My cheers to Gilmore Girls revival and things I wouldn’t like about Gilmore Girls if I took it more seriously

As every Gilmore Girls fan, this week I received great news. Gilmore Girls is coming back to Netflix for a short but a more proper ending. Yeah, let’s admit, we were all bitter-sweet about season 7. Amy Sherman (show’s creator) left the show before season 7 due to disagreements with the network and things were different; characters weren’t talking as fast, there was too much of Christopher, there weren’t as many pop culture references … Now she can finish the series the way she wanted to and we can enjoy more episodes of Gilmore Girls.

Gilmore Girls was one of the rare female dominated shows on TV when it was first aired. Despite being female dominated, it didn’t undermine its male characters (the male characters weren’t just there to support the females) and the females looked more real (the female characters didn’t all have “perfect” body shape and they neither wear expensive fancy clothes all the time nor they changed clothes too often during the day).
I watched Gilmore Girls more times than I watched my any other favorite series. Every time I re-visited it I related to different events, caught new references, and laughed at different times. It reduced my feeling of loneliness whenever I moved to a new place. I remember it in the mornings when I inhale my coffee deeply before taking my first sip, at movie nights when I consume too much junk food, every bedtime chat with girlfriends, whenever I am indecisive about which book to read, every time I eat at a diner,  …  

However, despite my love of Gilmore Girls, it had some elements that would annoy me if I took it too seriously. I know as a cheer to its revival news, it doesn’t make sense to remember things I actually feel uneasy about in Gilmore Girls, but this is why this blog is titled Distorted Pollyanna.

(1) Lorelai’s pregnancy with Rory at the age of 16

I know that Lorelai had more conservative parents and this wasn’t an easy option for her and there wouldn’t have been any Gilmore Girls if she had had an abortion, but I kept wondering what would Lorelai do if Rory got pregnant when she was 16?

(2) Stars Hollow

I come from a small town in Turkey; not as small as Stars Hollow probably, but still small. I liked my small hometown, but I also knew that I wanted to leave it eventually. I prefer living in places where not so many people know me when I walk on the streets rather than places where people know you more than you want them to know you and you have to listen to gossip about other people too often. So while I respect Lorelai’s attachment to Stars Hollow and not wanting to move anywhere else, my feelings toward a town like Stars Hollow would be more like Rachel’s or Jess’. Rachel was always ready to pack and leave the town, and Jess’ first scene outside in Stars Hollow is when he stands in front of Luke’s diner looking around the town while Elvis Costello’s This is Hell is playing in the background.

(3) Lorelai’s first marriage attempt

I hated everything about this Lorelai’s potential marriage to Max except for its bachelorette party. I was really happy when Lorelai broke off the engagement (which happens in the same episode as the bachelorette party :)).

First of all. 1000 daisies… Come on!! If someone bought me 1000 daisies, I would make him or her eat them. I know this was Lorelai’s fault. She mentioned 1000 daisies and proposal in the same sentence and Max got her 1000 daisies. Then, there was all this talk about this event possibly being the most important thing that would happen to Lorelai. Yuck! It was very anti-Lorelai that wedding.

(4) Only rich kids go to college vibe

I always loved the emphasis the series put into pursuing a good education and enjoying your time at school. Up until December 2014, I had been in schools since I was three months old. Depending on your instructors, schools can either be full of dogmas or wonders. I was lucky to experience the latter mostly. I firmly believe that being in school around students of various backgrounds keeps you young, dynamic, and open-minded.

However, Rory’s high-school and college experience throughout Gilmore Girls was that of a rich kid’s experience since Rory’s grandparents and the parents of Rory’s classmates seemed to have unlimited amount of money. While Rory had one of the best possible education in the world, her friends from Starts Hollow high school barely went to college. I admit that having some economic privilege helps you to get better education opportunities and this fact is more severe in USA than in other countries. However, I sometimes had really hard time relating to Rory’s education experience because of this elitist attitude. That’s why, I was grateful that the series’ focus was more on Lorelai (who didn’t get a penny from her parents to pursue her own education after she left home when she was 16) and not on Rory.

