Emergency Room

In recent years, I haven’t been able to spend that much alone time with my parents during my visits to Turkey, since we tend to have other family staying with us during holiday seasons. There is a reason why every couch and sofa my parents have at home can become a bed. I adopted this couch habit at each place I lived.

I love our visitors; they are people I miss and would like to see as well. Some of them come to us mainly to see me. Some of them live abroad like I do, so they come to see us. However, I have also lived away from my parents since I was 17 and I have no siblings. The time I visit my parents is crucial to us as I don’t see them often and we are each other’s core family.

Thus, I asked my parents to come to Copenhagen last year for the New Year’s instead of me going to Istanbul, and they welcomed the idea of spending time just us three. During their visit, my grandmother passed away[i]. We flew to Istanbul the next day altogether. That visit to Istanbul for her funeral was the last time I saw my uncle, one of my mom’s brothers, who also passed away earlier this year[ii]. Furthermore, we lost my aunt[ii], my dad’s sister, who lived in Chicago and usually visited us during summer holidays.

In darker parts of my grief earlier this year, I felt like a selfish asshole for wishing to have only my parents for the holidays. It is as if in return for that wish, I lost three close family members. Logically, I know the losses had nothing to do with my wish. I didn’t wish people dead, I just wanted more time with my parents.

 

This year, for the end of year holidays, we again have a fuller house with other family members visiting. I am excited to see all these people, especially after this year’s losses. However, as usual, that excitement comes with the trade-off of my time with my mom and dad.

I arrived in Istanbul the evening of December 22^nd. My parents welcomed me at the airport together with a family member who flew in from Izmir earlier that day. My dad drove us home. My aunt, my mom’s sister, was there waiting for us. We all had dinner. We would have more family coming in a few days.

My mom recently had surgery because they found skin cancer in her nose. It was benign, but it was better to remove it. Shortly after dinner, my mom went to the bathroom to renew the bandage on her nose and my dad went to help her. I was on my laptop writing while others watched TV. At some point, I heard my mom asking my dad if he is ok. I went there to check. My dad wasn’t ok. He was feeling dizzy and the color on his face was fading. Shortly after, he couldn’t stand without us supporting him, and he started mumbling. We called an ambulance.

My dad had a heart attack once back when I lived in the US. It was a mild one. He didn’t even notice it, he thought he was having a rough day. In other words, he had the best heart attack one could have, if such a thing exists. They noticed the traces of a prior heart attack during a checkup, which my mom forced him to go to, later that year.

By the time the ambulance came, my dad was in better shape. But given his prior history with heart issues, they decided to take him to hospital to keep him under observation for a while to make sure there is nothing heart related. I went with him. They told me that I couldn’t stay at the back of the ambulance, since it was illegal, and I should ask the driver if he would be willing to have me in the front. It was my first time in an ambulance. I felt very uneasy leaving my dad at that moment, but I knew they had to do their job. The driver allowed me in the front. He played some games on his phone as I waited anxiously while they did some initial tests on my dad. At some point, they opened the small window between the front and the back of the ambulance to tell the driver it was time to move. I could then hear my dad answering some questions in his normal voice, which calmed me down.

When we reached the hospital, I first had to deal with some paperwork before joining my dad in one of the emergency rooms. We talked about what stresses him out these days, did some gossiping, discussed world politics as the hospital staff came in and out asking us questions, getting more blood from my dad, and performing additional checks. At some point, my dad said “This way we got to spend some alone time. We were worried that we would get none during your visit. You can write about this in your blog.” It was true. It was one of the rare times I spent alone with my dad in years. I really don’t wish to repeat this, though.

After a while, I told him to try to get some sleep. Even though there were still interruptions for test results and more blood checks, he did get some naps. Eventually, they let us go. My mom’s older brother drove us back. There wasn’t anything heart related to worry about in the end. It was likely a low blood pressure issue, and he has also been overwhelmed lately for various reasons.

 

I used to have a dedicated day each with my mom and dad whenever I visited them on holidays. I usually went to the movies with my dad and had a shopping day with my mom. I don’t remember exactly when we stopped such routines. Was it after the Gezi Park Protests? The aftermath of these protests was among the incidents in recent Turkish history that put cracks in our hopes for the future and the joy we get when we are in our favorite districts in Istanbul. Or was it people in the family starting to get older and acquiring more serious illnesses? That certainly shifted our priorities when it came to how we spend time with the family.

 

Routines change over time, usually to create space for other routines. This is how we progress in life. For the most part, this is a good thing. But it doesn’t simplify the process of letting go as L.M. Montgomery also puts it.

“Outgrowing things we love is never a pleasant process.” L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

As a result of my many moves, coming from a relatively more complex country, and my family situation, I think I had to outgrow more than my fair share.

Regardless, I need to learn to cherish whatever form of time I have with my parents, friends, other family … rather than expecting to revive older routines. Maybe we get to do some of those older things from time to time, but we don’t need them to put higher value for our time.

 

Happy new year everyone! To new routines! :) 

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[i] My Grandmother

[ii] Losses

Navigating the World with a Turkish Passport: The Good, the Bad, and the Visas - Part 4

Part 4: Copenhagen

This year, shortly before summer, for the first time in my life, I made a serious attempt to buy a house. Not that I really want to own such big property, but I think unless I do this sooner rather than later, I will suffer financially in my old age, if I manage to reach old age that is. I reached out to my Danish bank to discuss mortgage. My initial conversation with the bank advisor ended with him telling me something like “Usually, we are more difficult with foreigners, but you seem ok. I can approve you for a loan.” I guess I finally made it as an immigrant after 14 years. Also, I now know how mortgage works.

 

In February 2018, I moved to Copenhagen to become an Associate Professor at IT University of Copenhagen (ITU), and to see if Copenhagen and I can satisfy each other’s criteria even though my home country pathologically doesn’t satisfy the Copenhagen criteria and I tend to be pathologically picky when it comes to where I live.

Five years later, I am still an associate professor at ITU, I love Copenhagen as I already told in the first post of this series, and, as of this year, I am also a permanent resident of Denmark.

 

Copenhagen has the sea (one year I managed to swim in from May to October), my favorite culture house (Huset), two easily accessible amusement parks (Tivoli and Bakken), 24-hour public transport, streets that I feel safe to walk on even at late hours and doesn’t feel deserted during a good chunk of the day, and a ~3-hour flight to Istanbul that doesn’t make you go through jetlag.

I live in a rental apartment that I really like, and I think my landlord is a decent human being.

Since I got my own PhD students in late 2021, I can say “I love my job” without hesitation for the first time in my life. Plus, I managed to establish a strong support system over time.

Denmark has also been the first foreign country that I lived in where some people pay attention to writing my name correctly. Not just the “ö” and “ü” in my surname, but also the “ı” in my name. To be clear, I don’t expect this from anyone. Even I write my name as “pinar” instead of “pınar” in emails. I insist on the correct form only in paper publications and presentations. But I appreciate it when people make the extra effort for this.

I don’t take any of these things for granted.

 

These five years haven’t been a smooth ride. I didn’t expect it to be smooth.

I didn’t really know anyone when I moved to Copenhagen. I had the weakest support system I ever had in my life in the beginning.

