Dec 31st 2006 Sunday: 138 days to go

(11:00) Today was the most bitter New Year’s Eve for me. No, not because it’s the first holiday I’m spending away from home, away from my family and my loved ones. It’s because I had a really bitter time at the bathroom this morning because of the extra-spicy-uncooked-meatballs I ate with my friends.

Yesterday I decided to get rid of the depression and join the activities my friends have. At 2PM we gathered on the soccer field and had a 6 vs 6 match with 12 players from all around Turkey. Right after the match we joined the rest of the 3^rd team (the team I’m in) to eat a very traditional Turkish food. It’s raw meat, mixed with various types of spice, and it’s so spicy that the meat cooks inside the spice.

We gathered around a table and started eating. It was so fun watching people get red and sweaty as they eat. It was an unforgettable meal, with 36 different people coming all around the country. You know, Turkey is not like any other country. People in each city, east, west, middle, north, south, southeast, they all have different characteristics, very different lifestyles and very different accents. To tell the truth, that experience was worth all th pain I had to suffer. It opened my eyes even wider. I always wanted to represent the Turks on Youtube, but now I know no one alone can represent Turks by himself. You may find any type of people anywhere you look.

(13:12) Things to do when I finish my military service:

* Take a vacation until September.

* Attend all the camps my hiking club prepares.

* Buy a canoe.

* Fix my bike and restart riding.

* Re-install and play M.A.X., worms 4, and old PC and arcade games.

* Restart playing chess.

* Continue my Youtube videos.

* Read “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”

* Buy a music keyboard and restart making music.

* Buy a telescope and continue observing stars & planets.

* Go to aikido lessons by a ship across İzmir Bay.

* Watch anime, Prison Break & Lost

* Rent all the movies I missed here. Watch older movies with my friends.

* Study Japanese harder & finish reading my astronomy notes.

* Restart playing FRP.

* Try to start caving.

* Restart swimming in the pool of my campus.

* Start studying bokken and continue studying Jo.

(15:15) I told you I was gonna tell you about the speech Tough C gave at the night training. The topic was “sound discipline” and he made us run with our rifles. After we came back he started his speech. I realized that when there are no ladies around, even the teachers start talking slang language. Every one word out of two was a curse, though not offensive. In fact he was so successful at making us laugh with every word he said just like a stand-up comedian. After a few minutes of laughs, he said “if real soldiers would make as much sound as you did while walking on the mountains of east, terrorists would recognize them from a km away and would say ‘look a squad of idiots are coming. Let’s fuck them to death instead of wasting bullets.’” After waiting for us to finish laughing he said “Except they really fuck the soldiers to death” and the laughter instantly turned into a stone cold look on our faces. And then he told us the ways terrorists kill our people, and added that these are not things he heard, these are how he actually lost some of his friends. He told how the captive soldier begs for death after getting mutilated slowly day after day.

(18:46) What I got used to:

* Getting up early, wearing army clothes, lame food, snoring people in the dorm, pooping to Alla-Turca toilets, having shower once a week with ice-cold water.

What I couldn’t get used to:

* The intense stink of some long terms as if a sweaty dead horse pissed on them. The continual thought of being imprisoned which still prevents me from enjoying anything. Taking a 3 minute warm shower by getting in line. Being away from girls. Being away from my family.

(21:50) It’s almost New Year. I watched a very funny movie called “Shaolin Soccer”. Right now I’m in bed, here it is calmer and more comfortable. After 2 years, I’m spending a New Year’s Eve without my friends, and for the very first time without my family. So there’s no need to miss my sleep. I think it’s also gonna be the very first New Year which I didn’t see the midnight.

Dec 29th 2006 Friday: 139 days after midnight...

Today, we got on buses, and got outside the barracks for the first time in 18 days. The reason was to go to the shooting ground which is near a large prison. For the first time we loaded real bullets to our rifles, and shot 6 bullets. The gun didn’t recoil to wound our eyes or nose as everyone was afraid of, but the sound was piercing. After 3 succesful shots, my ears were almost deaf so I stumbled my last 3 shots.

After that our substitute commander made us sit down and tell jokes to him. He’s a low rank commander who doesn’t like to work unless his superiors watch him over. So that’s a good characteristic for us.

By the way, let me tell you about the 3 commanders of our team. The main commander is a sergeant major which is I think the best superior in here. He’s a real soldier who has experience in warfare just like Tough C. Let’s call him “Our C”. He teaches everything better than everyone and he’s not too tough on us. He definitely knows the difference of college graduates.

Second commander is a dickhead who’s stupid and therefore has to shout and punish in order to cover his incompetence. Of course he can’t do anything while Our C is around. The third commander is the one we had today. He’s the lowest rank of all, and mostly harmless.

Dec 28th 2006 Thursday: 139 days after midnight

We’re being tested with all aspects of military. First it was heat & sweat, then it was dickheads, yesterday it was extreme cold. I don’t know how weather is changing so quickly. Yesterday I thought my hands were going to shatter to pieces, I still have open wounds on my hands. And today was the easiest day of all. The weather was good, we did practically nothing. The abominable commander is excused for a few days so the substitute commander did nothing but pretend to make lessons.

Dec 26th 2006 Tuesday 141 days after midnight

(20:40) Today was supposed to be a very tough day but as you can see it’s over. It was our turn to clean the dining room after the breakfast, lunch and dinner. We also had to take a night lesson. And the lessons themselves are stressful enough thanks to barking puddles. Cleaning the dining room didn’t turn out to be such a tough task unlike many people told us. I switched my mind off and swept the large room, refilled the water-bottles, re-arranged the chairs.

