Keep Calm and Embrace Your Anger

Jo: You don’t know, you can’t guess how bad it is! It seems as if I could do anything when I’m in a passion. I get so savage, I could hurt anyone and enjoy it. I’m afraid I shall do something dreadful some day, and spoil my life, and make everybody hate me. Oh, Mother, help me, do help me!

Mrs. March: [… starts with something soothing …] You think your temper is the worst in the world, but mine used to be just like it.

Jo: Yours, Mother? Why, you are never angry!

Mrs. March: I’ve been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I have learned not to show it, and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

 

In the first Avengers film, we meet Bruce Banner in a state where he seems to have figured out how to keep himself calm and not turn into Hulk. Tony Stark annoyingly keeps asking him what his secret is, but Bruce avoids the answer till the final battle scene, where this dialog takes place.

Captain America: Dr. Banner, now might be a good time for you to get angry.

Bruce Banner (right before he turns into Hulk): That is my secret captain, I am always angry.

 

In my pre-teens, I once kicked the door of the small bathroom in our house. After the kick, I froze, staring at the hole my foot created on the door. I was shocked at my anger, the reasons for it I can’t even remember, but my bigger shock was the realization of how shitty the bathroom door was. [1]

 

“I can’t image you angry.” is a statement I have heard many times, from different people, at different stages in my life. In contrast to these people’s impression of me, when I think of my anger, the hole I created on our restroom door and the quotes listed above come to my mind.

I have had anger bursts like the door-kick all my life even though they happen less and less these days. Except for a very few occasions, they do not happen in front of people, and while there is an incident that triggers them, they are rarely due to one reason. 

 

Here are some occasions that made me want to turn into Hulk.

 

At EPFL, I usually had lunch with Twin Sister. During one of our lunches, we sat next to a couple of male EPFL students. One asked the other, in English, if he had sex with so and so, and after hearing the positive answer, he said “So, she was easy.” I turned to them, as they continued their dialogue, with the desire to break my lunch plate on the head of the guy who made the statement. [2] Then, I heard Twin Sister say in Turkish “Calm down. We can vent on this later.” I don’t know what she saw on my face to make her react that way, but when I turned back to her, I could see her anger on her face.

 

When I was interviewing for jobs toward the end of my PhD, during one of my one-on-ones, I was asked if I would be comfortable taking the whole parental leave if I had a baby. There were a lot of “if”s there, none of which should have been relevant to my interview. The bigger irony was this was at a place where the maternity leaves were (and still are) unreasonably short. I was angry but tried my best to reply calmly “I am not considering having a child anytime soon, but if I did, I would use the whole maternity leave as it is my legal right.”

 

The year I joined ITU, I once sent an announcement about a postdoc position in Germany targeting female applicants to the mailing list of all faculty members. Shortly after, I received the following reply from a male colleague.

“Hi Pinar

You might not be aware but Denmark has a law against discriminatory hiring practices. You can read more about it here (in Danish sorry) https://www.danskerhverv.dk/radgivning/ansattelse-rekruttering/rekruttering/det-ma-du-ikke-skrive-i-en-jobannonce/

Best regards

XXX”

While I swore at him in Turkish in my head, I decided not to reply to this email.

 

Then, here are some re-occurring triggers fueling my anger.

Whenever a white straight European man with a traditional family life mansplains to me and others “DEI is not just about gender.” after a mention of a DEI event that targets women in Computer Science.

Whenever someone says “this would hurt the chances of Turkey becoming a member of EU” after something anti-democratic happens in Turkey.

Whenever a corrupt politician’s career ends or takes a hit due to an affair instead of their actual corruption.

Whenever I read / see the news.

 

Finally, I have also moments where I simply have anger that is turned inward as a combination of both internal and external frustrations that are often a result of unresolved or under-processed anger.

 

There has been an increased awareness about accepting our emotions, even the ones that have negative connotations such as anger, rather than suppressing them, as they are a guide. This does not mean you must act on every single emotion but try to understand the underlying cause and see how we can address the cause.

“Anger is meant to be respected. Why? Because anger is a map. Anger shows us what our boundaries are. Anger shows us where we want to go. … Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.”