Setting up your own research group from scratch is, to put it very mildly, hard. Doing it while trying to build up a more decent support system and learning a new language is extra hard.

And they didn’t give me my permanent residency card on a silver platter; I took both the longest and shortest exams of my life to prove my proficiency in Danish at B2-level and knowledge of Danish culture/history, respectively. This doesn’t account for the time I spent studying for those exams. Furthermore, they made me go to Næstved. I wonder how many Danes have been to Næstved. For some reason someone decided to discontinue the fingerprint and photo procedures for the permanent residency cards in Copenhagen leaving Næstved as the closest location for this purpose if you live in Copenhagen. To be fair, going to Næstved is still easier compared to most people’s daily commute in Istanbul or the Bay Area.

 

Shortly before I applied for my Danish permanent residence, my temporary one was up for expiration. I had to go through the same application process twice within six months, minus the extra documents for the permanent one the first time around. These applications didn’t cost me anything in terms of money because Turkish people are exempt from payment in residence permit applications (500ish euros). I don’t know the historical reasons for this exemption, but I assume the Danes needed the workforce. On the other hand, these applications cost me a lot of valuable time and stress. I would really like to be exempt from that time and stress as well, especially after 14 years living abroad. I guess the stress side of it is in my control to some extent, but it hasn’t improved when it comes to permits and visa applications over these years.

An additional annoyance was that the expiration date on my temporary residence permit was right after New Year’s in 2022, and I usually spend New Year’s Eve with family. Despite applying for the renewal of my permit as early as I was allowed to, I couldn’t get the new one on time before my end-of-year trip to Turkey. I still traveled to Turkey, but I returned to Denmark on Dec 31, 2021, just in case. My renewed permit was in my mailbox, but it was extended for less than two years instead of the usual four due to the expiration date on my Turkish passport. I knew I was going to apply for the permanent residency soon, which would hopefully overwrite this temporary permit, so this was ok, but otherwise it would have been a “please kill me now” situation. The highlight of that New Year’s Eve was I slept though the mayhem of fireworks that usually takes place in Copenhagen on that night since I was too tired. Early next morning, I went back to the airport to do a mandatory COVID test (yes, it was still those times).

 

Thanks to my Danish residence permit, I at least no longer have to get a Schengen visa to travel in most of Europe, which is a blessing. On the other hand, I gave up my green card in early 2021. By that time, I knew I would likely not go back to the US, and, therefore, this was the right thing to do. As a result, I missed two conferences in the US in 2022 because I couldn’t get a US visa on time for them. Now, I have a US visa for another 10 years, so I am good for the time being. I don’t know if having a green card prior made any impact on the visa decisions, but it certainly didn’t shorten the appointment time and it lengthened my questioning at the airport while I was entering the US this summer for a conference. 

 

The ITU CS department used to have a coffee hour every other week. The first time I attended this coffee hour, I remember sitting there in my usual silence and social awkwardness among people that I don’t know very well yet. After a while, a faculty member approached me and started a conversation about some issues regarding the Turkish population in Germany.

I now identify this colleague as one of my favorites at ITU. I am also the kind of person who would much rather talk about the Turks in Germany than the Turkish food or the weather. However, in those early days in Copenhagen, that conversation reminded me why I wanted to move to the US in the first place after Switzerland and the trade-off I made when I moved back to Europe. My Turkish nationality gives me a heavier baggage to carry in Europe, and I am not allowed to let it go. At least, I now have stronger muscles for it.

Navigating the World with a Turkish Passport: The Good, the Bad, and the Visas - Part 3

 Part 3: USA

 

After Switzerland, I felt the need to be not in Europe. More specifically, I wanted to go to a place where I didn’t have to be reminded of my non-EU status often and I could speak the local language fluently. Thus, it made sense to search for jobs in the USA toward the end of my PhD even though the distance from USA to Turkey felt too much. In my research field, the job options in Europe were also highly limited compared to the USA at that time. (Things got much better from that perspective now in Europe.) In the end, both Twin Sister and I found jobs in Bay Area / Silicon Valley.

 

I lived in downtown San Jose, CA, USA for 3 years while working for IBM Research.

In San Jose, my non-EU status didn’t matter as long as I didn’t need to go to Europe. All that mattered was my IBM job contract.

With that contract, I found an apartment immediately in downtown San Jose. Twin Sister hosted me for a month before I moved there because the move-in date wasn’t immediate, but I got the apartment I actually wanted rather than settling for one that accepted me after many rejections.

With that contract, I didn’t have an issue opening a bank account.

With that contract, I had access to better healthcare than my US-citizen aunt.

 

I can also speak fluent English. Thus, getting things done and having a social life was way easier compared to Switzerland. Also, downtown San Jose is rich when it comes to cultural events that I crave compared to the other cities in the area that aren’t San Francisco. Within 30mins walking to my apartment, I had access to concerts, movies, musicals, plays, opera, comedy shows, and a really cool bookstore. These things may not matter to everyone, but they matter to me.

 

For my work visa, instead of betting on the lottery of H1B, IBM decided that we go for an O1. An O1 visa is given to, as the website writes, “Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement.” This is how one of my celebrity crushes, John Oliver, got to the USA as well. Your PhD degree can qualify you for it, but you have to prove your ability and achievements.

I shipped 6kg of documents to the US authorities for that proof.

Back then I had a shopping bag with wheels, since in Switzerland I didn’t live close to a shop and could usually shop once a week or every other week, meaning I had a big load when I shopped to be carried from a remote location, so a shopping bag with wheels was handy. I used that shopping bag to carry the documents for the O1 visa to the nearest UPS office.

 

6 months after I started working at IBM, I asked if they would be willing to petition for a green card application for me, since I heard from another colleague that they usually are. They gave a green light, and in my case the procedure was similar to the O1 visa application with slightly more documents.  This time, IBM shipped things for me, though, so I didn’t have to carry >6kg of documents with me to a UPS office.

Despite these smooth aspects, the green card application process was still challenging.

Due to several rules about staying in the US both before and after the application, I ended up not leaving the US for 18 months. I know this is not unusual for many people, but for me it was. It was the longest I have been away from Turkey. My parents visited me during that period once, but it was also the longest separation we had. Even during COVID lockdowns, I went to Turkey twice a year. What made things worse is that toward the end of that estrangement, my dad had a heart attack.

In addition to proving my worth academically, I also had to prove myself health-wise for the green card application. Among the requirements, there are several health tests and vaccinations. I was told that I didn’t have syphilis and I had good mental health. To that I said “Thanks! I guess …” I was told that I could have all the required vaccinations (5+ from what I remember) at once if I wanted and be done with them irrespective of what I was already vaccinated for. To that I said, first in my head, “Are you fucking kidding me?”, then to the doctor, “I prefer that you make a test first to see what I already have the immunity for, I will only be vaccinated for the rest.” In the end, I only needed boosting my prior tetanus and measles vaccinations. The morning after I received the tetanus vaccination, though, I was on the floor of my bathroom throwing up and feeling like all my bones were being disassembled. Within 30mins of hearing this incident, Twin Sister ended up at my door and took me to her house where she lived together with her then partner now husband. I spent the day on their couch.

