The Boat That Rocked

I watched this film yesterday and instantly thought this is one of the best films I've seen. I don't know if it is because of the amazing cast, the soundtrack, the boat itself or the colourful era it is set in (1960s Britain) but something about it makes me want to see it again.

Very briefly, it's about a pirate radio station called Radio Rock broadcasting from a ship anchored in the North Sea and their reason for existence is to play pop and rock music that is not played on BBC Radio in those times. The government on the other hand try to shut the pirate stations down as they find them immoral and revolutionary. The storyline goes between the government trying to find loopholes in the law to close them down and Radio Rock getting more and more popular amongst young Brits during 60s and fighting against the government. Apart from the storyline which is quite engaging, it also captured me with the costumes of the characters and its soundtrack.

There were many familiar faces in the cast but Rhys Ifans (Mr.Nice) was the nicest surprise to me.
Mr. Nice is another must-see film by the way, it is really very very good!

Below is a scene from the dancing on the boat, just to give you an idea of the setting and the characters:

I'm uploading the trailers for both Mr. Nice and The Boat That Rocked, but if I were you I wouldn't watch the one for the Boat before seeing the film itself as some scenes in the trailer seemed rather like spoilers to me.

MR. NICE:

THE BOAT THAT ROCKED:

La Fee Verte by Kasabian

This is the one I keep replaying nowadays. Enjoy!

Festive season

This Christmas holiday feels like the longest one in the last five years :) We're in Cambridge for the first time and all we do at home is stuffing our face with food and watching telly, dvds, and catch ups! We went out for the first time in god knows how many days today and found it challenging to walk, even our legs are stiff. "Here comes a new year resolution" I catch myself thinking: more exercise, less junk food (I know it sounds impossible) Looking back on last year's anti-resolution list of mine, I managed to stick to 8 items on that list - out of 10! hooray! The ones I couldn't keep are:

Anti-resolution number 1. NO GYMS WHATSOEVER: I joined a gym (for a month)

Anti-resolution number 2.DON'T STAY AWAY FROM JUNK FOOD: I avoided junk food (for a month or two tops)

With the other eight, I was stubborn enough to keep the same. I'm not proud at all :)

Here are some of the cards I received from friends for Christmas, and Nina's Christmas present: a mug "3 good reasons to work for EF - Christmas party, Holidays and Diana" written on it, love it!! :)

I didn't make any Christmas cards this year - a hectic last week at work-, but still wanted to make sth special, so I made this "upset" tree:

And this other rather festive spotty tree:

For us, December has been fun, full of events from the start to the finish (thanks Aylin, thanks Ozgur!) but a part of me is in Turkey now wishing I could be there.

And I start my PhD in a month! That's a shocker for me, still!

More news coming your way soon.

Now it's time to go watch some more Christmas telly :)

Good night bloggy.

Diana's birthday invites

I mentioned I was to prepare invitations for Diana's birthday in my previous post, didn't I? Well, I finished making them last week and now they are with their new owners now, i.e. Diana's guests :). I finished them so late at night so didn't have the chance to take nice pictures but still wanna share some here on my blog. I'm glad people liked them.

Work in progress! You can see the boxes in the basket. They were flat when I got them, needed to do a bit of folding up to put them in shape.

 I came up with the designs myself, but it wasn't a hard task at all. I had so much fun deciding how to decorate each lid. They are all paper boxes with lids by the way. We printed the invititations on the same colour paper as the lid, and folded and put them in the boxes.

Aylin made this one.

And a group photo :P

The party is on Sunday and at a very posh hotel in Cambridge aaand I still don't know what to wear. So good luck to me :)

Nowadays

I am trying to go back to my old exercise routine but it's too hard when I teach 8 hours every single day.
I have started with a fitness class today, hopefully I'll go to zumba tomorrow, wednesday rest, thursday is the busiest day at work so I dont think I can do anything after the lessons but maybe I need to squeeze something in for Thursday after work because I know I won't be doing anything on Friday evening. I can see myself in front of TV with a big bowl of popcorn watching a dvd.

