I Want My Hour Back

60 minutes, 3600 seconds,

I lost my hour,

I want my hour,

Give it back.

 

Today, I lost an hour because of the summer time application; "Better utilization of the day hours!"

An hour I would have perhaps used to study for the physics exam on Wednesday.

An hour I would have perhaps used to finish The Shire Theme arrangement for the piano I've been working on for two weeks-more like planning to work on for two weeks.

An hour I would have perhaps used to SLEEP.

And where has it gone?

Just thrown away into the space, the endless void beyond the stars we see at night?

Time does that to you. It confuses you, it creates problems we really don't need right now.

Time passes. Only it passes slower when I'm in math class, and faster when I'm in physics or music. Or it doesn't really "pass" when we're asleep. We close our eyes, it is dark, we open them, it is day, and the only crumbs of memory we have are dreams, flashing, vivid pictures, which are seconds long. What happened to the rest of the time?

Time travel is another issue of concern. If it was invented in the future, we would have known by now, because a man in a space suit with six fingers on each of his hand would've stumbled into the middle of the Walmart claiming he is from the future.  One of my favorite movie series is Back to the Future, in which whatever Marty does affects his life in the future, as he tries to get back to it.

They cannot really explain how time works, and how it seems to take FOREVER for the video game to load, but it seems like it has only been 10 minutes since you've started playing it, when in reality it has been five hours. And today, I lost an hour of sleep, fun and doing homework (funny how those two words ended up together). I literally lost it. Now it is 12:52 PM, and I need to get started on studying history, studying the events of the time past, studying the events which might have happened right where I'm sitting right now, the battle of Sakarya, the establishment of the first parliament in Ankara... Same place, different people, different times. It is just like another layer, another world...

Just to confuse you a little more, before I get back to the present and the future, here's a question: If I went back in time and somehow caused my grandmother and grandfather to never meet, what would happen?

 

iPhones and Replicants

Last weekend, we needed to get our TV fixed, so we called the LG customer service in Turkey. A mechanical voice answered the phone, telling us to press numbers according to why we were calling, and then to "state our problem in a few words" to leave a message. We didn't even get to talk to a real person.

When we say "machines", people think of factories; pistons pumpin' and engines runnin'.

Your iPhone is a machine. The computer I'm writing this blog post on is a machine. My piano's a machine.

Yes, machines are all we need to make our lives more efficient, produce or consume more in less time, with less opportunity costs. They are the pearls of our world today, the very reason why innovation is so important...?

The x-ray is a machine. Guns are machines.

I am not in the group of people who worship The Machines and adore them. I think that we are way, way too involved with them and there is no way this can result in anything good.

Yesterday, I watched a TV show in which the cops went to a gun store to get information on a customer,  a suspect in a murder investigation. The gun shop owner kept saying the famous phrase "Guns don't kill". Finally, one of the cops said, "Stupid people with guns kill".

I cannot emphasize how true this statement by the cop is. Yes, guns sitting on the counter may not spontaneously go off and kill someone who double-crossed it, maybe forgot to grease it in the morning, but people, particularly stupid people with guns, do kill. The gun is the most horrible machine to have ever been invented and to have gotten into the hands of humans. Maybe it is useful in the military business, but now nearly 40 % of America has a gun stored under their pillow.

Apart from guns, which were designed to hurt and kill, there are machines which are really, really creepy.  The LG Customer Service talking-lady was certainly creepy; machines replacing humans. My iPhone recognizes what I say, converts it into text, understands it, and answers me. What is not creepy about that?

The movies Blade Runner and The Matrix are classified as science fiction. In both, machines rise against humans and they overpower them, gaining control over the world. It may sound a little paranoid, but with what we have right now; 3D without glasses, phones who talk to you, robots who serve you, those days of Replicants doesn't seem to be far away - that is, assuming that we all don't kill each other with those guns before that.

PROCRASTINATION

It is the thing that all students do, no matter how smart they may be, how logical a mind they might have...

Almost every month, once, we get instructed on time management and "how to use our time efficiently". They hand out nice little sheets of paper with neat tables printed on them. They ask us to "plan our week". We do. And then we throw those sheets of paper away in the first recycle bin that comes in our way. We sometimes even delay throwing the paper away.