After all these processes and convincing the US government that I wasn’t a former nazi and I didn’t plan to perform polygamy, I am unsure about getting married even to one person, I got approved for the green card.

Throughout this process, I questioned all my efforts trying to get a green card, especially considering that I didn’t think I wanted to live in the US in the long run, primarily due to its distance from my parents. But the day that I got my green card, all my doubts were gone. I cannot describe the happiness and relief I felt holding a residence permit that didn’t depend on my job for the first time in 7 years. Ironically, shortly after a year I got my green card, I moved to Denmark and put myself into a position where my residence permit depended on my job again. (Did I mention my dad had a heart attack?)

 

Which brings us to the year of 3 Schengen visas.

Early 2017, shortly after receiving my green card, I planned a longish trip to recover from being in the US for 18+ months. The trip would start with spending a few days with Partner in Crime in Frankfurt on the way to a Dagstuhl workshop, then continue with reuniting with my family in Istanbul, and end with a visit to Illegitimate Daughter in Paris. Due to the Germany and France hops of this trip, I needed a Schengen visa. I went to the German embassy a bit stressed out as I usually am at any embassy. I was carrying a printed excel sheet with me detailing the many hops of the trip. The lady handling my case was nice and thanked me for my careful preparation. I left the embassy relieved. Then, I got my visa covering only the travel dates. Nothing more. Nothing less. The Europeans didn’t want me in their land more than necessary. 

After that trip, it was clear to me that living in the US, especially in Bay Area, in the long run wasn’t for me, and I had to act sooner rather than later before the inertia crept further. I thought getting back to Europe was a fair trade-off between being closer to family while escaping the turmoil of Turkey after the recent coup attempt. Even if I felt systematically disliked in Europe, if I targeted bigger European cities with more diverse and international crowds, I could still find my tribe and necessary dose of cultural activities to balance things. Thus, I started to look for jobs in Europe. I wrote about the that process already in a blog post, Moving On, during my last week in the US.

During that job search, I did several industry job interviews that took place either at the US offices of those companies or online. On the other hand, the two academic interviews I did were both at location.

The first one was in Germany, and I was informed three weeks in advance. They had the interview structure of interviewing all the candidates on the same day, so there was one interview day that they determined for you without asking for your availability ahead of time. When I received the interview invitation email, the blood rushed in my body, and I became paralyzed briefly. Could I get a Schengen visa in three weeks?

After calming down, I wrote back to them that I needed a visa and whether it would be possible to change the interview date. While waiting for their reply, I checked the German embassy website. The earliest appointment date was way after the interview date I was given. On the other hand, I kept reading through the visa pages, and realized that because of the Schengen visa I got from the German embassy earlier that year, I was eligible for a visa application by post. I didn’t need an appointment, I just needed to send the documents to the embassy via mail.

In the meantime, the university replied that it would be difficult to move the interview date since it was a common date for all candidates. I asked them for an invitation letter to handle the visa process as fast as possible. They didn’t know what to write. I wrote them a draft, and they put it on an official letter and signed. This back & forth with them was at least quick.

I dropped everything at work and quickly gathered all the visa documents in a day. For one of the documents, there was a notary approval needed. I don’t remember which document that was for, but while searching for the notary in San Jose, I first ended up at a place where I asked if there was a notary there, after which I was asked if I wanted to buy pot. I replied, “No. Wrong address.” I eventually found the notary, shipped all the documents to German embassy, and received my visa on time. It was once again on my exact travel dates.

My parents were visiting me at San Jose at the time. It was the last week of their visit. They got to observe my anxiety through this visa process firsthand. At some point my dad told me “We of course want you to move closer to us, but we don’t want that at the cost of your mental health.”

The interview went well on my end despite being more worried about the visa than the interview itself during those three weeks of notice, but I didn’t get the job. 

In contrast to this interview, my now department head at the IT University of Copenhagen, Peter Sestoft, explicitly asked when it would be a good time to have the interview for me considering the visa process. We arranged a date that wouldn’t stress me. This time, I had to apply via the Danish embassy and couldn’t use the apply-by-post option. The Danes gave me a visa that was for 20 days even though my visit would be for about a week instead of the exact travel dates. How nice of them!?

I really hope I will never have to apply for a Schengen visa ever again in my life.

 

One of my favorite quotes from Cheryl Strayed is “Be brave enough to break your own heart.” As I mentioned in Part 2 of these blog posts, the day I left Switzerland was one of the happiest days of my life. The day I left US was different. Twin Sister drove me to the airport, Academic Sister met us there, I would have to leave them for good this time. They wouldn’t be moving to my next destination. Also, San Jose felt like a home by that time. I realized that I broke my own heart once already when leaving Turkey back in 2009. Probably it wasn’t fully healed, and I was now breaking it again. But it had to be done. Even though I had to deal with that heart break and starting from scratch once again in Copenhagen, I don’t regret leaving the US. I am way more content with my life in Copenhagen, which, combined with my higher emotional maturity when I moved there, made healing faster.

 

Next, in Part 4, which will be the last one of these posts, we will focus on Copenhagen.

 

Teaching Systems

I feel very honored to receive the ITU Teaching Prize this year.

As part of the award ceremony at ITU, I gave a brief presentation on what I teach to the general public. For this month’s blog post, I decided to share what I talked about during that presentation. The slides associated with this talk can be found here. This post is almost the same as my narration during the talk. I just elaborate a bit more here on some topics.

 

I work in a sub-field of computer science called systems. I love this field and feel very happy that I get to teach it.

What do we mean by systems?

I tend to work with data-intensive systems, which are systems that deal with storing, managing, and processing data. Therefore, I have my bias in my definition of systems.

A computer system is composed of layers.

At the bottom, we have the hardware, which could be the devices you use to store data or processors to compute insights from your data.

Next, we have the operating system layer like Linux, Windows …, whichever is your favorite, that helps us manage the hardware resources as we run several applications on top of that hardware.

Then, we have the frameworks that help us build applications. Especially here my bias comes into play because the framework examples I have are all related to data-intensive systems. These frameworks can be database systems like PostgreSQL, big data processing platforms like Apache Spark, or machine learning frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch.

Finally, we have the applications.

The systems field deals with building the layers underneath the applications to support those applications.

 

In my research, more specifically, I look at how these systems perform and whether we can improve this performance, because sub-optimal performance means you are paying a higher cost for something than you should. This cost could be money, time, energy, carbon footprint …, and usually these costs are all inter-linked.

Understanding the performance of a system often feels like being the doctor of a computer system to me. You do tests, collect a lot of data, and try to understand if there is something wrong with the system. For example, a thing we commonly do is to break down the execution cycles of a data-intensive system. The high-level breakdown could be as simple as categorizing the cycles that are busy, meaning your processor is actually doing something, or stalled, where your processor is waiting idly. If you notice a lot of stall time, then you may want to break down these stall cycles to understand where they come from. For example, they could be because of the complex code you have to execute in the system leading to many instruction cache misses. Then, the next question to ask may be “where do these problematic instructions come from?” and we go on like this to identify the issue and how to fix it.

 

To know how to investigate a system’s performance and come up with solutions to improve it, there are three key things to know.

