Childless Petless Plantless Lady: Part 1

  

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Little Women, C'è ancora domani, Sirens, Barbie, Russian Doll, Fleabag, and And Just Like That....

 

I am a kid. She is a teenager. I love spending time with her. She looks like she is at ease with the world. I feel like an oddball most of the time, but not when I am with her. I like observing her while she does chores. I feel angry that she is given more work in the house and less freedom outside in comparison to her younger brother, but I don’t know how to express my anger yet. She doesn’t mind the housework, and she finds creative ways to exert her freedom even if it requires lying. She dreams of getting married and becoming a mother. Her face shines when she talks about these subjects. I dream of meeting E.T.

30 years later, she is married with three children, and I am a resident alien often in interactions with other resident aliens. We both got what we dreamed of, and that makes me happy, even though I am well aware that neither dream was achieved without challenges.

 

I am 17. She is in her early 30s. We are in her car. She is driving. We wanted to have some time for ourselves away from everyone else. She is married, not yet with children, but she wants children. I tell her, while open to it, I don’t feel a strong desire to be married or have children. She tells me that this is ok, but I am still young and that desire may come later.

20 years later, being more acquainted with love and heartbreak, I still don’t feel it. I love visiting a married friend or a cousin, acting like an extra member of their home for a few days, and being an aunt to their children. But I don’t need their life to be happy or content.

 

We are almost 30. I love her as if she is my own sister. I often think I am not capable of physically hurting someone on purpose, but if someone hurts her, I may be capable of making an exception. She tells me she doesn’t want to be alone. I tell her that she is not alone, and I am here. She objects and underlines what she really means by not being alone, even though I got what she really meant the first time.

About a year later, I am her witness at her wedding. It is a joyful day for all of us. I also feel something else that I don’t know how to express until Greta Gerwig puts it into words in her Little Women adaptation in the scene where Jo tells Meg “You will be bored of him in two years, and we will be interesting forever.” on Meg’s wedding day. Later in the same scene, Meg says, “Just because my dreams are different from yours, it doesn't mean they are unimportant.”

 

As a woman with the preexisting condition of being a feminist, one of my life goals is to ensure that nothing in this world is strong enough to belittle neither my dreams nor the dreams of three women I refer to above. We live in a world where their dreams are more easily accepted, though, while mine reminds me what my mom once said to me during a heated argument: “If you want to do things differently, don’t complain about it, own it.”

 

Before she passed away, I called my grandma every Sunday after I moved abroad, regardless of where I was in the world. One Sunday, she roughly said, “You are so unlucky. Where is your white-horse prince?” I roughly replied, “I am not unlucky, I have my own horse.” She bought that argument.

As I get older, I hear similar remarks more often, even from family elders who are unmarried themselves. Even if I disagree with them and at times get very frustrated, I get the well-intentioned root of such remarks. Your loved ones want you to be happy. The picture of happiness indoctrinated in all our heads includes a family picture with a couple and children.

In August, during the Bikini Kill concert at Syd For Solen, Kathleen Hanna (the lead singer) talked about trying to figure out who her authentic self was without any of the indoctrination this world subjected her, and everyone else, to when younger. Her conclusion was there was no separation between her authentic and indoctrinated selves as she had never been not indoctrinated.

Earlier this year, while watching the movie C'è ancora domani and the series Sirens, I had to face my own indoctrination despite owning my life choices against people trying to convince me to work hard for a different life.

 

I saw C'è ancora domani together with four ladies at Grand Teatret. That screening was a WIFT Denmark event with a discussion afterward. The film is a dark comedy written and directed by Paola Cortellesi, who also plays the lead. It follows the story of Delia in the post second world war Italy. Delia is in an abusive marriage and a mother of three. She works at multiple jobs in addition to her domestic chores and taking care of her father-in-law. She seems to have a crush on a car mechanic, Nino, who also likes her. Toward the end of the film, Nino asks Delia to run away with him. On the last day the film depicts, we see Delia trying to find a way to escape her house. As the audience (at least most of us at the screening that day), given all the challenges you have seen in Delia’s life, you think she decided to take Nino’s offer and root for their escape. Instead, the film concludes with a more satisfying ending: Delia, despite her husband and with the help of her daughter, going to the voting booth together with all the women in the film, all voting for the first time on June 2, 1946.