To be honest, the time management things and the schedules saying :

17:30 - 17:45: Snack

17:45-19:00: Study math

19:00-20:00: Dinner

20:00-20.30: Practice the piano, memorize 3 of the scales.

20:30-21:30: Do econ homework

21:45-22:00: Break

22:00-23:00: Solve tests

23:00-23:15: Get ready for bed

23:15-23:45: Read two chapters of your bedside book,

NEVER WORK.

Instead, it metamorphoses into this:

17:30-17:45: Snack

17:45-18:00: Study some math and get bored

18:00-until your mother calls you to dinner: Break Time! Let's see what's going on in the social media...

After Dinner: I'll just play these pieces on the piano one time through...

A little while later, starting to get sleepy: I better start the econ homework and those tests...What's that? A new episode of Grey's Anatomy?

45 minutes later, feeling guilty about the episode you just watched, clock closing around on 23:00: Gee, it's almost bed time-cram in the math, hurry through the econ homework, get to the Turkish project assigned two weeks ago, decide to take the tests with you to school next day to solve them during your "free time".

Sometime later that night, or maybe even the next day: I better go to bed, but I should read a few chapt--zzzz.

 

This is why those schedules never work.

The student lives on procrastination, it is in its blood.

I even procrastinated on writing this blog post about procrastination, as I've had the idea for a couple of months now.

I am procrastinating doing the hard part of my math project even further (since it was assigned a week ago and I only got to it now) by writing this blog post.

What can I say? Just like you cannot take out religion completely, just like you cannot achieve world piece, you cannot possibly take out procrastination from a student's life. You just cannot.

Prisoner of Words

In response to question 4(b)...

Language: communication by voice in the distinctively human manner, using arbitrary sounds in convention, always with conventional meanings; speech.

Communication. Human. Speech. Meaning.

When George Orwell wrote his dystopic novel, 1984, he gave great importance to how language was "regulated", how it was under the control of the government. Newspeak was the language of the society of 1984, and it had laws, lines, borders drawn clearly with a sharp blade, not to be broken, or  trespassed. Unfortunately, these "laws" tended to go much further and penetrate the English language much deeper than simple laws of grammar that every elementary school student despises.

What would come along with putting laws on language is censorship. As it states in the definition of language, it is a way of "communication", and censorship on communication is a subject we're all familiar with. Phones being tapped, mails being monitored, texts being read before they arrive at their destination... Even in our day, in our "normal" world, yet I wouldn't quite say that it is too far from the world of 1984, we are changing the way we speak, just in case someone hears it, or someone reads it. We don't say "bomb" or  "terrorist" or "communism" on the phone, you know, just in case. Just like prisoners use argo, a different set of vocabulary with different meanings, so that they wouldn't be understood by the cops while they're planning their "great escape".  So, we already censor our speech, what would become of it if our language was fitted into laws other than past participles and present perfects?

Here's the answer: no more expression, no more conveying of thoughts. Just saying what people want to hear. Becoming those prisoners, only without an escape plan.

Language changes as people change, as I stated in one of my previous blog posts, and just as you cannot stop this world spinning out of control from changing, you cannot stop the language from changing, let alone fit laws around it. There is a whole branch of linguistics who deals with this "change of language"; historical linguistics.

Let's say that under the influence of a strict, religious government, it was no longer legal to use the words "evolution", "big bang" and "logic". Let's assume, again, that the scientists, at least those who are left, discover a new species in the depths of the wilderness of the Galapagos islands. How are they supposed to discover where this species comes from? How are they supposed to know there is a concept called "evolution", if they are the new generation? These kinds of brutal and austere laws would mean the end of language as a way of knowing, and sharing knowledge.

So, language is currently our best way of communication, unless you prefer hitting stuff to make noise and yelling out unintelligible sounds to communicate, and there is no sense in fitting it into tight, tight shackles we call "laws", which have already made the world we're living in a much duller, organized and cautious place, and taking all the fun out of it.

Consider this: let's assume, for the last time, that you broke the laws of language, and you ended up in jail. You would be a prisoner of your own words and speech. Do we really want that?

