Monthly Archives: June 2012

An Introduction to Civic Action Projects

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Hello guys,

I have just realized that since I founded this blog, I posted just one post about the Youth LAB. It’s not because I don’t have things to say, but is about timing.

Every Youth LAB participant knows how important are Civic Action Projects (which we call CAPs) as a part of leadership.

A picture of our volunteering team that cleaned a public school.

Doubtless PH International and ARI Movement did a great job, educated us about CAPs. I was too lazy to take notes, then. But fortunately, I scanned and uploaded the documents those given us and I do not think I need to give more info for this introduction. In order to read these ones well, you must click the right-bottom button to make it fullscreen. Here you go, fellows:

Civic Action Projects 101

I don’t think these texts are copyrighted, but if so, they can contact me. The one above is an introduction. If you don’t have an idea, no worries! Here you go;

366 Community Service Ideas

You may find these document too long, but you better be patient. A leader must be patient enough to read these stuff, in my humble opinion.

Please comment about these, and I beg you, inform me if you are about to do a CAP!

A Faroese Woman: Þurið Þorkilsdóttir

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Hello guys,

Nearly every person I meet acknowledges that I am in love with Scandinavia. Every single part of it. Its culture. Its food. Its music. Its folks, too.

So, as I was listening to Týr’s lovely song, Turið Torkilsdóttir, I wondered about it. I knew that Turið was somehow Scandinavian, and must be a hero or something, but who knows!

Let’s take a look at what Wikipedia says about Turið:

Þurið Þorkilsdóttir (Faroese Turið Torkilsdóttir, Icelandic Þuríður, Danish Turid, sometimes anglicized as Thurid, born ca. 960 in Ulfdal in Dovrefjell, Norway, died ca. 1047 in Skúvoy, Faroe Islands) was the first woman about whom we have knowledge in Faroese history. In the Viking Age in the Faroe Islands, she was the islands’ most influential woman. After her husband’s death in 1005, she was generally called Þurið Megineinkja, “chieftain’s widow”.
Þurið was the daughter of Ragnhild Þoralfsdóttir and Þorkil Barfrost. Around 986, she married Sigmundur Brestisson, on his third visit to Norway. According to the Færeyinga Saga, the wedding took place at Håkon Jarl’s farm near Trondheim and lasted for seven days. She had already borne him a daughter, Þóra. That autumn, the couple and their daughter moved to the Faroes, where Þurið lived out the rest of her life.
Þurið and Sigmundur later had four sons, Þórálfr, Steingrímr, Brandr and Heri Sigmundsson, who all lived on the farm in Skúvoy.

The island of Skúvoy where Turið died, as seen from Sandoy in Faroe Islands. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

She is said to be influential and powerful. And her husband is the man who brought Christianity to Faroe Islands at the decree of Olaf Tryggvason who was one of the most scary and powerful kings of Norway. Sigmundur also broke in to house of Tróndur í Gøtu who is a national hero of Faroes, as declared in Færeyinga Saga. I guess Sigmundur was not an enemy or something, but he was scared from the strong Olaf, and forced folks to accept Christianity.

So, the awesome band Týr made a song for the honor of her. Here is the song:

http://youtu.be/Q3b419s8InI

And here we have the lyrics for the song;

Vatnið rennur av høgum fjøllum
og eftir hvøssum gróti
So ilt er at leggja ást við hann
ið onga leggur ímóti

 

Dagurin líður, náttin kemur
dimmir á jørð so fríða
Í morgin saðlum hestar dyst at ríða.

 

“Tað er so vánt í tínum landi
tí har er veður og vindur
Nògv betri er í Noregs fjøllum
tú ástir við meg bindur.”

 

Fylgdi hon honum so langt á leið
til gøtur tóku at skilja
“Tað, ið eg vendi aftur frá tar
tað er ei við mín vilja.”

 

Turið situr í Noregs fjøllum
hon vekir harm og pínu
So møðig fellur hon blóðig tár
á báðar armar sínar

 

Dagurin líður, náttin kemur
dimmir á jørð so fríða
Í morgin saðlum hestar dyst at ríða.

Fellows! I know you’re wondering the translation. Here we go;

The water runs of high mountains
And along sharp rocks
So painfull it is to love him
Who doesn’t love you back

 

The days goes by, the night comes
Darkness falls on fair ground
Tomorrow let us saddle the horses for a race

 

“Your land is so unpleasant
For there is bad weather and wind.
Much better it is in the mountains of Norway
To stay here in love with me.”