 

I binge-watched Sirens in two evenings at home with a friend, who was visiting from US, a month after I watched C'è ancora domani. Sirens has been the highlight of the TV this year for me, and not only because of the topic of this post. Here, I will only focus on what is relevant for this post. Written by Molly Smith Metzler, Sirens follows the estranged sisters Devon and Simon. Devon is taking care of their father who is recently diagnosed with dementia, while Simon seems to have her dream job working and living in a mansion. Devon is an addict and has been having a hard time with all her responsibilities, so she decides to seek help from Simon, who she practically raised. On the island where Simon works, she meets a yacht captain, whose name, Captain Morgan, becomes one of the running jokes in the show. Captain Morgan and Devon hit it off. In similar spirit to Nino in C'è ancora domani, toward the end, Captain Morgan asks Devon to leave her life and come with him on yacht trip that will last a month. Simon encourages Devon to take the trip and live her life for a change instead of taking care of other people. You, as the audience, root for Devon to take the trip as well, especially after learning their family history. In the end, Devon decides to stay with her father but with some changes in her life so that she does not get as overwhelmed. She owns her decision so well when Simon challenges it that you, as the audience, are convinced she will be alright. Simon, in contrast, after rejecting one older rich guy’s marriage proposal due to him playing the role of the savior, accepts an even richer older guy’s proposal who is the ultimate savior figure at that point in the series.

 

In recent years, similar to the two above, we have seen great examples of movies and TV series that do not end with happy “coupled” or “saved-by-love” ending.

Greta Gerwig’s Little Women has a double ending that shows that Jo’s marriage to Friedrich was added afterwards in the book due to the publisher asking for it, which is what happened in real-life to Louisa May Alcott. Her Barbie ends with Barbie and Ken separating to have their independent journeys. Even before she became a director, some of Greta Gerwig’s earlier writing collaborations had similar spirit such as the brilliant Frances Ha.

In Russian Doll, what saves Nadia is not “finding love” but “camaraderie.”

Fleabag season 2 ends with our main character alone, despite finding love shortly before. The last scene acknowledges the grief that comes with the end of a love story but also assures us that our main character will be alright.

And Just Like That... ends with Carrie typing the following ending to her first novel, “The woman realized she was not alone—she was on her own.” While it was apparently not so popular for many, I think that ending was the best part of that revival.

My intension with these examples is not to indicate that an ending where people find love and end up as a couple is a bad ending. There are many love stories that I absolutely love; most recently, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. I give these examples because alternative endings matter to help break the indoctrination. They make it easier to see that different “happy” lives are possible also in real life or to see that the end of a love story, while sad, isn’t a tragedy, what matters more is that that story was a part of your life.

 

The Summer of VLDB 2021

 

Note: An account of the lessons learned while organizing and running a hybrid conference like VLDB 2021 can be found here. This post is an account of some of my personal experiences being the general co-chair of that conference.

 

In 2018, when I agreed to be part of the organizing team of VLDB 2021, I knew it would be a lot of work, even without the pandemic none of us knew about yet. It is not considered wise to take on such a responsibility when someone is at the academic age I was at back then. But I wanted to learn how conference organization works. Even though this post focuses on the challenges I have been through as the general co-chair of VLDB 2021, I want to emphasize that I don’t regret my decision, and I am proud of what we achieved with the whole organizing team. VLDB 2021 was the first hybrid conference in the database community and was the first to bring people together in person after a series of online conferences due to COVID-19.

 

Being the general chair of VLDB 2021 made me …

… eat my first (and last) non-vegetarian burger since I became a vegetarian in 2017.

… stop using a computer mouse.

… disable all the email notifications on my phone.

… get more familiar with ladybugs.

 

Putting aside all the hard work that came before, from July 14, 2021, till the end of VLDB 2021 (August 20, 2021), I worked almost full-time on VLDB.

During this period, I remember some days being like I am in my own Barbieland. Those were the days when I struck a routine of going to the beach to swim and read in the mornings and started working around noon on VLDB, which continued till late evening. But there were also days that felt miserable, when I felt all my batteries were empty. The empty batteries were not just due to VLDB but also a result of the COVID days.

As previous post also mentioned, after each COVID shot, I had fever and nausea for a day and lack of energy for a few days. In general, getting ill from time to time is part of life. The solution is to take some time off and get some rest to recover. The problem in this case was that I still had to work on VLDB 2021 full time and had no luxury to take the break that I desperately needed.