Life is Not Fair

In one of my favorite cartoon series, in the face of doing chores and having to go to school, Calvin always says to his father "This isn't fair," and his father always replies "Life isn't fair." Recently, I've seen this more than once, in my own experience and around me, and, yes, Calvin, life really isn't fair.

I had to write a lab report the night I got back from Honor Choir, and I was terribly sick. Anyway, I wrote it one way, or another, and sent it to my teacher on its due date. Next week, because of the complaints of my classmates, our teacher did not assign a lab report because some of my classmates had a similar excuse to mine.

This is just one example of the unfairness I've faced only the past week. Everyday, in my class, in my school, in Ankara, all around the world, people face unfairness, and the worst thing is that, most of the time, there is nothing they/we can do about it.

My small little lab report is very, very insignificant in the face of what unfair circumstances people face every second. Bill Gates is one of the world's richest people. Why? Yes, one of the reasons why is that he figured out a code which when entered, would allow him to use the computers in his university's lab without time limitations and so got hours and hours of practice, but one must ask, how did he go to that university? His parents were wealthy people, so he got raised in great circumstances, got a high school diploma, got to go to university. Maybe, some child of the less fortunate families in the world, could have been richer and more successful than Bill Gates. Only, he died of heart failure at age 4, because he had a damaged valve at birth and it was not discovered, let alone be treated, because of the circumstances he was born in to.

What happened to the child is simply, discernibly, unfair. Unfortunately, in our little, corrupt, capitalist world, not everyone is "born equal". As Gavroche in Les Misérables said, here's the thing about equality: everyone's equal when they're dead.

Nothing is fair. Sometimes, you just have to accept the fact that just because they're better friends with the people who choose the team, some people who otherwise probably couldn't have landed that position take part in this prestigious team. Sometimes, you just have to admit to yourself that whatever you do or say, won't make a difference. But sometimes, you have to see the sunlight piercing through the clouds and be stronger, be better, in spite of all the  brooding and gloomy clouds of injustice and unfairness.

 

Life Changing Experience

AMIS Women's Choir, Mixed Choir and Honor Band Festival, Dubai, 2013.

After auditioning for two years, this time around, I got accepted to the AMIS Women's Choir Festival which was in Dubai this year. At first, I was a little skeptical about being in the Women's Choir, I thought it would be boring, and would rather be in the Mixed Choir, which was also in the same place. Only ten minutes of rehearsal the first day was enough to prove me wrong, big time.

We entered the rehearsal room, freezing cold because of the air conditioning, excitement fluttering, plastic chairs set up carefully in four rows. As we sat down and started meeting people, amazed at finally being here, although a little sleep deprived, our accompanist started playing the piano intro to Shenandoah, one of the songs from our 8-piece repertoire. Our conductor, whom we've only seen now for the first time, started conducting, and, as if by magic, everyone started singing flawlessly, as if we had been rehearsing together for months. Of course, it needed some polishing, but it still gave me goosebumps. And from that moment on, I knew that there wasn't another place in the world that I would rather be and no other group of people I would rather be with.

Only, it wasn't magic. It was just an incredible organization which brought together very talented and dedicated 70 young women.

The next time I was stunned was when we got together with the Mixed Choir and the Honor Band to rehearse the finale, Arabian Folk Song Suite. Even though we couldn't quite find our entry point after the intro by the band, even in our first run, nearly 400 people from 45 different schools who have never even spoken to each other before, managed to make beautiful music together.

And with the blink of an eye, it was the concert night, with the next, our accompanist was setting up the music for our last piece as the Women's Choir on her music stand, and with the next, we were belting out the high B-flat the sopranos had for the majestic last chord of the Arabian Folk Song Suite. The greatest experience of my life was concluded, never to be forgotten.

This past week, I've met lots of new people, interested in music, made great music with strangers, got to see Dubai for a second time, climb the tallest building in the world, visit the world's largest mall, and most important of all, I got to see how music can unite people from all around the world.

 

The Changing Constant of our Lives

In response to Question 2.

“Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” George Orwell.

Why has George Orwell found the need to say that political language is different than any other language we speak? Do we really speak differently according to the people around us, where we are, what time it is, and what we are talking about?