1. How to devise a methodology to design experiments so that you can investigate the system’s performance,
2. The toolset to run the necessary experiments and collect the results, and
3. At least a basic understanding of the systems layers, even if you aren’t an expert in all of them, to be able to interpret your results and come up with solutions.

This is essentially what I teach.

 

Before I conclude, I also would like to touch upon diversity.

It is not news that women are underrepresented in computer science, and systems is among the sub-fields, where the female representation is consistently under the computer science average.[1] I am just one data point in the reported statistics, which sometimes feels like an over-simplification of my personal experiences in the field. I also acknowledge that this is a binary view on diversity, so I will try to talk about things in more general terms.

When I started my PhD, there was, and to some extent there still is, this stereotype of a successful systems person:

A successful systems person walks with a bravado, gives the impression that they already knew all the systems layers well when they were born, writes code for fun in their free time, and always has strong opinions, which they aggressively present to the world.

If you fit into this stereotype, it is perfectly fine, there is nothing wrong with that, and I am not here to judge. But if this stereotype is the only thing that we keep putting on the pedestal or creating a cult around, it will always be hard to reach a more diverse pool of talent.

I questioned my place in this field throughout my PhD due to this stereotype even though I loved systems research. This was partially because, early in my PhD, some of the more senior researchers, who could more easily fit into that stereotype, implied that I might not have what it takes to become a successful systems researcher. Luckily, I also had interactions with other senior people who chose to encourage me instead.

Now I am in a senior position, and I am well-aware that I have the power to both enforce that stereotype and break it, especially through my teaching. Thus, one of the things that I emphasize in my interactions with students is that everyone can learn computer systems as long as they are willing to learn and have the time. This is probably true for any topic you wish to learn anyway.

 

To conclude, I am really thankful to receive this award, and there are many I want to thank.

When I was in high school, once our literature teacher asked us to write an acknowledgements letter, and I wrote 12 pages.

But I will keep things brief here.

I would like to thank DIAS lab at EPFL, where I did my PhD, for giving me a safe environment to become a systems person.

I would like to thank my colleagues at ITU in general, and at DASYA lab in particular, for a supportive environment and helping me grow as an academic and a systems person.

I would like to thank Peter Sestoft for nominating me for this award in the first place.

Finally, I would like to thank all the students whom I had the privilege to teach. I know I am here to teach you, but I also learn from you all the time, and I really appreciate that.

 

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[1] Why Are There So Few Women in Computer Systems Research?

Navigating the World with a Turkish Passport: The Good, the Bad, and the Visas - Part 2

Part 2: Switzerland

I lived in Lausanne, Switzerland for 5 years while doing my PhD.

Switzerland gave me Twin Sister, a close-knit and very supportive academic family, a PhD degree and the upward mobility that came with it, basic survival skills in French and German languages, the best tap water I have ever drank in my life, great train connections, a Freddie Mercury statue to visit when I wanted to slack off, and several other positive stuff that I am sure I can come up with if I think hard enough.

On the other hand, the day I left Switzerland was one of the happiest days of my life. For the Tori Amos fans, it was the day I was past the mission and started to smell the roses. This doesn’t mean that day didn’t have other emotions in it. I was also upset for leaving my academic family and other friends who made my time there worthwhile despite my lack of love toward Switzerland[1].

 

Switzerland is traditionally beautiful, but beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

I was never charmed by Switzerland unless I was in Montreux, where Freddie is. This was partly about Switzerland and partly about the difficult start to my PhD. While I have written about the latter in several posts[2], the former is the focus of this post. I wish I could separate them in real life like in the blog posts. I might like Switzerland more if I could do that separation.

 

I have not seen as many anti-immigration posters in public display in any other country. They could be the first thing that welcomes you at a train station.

 

During the process of applying for a work visa, I was told to sign a letter that stated that I plan to leave Switzerland as soon as my PhD is over.[3]

 

Once I managed to get my work visa and moved to Switzerland, then started the hardship of finding a house in Lausanne. With Twin Sister, whom I met at EPFL Open House and who was my #1 confidant during PhD, we decided to share a temporary place in the beginning till we find a more permanent solution. The place we found was in a good location and nice, but it was too small for two people and almost double the rent for a place that size in the area. During our longer-term-house search, we were advised to avoid a certain housing agency since, as we were told, they would never give an apartment to someone who carried the kind of passport we carried. Together with being a PhD student, which is a disadvantage when searching for housing everywhere, our passports put us toward the bottom of the desired tenants list.

In the end, Twin Sister and I each managed to get accepted for a 19m2 studio at a building that was under construction at the time of our application. We were among the first applicants and the place just accepted EPFL students, so the competition wasn’t fierce. After spending 6 months at our temporary place, we were able to move to our long-term one.[4]

 

In parallel, we had to open a bank account. We opened our first bank accounts at Credit Suisse since it had a branch at EPFL. However, they rejected our credit card application. In the rejection letter, they didn’t give much detail, so we went to the EPFL branch to ask for the reason. The guy there said it is probably because we weren’t from the EU. In my head, I said “You aren’t from the EU either. Regardless, how does this make me less reliable for a credit card compared to my peers doing a PhD earning the same salary?” To him, I said nothing. This made us go to the UBS branch in the city center, which both opened us a bank account and approved our card request.

 

To receive my Swiss resident permit, I went to register at the Lausanne commune. I gave my passport to the lady at the counter for the registration procedure. She gave me a form to fill out and told me to pay some amount in CHF for registration. I filled in the form, prepared the necessary cash, and went back to her. She told me “Oh. I thought you were Italian. You have to fill in this other form instead and you have to pay more.” In my head, I said “You thought I was Italian?! You took my passport before you gave me that form.” To her, I said nothing. I took the new form, filled it out, added to the cash, and got myself registered.

Unlike our peers from the EU, who received a 5-year residence permit by default, we had to renew our permit every year. Our permits were from September to the end of August of the following year. In my first renewal process, the renewed permit didn’t arrive till the end of December. This meant (1) if any Swiss authority for any reason asked for my permit on the street during those four months, I didn’t have a valid one, and (2) I couldn’t leave the country or had to apply for a re-entry permit to be able to do so. I ended up applying for a re-entry permit to go see my family during the holidays in December. All my Turkish friends, including Twin Sister, had to do so as well during that year, and all of them also had to pay for that re-entry permit in addition to paying for the renewal. When they asked me to pay during my application, this time I openly said “No. I am not paying. This is your fault, not mine.” That for some reason worked in my case. I don’t know why.

 

These matters were all solvable through time or money. But they underlined our difference from the rest too often to a point that I internalized I am not one of them. I know people who are able to say “This is the world order that you cannot change. Just accept and move on.” I still have my rollercoaster ride of acceptance and resistance on this matter.

 

To underline our difference from others further, we received the questions of “Are you allowed to drink in Turkey?” (yes), “Do you have to wear a headscarf when you go home?” (no), "Did you feel any culture shock when you moved to Switzerland?" (no - except for some of the stuff listed below under practical challenges) too often. While I welcome questions of this sort, answering them as often as I had to back then made me frustrated. 

 

On a brighter note, during my PhD, my US visa expired, so I had to reapply in Switzerland before going for a conference. This visa application has been the easiest and most pleasant visa application experience in my life.