The day after my first COVID shot, we had to meet the folks at Tivoli Hotel, the venue for VLDB 2021. I had to be physically present in the meeting despite still feeling the after-effects of the vaccine. The meeting went OK, but our communication with the Audio-Visual (AV) team of the venue was sub-optimal from my perspective. They were suggesting a setup that I thought was unnecessarily complicated. I was upset with myself for not talking with more bravado (even though I hate the word bravado) while raising my concerns. But I also thought that this is their area of expertise, and I should respect it. Plus, I had my post-covid-shot lack of energy. Furthermore, they requested to be informed about the exact schedule by the end of the week if we didn't want to be overcharged for the AV equipment and staff (this meeting was taking place on a Thursday). Considering the many unknowns due to the hybrid nature of the conference, COVID restrictions, and our overall budget, this was something that panicked me. We were set for the conference days, but the workshop programs were still unknown. I had to somehow contact all the workshop organizers and receive the expected start and end times for each workshop in a few days. Keep in mind that (1) due to unstable COVID travel restrictions in those days, we allowed workshop organizers to be flexible with their hours and format, and (2) as all this was happening in the middle of the summer, not all workshop organizers could be responsive to emails.

On the bus 5C (for people familiar with Istanbul buses, 5C is like the 500T of Copenhagen) returning home after this meeting, in my head building a TODO list for that day’s VLDB emails, shortly before my stop, I noticed that my house keys weren’t on me.

My TODO list now forming fireworks in my head, and my body drained and starving, I stood at the entrance of the street I lived in looking at my apartment building that I cannot enter. The first thought I had was “I need an IV-drip.” What followed was a question: “What is the food that is closest to an IV-drip.” My head slowly turned to, now closed down, Café Vivaldi on the same street and answered, “a burger?” I can’t claim that my logic from that moment checks out, and my stomach was not happy a few hours later, but at that time, this made sense to me.

I entered Café Vivaldi, headed to the bar, ordered a non-vegetarian burger, as a vegetarian person, and non-iced water, despite the waiter insisting “it will be too warm”, and asked for the wifi password. I then sat down at one of the tables.

A year after I moved to Denmark, I gave my extra keys to Sister in Movies, so I texted her. I knew she was in Denmark just back from holidays a few days ago. Then, I reached my backpack to get my laptop out to start with the emails. There was a ladybug on my backpack. There were ladybugs on a lot of my things that summer.  

 

Before I moved to Denmark, I rarely saw ladybugs. I know in many places they are associated with luck; their Turkish name is “luck beetle.” When you occasionally come across them, it is therefore natural to have positive feelings upon seeing them. But when an army of them starts kamikazeing into your body on a Danish beach or when you stop counting how many are on your bedroom window after the 7^th, you associate them less with luck and more with bugs. Or you question whether this why Denmark is such a privileged country compared to your homeland, where you rarely saw ladybugs. You also realize that not all ladybugs come with bright red color; some look a shade of pink giving the impression that they have been through many washers and dryers in their lifetime. The summer of VLDB 2021, stopping to observe ladybugs was my main procrastination.

 

Seeing the ladybug on my backpack turned my VLDB TODO list from fireworks into an ordered list in my head, and I started going over the list calmly and kept at it while eating. After I finished my burger, I had a reply from Sister in Movies. She was at work but said she was ok to go home early, so that I could fetch my extra keys. When I got back home with my extra keys, I found the lost keys in the door lock.

When I met Sister in Movies for dinner the week after, after greetings, she said, “You look better today.”

 

Due to my overall bad posture and lack of interest in sports since high school, my right shoulder often acted up in my early 30s. The summer of VLDB 2021, the combination of long-stretches of sitting while answering emails and the shoulder movements one does when using a computer mouse while dealing with various excel sheets for the conference program, budget, etc. amplified the pain in my right shoulder. I could no longer sleep on my right side some weeks before VLDB. Ironically, these days I have harder time sleeping on my left side instead but due to a completely different matter.

The immediate step I took to fix my right shoulder was to go to an osteopath so that they put me back together. The long-term steps were ordering a keyboard with a touchpad so that I eliminate computer mice from my life and going to the gym regularly for yoga and strength-building (“stram op” in Danish) courses. The latter step took longer to establish, since the will to do sports doesn’t come to me naturally. This is also ironic, since there was a time when I was a kid, I wanted to become a basketball player.

