Show the Wind How to Fly

My interview to Nedim Gürsel on YouTube

2009-06-20T10:43:46Z

Available also in 7 other languages (the original one is in French). If you are interested, just ask.

Happy birthday, Anna!

2009-05-30T08:34:13Z

Come da oggetto :)

I'm going to be a TV star

2009-05-22T18:51:39Z

Well, I might be a bit optimistic... Just a bit.
Anyway, tonight, at 9.45, I'll be on air on euronews interviewing Mr Nedim Gürsel, Turkish writer, under trial these days for blasphemy. More details in the interview, which is being repeated all over the weekend (I think, I have no idea about the actual timetable).
And if you should miss it, don't worry: it will soon be on line on euronews' website. Enjoy!

Update

During the night it's going to be on air more or less every hour at .45.

Timetable for tomorrow: 05.45, 8.15, 12.45, 16.15, 21.15. And it's already on the website :)

Today the world's a worse place

2009-04-19T20:13:16Z

I cannot say I knew JG Ballard in depth. I can't even say I liked Crash: well, I read it 30 years after it was published and I found it boring.
But his short stories... I wish I could write something half as visionary.

I cannot but regret never meeting him in person. Rest in peace, James.

Elisa

2009-03-03T21:50:43Z

02.03.2009 :)

The Perfect Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T07:46:14Z

Good resolutions for 2009 (it's never too late for this kind of things)

2009-01-12T18:41:24Z

I used to be the kind of guy
Who'd never let you look inside
I'd smile when I was crying
I had nothing but a life to loose
Thought I had a lot to proof
In my life, there's no denying

Goodbye to all my yesterdays
Goodbye, so long, I'm on my way

I've had enough of cryin'
Bleedin', sweatin', dyin'
Hear me when I say
Gonna live my life everyday
I'm gonna touch the sky
And I spread these wings and fly
I ain't here to play
I'm gonna live my life everyday

Change, everybody's feeling strange
Never gonna be the same
Makes you wonder how the world keeps turning
Life, learning how to live my life
Learning how to pick my fights
Take my shots while I'm still burning

Goodbye to all those rainy nights
Goodbye, so long, I'm moving on

I've had enough of cryin'
Bleedin', sweatin', dyin'
Hear me when I say
Gonna live my life everyday
I'm gonna touch the sky
And I spread these wings and fly
I ain't here to play
I'm gonna live my life everyday

Hit the gas, take the wheel
I've just made myself a deal
There ain't nothing gonna get in my way
Everyday

Goodbye, so long, I'm moving on

I've had enough of cryin'
Bleedin', sweatin', dyin'
Hear me when I say
Gonna live my life everyday
I'm gonna touch the sky
And I spread these wings and fly
I ain't here to play
I'm gonna live my life everyday

I, oh I, oh I, I'm gonna live my life everyday
I (gonna touch the sky), oh I (spread these wings and fly), oh I
I'm gonna live my life everyday

(Bon Jovi, Everyday)

This deserves mentioning

2009-01-09T08:59:37Z

If you had googled "Turkey" this morning on the English news, you would have found on the first page this article, which I posted yesterday on GroundReport (and the day before on my blog Turkish Diary). It appeared on The Huffington Post (which I don't know, but it doesn't matter, as long as it appears so high on Google).

The title is: What Israel Can Learn From Turkey (the original one was: Israel and Turkey: so different, yet so similar, yet so different... but it was changed by the editors, and I find the new one actually better, although I didn't want to give such a "radical" judgement)

The women speak

2008-11-11T21:48:22Z

Here is a report by my friend Alberto and me about women literature. It was shot in Frankfurt, at the Book Fair, and two of the writers we interviewed are Turkish.

LJ maps... me too!

2008-10-25T08:27:31Z

Kas and Kastellorizo

2008-10-09T23:45:14Z

originally uploaded by falena.

I have just uploaded the photos I took in Kas and Kastellorizo. Yesterday, I uploaded the ones I took in South Nicosia. Just go and have a look at them!

AND Milan

2008-10-01T11:04:39Z

In my last post about travelling, I forgot to mention Milan. I'll be there just before and after Frankfurt, since I booked my flight from there.
So, I'm arriving on Oct. 13, leaving the next day, and then I'll be back on the 19th till the 24th.

So, if anyone is passing by...

My favourite video of the week

2008-09-23T22:06:17Z

Rome et al.

2008-09-23T19:06:38Z

Hello, world. I'm still alive, although I haven't been around for a while. The funny thing, is that a blog is for telling things that happen, but when too many things happen you don't have the time to update your blog.

Anyway.

Sorry if I missed something. I hope it was nothing really important. On the other hand, I'm a lot on Facebook and on Plaxo these days, so I follow all that happens there, including people who have a LJ and feed it into Plaxo.

On Thursday I'll be flying to Rome. Just a short holiday, or a long weekend, as you like. I'll be back in Lyon on Monday. I have just discovered (thanks to Facebook, again) that in those days there will be the Travel Literature Festival. I think I'll have a look at it, since I don't have much to do except for meeting friends.