 

There were also several practical challenges beyond the passport related ones.

First, it was such a hassle to communicate with people in Lausanne outside EPFL, since most only spoke French even if some understood English. I started following French language classes at EPFL, but after changing two advisors during my first year of PhD, learning French wasn’t in my priority list. No one will give you a PhD degree at EPFL for speaking great French. After feeling relatively safer in my PhD, I started going to language classes again but for German, which is now overtaken by my Danish.

Second, as a result of this more conservative attitude to language, there weren’t many cultural activities for the non-French speaking. Furthermore, most film screenings were dubbed in French. Thus, the things that I relied on for my natural socialization were taken from me. To compensate for all that, eating, which I previously didn’t pay that much attention to beyond what is necessary for my survival, became the primary activity for socializing with others. I realized that eating is the easiest common denominator if you want to gather people, since everyone has to eat regardless of their hobbies or how busy they are. Inviting people to watch an independent film on a Sunday morning due to the rare non-French-dubbed screening time didn’t draw big crowds, but dinner on Friday or lunch at work did. I know I am not a social butterfly and have no intention to be one. My social life wasn't in my priority list either at that time, once again due to the difficulties during the first year of my PhD. However, a friend once called me "social cement" in those days to highlight my ability to find ways to bring people together.

Lastly, most shops were closed in Lausanne (and in most of Switzerland) after 6pm on weekdays and Saturdays and completely on Sundays and religious holidays. Prior to moving to Switzerland, I was a college student in Istanbul, who abused luxuries like wanting mineral water 3am in the morning sitting in my dorm-room and going out to get one at the university canteen. Adjusting to Swiss hours wasn’t straightforward. In addition, there was the adjustment (or rather maladjustment) of moving from a lively crowded city to a place that made me ask “Has there been a military coup or a zombie apocalypse? Why is no one outside?”

 

In the end, as promised to the Swiss authorities, I left Switzerland as soon as my PhD contract ended, and I went back to Switzerland only once since then for a brief visit.

---

[1] Dear friends I met in Switzerland and my Swiss colleagues, I hope you know that I value you very much, and these sentiments have nothing to do with you.

[2] Rejections

The Lazy and The Workaholic

PhD Defense – Part 2: The Public One – Or from Amazonian Queen to Idiot to Humility and Fierceness

[3] There are many who are still in Switzerland after their PhD despite signing such a letter. If you find a job, you can stay. Thus, I don’t see the point of making people sign such an unwelcoming letter as one of the first things they do on the way to moving to your country to do a PhD.

[4] Toward the end of our PhD, it became harder and harder for PhD students to get accepted there, since there are many EPFL BSc/MSc student applications being prioritized over PhD ones.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera, who is one of my favorite authors, passed away earlier this month. This post is to commemorate him.

Warning: The post contains spoilers on The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

 

I bought my copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being at Shakespeare and Company in Paris in the summer of 2013. I was a fourth year PhD student then in Lausanne and visiting Illegitimate Daughter. It was our first time hanging out in Paris together, which would later become the first of many. We had Shakespeare and Company in our list of places to see because it is one of the places Celine and Jesse visit in Before Sunset. I didn’t have a plan to buy a particular book, but I wanted to buy one to commemorate the visit, which I usually do whenever I visit a bookstore that I deem important for the first time. After almost an hour of roaming and chilling at the bookstore, The Unbearable Lightness of Being ended up being the choice, for no reason other than being one of those books that I thought I should probably read one day.

I didn’t read that book until shortly after I moved to San Jose in 2015. Whenever I was reading it during my daily commute to work using the Light Rail in San Jose, it felt like drinking water after being thirsty for a very long time. I later read it again shortly after I moved to Copenhagen in 2018, and parts of it I read again and again in my first year there.

 

The book has three main characters: Tomáš, Tereza, and Sabina.

Sabina was the character that I was the most drawn to. She was on her own unlike Tomáš and Tereza who were a couple. She kept moving from place to place, whereas Tomáš and Tereza returned to Prague. I related to her unenthusiasm about the events that aim to create a nationality-based community for people living abroad. Toward the end, she created an alternative family for herself, but on a shaky foundation. …

But, most importantly, the first chapter where she is the character of focus, which is the third part of the book titled “Words Misunderstood” was one of the best things I had ever read in my life.

“Words Misunderstood” centers on the concept of words having different meanings to different people based on their background. This isn’t a new concept. Some may claim it is an obvious one. On the other hand, Milan Kundera’s rendition of this concept is the most beautiful one I have ever encountered. At one point, he relates it to composing, I assume because of his scholarly training in musicology. We form our life-compositions with people who enter our lives early on. Thus, we form a common set of words and gestures with them. When we meet people later in life, especially the ones who come from very different backgrounds, the same words and gestures may conflict or require over-explanation. In contrast, when you meet a good old friend, even after years of absence, things flow with ease thanks to our shared language/composition. On the other hand, he also mentions the possibility of creating a new composition with the people who enter our lives later if one makes the necessary effort.

 

“While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.”

The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Part 3: Words Misunderstood

 

Lausanne was the first place I moved to that didn’t have the sea. Switzerland doesn’t have sea. It has beautiful mountains and lakes. That is what is engraved in the locals and many foreigners that live there. I, on the other hand, lived the first 21 years of my life in coastal cities seeing the sea almost every day. When I traveled, it was also mostly to other coastal cities. The sea was the most consistent part of my life. I knew the world is a lot more than its coasts, and the sea isn’t a big part of many people’s lives, but I had never internalized that fact before I moved to Switzerland. In Switzerland, the sea wasn’t a big deal. Or the relation to the water was centered around water sports, creating a more active state when interacting with the water as opposed to experiencing it as is. In return, I didn’t care that much for their beautiful mountains, skiing, or hiking. Turkey’s coast also has mountains, but to me the mountains came as an attachment to the sea. Later in life, I adjusted my composition to appreciate the beauty of the mountains and enjoy hiking with friends. That composition hasn’t had a place for skiing, though, and I don’t expect that it ever will. And I am afraid one day I will face deportation from Europe because I don’t hike enough.

I know this example may sound like a first-world problem. Last month I wrote about way more serious challenges people face when they move abroad. Especially in the context of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the characters move abroad to escape the political climate in their home country. But even if you have the best conditions in your life abroad, seemingly very frivolous things can create a divide between you and the other people. With many words misunderstood the divide deepens. This is why it is very challenging to create strong bonds with local people when you live abroad unless both sides are willing to put the energy to create a common language/composition.

 

“Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.”

The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Part 2: Soul & Body

 

The second part of the book titled “Body & Soul”, which focuses on Tereza, touches on the theme of living abroad as well, especially when your country of origin is the politically more complicated and socio-economically less privileged one compared to the country that you moved to. You end up being subjected to the top-down or black-and-white views of the people about you and your country. That contributes to the deepening of the divide substantially. In the book, our characters first move to Switzerland from Czechoslovakia. Someone in Switzerland shames Tereza for being dependent on Tomáš’s money.