 

The summer of VLDB 2021 was also the summer of 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which was postponed to summer 2021 due to the pandemic. The theme of Olympics was all around me as I was dealing with the barrage of VLDB emails. One day, I wrote to Philippe Bonnet (my VLDB 2021 general co-chair), “i feel like i am in olympics in the category of ‘writing emails’.” Shortly after, I disabled all the email notifications on my phone, and I have kept them disabled since. This doesn’t mean that I stopped checking emails on my phone. I still do this check unnecessarily often and am trying to reduce this behavior but can’t claim success so far.

 

Finally, let’s get to VLDB 2021 itself.

 

During the, not-Barbieland, miserable days of that summer, several loved ones told me “It will all be over once the conference starts." The day before the first day of the conference, when I saw Peter Boncz, he told me “It is now starting.” That was the moment I realized everyone, except for Peter, was lying to me to make me feel better.

The first day of the conference was mayhem. First, the complicated AV setup that I wasn’t a big fan of failed during the first sessions of the workshops. Philippe and I took the decision to switch to the simpler setup that I was proposing in that meeting with the AV folk. Then, I remember sending emails and messages almost non-stop throughout the day.

By the time it was dinner time, I wished someone would take care of dinner for me. We had a reception on the second day and conference banquet on the third day but nothing for the first day, and I had to eat. I wish I wished for something else, because shortly after my wish, Philippe and I received an email from Divesh Srivastava inviting us to dinner at one of the conference hotel restaurants. During this dinner, he also simply ordered everything for me, sparing me from extra decisions. While, under normal circumstances, I want a lot more agency on what I eat and drink, that day this was exactly what I needed. I had no brain power left to think about food, and I still had to monitor the late-evening online sessions after dinner. Bless Divesh!!

After that first day, things got gradually better. When Peter asked me how I was doing the last day of the conference, I could reply “better than yesterday.”

 

Because of the hybrid nature of the conference and wanting to have a program for all the regions of the world, our schedule stretched from 7am to 11pm Copenhagen time. The early morning and late evening sessions were online-only, but someone still had to overlook them, which was a task Philippe and I shared. Thus, we both stayed at the conference hotel to more easily cover these hours. I remember feeling very hungry during those early and late sessions and snacking the Swiss chocolate Academic Sister brought with her to the conference for me. Bless her as well!

 

Overall, I cannot say that I experienced much of the actual conference content that year, as I could only attend the plenary sessions and Greek Bro’s talk in one of the parallel sessions. On the other hand, the attendees in Copenhagen seemed happy with the in-person experience after so many online events and being stuck at home for too long. I am glad that we pushed for the hybrid event instead of online-only despite all the unknowns of the pandemic and changing rules and regulations. It was a welcome challenge for me, and I learned a lot in the process.

Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to VLDB 2021!

 

When You Need a Break

 

August 26, 2021, the week after VLDB 2021 and two days after I got my second COVID shot, was the date for our annual department BBQ in 2021. The 2020 instance had to be skipped due to COVID.

Most people joining this BBQ help with a task such as setting up tables, handling the grilling, bringing cake … You can volunteer yourself for a task from the tasks list. I usually sign up for tasks related to setting up the place. That year, I didn’t sign up for any task, though, since I was the general chair of the VLDB conference, and I thought I can cut myself some slack right after the week of VLDB.

On August 24, 2021, I got my second COVID vaccine shot. After each of those shots, I had (not at all mild) fever and nausea, which lasted for about a day, and felt exhausted for a few days.

A few hours after the shot, there was an email in my work mailbox that said I was one of the people who were assigned with the task of bringing a vegetarian disk to the BBQ. I guess I got that task due to being one of the “problematic” vegetarian people going to a BBQ.

At the depleted state I was in, and after worrying for weeks about how to feed the attendees of one of our biggest conferences without creating a deficit in our first-ever hybrid conference budget, the thought of the task of bringing a vegetarian dish to our department BBQ caused a meltdown.

As a response to my meltdown, I wrote to the person who emailed me for the task that I won’t be attending the BBQ due to feeling tired after the COVID shot. This was a perfectly plausible reason and almost not a lie. But the real reason was I preferred staying overnight at the Overlook Hotel rather than bringing that vegetarian dish that particular week.

A more mature and constructive response to that email would have been to explain the state I was in and ask if I could drop the task. The BBQ organizers knew neither about VLDB nor my COVID shot. I am sure they would have said “of course” to such a request. Or I could have bought cheese and crackers to fulfill the task. They didn’t expect me to cook my okra-chickpeas dish and bring the pot to the BBQ.