The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron

When my cousin was rejected a Schengen visa for his trip to Copenhagen to come visit me back in Spring 2023, I was furious at the Schengen countries in general due to the spiking number of visa rejections toward Turkish people from all over Europe in those days. But I was even more furious at myself for not being able to give up my personal comforts and spending my best years serving a land, who will never accept me truly. With that initial fury, I remember wanting to write on our department Teams channel about this situation. I wrote and rewrote and rewrote some text but then deleted it completely and wrote a text message to Illegitimate Daughter instead. Chatting with her calmed me down. Eventually, I put my frustration into a series of blog posts [1, 2, 3, 4] about my passport’s relation to the Western world, which was probably way more constructive than writing something on work Teams.

Similarly, I am active in DEI activities both at my work and research community, as much as I can, rather than only venting frustrations with other frustrated parties.

 

In Season 2 of Sex Education, our teens discover a junkyard, where they can smash things to release their anger. I sometimes wish such a junkyard was available to me. In other words, I wish we allowed more room for venting frustrations without belittling them or even acting anger out through non-harmful ways, like my door-kick or the Sex Education junkyard, rather than labeling such actions uncivilized. A healthy dose of venting or acting out anger can help one to move onto the more constructive acting upon stage more easily, decide what the acting upon action should be, and minimize the anger/rage that eventually ends up being turned inward.

 

Tori Amos’ album Boys for Pele is a great example of art created by a person with silent (female) anger, and is my #1 go-to album when I need to calm down. On the album’s cover, Tori sits down holding a rifle. I am not an expert on rifles, but the rifle lock is not in a position that will allow you to fire. There are several interviews where Tori talks about her own interpretation of this album cover, and you are welcome to have your own. To me, it says, “I am not here to shoot you, but I am not putting the gun down either for your or anyone else’s comfort as it is part of me.”

 

Happy belated International Women’s Day to all my (angry) sisters!

 

[1] This small second toilet-only bathroom was a luxury considering that we lived in a two-bedroom rental. Later my parents bought their own place, which was bigger but came with only one bathroom, making this small bathroom, and the hole my anger created on its door, to be among the things that we reminisced the most from our previous home.

[2] No matter what I may dream in my head due to my anger, I want to make it clear that I have neither hurt nor wanted to hurt anyone physically in real life, at least not intentionally; once the frisbee I threw hit someone, and I was very sorry for it.

 

The Elephant Man & The Straight Story

Note: This post is written to commemorate David Lynch, who died last month. While I tried to keep it to a minimum, the post contains some spoilers for The Elephant Man & The Straight Story.

 

When I was younger, I spent a good amount of time thinking about Blue Velvet, in addition to frequently revisiting the scenes In Dreams play in the movie.

I take Twin Peaks (the original series, the movie, the revival, and all the extras) as a meditative experience and have no intention of delving deeper into its plot.

Watching Lost Highway or Inland Empire make me ask the question “Am I high?”

I am impressed by the new Dune movies, but I don’t have any desire to rewatch them, while I am happy to rewatch any David Lynch movie anytime including his Dune.

As someone whose tastes were often put into question during her 20s, I made my peace with the people treating me like an oddball because of what I like or dislike. So, when someone asks me if I like a film, book, artwork … and if my answer is “yes”, I sometimes add “but I also like David Lynch movies” to that “yes” to let the person decide whether they can trust my taste.

 

David Lynch was notorious for creating hard to comprehend and describe films. Despite creating confusion in viewers, his films were very clear on a few things: amplifying “there is more than meets the eye” both for the people and the places, unveiling the sinister behind the idyllic facades, and mixing up the usual and the unusual. Today, these patterns are called Lynchian.

Inspired by his patterns, in my attempt to commemorate him here, I pick the two David Lynch movies that are considered the most accessible to the viewers, hence the most unusual for David Lynch: The Elephant Man (1980) and The Straight Story (1999).

 

The Elephant Man is based on the real-life story of Joseph Merrick, who lived in London in the late 19^th century. Joseph, referred to as John in the movie, is treated as a “freak” by others due to the way he looks. He is admitted to a hospital by a well-intentioned surgeon, Frederick Treves. However, even at the hospital, the society keeps viewing John as a “freak”, and he becomes an object of display for the people, who pay to visit and see “The Elephant Man.”

During one of those visits, John hosts a high society couple, offering them tea and acting like a solid gentleman, while the couple acts odd and uneasy. It is a scene that subverts the labels we so easily put on people and makes you ask the question “Who is really the freak here?” Therefore, it is a scene that is as Lynchian as it gets.

