Itza. another.
we went to a jungle tour with my crazy driving skills (ask ahmet!) hehe. we then did snorkeling on some coral reef. well.. as u would guess, that's not enough for a certified diver. the next day, we went to Cozumel, which is rated in top 10 for reef diving. it was absolutely wonderful down there! someone took a photo of me while getting out of the cave.
we also swam with the dolphins for half an hour. here is a photo dolphin kissing me. lol. video comin' soon! |
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new york city
December 29, 2004 - January 03, 2005
i love nyc. period. it's a place on earth where everything is at your fingertips. we stayed at the Centralpark Hostel which was conveniently located near a subway and is for foreign students only. the rates were incredibly low compared to any other accomodation in nyc.
at first night, we went to a comedy club called "ha!". "it's like going to a restaurant called hmmm"... then, we wandered around times square and girls did some shopping as one would expect. you gotta see this funny shot of kemal and finally he bought this one.
the next day, we took a 3-hour cruise around manhattan island. nice photo with the liberty behind, another one. let's not forget the unbeatable history channel of kemal's.
we then went to ice skating at rockefeller center. it was kemal's first time. lol. i had done it a couple of times before. i wasn't that bad. u shouldn't ask me to sanna though :P she's from finland.. she skates to school everyday.. lol. we waited in line for 1.5 hours and saw this animation like ten times.. it was worth it in the end though :)
on new year's eve, we went to an italian restaurant in greenwich district. we were all drunk by 2am and taking subway back home was funny. check out what one rose does to ppl.. lol
chris & melek and chris & kemal.
first day of 2005, we walked through the central park and went to avalon at night.
leaning on a tree
two birds
i love this central park shot
an unexpected shot at the turkish restaurant, bereket kebab house, shows how satisfying the food was. lol
sanna turkish wife
pretty funny shot inside the subway
city view from the intrepid museum
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