(5) Town Traditions

I have allergies to traditions that I did not contribute in creating. Don’t get me wrong, I respect people enjoying old traditions. This is just one of the many anomalies that I have. My reaction to Stars Hollow traditional activities would be more like Luke’s sarcastic attitude rather than the cheerfulness of the rest of the town people.

(6) Constantly eating junk food

I love eating pizza, burgers, French fries, etc. However, if I eat this kind of food for a couple of days in a week, then I want my salad or soup or vegetables for the other days. I did not feel good about all the condescending remarks of Gilmore girls on various salad ingredients or vegetables. :P

(7) Lorelai being a big fan of Bono

My favorite episode of South Park is the one where they claim Bono has always been a #2. My least favorite part of Lorelai was the fact that she loved Bono very much. I don't want to write more about Bono and waste space.

Home

“I don’t think home is a place anymore. I think it’s a state of mind.”

Neil Gaiman, The Sandman Vol. 5 – A Game of You

When I was a little kid, home was the apartment my mom and dad lived in.

During high school, home was both the apartment my parents lived in and my high school classroom because that high school classroom was the first place where I left being my parent’s kid and became an individual.

When I left home for college, the first couple of years, the college campus was my home. In third grade, I started staying with Esra, the person I would call my college roommate and also my illegitimate daughter. Together we tried to form a Gilmore-Girls-style household and among the places I have called home so far, the dorm room I shared with her for two years (which was dorm building O – room 306) was my favorite home.

After college, I moved to Switzerland. Despite living there for a little more than 5 years, I never felt at home there. I always felt detached from my apartment and did not invest in it to make it my home. It was always a temporary place, the place I would get out of as soon as I finish my PhD. During my time in Switzerland, when I thought of home I only thought of Black Sea or Istanbul.

In November 2014, I moved from Switzerland. I had about a month in Turkey before I moved to the US in January 2015. This intermediary period, where I was in between countries, was the time I lost the meaning of home. Things got pretty messed up. I witnessed Istanbul slowly transforming from an extremely glamorous drag queen into an incredibly annoying macho prick. (People who are familiar with the social/political turmoil in Turkey during the past few years would understand this transformation.) I also briefly visited my at-Black-Sea-coast hometown (Zonguldak) after like six years and it made me sick (both psychologically and physically).

So I accepted, I don’t know where home is anymore. Some people view this as a sad thing. I agree that it also makes me upset from time to time. But who am I kidding? This is actually what I always wanted. I didn’t want to belong to any specific place. I remember the summer holidays I had with my parents where we stayed two days at one place and three days at another place and another night at another place. Meeting different people, being on the road, experiencing the unfamiliar ... Those were my favorite days from my childhood. Similarly in college, I don’t remember staying in my dorm room for ten consecutive days unless it was the exams’ period. I either visited some relatives or stayed at different friends’ house in between.

However, as everything we want to achieve in life, losing your sense of home also comes at a cost. I feel more and more that I never stay at a place long enough to form a friend group that I can meet regularly or build a family of my own. I hate admitting it because I fancy myself Xena (a.k.a. Warrior Princess), but sometimes it makes me upset. On the other hand, I have friends and family scattered all around the world and when I meet them we just resume from where we left off. Those friends and family make me realize that I am going to be just fine the way I am.  

Now I feel at home at very random moments and those moments always put a giant smile on my face. Like when …

… you come to your apartment in San Jose from work and find your mom and dad preparing dinner while The Velvet Underground & Nico is playing the background,

… your best friend in town (also known as your twin sister) has a sleep over at your place,

… your Greek/academic brother starts warning you on eating healthier after seeing you order a plate of French fries for lunch,

… your college roommate tells you that she is getting married,

… the waves of the Pacific hits you in the face and knocks you to the ground,

… you gossip about the people at work with one of your cousins during a work day afternoon drive,

… you start listening and singing System of a Down songs with another cousin despite being exhausted and wanting to sleep after three days of Lollapalooza, …

Well, as Barbie from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman said “I don’t think home is a place anymore. I think it’s a state of mind.”