I watched The Elephant Man back when I was as BSc student. I can’t remember the exact year, but it should be around 2007. After my watch, I thought it might be the best film I had ever watched, and this scene stayed with me. In my next chat with my father, whose love of cinema I inherited, I asked him if he had ever seen The Elephant Man. He said yes and immediately started to reminisce about this scene.

My dad saw The Elephant Man in theaters shortly after it was released. Despite the almost 30 years difference in our respective viewing of the movie, the same scene made a long-lasting impact on both of us. Yet that scene’s impact comes from being a part of the whole of The Elephant Man, making both the movie and that scene timeless.

 

The Straight Story is also based on a true story. It is the story of Alvin Straight, who made a journey from Iowa to Wisconsin on a lawn mower in his 70s, two years before he passed away, to visit his sick brother.

When we meet Alvin in The Straight Story, he is on the kitchen floor unable to walk. The movie juxtaposes him with a baby. Alvin is old, but for many practical purposes, he is like a baby.

Alvin hears about his older brother’s stroke. They have been estranged, and, as we have already established, Alvin’s health is not great. Both despite and because of these facts, Alvin decides to go on a trip to reunite with his brother. He can’t have a driver’s license due to his health, so he takes the lawn mower.

On the road, Alvin encounters various people. Each encounter represents a different phase of a human’s life, as the person/people Alvin meets gets older, and reveals a different dark story either from Alvin’s or the person’s/people’s past.

Eventually, Alvin reaches his brother, the person who is closest to his age among all the people he encountered on the road, completing both his personal and literal journey. As if this is not a satisfying enough end to this road movie, his brother is played by Harry Dean Stanton, who once played an iconic road-movie protagonist himself in Paris, Texas (1984).

While The Straight Story can be interpreted as the simple straight story of human life, all the human stories we hear in Alvin’s journey underlines the complexities behind all “simple” human lives, once again fitting the Lynchian.

 

I heard the news of David Lynch’s death when it was announced at Husets Biograf during the introduction for the screening of Revenge, the first feature film of The Substance’s director Coralie Fargeat. You could hear the audible gasps of the audience, including mine, as a reaction to the news, and we all raised our glasses to David Lynch right before Revenge started.

After I left the theater, I checked my phone, as we all do now as a reflex. There was a message from Illegitimate Daughter about the death of David Lynch. I texted a few people about the news as well including Sister in Movies. It was clearly a notable sad moment for all my close movie buddies.

 

David Lynch left a mark on so many people, especially because of his unique style. That style had the power to make us go through a cocktail of opposing reactions at the same time. For example, the In Dreams scenes from Blue Velvet, which I referred to in the beginning of this post, can make you feel fear, sadness, jealousy, love … due to what is going on in the foreground, and can make you laugh due to the figures in the background.

Overall, I am grateful to him for challenging us in all the good ways over the years.

Too Many Social Media Accounts & Boycotts

 

As people were moving away from X and joining Bluesky after the US elections in November, I was thinking how I ended up having accounts across five social media platforms that I regularly, almost daily, check. Why did I need all these accounts? Why did I feel the need to check them relatively frequently? Did I need to add one more account to that list now? …

In my ideal world, I would keep at most two social media accounts: one for private stuff and one for work. But we don’t live in that world. My consolation prize is I don’t have any of the corresponding social media apps on my phone.

 

My entry to social media was with Facebook. It was the second half of the 2000s. I was a BSc student at Koç University and a member of the university’s cinema club. I wanted a way to announce our events more effectively, beyond putting tiny A4 posters around the university. [1] Facebook seemed to be the platform people used for such things. So, I created an account but wasn’t a frequent user back then.

Then came the LinkedIn account in 2009 shortly after I became a PhD student at EPFL. I don’t remember why I joined exactly, but I assume it was probably because other PhD students were joining. I used to log into LinkedIn only when someone sent a connection request or when I changed jobs.

I got into Twitter, now known as X, in 2012, while still a PhD student. My goal was to use it for work and that hasn’t changed. How frequently I used the platform has changed, though. In the beginning, I checked it and posted there very infrequently.

I created an Instagram account in December 2020 to follow one person, Judith Liberman, whom I mentioned in a previous blog post about fairy tales. She has been a healing influence in my life, and Instagram is unfortunately the only platform to follow her properly.