 

She followed him so far on his way

Until paths went separate ways.
“When I turn away from you now
It is against my will.”

 

Turið sits in the mountains of Norway
She invokes harm and pain
So mournfull she fells bloody tears
Down both her arms

 

The days goes by, the night comes
Darkness falls on fair ground
Tomorrow let us saddle the horses for a race

Don’t murmur for the lyrics, I am unfortunately not able to translate them, so I obtained the lyrics from Dark Lyrics, those fellows working very well.

How To Make Free, Unlimited Calls To The US From All Around The World?

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Hello guys,

Today, I want to tell you about a system I am using for making free calls to the US from Turkey. But it is not limited with Turkey, you can use this system from all around the world to make free calls to the US.

I don’t know who owns the copyrights of this image. If you own, you are free to contact me.

I have friends from the US, and talk with them most of the time. Even though we live in a world of interaction, some of us don’t have internet connection every time, so sometimes I must call directly their cell phones. But this is not the only situation.

For example, my Kindle was broken a while ago. I had to send it to the US, but I had no idea how to. And when I checked Amazon‘s website, I saw that I had to call them. But I didn’t want to pay for calling them. So I got an idea.

I knew that there are systems those provide you privacy in online world. Proxy services. While I was digging up Hide My Ass, I’ve realized that they provide you a free proxy list. You can choose the country which you want to get proxy service from, you can choose the security options, the speed options, it’s awesome!

You just rearrange your connection with the proxy servers’ IP number and port number, it’s all done.

If you are using Windows 7, you can go to the Start menu, write down “Configure proxy server” to the line, press Enter. When you see the Internet Properties window, click “LAN settings” button, then you can see the proxy section. For other operating systems, you can ask Google about it. Believe, it will not take a long while to do that, easy peasy.

With proxy services, you can browse the web anonymously, with no trace behind you, you can use some local opportunities just like you’re connecting from there, so it’s very handy.

Most of the people knows that Google has a service that works in the US pretty well. Directly from your Gmail account, you can make free calls to the phone numbers in the US, doesn’t matter if it’s a toll-free telephone number or a cell phone number, or anything else. Just call it, and just do it for free! Actually when I was in the US, I used that service very much.

Three steps for this very easy trick;

  • Find the best proxy servers that you can find, using the proxy server list services like Hide My Ass. Be sure that you picked up a proxy server in the US.
  • Configure your proxy settings.
  • Go online, call friends, say “Hello!”

Proxy servers are being used for a long while. They are mostly safe, but the tough point is finding a good one, so you become sure that you won’t have any troubles with that.

Keep in mind that if you just want to browse the web (but do not need to use complicated services, like the ones those need cookies), you can use Hide My Ass for that reason, too. You don’t have to change your proxy settings that way, open the service, use the service, close the service and that’s all.

I do not know who owns the copyrights of this image. If you own, you are free to contact me.

Believe me this is not an advertisement or something, but they have great services like anonymous e-mail service. You can obtain an anonymous e-mail address with an expiration date, so you can use it and it will destroy itself when the date comes. I don’t know if they are the first one, but I must tell you that I knew Melt Mail. But it was a forwarding service, so they’re not playing the same game.

If you do not want to bother yourself with dealing with connection settings about the proxy servers, you can use a software like Proxy Switcher.

With a software like Proxy Switcher, you can have a list of proxies, set them to be automatically changed by the time, so increase your anonymity.

Hide My Ass is one of the best proxy services I have ever seen. But it has cons, too. For some extreme conditions, like obtaining an e-mail address from Faroe Islands, you may need proxy services from special countries, I mean the small ones, like Denmark, Iceland, Norway etc. For this situation, Proxy Switcher helps you a lot. Because it uses a lot of proxy server list resources, so your chance of finding those rare proxy server IP’s is being increased as the number of proxy servers increase.

With this method, I got a blog from Norway, from Blogg.no service; an e-mail address from Iceland, from Email.is; also an e-mail address that ends with Yahoo.no So can you imagine how many chances you get? A lot. Definitely, a lot.

If you need a professional solution, you can look up to Hide My Ass’ Pro VPN Services.

The Prestige

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I don’t know who owns the copyrights of this image. If you own, please contact me.

Hello guys,

I watched this movie a few days ago, so today I want to share my notes with you.