My “Love” Letter to Swiss Housing Agencies

When I think back on my bad memories in Switzerland, I can associate majority of them with three places: EPFL, government offices, and housing agencies.

EPFL is normal since I did my PhD there. PhD is a bitter-sweet journey for everyone. No matter how resourceful the journey is, it is painful at the same time. Therefore, I do not mind my bad or stressful experiences at EPFL. These were among the bad experiences that enriched my life.

So let’s move on to the government offices. These institutions are a pain in the ass wherever you go. So there is no escape from them. You just need to find ways to relax yourself after dealing with the people at a government office. To wash away the memory of the annoying interactions you had to go through in these offices, either swearing by yourself in your native language or listening to your favorite punk band after you leave the office works.

This leaves us with the Swiss housing agencies. The “wonderful” “lovely” agencies…

I was living in a college dorm before I started my PhD so Switzerland was the first place that I had to deal with a housing agency. Even though I had been told that it would be hard to find an apartment in Switzerland, I didn’t expect things to be this hard. Every time I went to an agency, it felt like talking to a wall. Of course, this was partly because of the language issue. My French was terrible in those days (and it still is). I also remember many agency visits where I asked my questions in English and got my answers in French. However, even if there were some people at the agency who didn’t resist talking to English, it still felt like talking to a wall when talking to them.

After struggling some time being rejected from all the places we applied for. Six months into my PhD, I finally moved to a studio apartment, which I didn’t dare to leave till the end of my PhD. I was lucky with this one because the building was a newly built one, it was specifically built for EPFL students based on an agreement between EPFL and Foncia agency, and  not many people knew about it at the time unlike my friend Cansu (who urged us (my other friend Duygu and I) to apply for it).

The feeling of talking to walls never disappeared though whenever I had to contact a person from Foncia even though I was now their customer.

The latest set of encounters I have been going through with Foncia is related to my deposit. I ended my contract with them on November, 2014. It has been almost 3.5 months now. And I still haven’t received my payment. The first time I contacted them regarding this issue was the beginning of February, 2015. Since I moved to the Bay Area in early January, I was sending emails to them in my evenings and calling them the first thing when I wake up at 6am in my mornings if my emails weren’t answered. The contact guy for my ex-building was a different one now and he seemed more responsive than the previous one.

As a side note, the previous one drove me crazy while I was moving out. He didn’t answer any of my emails and he barely answered my phone calls. All I wanted was a letter that says I was going to move out at the end of November so that I could schedule a time with my concierge to leave my keys. In the end, I physically went to the agency to ensure he handles my request. That was useless as well. He told me the letter should be in my mailbox in a week, but it wasn’t. In the end, I kindly asked my lab’s secretary to contact him and only then I got my letter. (Bless you Erika, and all the secretaries at EPFL that helped me. If I ever wrote an actual love letter to someone in Switzerland, it would be to the secretaries I interacted with at EPFL. They are the best.)

Anyways, this new guy, he actually answered emails and phones. So I was a little hopeful and decided to be polite with him while handling my deposit situation. I have never been a person that believed aggressiveness can solve my problems. (I blame my dad in this attitude; constantly making me listen to his favorite hippie singers/bands when I was a kid and basically brainwashing me to be a peaceful human being).

However, a couple of weeks later I started feeling like I had no progress in my issue with this guy. He kept telling me I should be receiving my deposit at the end of the week and he wrote this at the beginning of every week. Then he told me that they don’t have my account number (which I gave them while I was giving away my keys to the concierge, I have two people that witnessed me searching for my account number for 5-10mins in my wallet and then writing it down for another 5mins). I said anyways I gave him my account number over email and kept my polite attitude still. He again said I should be receiving things by the end of the week. The other week, when I re-emailed him saying I still haven’t received my money, he said that there are some documents that I should sign. I signed them, scanned them back to him in a still-polite email.