At night it was fun. We grabbed our guns and started running on the training field like commandos, hehehe.

At the end, Tough C made a speech to finish the training. I’ll tell about it later, probably on the weekend, because I don’t wanna rush it up.

Dec 25th 2006, Monday 142 days after midnight

(20:41) Days are supposed to go faster but they’re slowing down constantly. My brain is getting numb because some commanders are trying to make my days harder by shouting, insulting and punishing. When they go home they’re probably telling how they went tough on college boys, and what’s more they’re getting paid to do this shit.

But you know what? Here’s what I have to say to them. You think you’re satisfying your ego by screwing us up, but you’re nothing more than barking puddles. I will finish this recruit training and serve military, and go civilian, talk to people all around the world, represent my country on Youtube, visit places you’ll never see even on TV, date with girls your imaginations can’t handle, will be known by more and more people everyday, while you live in your scum, like a lifeless bug who bites anyone who gets in the way. You’re doomed to live here your loser life, and no matter what you do, I’ll leave this prison one day and wave at you from the bus...

Dec 24th 2006, Sunday 144 days to go...

Tomorrow is mom’s birthday. Of course I won’t be there to celebrate her. I won’t be able to celebrate dad’s and my sister’s birthday either. However for the New Year I secretly bought gifts for them before coming here. I put the gifts in my room in a closet. On December 31st, I’ll call dad and tell him where the gifts are. It’s surely gonna cheer them up.

The window of the dorm has a pleasant scenery of the highway. Accross the highway there’s a river, a large bridge, and the rest is all green. It’s a perfect picture of freedom. Just near the entrance of the military, there’s a digital sign which shows the temperature of outside. The sign instantly took me back to Zalau-Romania. It’s so different in here, every memory comes back to your brain, all your five senses, so easily. It’s like a blind person sharpening his other senses. For a few minutes I felt like I was actually there. Let me tell you a little bit about Zalau. It’s a town in Romania where I stayed for a while to be with my girlfriend.

I had stayed in a modest but decent hotel room, where there’s a cable network in rooms and two beds even if you pay for one. I had spent most of my time in that room, waiting for my girlfriend to leave work. In front of the hotel there’s a big square. In the middle of the square there’s a similar sign which shows the time and temperature. So sometimes I’d get bored, take my old walkman and take a walk past that square. I’d then pass by churches and old small houses. The weather was ussually cloudy and since it often rained, there would be a soft coolness and the dense smell of fresh rain. Every building would have a Romanian flag in front of its window.

There was also a park with an amphitheater. So wherever there was a concert or similar organisation (like “Zalau Days” at the beginning of August), this park or the square would be the place to do it. The names of the shops (like “American Fastfood”) would show the country was no longer under the shadow of communism. The faces of people were quite different than the Turks. They all had this calm facial expressions, probably because nobody is trying to get on them and ride their asses. Unlike Turkish people where we always look aggressive and aware. The Romanian girls ussually had a sad and innocent look that would make you wanna love them. The town was so small, the buses had only one route, so you wouldn’t have to read where it’s going when you get on a bus.

Of course it’s harder now to visualise all this while I’m writing here on the training field, sitting under the sun and watching commandos and short-term soldiers playing basketball. Gotta put this notebook back in the locker.

Dec 23rd 2006, 145 days to go...

(14:40) It’s been 12 days since I came here, but nothing’s getting even slightly better. I don’t wanna take this shouting and insulting anymore. I don’t wanna watch jackals howling at lions for no apparent reason just because they have more military ranks. I wanna shout too. I wanna scream “GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING FREEDOM! GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING LIFE! GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING LIFE!” But I can’t. And the only thing to keep my sanity intact is the 15-minute-breaks they give between training sessions, where I sit on a tire on the field, inhale the fresh grass, and look at the fence, and what’s beyond it, the buses taking people to their homes, the children playing basketball, the planes taking people to their cities, the birds flying freely, and the trains, passing occasionally just near the training field. Sometimes I stand up and wave at the people in the train, and children wave back at me, and they go away, and then the whistle blows. And we go back, marching with rifles...

Today I also realised it’s been 12 days I haven’t seen a girl. This was one of the things I was worrying about before coming here, would I go crazy without seeing girls, without listening to music, without internet, without everything that gives flavour to my life. But right now... I think of none of these. EVEN MUSIC. I even doubt I’ll listen to music when my family comes and brings my discman at the end of the recruit training (Jan 12th). All these things were worthy when I was enjoying my life. I don’t want to enjoy anything knowing I’m not a free person. All I long for right now is a bedroom which doesn’t stink, a comfortable bed with no snoring sounds, a place to call home, clean clothes, a decent bath, some real food and spoon or fork to eat with, and knowing that I’m free. Anyone who’s reading this, know the value of your freedom, no matter who you are, if you’re free to do whatever you want, then you’re fortunate.

(16:56) I forgot to tell, people are surprisingly interested in me being an astronomer. They keep asking me the names of the stars they point at, and questions about the universe. You wouldn’t know what might help you make friends.

What I also found out that, being a college graduate doesn’t automatically make you a mature or even an educated person. I can’t believe how stupid they can be. Some of them make fun of me that I’m an astronomer ‘cause it doesn’t make money. Some of them claim that they don’t read book AT ALL. How can someone not read a book? Of course these guys are graduated from very simple universities with the sole purpose of having an easy & short military service. The question is, do they deserve it?

Two commandos are reading astrology on the newspaper, here in the lounge, with 50 people sitting tightly next to each other. One of the says: “My sign says I’ll go to a crowded place soon” Other one replies: “Then you’ll probably have a permission to go downtown”