Based on the same-named novel of British author Christopher Priest, the book is adapted for the movie by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan. Christopher Nolan also directed the movie.

The Prestige is keeping its place as the 70th best movie in IMDB’s Top 250 films list.

We all love magic, don’t we? The mystery attracts all of us! Have you thought about magicians? Their job is pretty hard, right?

So, welcome to The Prestige! It’s all about magicians’ tricks. I want to quote these sentences from the FAQ of the movie on IMDb:

Who or what is the “Prestige”?
The film describes every magic trick as having a three-act structure which consists of the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. The pledge is “a magician shows you something ordinary.” The turn is that he makes it seem to do something extraordinary, disappear, levitate, transform etc. The prestige ( “..the hardest part..”) is the payoff, the reward of the trick for the audience. In a trick like sawing a woman in half, the prestige is reconnecting her. In the central trick of the film, the prestige is when someone appears across the stage or theater having previously disappeared. This three act structure of a trick was invented for the film and is not based on actual terminology used by real life magicians. In the novel on which the film is based, the prestige is the spirits of the duplicate Angiers.

While the movie were going on, I was already amazed by the story and the world of magic. The film taught me a lot about how to show something to audience:

If your aim is attracting the audience, the presentation of the thing is more important than what it actually is.

The other topic that is been mentioned in the movie is obsession. If you watch the movie, you will understand what I mean.

If you have any obsessions, get rid of them. They can ruin your life.

Seems neither Christopher Priest nor Christopher Nolan forget the children. Here is a rule for children welfare:

Parents should not fight or yell each other if any child can watch them. It will definitely affect the children negatively.

If you are debating the magic and the science, stop doing it:

Science is the real magic. And the truth may not always be as it seems.

If you ask about learning, here you go:

Learning is good, but knowing everything does not always bring good luck.

To sum up the sentences all above: if you haven’t yet, you must watch this movie. Yes, it’s a must!

Here is the trailer:

A Thousand Words – Eddie Murphy

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Image source: EntertainmentWallpaper.com

Hello guys,

Today, I’ve watched this great movie from DreamWorks team and directed by Brian Robbins. Eddie Murphy is the headliner, so it’s a comedy movie, you may think. In fact, it is. But again, in fact, it is not at all.

The movie is not that long at all, just 91 minutes. Short, but amazing.

Every single day, we talk. There’s no end. We talk as much as we want, and mostly, I’m sorry to tell you this one, but, we talk unnecessarily.

More than a comedy, the movie dwells on this. Our speak. Imagine that there’s a tree whose faith is exactly the same with yours. What happens to that tree, it happens to you. And for a word you say, a leaf falls down. And imagine that you have just 1.000 words to say. When you finish those words, you’re gonna die.

Oh, you may think that “I can write down, you dumb-ass.” No, man. You can’t. It doesn’t matter if you express yourself with pen-and-paper or by the words coming from your mouth. Each word will cause a leaf to fall down.

So, if you had just 1.000 last words. What would you spend them on? Say “I love you!” to your loving one? Say “I will never forget you!”? Probably you’d say these words.

OK, I say love is good, it’s needed blah blah. But there is more than love: forgiveness.

We are living. And we don’t care about the other people most of the time. We break a lot of hearts, even sometimes we’re not aware of what we are doing.

So, my point is: assume you have 1.000 last words. Spend them on the good. Then they’ll increase as much as (and as long as) you spend them. You will never die, so.

Forgive the ones that you accuse. And do it good.

Here is a trailer of the movie, hope you will feel as good as I do:

Don’t Panic, Be Organized

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Hello guys,

A friend of mine have just shared this on Facebook. The moment I see it, I lost in thought. We are just people, and we know it. Each of us is a single, alone person. Maybe we scare something bigger than ourselves. But in that occasion, we mostly run. Remember the saying “Run for your life!”, just like that.

Maybe there are some people don’t run; instead stand up, organize and fight with the big trouble. They organize instead of running for their own lives. (Don’t think that the “Stand up and fight!” phrase didn’t make me remember Turisas’ album)

If you read the “About me” page on this blog, you all should see that I got educated about leadership. If there were a phrase to summarize all the camp, it shall be “Don’t panic, ORGANIZE.”. For sure.

I truly believe that local bloggers are the real fighters. They organize and fight, as Adnan Hajizada and Emin Milli did. No one says it always brings success, but attempt is a kind of success, too.