After this last email, he answered me writing they finally approved the release of the deposit and I shouldn’t contact him anymore and instead contact the cooperative of my building instead. When I asked him for their contact information, he told me that he doesn’t have such information and I should look at the contract that I made with “them”. 

(Here is where I leave my dad’s peaceful rock music and switch to my mom’s more angry music that is very specific to her so I won’t give it a genre name.)

Them, THEM. THEM = Foncia, you work at Foncia. How the hell you don’t have their number? You think I am an idiot. I am really bored of being treated like shit or an idiot every time I had to deal with a Swiss housing agency. I don’t know whether this is because of my student status when I was there or my nationality. But I don’t care. I don’t deserve this. Neither any of my friends who were/are at EPFL.

To give a comparison, it took me one day to find an apartment in USA. Whenever I have a question, request, or maintenance issue, it is handled at most in two days (as opposed to waiting weeks or a month in Switzerland or making your secretary call them again to fasten the process). Whenever I meet one of the maintenance guys in my complex or visit my leasing office, everyone greets each other. They always ask me if everything is OK with the apartment. They treat me like a human being.

I know writing this won’t have any effect other than switching me back to my peaceful mode. There is a housing issue in Switzerland. Supply just doesn’t properly meet the demand. And the housing agencies will keep exploiting the lower class European citizens like me. What happens if I badmouth Foncia’s name? Nothing. A student or a non-student non-EU citizen newly moved to Switzerland, has to say YES to the first suitable apartment that she/he got accepted into by the agencies. Because the alternative is either being on the street or paying really high prices to extended-stay-like options.

It feels like superman died!

It has been almost a week now. I still get sad at random moments during the day.

After seeing the deaths of many young or middle-aged people when I was a kid, I remember telling myself that I won’t get upset if a person lived a life full of bitter/sweet memories and died at a reasonably old age (like at least 70) because she/he lived a good life, there are people dying at much younger ages, and we are all going to die anyways.

But I am still upset even though he was 71. Because I feel like superman died. He was a very nontraditional superman but he was my superman. I thought maybe I can feel better if I write as I always do.

Even though I had heard his name before, what really introduced me to Lou Reed was reading Trainspotting in high school. Trainspotting gave me a good list of musicians to be discovered; Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, etc., and shaped some branches of my music taste. From that list, Lou Reed was the one who left the biggest impression on me, because he not only became one of my favorite musicians, but also one of my favorite poets and storytellers. His love for literature was all over his work and he offered me a goldmine for underground literature in addition to his music and poetry.

He was one of the most important figures in my life who made me love and respect people as they are, especially the ones marginalized by the society, because he often wrote about drug addicts, transvestites, prostitutes, etc. But more importantly, many times he made me accept who I am whenever I felt like an outcast and hated myself for it.

He was one of the main reasons that during my bachelor’s my first academic paper’s topic was prostitutes or I visited a penitentiary regularly to voluntarily work with female prisoners.

He was sometimes a substitute for my mom and dad at nights I had hard time to go to sleep. When I was lying in bed alone in my 19m² studio in Lausanne last September with a high fever on a Saturday night, his voice put me to sleep making me dream about a beautiful Sunday Morning.

To a girl like me who gets extremely bored while listening to famous love songs like Unchained Melody or I Will Always Love You, he gave her favorite love song, I’m Sticking With You.

He gave me some of my favorite movie scenes; like when Perfect Day plays in Trainspotting or when Venus in Furs plays in Last Days.

I often felt drunk or high by just listening to some of his songs.

He was always there to say everything is going to be alright in various ways when I was broken.

And he will always be there with his songs whenever and wherever I need him. But it still feels like superman died.