My very good friend Diana's birthday is coming soon, I'm responsible from the invitations/souvenirs. I'm making her a birthday party invitation which also should look like a souvenir of her 30th birthday. It's hard job, believe me. I'm still trying to come up with the design. I'm thinking of using small boxes, and covering them with felt and beads, ribbons, etc. but still it's not very clear in my mind. I'll post what I've made here when I'm finished.
And Aylin's back in Cambridge from her break, the only Turkish friend I have here. It always feels nice to have her beside me whenever I need.

 

Now it's time for dinner, need to go.

Kiss kiss :)

Guatemalan worry people

And the new academic year begins

Second week of the academic year finished, still 34 weeks to go. The school is busier than ever, feels like it's even busier than summer school in terms of our timetables. Diana, Nina and I started off the new term with our little party at Nina's place, in her beautiful garden. It kept us going for a week without getting depressed but now we're in need of a second one, urgently, we need something to look forward to :)

Frinton on Sea

And these are from last Sunday when the weather was even warmer than the week before.
We should have discovered Frinton on Sea years ago, 5 years too late :)
The seaside was amazing, the beach stretches for miles and it is so clean you can see the sand at the bottom.

One fine day in Cambridge

This pic is from two weeks ago when the weather was unusually warm and sunny for the whole week. We went for a ride along the river first, then went to the Orchard in Grantchester. It was such a relaxing day.

Trip to Dover

We wanted to go somewhere interesting at the weekend and decided to head to Dover. Seeing Beachy Head and the cliffs before and loving it, and hearing about the castle, we thought it would be nice to see some more dramatic white cliffs in Dover :)

We set off on Saturday lunchtime, it was supposed to take around 2 hours but because of the road works and traffic, it took us just over three hourse to get there. Can't complain, we were lucky to get a little bit of sunshine. Grey clouds yes, but no rain!

 We spent around two hours walking around the castle and taking photos. The castle is on the top of a hill and there are many other ancient bulildings around it so it was really interesting to have a walk around the secret passages, dungeons and tunnels. And the view from the top was worth climbing some very steep hills.

I'm attaching some photos:

This is Aylin and I having a lie in the sun :)

One of the many white cliffs in the area
(Attention please to what we wear in the middle of July: wooly jumpers yaaaay! :) )

Have a nice week everybody!

Happy birthday to me - 26.07.11

Pictures from my birthday yesterday

These two are from my little birthday celebration at school at lunchtime.
Many thanks to Beth for making the cake, Diana for the flowers and organising the whole thing, Rachel, Louise, Nina and Andrew for being there with me  :)

And these pictures are from the party with Oguz and Aylin in the evening after work:

Aylin made me a yummy yummy cake :) Hope you can see the butterflies and the candles and the sparkling mutlu yillar letters. She spent days making it and it turned out to be the best cake ever :)

Aaaand she made me the best tote bag anyone can have on this planet. I don't think I'll be able to use it though, it's too beautiful to use:

My friend is a real artist!
The one standing in the front is me with my favourite orange skirt. And the one looking from above is Aylin. Oguz must be the rabbit then hehe.
She designed the pattern and painted the bag herself. She's wasting time working as an architect here, should have opened her own gallery by now :)

I'm back

I've abadoned my blog for months now..
Life's been hectic lately. Summer school started a few weeks ago and i do 8 hours teaching with only a 40 min break nearly everyday. I find it very exhausting. I have no time for myself on weekdays so i look forward to the weekends to do some shopping and catching up with life..
For now i'm patiently waiting for the academic year to start in september.
***This post is to see if i can reach and write on my blog from my phone***
I can't seem to attach any photos though!