Finally, I got a Mastodon account in late 2022, after Elon Musk bought Twitter. That was the first trigger causing many to flee Twitter. However, it didn’t stick, so I got stuck with both Mastodon and Twitter.

 

Which brings us to the state of affairs today.

I started using Facebook more frequently after moving abroad. It was a way to keep connected to people as I moved from place to place. Facebook is also the most effective platform for keeping up with the events at your favorite local small independent cinemas, theaters, concert venues, etc. While these days Facebook shows too many ads, if you use the free version, most ads I see are about cultural stuff as well (Ursula K. Le Guin quotes – somewhat ironic to see on Facebook, The Atlantic / New Yorker articles, Taylor Swift news ...) and at times helpful (I discovered Say Nothing through Facebook).

Last few years, it has become more common to use LinkedIn for work announcements in academic circles. Staying connected to my research community and having an effective platform to do work announcements is important to me. As a result, I became a more frequent user of LinkedIn as well.

I became a more active Twitter/X user after I moved to Denmark. Combination of being away from Bay Area, Mecca of our profession, and my increasing responsibilities as a professor made the platform more appealing to post work news and follow posts of others. Up until the latest US election, X was the best platform for staying connected to my work community. Since my main goal has always been to use X for work, I (almost) only follow the people I know through work on X. Therefore, I see non-work-related posts only if the people I follow post them. After Elon bought the platform, I started seeing posts of him in my feed, even though I have never followed him. Before I figured out the “For You” vs “Following” tabs at the top, my solution was to block him. Then, I decided to keep him blocked. After many people fled to Bluesky, I stopped using X actively.

My 3-following-and-2-followers existence on Instagram didn’t last long, as people discovered I am on Instagram as well.

And I kept Mastodon active, if not as active as X, with the hope that one day it may become as effective as X for work posts.

Today, I also use all these platforms, except for LinkedIn, to announce my blog posts. On X, I have a separate account for this, though.

 

As people were migrating to Bluesky as a boycott to X’s owner, my first reaction was “I don’t want a 6^th social media account.”

If the motivation is to move away from the political manipulation of too-powerful tech bros, Mastodon makes more sense as a platform because of its mode of operation; it is open source and self-service. Our Mastodon server at ITU is run by Sebastian Büttrich, who is in our research group. The computer systems community has discuss.systems. In Mastodon, we have more control!

One the other hand, Mastodon hasn’t gathered enough attraction among the work circles I would like to be connected to. I have less than 1/10^th of my Twitter/X followers on Mastodon. 1/3^rd of the folk that follow me are colleagues at ITU. I don’t know how/if I can boost it better. I already share a physical workspace with my ITU colleagues, so my social media presence isn’t really for them. Most of the time, I feel like I am posting for myself there, which I don’t mind on a platform like Instagram, since it creates a blog-picture diary for me, but this isn’t why I use Mastodon. If I want to post an announcement about an open PhD position or travel grant for a conference, I would rather be on a platform that can deliver that announcement to the right set of people. Unfortunately, Mastodon is far from doing that at the moment, and I don’t hear relevant work news on Mastodon either.

So, eventually, I will choose the easy way out. I will get a Bluesky account at some point in 2025, even if I don’t want to.

 

My conflict with creating a Bluesky account reminded me of my conflicting relationship with boycotts, since what triggered all this was people boycotting X. Boycotts are also an important topic these days due to ongoing wars.

I come from Turkey, which is a country that is an easy target for boycotts. I wrote a relatively frustrated blog post back in 2017 on this matter. There have been famous cultural figures (e.g., Bono, Paul Auster) who stated that they won’t visit Turkey due to its human right violations, issues with freedom of press, etc. I know some people who told me that they won’t visit Turkey as long as Erdoğan is in power. I respect and support these causes (even though I don't like Bono). However, at times, such statements feel strange to hear about a place where my primary connection is love. I don’t mean nationalism, which I am a grinch for. I mean feelings of tenderness for some place and the people who live there even if you don’t like everything about it / them. I love visiting Turkey and hope that I will always be able to visit it. This doesn’t mean that I support the human rights violations, lack of freedom of press, or Erdoğan. [2]

I know boycotting a social media app, a person of power, and a country are all different. However, whether it is an app, a person, or a country, it is easier to boycott something when you don’t strongly depend on it or don’t have a strong relation to it. In other words, being able to boycott may be a privilege that we don’t realize. This is why someone like Bono will never boycott the USA no matter what it does or whoever its president is.