But one cannot always think that clearly when they seriously need a break.

 

Black hole opened in the kitchen
Every clock is a different time
It would only take the energy to fix it
I don't know why I am the way I am
Not strong enough to be your man
I try, I can't stop staring at the ceiling fan
…

Not Strong Enough, boygenius

One of my favorite songs from recent years is boygenius’ Not Strong Enough. The song starts with a situation where all the clocks around the song’s protagonist show a different time. It is a mild problem. All one has to do is to go over the clocks one by one and adjust them to show the right time. As the song says, the only thing required to fix this situation is energy, the energy that one needs to go over the clocks one by one and adjust them. However, upon realizing the task, our protagonist is paralyzed staring at the ceiling fan and experiences the situation as a black hole. They clearly need a break.

 

Can we prevent this black hole point? By being strict with taking breaks? By being mindful of early signs?

How do we learn to see the signs? Does it come with age / maturity?

Can you rely on your support system to help you notice the signs? How do you ask for some help / slack when you lack an immediate support system?

Do we always have the luxury to be proactive even when we notice the signs? Being an adult comes with many responsibilities that require immediate attention, so does moving up the ladder at work. I don’t remember the last vacation or even the weekend I had where I was completely “off”.

If we can’t be proactive, how do we maturely deal with the postmortem and recover?

What does it mean to have a break? Does the time you spend doing house chores over the weekend count as a break? Sure, it is a break from your paying job, but it isn’t really a break unless you love those chores.

 

I am typing this on a train from London to Edinburgh the week after VLDB 2025. I am off for a few days. I planned this trip assuming I would need a break at this time. It will be my first time in Edinburgh, which has been high up in my list of places to visit, because Irvine Welsh was one of my favorite authors when I was in high school. I will stay in Leith, where he is from. I didn’t even inform the people I know at the University of Edinburgh, because I really want to be off, although I will still attend to emails and academic service duties.

Since late July, on top of the usual duties, I have been through three deadlines (one small, one regular, and one big), while dealing with an out-of-ordinary challenge that came as a result of being a section head. Taking some days off this week was a good proactive decision, thanks to knowing myself better now. When I took that decision, though, I didn’t have the “big deadline” and “out-of-ordinary challenge” in my TODO-list. The former was under my control to avoid, while the latter wasn’t; though maybe it was, as I chose to become a section head. They were both extras that almost tipped me over to my post-VLDB-2021 state. I asked myself, “why do you push yourself this hard?” or “why does work feel like eating an excessive portion of your favorite meal?” several times the last couple weeks.

 

I am late with this post, which was planned for August. I picked the topic before the “big deadline” and “out-of-ordinary challenge” as well. While they delayed my writing, the topic now fits better. And I consider writing to be a break helping to recover.

 

Bad Daughter / Citizen / Friend / …

 

After 7 years in Denmark, I still go to Danish classes, not for an exam anymore, mainly to practice speaking Danish. The others in the class are there with similar reasons. Since none of us get to practice Danish with Danes that much, that classroom is the only time that we get to engage in longer conversations in Danish.

To create conversation topics, the teachers bring news articles, podcast episodes, etc. to each class, or we watch the day’s news. Once, the teacher played a podcast that was about discussing letters Danes wrote describing the, very Scandinavian / first world, challenges they face in their lives. The goal was to discuss the challenge in the letters before hearing what the podcast hosts recommend to the letter-writers. Two out of three letters we discussed were about birthdays. More specifically, one was about a father-in-law not inviting his son-in-law to his birthday, since they can’t get along, and the other one was about a person who thought they were invited to a destination birthday and wedding while not being invited. At some point in the class, I told the teacher “I can’t relate to this. Not sure if I can discuss it.”

To be frank, for the former, if they really can’t get along, this is for the best. Not everyone in a family has to like each other, except for the people who make the decision to get married or live together as partners voluntarily.

The latter screams privilege to me, as I am not close to anyone who can afford a destination wedding or birthday. Plus, I don’t remember any of my family members throwing a birthday party that required invitations. For my grandparents’ generation, celebrating birthdays was not even a thing for most, especially if they were from a rural area. Hence, it was up to us, the children and the grandchildren, to celebrate their birthday. One key reason was it wasn’t usually clear when they were actually born. Sure, they had a birthdate on their ID, but this was rarely their real birthday.