Yes, we do.

Just like reading, listening, watching, hearing, language is a way of knowing. It may seem obvious, but without language, we wouldn’t be able to share our information and what we know. We see language as a constant in our lives, yet language is anything but constant. Both in the historical context and in our daily lives, the language we use always changes.

Historical linguistics is the branch of linguistics which deals with the change of language over centuries, but what interests us here is the change of language in one, short day of our mundane lives. We speak differently to the bus driver when we ask him where the next stop is, we speak differently with our best friends, differently with our “friends”, and differently with our teachers or bosses. When I am speaking with my best friend about music, she both understands what I’m saying in the musical context without me having to explain it, because she is also a musician, and she understands what I’m trying to say, for example when I say “that thing we did with the thing in that place”, because we spend all our day together and we know each other very well.  If I had said that very same sentence to a stranger, they would think me mad. The set of words specific to a profession is called jargon, like the music vocabulary I used to talk to my musician friend about the use of leitmotifs in the music of Lord of the Rings. The very existence of jargon shows how we change our language according to who we are talking to and where we are talking to them.

Another type of language change we see in our daily lives is called “code switching”; when people switch to an entire other language, not just change their vocabulary. For example, when I can’t say what I must in French class, I switch to English in the middle of the sentence.

Of course, as there is a problem with everything good and nice, and as much as changing our language may provide variety and may liven our conversations, we changing the way we speak create problems for linguists. For example, when linguists want to observe how people from the Çömelek village talk amongst themselves and how the Turkish language used daily has changed in the southern part of Turkey, they need to talk to people and record what they are saying. Only, there is one problem: people tend to be more careful about what they’re saying and how they’re saying it when they are talking to a linguist, so the linguist can never know how the people really speak amongst themselves. This is called the observer’s paradox and shows a problem with language as a way of knowing while language changes constantly.

Language is dynamic; it changes over time, we twist it and manipulate it every time we talk, according to the context, audience and setting of our conversation. Change, in this case, language change, is always good, since people change and the only way people can show what they know, how they know it and tell other people about it, is through the one and only path which us humans take for granted, the changing constant of our lives; language.

 

In the Words of an IB Student...

 

Take the IB, they said.

It will be fun, they said.

 

Now another precious Saturday is over,

With little got done,

I'm sitting in front of the computer,

Entering the data for my lab report one by one.

 

I set the alarm early in the morning today,

Because Saturday and Sunday is no holiday.

They may be shaded on my calender gray,

But they are just like every school day.

 

The bright brilliant day outside,

And the wondrous things on the web, like Facebook,

Are incredibly alluring, but I must not abide,

Since I have not given my math questions a single look.

 

As if it knows,

The computer is reluctant to draw my graphs,

I need to calculate the uncertainties and the ratios,

But all I get from the data-collection software is bitter laughs.

 

There is a TOK essay waiting to be written by me,

Blank sheets gazing up, asking, "How do I know?".

I know, it's only 300 words and five comments, not fifty,

But why does it seem like I still have 1000 words to go?

 

Now I must stop writing this poem,

And dive back into the bottomless dark pit of position, velocity and acceleration,

I sincerely hope I'll get all my stuff done without becoming a victim,

Of the cruel IB and its high expectations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

24601

Fight. Dream. Hope. Love.

This is the tagline for my currently-favorite film, Les Misérables. I've watched it a couple of times over the past week, and just watching its trailer a year ago was enough for it swoop in and grab the throne from Batman Begins, in my Top-10 list. I guess the incredible, extraordinarily talented cast made up of Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried and Helena Bohem-Carter may have played a part in the movie being such an awesome one. I know, the word "awesome" is  a little cheesy, but it's the one that best suits this situation.

What made the movie so special for me is the fact that it was a musical, using the music written by the French composer Claude-Michel Schönberg. Some people, one of them being one of my closest friends who I've dragged with me to see the movie a second time, didn't like the movie being "all-sing and no-speak". I think otherwise. I believe that by adding moving chords and melodies caressing your ears, you magnify the meanings of the words and the richness of the movie, not degrade it.