I am very open to discussing different views on this and being educated if anyone has good recommendations for reading or listening on the impact of boycotts. I listened the “BDS and the history of the boycott” podcast episode earlier this year but didn’t hear anything new. For example, do economic boycotts usually benefit or cause more harm in the end? Don’t people’s isolation and deteriorating economic conditions, due to boycotts, help the authoritarian leaders in a country? Isn’t this a double-punishment of people in that country who do not support such leaders? … Overall, I have a lot of questions and dilemmas when I think about boycotts, and, as I said, I am open to discussing and learning.

 

[1] Orthogonal but related anecdote: I was once confronted by some guys from the university’s American football team for putting up A4-size cinema club event posters on top of their giant posters advertising an upcoming party. Needless to say, they were each multiple times my size. In my defense, there was no space left on the announcement boards due to their giant posters. I managed to defend our posters.

[2] I remember the days when Erdoğan was being presented as the face of modernizing Turkey by the western media and having to explain myself to some Europeans, since they were asking me why I don’t like him. I also remember the days when the EU gave him a lot of money, hence supporting him, so that he keeps the refugees away from the Europeans.

 

PhD#1: Ties Robroek

Overview of Ties' thesis work. Preprint of the thesis can be found here.

Note: Yesterday my first PhD student, Ties Robroek, defended his thesis! I said some words about him after the defense. The text below was my write-up to be prepared for those words. The speech itself was of course slightly different.

 

I sent the email offering my first independent PhD position to Ties on June 6^th, 2021, at 11:07am. At 12:10pm, I received a reply that said “… I accept your offer …” with a level of enthusiasm that made me think “No one has ever been this excited to hear that they will work with me. That is nice.” Then, I made a mental note “He has to learn not to accept any offer before seeing the contract first.”

 Ties started on September 1^st, 2021, less than two weeks after I was done being the general co-chair of VLDB 2021 and 3.5 years after I joined ITU.

I finally had what I wanted, my own PhD student.  I was very happy, but as is often the case when you are doing something for the first time, I wasn’t sure about many of the things I was doing. Of course, I had supervised many other BSc/MSc/PhD students before, but, with Ties, for the first time I had full responsibility for someone else at work. It felt like I could make or break his career. Furthermore, the project was on a topic that was relatively new to me, ML not databases, which added to the feeling of unsureness.

But here we are today, so it all worked out.

I think there were two key reasons why it worked out.

First, we managed to have an open dialog, especially when it came to our doubts. We didn’t agree all the time, but that never hindered the open dialog.

Second, Ties took initiative early on. From the beginning, his attitude was “You know hardware, but not machine learning, so I will work to be the one providing the machine learning expertise in the team.”  Luckily, he is a data scientist at heart, so embracing that responsibility came naturally to him.

Overall, Ties has been great at combining his data scientist identity with computer systems research. One of the first things he did was to create the radT platform, on top of MLFlow. I didn’t tell him to do that, at least not explicitly. Based on what we discussed, it was clear that we needed a systematic way to do benchmarking and collecting experimental data, and radT was his solution for that, which later became the first contribution in his thesis. Since then, radT kept evolving and is used in several research (BSc/MSc/PhD-level) projects hosted by our research group.

Furthermore, while implementing radT and any other codebase that later became part of his thesis, Ties’ primary design goal was always “I want a data scientist to use this, so it needs to come with minimal impact to their code.” I appreciate this perspective, and we “computer systems” people need to remind this to ourselves regularly.

Also, some fun stuff.

 

When someone shared the meme below with me in a group chat, the first person I thought of was Ties, so today he will get a card with this image on.

Note: I don’t know the original source for this picture, but a quick search led me to this LinkedIn post.

 

Speaking of cards, once I asked Ties to get a card for a lab member’s departure. Ties kindly accepted the request, but asked “So, your generation, whichever letter you are, where do you buy cards?” (If, like Ties, you don’t know the answer to this question; supermarket works.)

 

Earlier this year, Ties made me realize that I had been mispronouncing the word gouda. 