I remember once a Frenchman I met at a wedding telling me “You can feel free now that you live abroad” when we were discussing issues related to my gender in Turkey. I was taken aback by that statement. How did he get to that conclusion? Sure, we were discussing serious issues women face in my home country, but how did he make this projection to freedom and the lives of all the Turkish women? How did he project that onto my life? Did I give him this impression? Or was this his entitlement making such bold statements about the lives of people he knew very little of? Did he not know that there are also many challenges women face in his own country, in Europe, in USA …? Did he not realize that my residence in Europe/US depended on my job, which by default made me less free than most people around me, and I lacked the very strong support system I had in Turkey when I was abroad? Plus, if I go down the rabbit hole, was anyone really “free”?

 

Milan Kundera was exiled to France from his homeland Czechoslovakia in 1975. He lived the rest of his life in France. He knew what it meant to live abroad, to come from a politically complex country, and to be persecuted for one’s ideas. I admire and appreciate him for analyzing concepts such as identity, misuse of political power, beauty, sex … using the almost archetypical characters he creates, but without undermining, overgeneralizing, or creating a caricature of those characters, so they all feel very human at the same time.

 

I would like to end this post by acknowledging the people who have contributed to forming the core of my composition early on back when I still lived in Turkey and who have been generous with me as I lived abroad so that I can keep enrichen my composition later in life. It is hard to list them all, but they are the ones that frequently appear in this blog. Thank you, and I love you!

 

P.S. Special thanks to Illegitimate Daughter for remembering the dates of our visit to Shakespeare and Company.

Navigating the World with a Turkish Passport: The Good, the Bad, and the Visas - Part 0 & 1

 

Copenhagen has now become the city that I resided in the longest after my hometown. To celebrate this, I initially planned to write a love letter to Copenhagen; a sincere one, not a sarcastic one. Then, my cousin, who was the “baby cousin” in May’s blog post and is now 30 with a stable full-time job, was rejected a Schengen visa to come to Denmark to visit me. His visa rejection letter in short said “Currently, we don’t grant visas to people from Turkey unless it is a matter of close family and business-related visits.” This outcome is neither unique to him nor Denmark these days. I hear more frequent Schengen visa rejections for Turkish people including musicians wanting to travel for their concerts. In my anger and frustration, I realized that my love toward Copenhagen is doomed to be one-sided. As a result, instead of a love letter, I decided to write about the impact of my under-privileged passport on me as I dreamed of exploring the world as a kid and lived abroad as an adult. There will be some love still in the mix.

 

First, let me acknowledge my own privileged position here. I am an expat. I moved abroad because I wanted to not because I had to. While no foreign country welcomed me with open arms, this isn’t the same as seeking refuge abroad. In addition, while I am aware of the unique challenges some other passports have in the Western world, the challenges I describe here focus on the ones that come with my Turkish passport. I know people who can’t see their families for several years due to the harsh residence permit requirements of the country they live in or the unwelcoming conditions in their home country. I have never been in such a situation, and I wish no one had to be. The longest I had to be away from my parents was slightly over a year, it was very difficult, and it was due to a residence permit requirement. This being said, given my country of origin, I also have to acknowledge that this relative privilege may change at any time.

 

Despite living (and full-time working and paying taxes) in the Western world for over a decade, I am still in a disadvantaged position when it comes to my rights compared to the majority European people who are around me on a day-to-day basis. This is “thanks to” my Turkish passport. This world is not as open to me as it is to them. I am subjected to more visa and residence permit requirements, and therefore endure more challenges when I travel for work. When my family and friends in Turkey want to visit me, even at the place I now call home and was about to write a love letter to, we are at the mercy of a stranger granting visas. Except for a brief period in the USA and up until this year in Europe, my residence permit depended on my job and losing my job meant deportation. The welfare rules don’t apply to me with the same benefits. As a result, I also by default feel distant from most of the people who surround me.

 

But I want to start from the beginning. So, let’s rewind and dig. Since I lived in 5 countries (meaning I had to open a bank account in 5 countries), this story will have 5 parts, so I will post it over multiple months. This month comes Part 0 & 1.

 

Part 0: Turkey

Growing up in Turkey, one of my favorite TV events was the Eurovision. I didn’t care for the songs. I rarely watched that part. But I stayed up late to watch the voting part. I don’t know if it was an early interest in world politics or a very creative self-harm method. During that voting segment, while many of the competing countries voted well for their neighbors, we usually got the lowest scores from ours except for Azerbaijan.

Then, there was the Copenhagen criteria and Anders Fogh Rasmussen saga frequently on the news. The Copenhagen criteria are the criteria to enter the EU, the criteria that we have never been able to satisfy, and very likely we never will. Rasmussen welcomed 10 new countries into the EU as a conclusion to that saga. We of course weren’t one of them, and we never will be even if we could satisfy the Copenhagen criteria. If I describe the reactions my family members had toward Rasmussen’s news appearances in those years, this blog post might get an R-rating, so let’s just say that he was quite unpopular.

 

I was 15 the first time we planned to travel abroad as a family. It was to visit my aunt, who lived in Chicago, USA. We needed a visa to enter the USA. The closest US embassy to us was in Ankara, which is ~4 hours by bus from my hometown. It was early summer. The day of our visa appointment was very hot. We left the house of the family friends who hosted us during that trip with very light clothing. My mom, however, got a couple of jackets with her just in case, and my dad and I made fun of her for that. Then, we arrived at the US embassy shortly before our appointment time and were let in. We ended up waiting there for ~4 hours for our turn to come, and the AC was on at full blast. One of the people, also waiting, politely asked the security guard if they could turn down the AC. The guard yelled at her in return, and the AC was kept as is. At the 3^rd hour, my fingernails started to turn purple. My mom put a jacket on me. They granted us a 10-year visa.

 

The second time I traveled abroad was again to Chicago after graduating high school, as I also mentioned in previous month’s post. This time I had a visa. But when I was in Chicago, my cousins and I decided to do a road trip to Toronto for a concert. I needed a visa to enter Canada, unlike my cousins who are US citizens. One of my cousins and I went to the Canadian embassy in New York. It was a short visit. They rejected my application because I was 17 and needed a permission letter from my parents. The interviewer even asked, “How did you enter the US?”, to which I replied, “by plane.” He didn’t ask more. Our NYC trip was beautiful, though. After that rejection, I told my cousin that we didn’t have to go to Toronto, or they could go, and I could stay with my aunt. She said we should still give it a try. Then, my parents sent me a letter. One of my aunt’s friends was an official translator for these types of documents, so she helped us to make it official. This time with my other cousin, we drove to Detroit to retry our chances at the Canadian embassy there. With the permission given by my parents, Canada welcomed me. When I look at my old passport, I see a one-month Canadian visa. I vaguely remember that I actually received a visa for a week, but then the border control officer at Canada extended it to one-month saying, “I have a really good friend from Izmir.”, but I can’t see any evidence to back this memory up on my passport. Regardless of the visa outcome, the trip to Detroit was one of the best trips of my life. If you want to really bond with someone, do a road trip with them, especially driving at night. In Detroit, I was let into a bar for the first time in US despite being 17 because the owner was my cousin’s friend’s cousin’s friend (in Chicago, they didn’t let me in bars; in Turkey, they did), and I was introduced to an Irish car bomb, which became more Irish car bombs by the end of that night. Next morning, we went to Six Flags, which was a great way to spend hangover.