I may be the most reliable source in my family when it comes to remembering people’s birthdays and anniversaries. But, after I moved abroad, I have never made an attempt at being present at a family member’s birthday. Unless the birthday coincided with my regular vacation time, I wasn’t there. I also rarely make an attempt at being present at loved ones’ weddings. Considering how often I travel; I will likely not even be present at your birthday or wedding even if we live in the same city. In contrast, I have a better track record at being present at funerals and wakes.

 

A few years ago, one of my parents’ ex-colleagues wrote to me a long text on whatsapp. This was a person that I liked but wasn’t close to, and I hadn’t talked to them since I left my hometown in 2005. The text in short said that I should consider my parents’ wellbeing and start looking at academic positions in Turkey to move back as soon as possible.

I am well aware that me living abroad as my parents’ only child has been difficult for my parents. It hasn’t been easy for me either.

I am also well aware that whenever my parents have an urgent need, I am rarely there for them, unless you count emotional support. They have relatives, family friends, ex-students … who provide the more well-rounded support system. On the other hand, I am sure that my mom didn’t give birth to me so that I can care for her in her old age. Plus, I have been going through life with a substantially weaker support system than my parents have. That is the artifact of living abroad.

The text of my parents’ ex-colleague, while inappropriate, was well-intentioned just like the statements made by some people whenever I visit Turkey, which in short boils down to “When will you be back for good? Stop torturing your parents.” Whenever I hear such statements, it is as if someone stabs me in the chest. On the other hand, I can’t be angry at these people for caring for my parents, even though I don’t fully agree with the logic and find the comments boundary-crossing.

 

Another version of these types of comments takes it to the next level and focuses on the country instead of family. They boil down to “It is a pity that so much of our youth is abroad. Your country needs you. Don’t escape and serve others. Come help fix your country.”

Is living in a country a necessary precondition for preventing its downward spiral?

During the three years that I lived in the US, I traveled to Los Angeles from San Jose three times to vote (twice in Turkish general elections and once the 2017 referendum), sometimes carpooling with Twin Sister and her partner (5-6 hours’ drive) and sometimes taking a flight (~1hour). In the case of the referendum, our flight was cancelled due to the rain in LA, so we drove instead, voted, and drove back on the same day. In contrast, I know people who live in Turkey, not escapees like me, who didn’t bother to go to vote in those elections or referendum either to avoid breaking their vacation or weren’t thrilled about the opposition party or opposition leader, even though they strictly opposed the ruling party.

 

If we look at our relations to people and places from the perspective of expectations and duties, I guess I am the bad daughter, relative, friend, citizen …  I would like to have less boxed-up relationships, though.

To my loved ones, I’ll always do my best to be there for you even if I am not where you are.

To my country, if we manage to have another election, despite the opposition ending up in prison one by one, I will be there for you as well, no matter how long it takes me to go to the voting booth.

 

 

Inaugural Lecture: Prof. Veronika Cheplygina

 

Note: My dear colleague Veronika Cheplygina, who got promoted to a full professor at ITU in April 2025, had her inaugural lecture on June 10, 2025. I was asked to say a few words about her before her talk. The text below was my write-up to be prepared for those words.

 

I came to know Veronika because of her interview at ITU. I usually make an extra effort to go to the faculty interview talks, because they are a great way to get to know not just potential new colleagues but also different research fields. In the case of Veronika, though, this wasn’t just about making an extra effort, I was like “I have to see that talk”, because it was titled “How I failed machine learning in medical imaging.”

 

Then, unsurprisingly, Veronika got an offer from ITU, and luckily, she ended up at our research group, DASYA. Shortly after, inspired by Veronika’s presence, more and more people in DASYA started to openly endorse cats. I didn’t realize that we had so many cat people in the group before. If ITU didn’t have “no pets allowed on premises” policy, I might have suggested getting a DASYA cat to 4E.

 

We also have a DASYA website that we almost never systematically update. The only time that website was properly updated was when Veronika created a game for it, which was a pub-quiz, where for each correct answer, you got a website-update-task to do. It turned a very mundane TODO-list into something fun, and we got work done very efficiently.

People from the former CS department also know of the pub quizzes of Veronika, as she also volunteered to prepare them for our department retreats. And every time, as we did those quizzes, I was amazed by how well they were prepared. So, that is a whole different unique creative talent that she has on the side.