 

If you ask Ties “What do you recommend doing in Amsterdam?”, he will likely give you the answer “You can take the train to another town.”

 

Finally, we all have different ways of dealing with stress. While I was writing my thesis, I took a walk almost every day near Lac Leman, usually listening to Tori Amos’ Scarlet’s Walk. In contrast, Ties did a triathlon and a DHL run within the last two weeks of his thesis submission deadline. At one point I was worried that he will kill himself before submitting his thesis. Then, one week after his thesis submission, he did something called Nordic Race. Looking at its website, Nordic Race seems like an event designed to help people enter Valhalla.

Anyway, I am glad he is still alive and is now a Dr.

Thick Skin

 

The first time I attended a Dagstuhl workshop was in 2017.

From my experience, people who aren’t computer scientists, even in Germany, don’t know what or where Dagstuhl is. Thus, first an intro.

Dagstuhl is a, not-that-easy-to-reach, place in Germany that allows computer scientists to organize workshops quite cheaply. The workshops are invitation-only, and the crowd is kept to ~60 people. The goal is to focus on a research topic with experts for either half a week or a whole week. It is a big deal to get invited to one. Therefore, I was quite excited to attend one.

The first day of the workshop, we had a session, where people could sign up to give a short presentation on a topic that would potentially trigger discussion among the attendees. I did sign up. I gave my presentation. Except for a couple comments, the reactions weren’t that encouraging, and I received a somewhat personal, non-technical, negative comment as well.

For the purpose of this post, the topic of my presentation, the man who shouted out the personal comment, or the comment itself doesn’t matter. This man apologized to me the next day, which I appreciated. I have received nothing but respect from him since then, and he is someone I have high respect for as well.

The important thing is how I felt after that presentation, especially as a result of that comment.

I wished the week to be over and to get out of there. I was annoyed that Dagstuhl is out of nowhere, which is on purpose, so that people have very little distractions and can focus on thinking “big thoughts”. But if I could spend a few hours away, in a city, I could have more easily cleared my head and found focus again. I thought I would never want to attend another Dagstuhl workshop. I felt alone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I left the evening social activities early to lock myself in my room. I over-drank one evening. My plan was to visit my cousin and his family, who live in Stuttgart, after Dagstuhl. I looked forward to seeing my cousin, a man, whom I had a very different relationship to, one that didn’t require any armor, compared to the men who surrounded me in Dagstuhl.

The next time someone reached out to me for a Dagstuhl workshop, it was 2019. I was asked by Goetz Graefe and Caetano Sauer to co-organize one, also together with Allison Lee and my academic sister Renata Borovica. That was hard to say “no” to, and that was the workshop that healed my relationship with Dagstuhl and helped me to get rid of most of my armor in similar work events.

 

With the distance of the years, I can now say that most of the comments after that presentation, even though not super encouraging, helped me develop better technical arguments and realize what I should have made clearer while presenting that particular topic. That is the thing with the technical comments. Even if they may sound negative or aren’t expressed in a constructive way, they can still help you improve yourself for the next presentation, discussion, paper or grant submission, project, system design ... This is one of the reasons why I love giving presentations and receiving comments and questions on them.

However, I cannot play pretend and put a positive spin on that personal comment even today. It was not ok. But was it really “I want to get out of here” bad? Would it make the same kind of impact on me today? Why did I have such a “thin skin” back then?

 

Earlier this year, I read (or audibled to be more exact) Roxane Gay’s Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business.

Roxane Gay is one of my favorite authors. I once met her in Copenhagen airport. We were on the same flight. I saw her sitting in the waiting area of our gate, but no one else seemed to realize that she was there. I approached her and asked, “Are you Roxane Gay?”, to be sure. She confirmed. I told her that I really loved her writing. She thanked me and asked me for my name. Then, we shook hands. That was pretty much it. I preferred to keep the interaction brief, partly because I didn’t want to bother her in her private time and partly because I thought my heart was about to find its way out of my body based on the way it was pounding.

In Opinions, Roxane Gay writes about the “thinning of the skin”. Her argument is if a person or a group of people, such as minorities, are often subjected to comments or interactions that are hurtful or painful, their skin will become thinner. Hence, they will be more sensitive to any comment and may have more triggers. This argument contradicts the popular belief, at least the one I more often heard, that the more you face harsh comments or painful events the thicker your skin gets. She also questions the glorification of thick skin pointing out that thick skin implies the lack of feeling emotions.