 

In contrast, when it came to traveling in Europe, I had one advantage compared to many other Turkish people back then. By extension of being my parents’ child, I had what is called a Green Passport in Turkey. It is a passport that gives you the right to visit Schengen countries without obtaining a visa for up to 3 months. It is typically given to people who serve in public office for a certain number of years. My parents have it because they were professors in a public university.

There used to be two criteria to keep the Green Passport through nepotism for a daughter: (1) being unmarried and (2) being unemployed. For a long time, I only knew about the first one and not the second. One day, I think in my early teenage years, I told my dad “I won’t get married.” I didn’t elaborate on the fact that this was to keep my passport rights. He didn’t ask for a reason. He said “That is OK. You can still live together with the person you love. You don’t have to get married.” I became aware of the second rule around the time I was preparing to move to Switzerland. Being a PhD student was going to be my first grown-up full-time job. And while I gave up my prospective spouse without thinking twice for a passport, I was never going to give up my economic independence.

In the end, the only time the Green Passport was supposed to be beneficial for me, it ended up being a disadvantage, and we will delve into that in Part 1.

 

Part 1: The Netherlands

Third year of my BSc at Koç University, thanks to my supervisor Serdar Taşıran, I and two other students in the department was accepted for a two-month summer internship at University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. Since this was a visit of less than three months, I was supposed to be covered with my Green Passport. However, the Twente-side told me that since this was a paid internship, I should still apply for a visa.

I did and got rejected. The Dutch embassy in İstanbul told me that “We cannot give you a visa for this because you do not need one.” There was so much back-and-forth between me and Twente. I had to visit the embassy several times and the staff started to greet me with a “You again! Hi.” At least the Dutch embassy is at İstiklal Avenue, which is one of my favorite places on Earth. All the other embassies I have been to are at locations that I wouldn’t go to otherwise. My parents also went to that Dutch embassy once on my behalf because I had classes. During that visit, my mom developed a crush on one of the cute embassy staff who identified my case as a “nightmare”. To this day, whenever we reminisce about my Netherlands days, she gives a shout out to that guy.

The other two students got their visas quickly and they were set for the internship. My situation was unclear up until last week. Eventually, the Twente-side gave in.

In Enschede, the university found us a place to live, which I really appreciated. I lived in a house with five boys and a mouse named Elizabeth. I was also the only girl at the department I interned at. All the boys/men were nice, but I really missed my college roommate, a.k.a. Illegitimate Daughter, who has a love letter dedicated to her somewhere in this blog. It was with those emotions I started watching Gilmore Girls, which she always insisted that I should watch. This action was the start of a very important tradition for me, which is to watch Gilmore Girls whenever I move to a new country.

Besides Gilmore Girls, I was often unsure about what to eat, so I ended up eating too much stroopwafel. The trash in the house was somehow always overflowing. People often told me that I don't look Turkish. Someone threw up in front of me on the street in Amsterdam. I did all the rides in Efteling. I was able to go to the Dutch edition of Sister Blue’s wedding, which required two trains and a bus ride (pre-smart-phones) that brought me to a place in the Netherlands where some people couldn’t speak English. We were only 3 representing the bride’s side heavily outnumbered by the groom’s family and friends. I guess the Turkish edition of this wedding had the opposite outlook, but I wasn’t in that edition. They assigned the task of recording the wedding to me; a tip: don’t comment on things while recording a wedding even in Turkish, since some foreign spouses end up learning Turkish.

Overall, the internship at Twente was both productive and fun, and an encouraging experience just before deciding whether I should go abroad for my PhD, which we will delve into in Part 2 next month.

Losses

  

In March’s post, Rejections, I mentioned that two of my close family members were battling cancer. They were my uncle, mom’s brother, and my aunt, my dad’s sister. They both passed, in late March and early April. My dad was the one who gave me the news of my uncle’s death crying on the phone. 13 days later, I was the one on the phone crying giving him the news of his sister’s death.

In January’s post, My Grandmother, I wrote that the grief that came with my grandmother’s loss wasn’t wrapped up in anger. Losing a loved one to cancer, or even watching them battle it, on the other hand, makes you want to torch Olympus at times.

 

Once a colleague, when we were talking about the losses in the family, said “We don’t have a big family, so there haven’t been too many losses.”

It is true that the more beloved ones you have in your life, the more losses you will experience, unless you die first. For Turkish standards, I can’t say that I have a big family, but I do have a sizeable family.

It is also true that not everyone has to be close to their family, but I am.

 

My uncle was cool. He was The Rolling Stones cool.

I didn’t want to let go of him when I was a kid, and whenever he was around, I had his full attention. Later when he had his own family, I had to make my peace with sharing him. It wasn’t easy in the beginning, but I loved his partner quickly and my baby cousin was the cutest thing I had ever seen.

When I was in college in Istanbul, Istiklal Avenue was a spot I visited often in my leisure time, as it was for most college kids I knew in those days. My uncle’s workplace was close to Istiklal Avenue, so I sometimes met him either at his work or somewhere in Istiklal. We drank either beer or coffee. We talked about many things including whether there was hope for the Turkish left [1], which still is a prominent question in the light of the upcoming elections in Turkey [2].

Then, I moved abroad and my interactions with the family in Turkey, except for my parents, became less and less. I saw my uncle almost every time I visited Turkey, though. During COVID lockdowns, we started talking more regularly over the phone. Around the time the lockdowns started to get more relaxed, he got diagnosed with cancer. Toward the end, he didn’t have the energy for a phone call.

 

My aunt was a force of nature. She gave the impression that nothing could beat her. Then, she had cancer.

My aunt lived in Chicago, USA with her husband and two children. Because of that I didn’t get to see her much beyond their brief and rare visits to Turkey when I was a kid. My real relationship with her began after I graduated from high school. That summer my parents gifted me a flight ticket to Chicago. After I was done with my university entrance exam, I flew there to spend a month with my aunt and cousins. During that time, I got a chance to form a strong lifelong bond with all three of them. Later, when I lived in San Jose, I frequently visited them in Chicago, since I felt at home in Chicago, even though reaching Chicago from San Jose is more difficult than reaching Istanbul from Copenhagen. 

I loved having big family gatherings at my aunt’s place with my cousins and their growing families. She and I drank Turkish Raki together during some of those gatherings. Neither of my cousins and none of my friends in the US liked that drink, so sharing it with someone who also appreciates it as much as I did was something I cherished.

I also loved spending evenings at her house drinking tea from her tiny Turkish tea glasses and eating bitter mint-flavored chocolate. Even though I am not a big tea drinker, I kept a tiny tea glass at home in case she visited, since she had a high preference toward drinking tea with such glasses. She only got to visit my place in San Jose, and I unfortunately broke that tea glass a while back in Copenhagen. Now, I no longer need one.