Bag charms

Felt bag charms I have recently made:

 

I have made only two so far but will need to make a few more for family and friends :) I'm not complaining at all! Glad they like it :)

Tote bags

One of the many fashion items becoming a part of our everyday lives without us realising is the tote bags. Having read a short article on it in the newspaper at the weekend, I've started thinking if I really have a thing for them. For me, it all started when a fashion magazine gave away this world famous tote bag a couple of years ago:

It was so handy and strong to use, so I always had it with me when I went out shopping. Then, I discovered a whole different world of similar reusable bags made of organic cotton / canvas. Supermarkets here are not very willing to give their customers plastic bags (which I can understand to some extent) so I knew, sooner or later, I would have to have my own bags around whenever I popped into one. That was when I made a habit of using my own shopping bags to avoid the feelings of guilt for asking for plastic bags and anger for getting told off by the looks some cashiers might throw at me!

Only later did I find out that an English fashion designer named Anya Hindmarch started this craze after she designed her first tote bag "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" and sold it in shops and online:

 

The article I read in the paper mentions how these bags were once very cheap and "Anti-It" but are now sold with price tags over £600 and have become a symbol of self-expression and a stand against the designer bags that are ridicilously over-priced and so tiny you cannot put your wallet and mobile in at the same time.

I have four of them so far and they are real life-savers when I look for a bag to chuck my gymwear in or when I go food-shopping. Plus, they easily fit in my bike basket :)

Believe it or not, there's even a book on tote bags and the history of their making:

These are some of my favourites:

 

What I need now is to learn how to make one.
I will keep you updated.

From: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/how-to-figure-out-if-youre-happy/

How To Figure Out if You’re Happy  

Note: there is no “answer.” 

Feb. 24, 2011 By Brandon Scott Gorrell

Brandon Scott Gorrell is a writer living in Seattle, WA.

Read more »

Start in bed. How are you sleeping? Are you sleeping well? Do you leave the TV on until you fall asleep? Do you wake up in the middle of the night so you can turn it off? Or are you, like, drinking yourself to sleep every night? Because these things aren’t happiness.
Wake up. Do you feel bad already? Do you think that today is going to be the same as every day? That all you’re going to do is get out of bed, piss, get dressed, go to work, converse with your extremely dull and having-nothing-to-offer coworkers, come home, put on your sweatpants, and refresh websites repeatedly until you fall asleep? This is an unhappy situation. I promise that you will look back on this time as an unhappy time.
How much TV are you watching? How many hours is it? I hope you don’t watch very much. Watching a lot of TV is not happiness. Watching TV every night after work until you fall asleep is definitely not happiness.
Do you believe that a terrorist attack is imminent? How nervous do you feel on the subway? Flying? Are you afraid of North Korea? Ask yourself: Am I really afraid of North Korea? This is important information to know. Because generalized, doomsday fear of an entire country is pretty stressful and unmanagable and… neverending. Because, like, how could you realistically manage that fear? I guess you could go to war.
How much quiet time do you have? Because quiet time is happy time. How much time do you dedicate to performing a singular, non-multitasked task? What do you do during your free time? Do you have free time?
What about your friends? Are they all your coworkers? Can you actually talk to any of them, or is it something else? Is it like – they are in front of you and you are in front of them and you’re just sort of awkwardly aware that the two of you are in front of each other? That sort of thing? The kind of thing where you’re not engaged? Perhaps you should reconsider things.
And sex. Romance. Who are you seeing? Are they good? Are you in a relationship you feel is unsustainable? Are you simply “putting up” with your significant other? Or are you just sleeping with a new person every couple of weeks?
What does it even mean to be happy? Do you even have a definition for it? Do you have any idea what happiness is? Is it temporary? An emotion along a string of emotions experienced throughout your day? Is it that you are “at peace” with the world, have “found your way,” and that, despite any difficulties that may arise, you continue to feel peachy and neverendingly satisfied, because for you “life is good,” “hakuna matata,” etc? Or is it general acceptance and compassion? The stoic experience of a range of emotions on a regular basis in acceptance of the fact that reality is not “smiling upon you” because, in terms of emotional capacity, the universe is completely senseless and does not care at all what happens to anything – humans, plants, machines, the sky, the planet, the sun – even itself?
The universe. Do you feel it owes you something? Do you believe that everything will “work out” in the end? How black/white is your worldview? How much information do you block out? What kinds of things do you avoid thinking about? What are you hiding?
Do you think you’ll be happy eventually, so that it’s OK that you’re unhappy at this juncture? Do you think that you’re “putting your life on hold” so that it will be better, later? Do you think there is a “one day” (i.e. “One day I’ll do it, when I feel more ready”). I think that the universe is not privy to your plans. 