 

This year, our department had its annual retreat in September, while I was in California for the HPTS workshop. In these retreats, we can propose to run a session on a topic we deem important such as well-being of PhD students, grant writing, finding collaborators ...

One of our colleagues, Louise Meier Carlsen, proposed to run a session on Advancing Gender Equality in (everyday) Academia. She asked the female faculty, postdocs, and PhD students to anonymously share some of the things we endured that can be put under categories such as harsher comments, dismissal, isolation, sexual behavior, etc. at work. Her goal was to avoid potential dismissive comments such as “these are isolated cases” by collecting data from a variety of women in the department.

On the last day of HPTS, I took some time to write about my experiences including the one from my first Dagstuhl workshop. I was grateful to Louise for running this session. It was helpful to write but also grim to realize that I could write so many things in such a short time. Similarly, it was both helpful and grim to read what others wrote.

 

Do I have thicker skin now compared to my pre-30s?

While I will never be a poster child for thick skin, I think the answer to this question is yes.

Did I develop that thicker skin because of all the shit I wrote about for Louise’s session? Or did I develop it thanks to all the people who supported or acknowledged me on the way making me realize that there are people who believe in and respect me regardless of those discouraging personal comments and interactions?

Before reading Opinions, I believed, somewhat uncomfortably, the former, because that is what I was taught by society, but the latter makes a lot more sense now.

 

Running to Schiphol

Last Thursday, I flew to Amsterdam for Tim Gubner's PhD defense. The defense was on Friday. I booked an extra day for myself in the city, since I like Amsterdam and I thought it would be a nice break after the extra-busy September.

I have been to Amsterdam many times at this point. This time, I did two things differently.

Firstly, for the stay, I picked a part of the city that I haven’t stayed before to explore something different, meaning I chose a hotel that was not 10-20mins walk to the central station. This choice came with the extra benefit of an additional m2 at a cheaper price for my stay while still being in a central location. 

Second, I didn't inform any of my friends living in the area, since I needed some time for myself, like it is expressed in that beautiful Lucinda Williams song Side of the Road. 

And I had a lovely day in Amsterdam.

Then, it was time to go back. From my hotel, the easiest route to the airport was taking bus 397 from Museumplein. My bus ride on the way to the hotel from the airport was ~30mins.

I was at the bus stop around 16:00. There seemed to be some delay in the bus schedule according to Google Maps, and I could see the traffic in front of us, but the cars still moved, and the bus came earlier than what Google predicted, so I got on it ~16:10. The bus moved slowly but steadily, so I decided to chill and turned on audible to continue listening to Kelly Bishop's memoir, The Third Gilmore Girl.

From the memoir, I learned that Kelly Bishop is a Tony-award-winning actress and dancer who has been rocking being a childless cat & dog lady since at least the 60s. As a Gilmore Girls nerd, I knew her as one of the pinnacles of the Amy Sherman-Palladino TV-universe, most notably for her role as Emily Gilmore, the mother to Lorelai Gilmore and grandmother to Rory Gilmore. The first time I watched the show, the mother-daughter relationship I focused on was the one between Lorelai and Rory. As I got older, in my Gilmore Girls rewatches, I became more drawn to the relationship between Emily and Lorelai and highly appreciated the existence of a matriarch like Emily on TV.  

Emily Gilmore is also part of my TV battle crew, which, in addition to Emily, includes Sister Michael from Derry Girls, Olenna Tyrell from Game of Thrones, Xena from Xena: The Warrior Princess, Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Villanelle from Killing Eve.

Let's get back to the bus, which stopped moving somewhere after two stops. It was 16:45. I had been in the bus for more than 30mins at this point.

My flight was at 18:45. I prefer being at the airport at least two hours before for within-EU-flights, since there are no passport and visa checks. I aim for three hours, otherwise. In other words, I was already late based on what I was aiming for. While there was no reason to panic yet, it was time to put Kelly and my battle crew on pause and start thinking about alternatives.

I checked Google Maps again, but it wasn't able to show me a solution. There was a tram stuck in front of us and heavy traffic left and right. It was too far to walk to the Central Station at this point (~1hour), and I wasn't sure which other station I could check. I didn't know how to call a taxi in Amsterdam, but even if I did, I wasn't sure how a taxi could enter that mess or where to walk to in order to call one. In the meantime, we managed to move a little bit, but not by much. There were no announcements by the driver. Some asked the driver to open the doors so they could leave, but all the people with luggage remained in the bus, so it wasn't only me who didn't know a better way to get to the airport.

