Today, across the road from work, the council workers were planting palms on the side of the pedestrian path as the first blog photo from my camera shows.

Mersin’s main soccer stadium is across the river to the left of the Australian gum (a type of eucalyptus) tree.

A few interesting aspects of the path development:

* This side (the east) of the river is part of the “Akdeniz” (Mediterranean) Council. The other side is the “Yenisehir” (New City) Council. I don’t know if the other side will be developed.

* a) The new path extends from the vehicle bridge near the sea outlet, past another road to the next vehicle bridge inland.

b) There is a military base on prime land next to the river outlet.

c) The path is 3 or 4 metres wide and it is clear except for a few gum trees near the inland bridge.

Conclusion: The pedestrian path will be used as a short cut, particularly by police and council vehicles and possibly the odd private and military vehicle as well.

Today, my boss brought the Sony DSC-P73 to the office. Tonight I will be busy studying the manual and playing around with the camera. Tomorrow I should have the camera’s first photos on the blog.

PS: I can’t post comments at the moment as I receive this message when I attempt to publish:

Open proxy detected. Comment posting disabled. If you think you have received this message in error, please contact the webmaster and be sure to include this info: ‘81.215.160.107,195.175.37.71’.

In response to Jeff’s comment: Yes I do need more CDs, but first I require a CD player that works. My portable CD player is now only good to recharge my tape player’s batteries after it fell off the fridge.

For the past hour the same 4 seconds of a dodgy dance song have been looping on Mix FM, Mersin’s automated, foreign music, dj-free radio station.

I wonder when either the CD will become unstuck or the producer will make an emergency visit to the radio station and fix it. If I don’t get up soon and turn the radio off, something or someone will become the victim of a crazed Australian 🙂

PS: In the morning a short guitar strumming piece was played over and over again on the same station for at least 30 minutes.

I’ve just made a few modifications to the website.

*In two days’ time I’ll have a digital camera. With the convenience of digital I’ll upload many more photos. In anticipation of this, I have removed the ‘Photo Of The Moment’ and replaced it with a smaller photo of myself, helping put a face to the words.

*The blog and website links are better organised. There are now new categories: “Other Australian Expat Blogs” and “Australian Blogs” and I have added new links. Blogs not updated in the past 3 months have a line through them. These lined links still work, though (well they should!).

*To make the blog easier to read I want to restrict the width of the blog posts to 600. However, whatever html I adjust, does not seem to perform the function. Could someone more knowledgeable please look at the page source and suggest something? I would be most grateful.

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention I added a “Commerce” category under the website links. If you ever want to buy a poster or anything from Amazon.com you can help me by purchasing via my links.

I don’t know how credible this story is as it is poorly written and I have not heard it from any other source. If true, it is a sad indictment on Mersin society.

National athlete froze to death at street

Turkish National athlete Cihan Kesici, who had represented Turkey in various contest for many times, could not bear freezing weather with his blanket at street, and passed away in the hospital he taken.

Cihan Kesici striking the agenda of Turkey last month with DIHA’s story entitled ” The national athlete who has presented Turkey in 60 international competitions” has been living at street” lost his life in Mersin. Although his strong body had been able to struggle in 60 contests, he could not bear freezing the cold weather living homeless underneath a blanket. Being about to freeze to death, he was taken to Mersin State Hospital with aids of shopkeepers nearby, but could not saved from death in spite of medical interventions. His funeral ceremony to which none of his relatives attend was held by his a few friends in Guneykent City Graveyard, Mersin.

Striking claim

The shopkeepers helping Kesici taken to hospital have kept the officials accountable for national athlete’s death said “It has been rainy for many days and Kesici escaped from freezing danger times and times. We called an ambulance last Sunday. The officials in the vehicle did not accept to take him into the vehicle because he was ‘very dirty’, so they left him ill with his bad situation. Is human life so cheap?”

Link

I work directly across the river 100 metres from the stadium where the main Mersin soccer team, Mersin Idman Yurdu, play in.

Today, via a new article on the web, I found out an Australian soccer player was playing for Mersin Idman Yurdu until last week when he returned to Australia and signed with Sydney FC.

How did I not know?

Admittedly, Ufuk Talay is of Turkish origin so he would have been treated as a local here. If he was an Australian of non-Turkish origin I’m sure every local would have told me of his existence 10 times over.

See the Sydney Morning Herald (subscription) and SBS for their versions on the story.

On a side note: it is funny how many Australian websites write “Mersin Idman Yurdu” as “Mersin Ydman Yurdu”. This is because the capital Turkish capital dotted I (“İ”) often appears as a “Y” on non-Turkish enabled computers.

Believe it or not, in the recent past there was a website called Mersin Love Fest On-Line located at MersinLoveFest.net. The website does not exist any more but is cached at Google.

Swingers or groupies in Mersin? Never heard of it before but anything is possible…

As mentioned earlier, my boss is in Saudi Arabia for Hajj.

Whilst there, he is taking advantage to look at the digital cameras and their lower than Turkish prices. This time next week I should have a Sony DSC-P73 in my hands.

Yeah, baby!