Sundays are not fun :)

I hate Sundays - I hear you say it with me :)
And I wonder if it's because it's getting busier each and every week.

My to-do-list for this week:
1. Might start driving lessons if I can find the time. I have my provisional licence and can drive with an L plate but I need to get the real licence before summer. So many summer plans, so little time :)

2.I am doing a lecture at school on Friday. If I leave it to last minute, I know I will put a DVD on like I have done before so the sooner the better! It will be on Harry Potter OR Canterbury tales OR the Brit awards. I might go with the last one as it involves popular music, which will give me the chance to prepare handouts and exercises on song lyrics.

3.I have started yoga recently but I am still not quite sure whether I like it or not. I will give it another shot this week and if I get to like it, I will gear up with my yoga mat and straps and blocks.

4.Zumba business as usual :) 2 times a week. I now have new exercise pants and a tshirt yaaaaay! I will get a Zumba CD this week so that I can practise at home when I have time, I remember most routines so won't need instructions. Or I can upload it on my ipod.
Btw, my sister was browsing zumba games on Amazon the other day and came across this Wii Zumba game and guess what! The picture of the girl on the cover is my zumba instructor!!! I couldn't believe my eyes!! Didn't know she is world wide famous now:) And she is the best instructor ever, love her. I'll copy paste it here for you to see.

5. I will make a pizza - again. This is the new fun in the kitchen. I had never tried to make one before Jihen had this dinner party and made pizzas. They were so delicious I decided to give it a go and Voila! Had three of them in one sit :) And they are sooo easy to make.

6. I need to go to post office to send my sister a box, it's been waiting in my wardrobe for a week now, all packed up and ready to go to its owner :)

Hope you'll all have a good week.

It's been four full years since I moved to Cambridge today :)
And this heart I've knitted is to congratulate ourselves on being able to build a life from scratch - all on our own, with its ups and downs..

another Sunday..

Our Sunday mood-lifter menu:

Oguz's special: Thai style stir fry
Muratahan style potato salad
And Dad's easy-to-make cake with strawberries and blueberries, I miss it soooo much!! :)

Happy Monday everyone, hope you'll have a great week!

Life nowadays

Hi bloggy,
I have abandoned you again.
I don't do much nowadays. Since I went back to work, weekdays have been very short and a little tiring but I'm glad I have three very good classes and sweet students. I get home around 8.30-9.00, make dinner, watch tv/read a book/knit/craft or cook lunch for the next day.

I don't do much at the weekends either. I just stay home and try to relax. I have a new knitting book, have already started knitting a ribbon. And I have "Jamie's 30 Minute Meals" now, guess everybody in the UK has this book, it was Christmas no.1 seller last year, and must still be at the top of the bestsellers list.

Well, I guess I can summarise the last two weeks like this :) :

still a big Zumba fan, go to classes twice a week.
Love it.

I watched five Harry Potter films in the last two weeks.
Trying to finish all seven so I can watch the big finale on big screen.

Work work work...

Also started Spinning classes, once a week.

... as if it wasn't enough to cycle 8 miles to work everyday...







Have a good weekend everyone :)