When you notice the chord progressions from E minor to F major when Javert and Fantine are talking, respectively, you get even a better insight into the characters because then you don't only have the words to understand them, but you also have the music.

What interested me the most and made me scrutinize our current judgement system was Jean Valjean's common phrase: "I stole a loaf of bread". He says this, meaning that he did not deserve the  time he served as a slave, that stealing bread for one's sister's child who is fighting death does not entitle serving 5 years as a slave. I was caught in a dilemma. Were some crimes forgivable, should the reason they were committed be investigated before slamming down the hammer of justice?  Or should just the fact that they are called "crimes" be enough to condemn one to slavery and a "badge of shame"?

Another aspect of the slavery and punishment system of the 19th century that seemed inhuman to me was giving a number to the prisoners and enslaving also their identities, their personalities, their individualities.

Les Misérables is an incredible work of art, combining great talents in acting with unbelievable and unexpected talents in singing, with a plot laid down 200 years ago by the renowned Victor Hugo that will surely bring tears to your eyes, all the same managing to criticize the way the poor have to fight to live while the rich get richer, and showing everyone the Jean Valjeans once murdered by the law that gets tighter and tighter, the Jean Valjeans murdered by a number, 24601.

The Ignorant & Arrogant Species

Dogs. Cheetahs. Cats. Trouts. Elephants. Humans. Monkeys. Pigeons. Lizards.

Yes, we too are animals and as far as I'm concerned, the most pathetic ones. So that's why we've invented and created everything we use in our lives right now; to compensate for our lack of... well, everything.

We are not loyal like dogs, we betray, we kill each other, we cheat, we lie.

We cannot run as fast as cheetahs, so we've invented cars that can accelerate to 100 km/h in 2 seconds.

We do not have tails like cats to keep our balances, so we've built wide sidewalks.

We cannot stay  under the water and swim through the sea like trouts, so we've invented submarines and ships.

We don't have large masses and trunks to drink water and eat easily like elephants, so we've invented fine china, forks and spoons.

We cannot travel from branch to branch in a forest with extreme speed, so instead we've cut those forests down and built houses and factories instead.

We cannot fly like pigeons, so we've created airplanes.

We cannot adjust our body temperature according to the environment, so we've been trying to change the world's climate.

As you can see, we do not possess much as humans, just some opposable thumbs and brains. So, we've tried to make the best out of what we have, and tried to fit  in to world we were born in...Unfortunately, that is not always the case. With humans, it is the other way around most of the time: try to adjust the world we were born in to be able to live on it. We've cut our forests because we were bothered by the "wild animals" coming out of them and would prefer villas instead of clean air, we've filled up some parts of our oceans so that we could build islands shaped like a palm tree, because, you know, we're rich and we love islands, and, moreover, we've exterminated other species just because we like to do that as a hobby.

Have you ever seen a lion who shoots down people, skins them, decapitates them and hangs their heads on its wall and puts their skin on their living room floor?

I doubt it.

OK, I'm over the fact that we invented stuff, in the end, that's why we have brains, but why do we feel the need to harm other creatures who deserve to live on this world as much as we do? We hunt deer, hang deer heads in our living rooms, we skin bears and wear their fur in the winter to keep warm. We steal their gift of nature and use it as our own. We skin polar bears, incredibly cute creatures, and spread their skin across our room, sleep at night looking at it. The most cruel of all, for me, is taxidermy. Stuffing dead animals, displaying, selling, collecting them... Totally not weird, right?

I believe it's because we are very vulnerable creatures. It's similar to how little "pocket-dogs" bark at huge dogs, as if trying to prove something, or how short people are generally more ambitious. Humans can be wiped out with a single sweep of the ocean, a crack of the earth's crust, a gust of wind, and there is nothing we can do about it. So, we've declared a war against nature and we've been trying to prove nature wrong ever since, trying to show it what we are capable of. This is also the reason why we've created religion; because we need something to believe in, something to curse to for all the bad stuff which happen to us that we cannot stop, and something to praise, love and adore for all the good stuff.

We are vulnerable, ignorant little creatures, so full of ourselves. All we have of significance is our brains, and, with all the advancements in medicine and technology, we still haven't figured out how that works. Think about severity of the situation.