This is a travelling period. More than usual, actually. In October I will be at the Frankfurt Book Fair. And then I think I'll have to choose between two SF festivals: the Utopiales, in Nantes, and Science + Fiction, in Trieste. This year I'm more in favour of Trieste, but I must say I'm quite tempted by the Utopiales because of the presence of William Gibson. If I can avoid to choose, I'll be disgustingly happy.

All this just to say that right now I'm doing exactly the life I have always wanted to do, and I would be a liar if I wouldn't say I'm perfectly happy. Nothing to do with the sudden bursts of happiness, followed by depressing periods, I've had in the last years. It's a quiet happiness, a sort of balance I have found. Oh, I know all too well how this balance is just temporary, I'm not exactly a balanced person, but right now I'm just enjoying it, like a sort of holiday. It seems I didn't need to go on holiday from myself, but from the myself I'm not.

Interview: Palestine as seen by Matt Rees, author of crime novels

2008-05-15T11:41:40Z

On GroundReport: http://tinyurl.com/6me2bh

Anyone been to Northern Cyprus lately?

2008-05-10T09:55:52Z

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, or who haven't been following me lately.
I'm trying to figure out how to go to Cyprus from Turkey without violating the Cyprus law as well as an international embargo.
I'll give more details to those who are interested. I will land in Istanbul on July 18, would like to be in Cyprus (both North and South) on the 20th, for the anniversary of the Turkish occupation, and I'm scheduled to leave Istanbul on July 30 (or 31, I must check, but it's not really important), so it's quite urgent.

Thanks to those who will be able to help me.

Since some of you are not on Facebook...

2008-05-04T09:33:57Z

Happy Birthday, Tenzin!

2008-05-03T19:37:17Z

Well, it's a bit late, but not so late as you were with my birthday ;-)
Just kidding :)

Stay young and be happy!

La Journée de la Lyonne - 2ème partie

2008-04-10T10:39:07Z

La deuxième partie de l'"épisode monstre" sur les femmes est en ligne ! Ici Flo et Selene discutent des sujets traités par les femmes qui écrivent de la science fiction. Identité, sexe, guerre, maternité... et ce n'est pas fini !

Click here to get your own player.

I do love them! :D

2008-04-01T09:53:35Z

Anglo-Saxons again

2008-03-30T22:27:20Z

Do you remember this?

Well, here is what I have found:

Britain and America

Anglo-Saxon attitudes

Mar 27th 2008
From Economist.com

Not such special friends

Illustration by David Simonds

TO TURN over the supposed Anglo-American common ground carefully, The Economist commissioned pollsters at YouGov in Britain and Polimetrix in America—supported by additional funds from the Hoover Institution, a California think-tank—to find out what people in both places thought about a number of social, political and economic matters. A thousand people in each country were consulted between March 7th and 11th. Broadly, the differences between the two countries look more striking than the similarities.

See the full story here.

How to deal with twisted rhetorics?

2008-03-27T07:32:50Z

For a long time I have thought that my lack of communication with my mother was due at least for half of it to my unwillingness or inability to explain things to her, while I have dedicated my life to a job that consists exactly in helping people understand. So, I have been struggling to break down that wall of incomprehension by making genuine efforts to communicate, but I always end up crashing on her part of the wall, in ways sometimes comic, sometimes grotesque.

Today my father, who has been a butcher all his life, said something about camel meat. My mother was horrified. We tried to explain her that it must not be different from any other kind of meat, and then she started raving about Chinese people eating rats and Chinese restaurants, and when I tried to tell her she was missing the point, she said: "And yet you eat at Chinese restaurants!".

A few minutes later, a discussion about immigrants started: she was complaining about immigrants taking money from us. Since all my past efforts to make her understand something about immigrants (and especially that she IS an immigrant as well) have always failed, I tried the emotional card, saying: "You know, when I go to Turkey, I find people so poor they don't have a roof, and yet, the little they have, they offer it to you". Her reply was: "Well, they are used to it!".

Now, apart from my personal relationship with my mother, the most horrifying consequence of all this is that, no matter how many efforts I do in my work, there will always be someone who understands just what they want to understand. And I wonder: is it worth it? Is it worth to spend so much time writing a book against prejudices about Turkey? The answer, of course, is yes, because, luckily, not everybody is like this, and if prejudices are often the source of ignorance, sometimes it is the other way round, so fighting ignorance is fighting prejudices. But I must not delude myself, I must keep in mind that much of my efforts will be lost in an ocean of prejudices.

My new haircut

2008-03-26T16:58:05Z

Is so totally different from what I wanted it to be that I have decided not to show it.

Passing by...

2008-03-16T19:11:20Z

Just to say hi. Right now I'm in Roma Termini station, back from the Italian SF convention. I'll take the train to the airport later, and tonight I'll fly to Istanbul. I'm a little tired and hope to find a way to sleep a bit. On the other hand, I'm not hungry at all, since I must have eaten something "wrong" at lunch. Or maybe it was the wine. Or just my stomach protesting for overwork. I think I'll look for a tea.

See ya!

Luna

2008-03-08T21:55:26Z

Luna, originally uploaded by falena.