 

For the last part of my speech, I was debating between the two topics that are at the core of my personal relationship with Veronika, which are the challenges of academia and Gilmore Girls. I think for today the former topic is more fitting, but in the spirit of Gilmore Girls, I will start with a movie reference.

In the movie The Meyerowitz Stories, by Noah Baumbach, one of the characters used to be a promising piano player but quit pursuing that professionally. At some point in the movie, he feels the need to explain why he quit, and here is what he says:

“It was like walking barefoot through broken glass to get a milkshake. I loved the milkshake, but, you know, my feet were bleeding.”

That line made me think of all the times I considered leaving academia. I technically left it for three years and then came back.

I know Veronika, you have also been there, because you very openly and generously talk about it and the challenges that drove you to that point. One of those challenges is in this profession we overly expose ourselves to other people’s opinions by design, and that is for good reasons, because when it is done constructively, it helps you grow, both personally and professionally, but sometimes it also leads to other people undermining you and your hard work by calling it things like “not real research”, which is also highlighted by the title of your talk today.

I am really happy that you didn’t leave academia, because what a loss that would have been.

And I thank you for working hard to create alternative paths for others in academia that don’t have to have broken glass, or when the broken glass is inevitable, at least to be there as part of the support system.

Big and very well earned congrats!

Looking forward to the talk and the celebration afterward!

 

All About My Mother (& Almodóvar)

 

My dad started taking me to the movies when I was four. At home, he let me watch whatever he watched on TV (typically cartoons, fantasy, science-fiction, or horror) without censoring things. I was fully immersed in all of it. 

My mom, in contrast, preferred romantic comedies. While I can’t relate to most romantic comedies even today, I am more open to this genre now, especially if it is also a musical. But back then, whenever mom made the movie choice, I became mentally checked out and wished we were watching a Tim Burton film instead. As a result, unlike my relationship with my dad, I hadn’t really connected with my mom while watching a movie or TV, until …

… we discovered Pedro Almodóvar.

 

It was late 2002. One day, a family friend, and one of my bonus mothers, took my mom to the movies, which is the only time mom went to the movies without me or my dad in my lifetime. After she came back, we asked her about the movie. To this day, I remember the level of excitement she had when describing to us that movie, which was Hable con Ella (Talk to Her). 

Shortly after this incident, one day I was perusing the TV guide on the newspaper (I feel old writing this) and realized Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) was on TV that evening. I asked my mom if she would be up to watching Todo Sobre Mi Madre given that it had the same director as Hable con Ella. She of course said yes. 

I don’t remember if my dad was also present that evening as we watched Todo Sobre Mi Madre. As far as I am concerned, I was watching the movie with my mom and was mesmerized. It was the first time my mom’s and my movie taste met. It was the first time I was seeing such a diverse depiction of women, and not only straight women, on screen. It was the first time a movie I was watching made me think of all the women who were prominently in my life. 

 

When I lived in the US, at some point, I had a crush on a Spanish guy. During one of our long talks, I brought up Almodóvar. He thought Almodóvar made movies about the people who are on the fringes of society and not about “regular” people, and therefore, Almodóvar’s movies didn’t represent him. This was disappointing to hear, and unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the last time I hear such a comment about Almodóvar. 

Let’s give some examples of what is viewed as “fringe” here.

Women. 

Mothers.

Sex Workers. 

Transgender people.

Gay people. 

People with disabilities.

People who were sexually abused by a parental figure or church. 

People who express their emotions loudly. 

People who have AIDS.

People looking for the graves of loved ones who were killed at the hands of a dictator.

People who have to live with chronic pain.

People who love someone despite being hurt by them.

People who care about but also are estranged from each other.

…

 

In Almodóvar’s characters, instead of “fringes of the society”, I often see my mother, my grandmother, my aunt, and all the other women whose inner-lives I have been exposed to as they were caring for me. The events and locations may not be the same, the style may be overly theatrical or soap-opera-ish, but the stories and emotions that burst out on the screen, and in contrast are swept under the rug or pushed to the fringes in real life, are recognizable.

Beyond his focus on women and gender, topics such as inter-generational impact of military dictatorship, religion, and, in his last film, euthanasia are all covered by Almodóvar with a political perspective that hits too close to home.