I decided that it was time to ask for help. I approached the closest person with luggage, who was a young lady (will call her Helper Sister from now on): "Do you know any other way to get to the airport?" She shook her head and said: "No." She looked worried.

More passengers became audible asking similar questions. Some started to move toward the front of the bus, and Helper Sister and I followed. Helper Sister started chatting with another lady in Dutch. Afterwards, she told me we would get off the bus and call a taxi.

Getting off the bus took some time, since the check-in/out system of the bus was disabled and people wanted to check-out before getting out. Eventually, people simply accepted that they would have to get out of the bus without checking out.

As soon as we got out, the tram in front of us started moving. The bus door was still open, so we got back in, and the bus started moving, but only to get stuck again in a short-while. 

At this point, I started thinking "They probably have another flight to Copenhagen in the evening. It is Saturday night, it shouldn't be difficult to find space in it. In the worst case, I'll stay one more night in Amsterdam." Helper Sister was on the phone talking to someone. The driver got off the bus to talk to some other drivers who were stuck in their cars behind us and came back with no news about what was going on.

Then, Helper Sister ended her phone call and told me: "I will leave and try something else, you can come with me." I replied: "OK."

It was ~17:15. We got off the bus. She mentioned something that I didn't fully get, but I remember hearing "I think it will be faster. But we need to walk." I said, "I am fine with walking." I blindly followed her as we alternated between fast walking and running. When we were at a spot where our side of the road was empty, meaning the cars could move, she started hitchhiking. It was the second time in my life I was hitchhiking. The first car we saw stopped. It was a mother and daughter in one of these small cars that requires the people in the front to exit the car in order for people to sit in the back. We did that at the side of the road and took our luggage on our lap. My luggage was a carry-on, but Helper Sister's wasn't.

Helper Sister told them directions in Dutch while in parallel explaining the situation. At least that is what I assume, as I can't really comprehend Dutch. We started to approach an Amsterdam Zuid sign, and I finally got the plan.

Where we got stuck in the bus was south of the city, which was closer to the Amsterdam Zuid station, where one can take a train to the airport. I don't know if hitchhiking was always part of the plan or if Helper Sister assumed we can walk/run to Amsterdam Zuid and improvised on the way.

We thanked the mother and daughter, they were lovely, made it to the 17:35 train, and were at the airport at 17:45. I was at my gate at 18:05 and ate a gevulde for dinner.

Helper Sister and I went our separate ways once at the airport since we were on different flights, but I thanked her a bunch before that. I don't know her name, she doesn't know mine either. The only thing I know about her is that she had a flight to Heraklion at 18:40 on that Saturday and she can speak Dutch. I don't know why she picked me from that bus full of passengers. Was it simply because I reached out to her for help? In any case, I am very grateful. I hope she had or have been having the time of her life in Heraklion.

Public Reading of Ongoing Works & on Breakfast

Breakfast has always been my favorite meal of the day.

When I was a kid, my dad prepared the breakfast table for us, unless he was extremely ill or away. He is still the one who prepares breakfast at home. This is simply because he wakes up really early (~5am) as opposed to my mom who prefers sleeping longer.

After I moved away from the home my parents gave me, and lost the privilege of being served breakfast, I very rarely skipped it even if I had to rush it on some weekdays. In contrast, I don’t mind skipping lunch or dinner on a busy day.

After I moved abroad, I realized that not every country gives as much importance to breakfast as my home country. Then, breakfast became the main meal that brought me back together with family and friends.

 

Since the beginning of this year, I have been experimenting with writing a play that takes place around a breakfast table that brings back old friends. I have worked on it one evening each month on average. It has been evolving, but it is still a baby, and it will keep evolving. A part of the current draft will be read in public on August 28th at LiteraturHaus. The event is free, starts at 8pm, and also includes the works of other creatives that I had the chance to meet during this year in a writing course led by Paul Gordon. I cannot vouch for the quality of my work, but I heard excerpts from the works of others, and I can vouch for them. 

The Facebook link for the event is here.

The ticket link is here (it is free, this is just to keep the count).