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At 7:30 pm AEST Friday night (12:30 pm Turkish time) in Sydney, Turkey will play Australia in a soccer international for the first time in many years (did the soldiers play in Gallipoli?). The second and final game will be played in Melbourne on Monday. Although I am not passionate about the contests I am interested for 2 main reasons:

a) The series will probably be the first thing the locals talk to me about for the next 3 months.

b) If Australia wins I can stir the locals 🙂

I hope to display proudly the Australian flag I gave to my boss (if I can find it). I may even gather enough courage to drive a car around the city tooting the horn with the flag fluttering as the locals do whenever their team wins. I wonder how the Turkish would react?

UPDATE: Turkey won 3:1 and were by far the better team. The result was not that important to me anyway as I couldn’t find the Australian flag to show off. If Australia had won and I couldn’t find the flag I would probably be more disappointed 🙂

The decider is at the same time on Monday in Melbourne.

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Many thanks to Madzik, Cath Gizem, Kaan, M. Brummet, Tami, Bakr Ben Ayad, Noriko and Shazza for making the latest posts on my GuestMap!

The map of the world is starting to look better, however, there are still many, many blank spaces. If anyone else would like place their icon on the world, please click the button to the right of page displaying, at various times, ‘View My Guestmap‘, ‘Place Your Pin‘ and ‘CLICK HERE‘. Note, you can zoom in on the map to make your placement more accurate.

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10 minutes ago there was a brief firework display commemorating the day. One of the fireworks was loud enough to start a car alarm opposite work.

The university in Samsun is actually named ‘Ondokuz Mayis Universitesi‘. In English this is ‘Nineteen May University’. The university is named after the same event today’s holiday celebrates. Here is a description of the city of Samsun and its university. Click on the arrow for the next page.

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Today is a public holiday in Turkey. Well at least for schools, government businesses, banks and the odd commercial business. This holiday commemorates Ataturk’s arrival at Samsun on 19 May 1919 at the beginning of Turkey’s War of Independence.

Like all public holidays (except for the two main religious holidays) many Turkish houses and businesses display the Turkish flag out the front. In the past 3 years I am sure I’ve seen more Turkish flags than any other flags in my whole life.

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I am on the way home from a beautiful, relaxing walk along the coast, around the yacht harbour, to the port and back. The twilight evening light created sureal images across the bay. There were shades of red, purple and blue. The yacht and fishing boat reflections were similar to those on the current photo of the moment (top right of screen). The view across the bay to the port was breathtaking.

A brief afternoon rain had cooled the temperature from late 20s to early 20s (centigrade). Many families, lovers, groups of friends and individuals were enjoying the coastal tranquility only a short distance from main roads and city centre. For a while the tranquility was disturbed by the honking of car horns celebrating the local soccer team, Mersin Idmanyurdu’s win.

On the return I boarded a boat restaurant for ‘balik servis’ grilled fish accompanied by lettuce-based salad, bread, a wedge of raw onion and wedge of lemon. As with almost all simple restaurants in Turkey the meal was accompanied by a side dish of pickled chillies.

For most of the afternoon I felt the pain of a headache and moped around at home. The evening was so much better!

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As referenced in a previous post, here is what the new 3 star Fenerbahce looks like:

In case you don’t understand, the above image states: “Champion Fenerbahce”

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Tonight is the night of nights for inter-European pop-culture. Yes, the contest that launched Abba 30 years ago, Eurovision, will launch a new act to superstardom or, more likely, 15 minutes of fame. For the first time Eurovision is to be held in Turkey. The venue is Abdi Ipekci Stadium on the European (doh!) side of Istanbul. Eurovision 2003 was huge in Turkey as Sertab Erener became the country’s first ever winner for the song “Everyway that I can”. This year’s Turkish participant is the country’s most popular ‘punk’ group, Athena.

According to BBC World Service radio this morning, TRT, the official broadcaster and Turkey’s national television company, was having some technical difficulties with the production. Let’s hope, for the sake of tackiness and bad pop songs, the broadcast will be clear and crisp. Actually, I’m not really concerned how it turns out. I’m not even sure if I’ll watch it.

Who do I think will win?

The singer/group with the highest number of votes. 🙂

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…visit Alicia’s blog at NonsensicAlicia and click on the links on the right hand side. Hurry up as the links may not be there for long.

If anyone else wants to give me password access to their blog I am happy to modify theirs as well 🙂