 

I lost other beloved members of my family and some family friends to cancer before. I also have some family members and friends who survived cancer. I know all the options are on the table, and one should ideally never give up hope. On the other hand, sometimes it gets to a point where you realize the end is nearing. Your prayers or wishes for the loved one start shifting from “please let him/her heal” to “please stop his/her suffering.” In March, despite my best resistance, that shift happened for me. When some colleagues asked me about whether my family members were ok after the earthquake in Turkey, I often wanted to make the terrible dark joke of “They were safe from the earthquake, but we have cancer to compensate for that.”, but I held my tongue. I was often in a bad mood almost waiting for death to happen anytime and ate more and more lunches alone at work instead of going with other lab members. Not that they weren’t extremely kind and supportive, one of them even gave me a much-needed strong hug the morning my uncle died, and I was supposed to give a lecture in less than an hour.

 

I traveled to Istanbul for a week the day after my uncle died. I especially wanted to be with my mother, who experienced the loss of a sibling for the first time.

It was the right choice since being with the family was helpful to cope with the situation.

I was back in Copenhagen when my aunt died. I thought about going back to Istanbul again for a few days to be with my dad, who lost his last remaining sibling, or going to Chicago to be with my cousins. At the same time, I felt like crawling into a cave and staying there uninterrupted. My dad told me to take care of myself first, so I stayed in Copenhagen.

It was also the right choice since I needed time for myself.

 

I know I am writing all these from a place of distance still. I live abroad. I experience everything that happens to my family from abroad. These losses created a lot of grief for my family and close family friends. Yet, it is not my place to write about anyone else’s loss or grief. I can only do my best to put mine into words, and this is it. In the end, I am grateful that both my uncle and my aunt were an important part of my life despite our residence across different countries, and the memories are here to keep.

 

[1] My uncle belonged to the left-wing student groups during the 1970s political uproar in Turkey, which led to the 1980 Turkish military coup, and had to leave the country briefly to live abroad since he was receiving death threats from the right-wing groups.

[2] I voted on Friday, and I am hopeful.

The Banshees of Inisherin & Midnights

 

Friday evening, lying on the couch struck by my period cramps, I ended up watching Directors on Directors: Taylor Swift & Martin McDonagh. My initial plan was to watch Martin McDonagh’s short film Six Shooter, which was recommended by a friend the night before while we were discussing Martin McDonagh’s work. My YouTube search for Six Shooter also brought me the Directors on Directors episode with Taylor Swift and Martin McDonagh.

At a first glance, it looked like an odd pairing: a 53-year-old playwright turned into a filmmaker known for his tragicomedies and a 33-year-old ex-teenage-country-singer turned into an incomparable popular artist. Plus, neither makes me think of a “director” first, since the former’s writer identity and the latter’s popstar identity are more prominent.

Upon a deeper glance, I was completely on board for this pairing: the writer/director of the movie that I have revisited the most and the artist of the album that I have listened the most so far in 2023.

 

I must admit that Martin McDonagh was not a filmmaker in my radar before I watched The Banshees of Inisherin earlier this year. I missed In Bruges when it came out, put it in my “to-watch” list, but it fell through the cracks. I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri on a plane, thought it was one of the more interesting movies of that season, but didn’t think much about it afterward.

I was on the road till mid-January this year. When I came back to Copenhagen, The Banshees of Inisherin (will call it The Banshees for short from now on) was one of the films widely shown in cinemas. I found the trailer interesting. Sister in Movies wasn’t so interested in watching it at the time, so I made plans to watch it by myself after the first lecture of the new semester. Despite the big audience that day for the film, I was somehow the only one in the last row of Grand Teatret’s big room. After the film ended, I left Grand thinking “I am glad I lived to see this gem.”

I love watching things that are very funny and very sad at the same time, e.g., Nanette, Fleabag, Russian Doll ... It is very hard to strike a balance in that tone, but when it is done well, the end product gives you a lot to reflect on if you wish to. If you don’t, you can just take in the funny parts and run away with them or you can complain about how sad and depressing what you just watched was. The Banshees masters this tone in my opinion.

The film also has multiple stories well-juxtaposed. There is the personal story as we watch the interactions of the town people, the historical story with Irish civil war going on in the background, and the fable story with the several animals having almost three-dimensional characters and the banshee figure. You can take all the stories in or just follow one based on what you prefer. Either way, the film’s value doesn’t diminish.

When it comes to the personal layer, it is also rare to be able to relate to multiple characters in a film even while watching it for the first time. In the case of The Banshees, without major spoilers, I could feel Colm’s despair and self-destructiveness, Pádraic’s grief over being dumped by his best friend in a drastic manner, Siobhán’s need to leave, and whatever Dominic feels when he says, “there goes that dream.”

I finally watched In Bruges three days after I watched The Banshees and loved it as well. People are keen on comparing the two since both has the same main actors and are written and directed by the same person. The consensus among the people who are old-time fans of In Bruges seems to be that The Banshees isn’t as good as In Bruges. I disagree, but I also think that the comparison is unnecessary. I am glad that I didn’t have to bring any In Bruges baggage to my viewing of The Banshees.

 

I must also admit that I have never been a Swiftie.

Shortly after I moved to Bay Area in 2015, I volunteered to visit a primary school together with my then manager Guy Lohmann to promote Computer Science among the students. At that time, Guy was at IBM for 30 years, and I was there for 3 months. We were our own odd pairing. In my presentation to the students, I had a picture of my one-year-old self in front of a computer with a date on top of the picture. One of the male students in the classroom reacted to this picture by saying “Wow! You are the same age as Taylor Swift.” Technically, I am one year older than her, but this is not the point of this story. That was the first time I had to acknowledge the real-world impact of Taylor Swift.

Since then, I didn’t keep up with Taylor Swift much beyond the occasional songs I got exposed to by the popular culture, until Fall 2021. Taylor Swift was the musical guest in a Saturday Night Live (SNL) episode around mid-November 2021. She played All Too Well for 10mins, which was unusual for SNL. It was the first time I heard that song. I thought it was a very beautiful breakup song and form of storytelling. Then, I got into the wormhole of the internet to read about what she has been up to. I learned that she started directing her own videos (“Respect!”) and re-recorded her old albums to assert ownership of her own work over her old record company (“You go girl!”).

In those days, I had my own struggle with asserting ownership for my work and funding resources. My struggle ended with me losing part of my work and resources. I felt devastated by it, since I still don’t feel that I am at a stage in my career where I can spare any resources or work. I blamed myself for not asserting things earlier with a higher level of self-confidence.

While I found Taylor Swift’s battle inspiring, I am also old enough to know that some battles aren’t worth it. If I had entered a battle, and that would have been more natural for my overall stubborn self, I could have lost it all. I needed my energy to maintain the remaining parts of my work and resources in the long run.

Nevertheless, I decided to follow Taylor Swift’s work beyond just random exposures. She released a new album, Midnights, last fall. I gave it a proper listen at the end of this January. Then, I couldn’t let it go. I tried her previous albums as well, but none of them stuck except for a few songs here and there. I wrote to Academic Sister, whom I usually go to punk concerts with, how much I loved listening to Midnights and questioned “maybe something is wrong with me.” She replied “No, you are just open to mainstream music.”

Midnights is an album that highlights becoming more self-aware, which to me is the best part of getting older. I think that is why I love listening to it so much.

 

I had a lovely Friday evening watching the conversation between Taylor Swift and Martin McDonagh. It was a genuine, constructive, and inspiring conversation between two accomplished people whom most people wouldn’t imagine in the same room. Whoever thought of this pairing, I appreciate it.