 

In Dolor y Gloria (Pain and Glory), the Almodóvar film with a protagonist that most closely resembles Almodóvar himself, we see scenes of the protagonist’s childhood, his mother washing clothes in the river with other women in the village singing together. Almodóvar’s love for these women and many others, his observations of their behavior, and his ear for their stories are apparent in all his creative work. I often think if we wanted to represent our (Mediterranean, Black Sea, Balkan, Latin American …) mothers collectively, it can be done through the archive of Almodóvar’s films.

In The Guardian interview for Dolor y Gloria, where Antonio Banderas plays the protagonist, Almodóvar says “I felt like a mother who has lost her son” when talking about Banderas leaving Spain for a career in Hollywood. In this light, I would like to conclude this post by wishing all who has ever mothered someone a Happy Mother’s Day, including Pedro Almodóvar.

 

PhD#2: Ehsan Yousefzadeh-Asl-Miandoab

 

Note: On April 9, 2025, my second PhD student, Ehsan Yousefzadeh-Asl-Miandoab, successfully defended his thesis (here is the preprint). I said some words about him after the defense. The text below was my write-up to be prepared for those words.

 

Ehsan started his PhD three months after Ties, but I knew of Ehsan before Ties.

By the time Ehsan applied for my PhD opening, I had already assessed Ehsan twice for different openings in our group. The first one was for Zsolt István’s PhD position and the second was for the DAPHNE project, both for very hardware-oriented topics that included FPGA programming. Ehsan was one of the strongest candidates for those positions as well, but world politics interfered. While FPGAs are the trickier hardware platform, when it comes to the US sanctions against Iran, the rules for GPUs are more relaxed, so I was able to hire Ehsan for my project.

 

Ehsan’s start at ITU completed the founding members of the RAD group: Ties, Ehsan, and I. Us three had a brand new group to establish, so came the website and the logo, where Ehsan led the efforts. 

 

In the beginning, I had to convince Ehsan to pace himself, and that is a challenge for someone like me who doesn’t know how to pace herself before experiencing exhaustion signs. Ehsan wanted to do his research, maintain an excellent github repo for all the code and data he creates, prepare extensive teaching material, record youtube videos for that material, write technical blog posts about the papers he has read, and fly rockets to the moon all at the same time. It is great to see that fire in someone, and one shouldn’t kill it. But doing everything in parallel isn’t possible, and one has to learn how to prioritize and adjust over time. I can’t claim I always guided him perfectly when it comes to prioritizing, but we established a more reasonable pace. 

 

For the core part his PhD, Ehsan took on a challenge where neither of us were experts on; using machine learning (ML) for systems. More specifically, he wanted to use ML to estimate memory needs of deep learning training workloads to effectively guide resource management and collocation decisions for these workloads. While testing different GPU collocation ideas, we found out-of-memory errors to be one of the biggest challenges against collocation and often overlooked in literature. Hence, we needed something to minimize them. We tried the more analytical techniques found in prior published work, but they led to drastic misestimations. So, Ehsan wanted to try out something learning-based to see if it could lead to more precise estimations. But, once again, we were not experts in ML. We tried and failed, tried and failed, on and on. Nevertheless, Ehsan persisted, kept asking for help from different ML experts, and got many good suggestions, but they did not lead anywhere either. In the end, Ehsan found the collaborator he was searching for all along; Reza. I cannot claim any credit in that search effort, it was all Ehsan, I just did my best to prevent him from giving up. With the help of Reza, Ehsan built his estimator, and the last two chapters of his thesis got unblocked. 

 

Ehsan also persisted despite the many challenging news coming from his homeland and not being back home since he moved to Denmark for his PhD. While I mention this here as part of my praise of Ehsan, I want to emphasize that no one should go through this, especially to get any sort of praise. 

As a result of this, some of our one-on-ones with Ehsan turned into venting sessions commiserating over politics and PD3.

 

And finally, a couple of fun facts. 

Ehsan probably knows Turkish music better than I do. I don’t know how many times I heard Turkish tunes coming from his office or headphones.

Early in his PhD, Ehsan decided to get some plants for his office and got me one as well. As someone who never managed to keep plants alive at home, including cacti, I somehow still manage to keep this plant alive, while Ehsan killed all of his. I even had to smush the alive parts of the plant back into the soil after its root broke off from the rest, and it keeps flowering, as you can see below. Looking at it is a good way to remind myself to keep being stubborn, and I hope I keep motivating my students to do the same.

 

Congrats for a well-earned PhD! Looking forward to collaborating further with you.

 

February 25, 2025 - after the root broke off from the rest of the plant.

April 10, 2025 - the current state.