I think the image below has a better resolution. Doesn’t matter. This kind of things always motivates me to success, to do things, to raise awareness in a society about a specific topic.

Don’t forget that you don’t have to be born as a leader, we’re all leaders deep in our lives.

Aram Khachaturian – Sabre Dance

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Hello guys,

One of my best friends is a successful pianist. And she loves classical music. And, she makes me love classical music. :) Nowadays, I found myself going deep with classical music and got a bunch of (190 songs!) classical music songs.

During my Armenia visit, I wondered about Armenian art but didn’t (actually, couldn’t) have the time to see some materials or memorials about the arts.

But of course, it can’t keep me tied up. I started listening those classical music songs, and liked this one very much. I immediately looked up for the composer, and find out he’s Armenian. I’m so lucky, aren’t I? :)

Yes, Arrmenian friends. This post was written for you. I miss you so much, fellows. Here you can listen to Aram Khachaturian’s awesome Sabre Dance.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

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Hello guys,

I have been reading this book for a while. Actually, I have been listening. Have you heard of Audible? If you haven’t, you must. You definitely must.

When I walk on my way, I mostly listen to books. They’re narrated by very professional people and they’re doing your job pretty well. If you want to try, they have very cheap options. You can have a look here.

When I do not listen to books (maybe I didn’t buy them), I read them on my Kindle mostly. Actually, every time.

If I do not read a book on my Kindle, it means it hasn’t gone online yet! There’s no other way. :)

Oh, actually there is. My Kindle has broken and I had to ship it to the US, to a friend of mine. Hope he will take care of it. I trust him.

OK, OK. Here I start talking about the book.

Thinking, Fast and Slow is an impressing book. Even at a glance!

Daniel Kahneman is a genius on his main topic: behavioral economics. I think that’s why they gave him a Nobel prize in economics. In this book, he has summarized his four decades of work. So this book is very very important for us.

He and his friend Amos Tversky (who is not among us today, sad to say), worked together. Asked questions to each other and attempt to find reasonable answers together. And they realize we think in two ways, as they call System 1 and System 2. Also you can call them “automatic” and “effortful”. Kahneman describes these systems as;

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.

There is a sketchnoting image below. If I were you, I’d take a look.

Thinking-Fast-and-Slow

Image courtesy of Eva-Lotta Lamm, a flickr user

Actually I wanted to write a lot of things about System 1 and System 2, but the image above explains most of them, I do not have a bulk of things to add.

Update: I have just found this image and wanted to share with you, guys.

Image courtesy of David Plunkert, via The New York Times

An Introduction to Youth LAB

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Hello world!

This is the first post from my new blog and I wanted it to be about the Youth LAB.

First of all, I want to tell you what “LAB” stands for: Leadership Across Borders. OK, but which “borders”? Surely, this one can be asked, too. Youth leadership across the borders between Armenia and Turkey, those are two neighbor countries, for centuries. And the borders between Armenian and Turkish youth. Of course, American youth is in the game, too. I’ll continue after copy-pasting the introduction of the program from Embassy of The United States in Ankara’s website:

U.S Embassy Ankara is pleased to announce Youth LAB a program to foster leadership and cross-cultural understanding among Turkish, Armenian, and American youth.  This program is being funded by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, and implemented by PH International in Vermont and Yerevan, in cooperation with Arı Movement in Turkey. Youth LAB is a program to foster leadership and cross-cultural understanding among Turkish, Armenian, and American youth. The sixteen-month initiative will bring together 72 young activists – 24 students ages 16-18 from each country – to discuss solutions to global and local issues. Students will communicate online prior to a three-week leadership camp in Vermont in the summer of 2011, which will consist of a two-week camp at Sugarbush Resort, as well as a one-week homestay experience. In late December 2011, students will spend ten days in Turkey and Armenia for cultural immersion and leadership training. Again, the program will consist of homestay experiences in both countries.   We are currently accepting applications for the program until January 5, 2011.

Program Activities Will Include The Following:

Online activities exploring themes of leadership, multiculturalism, youth culture, volunteerism, community service, global and local issues, concepts of identity, and tolerance

  • A two-week camp in the U.S. in July 2011, following by a one-week homestay experience in American host families
  • A period applying new leadership skills through projects in home communities, from August – November 2011
  • A 10-day visit to Armenia and Turkey in December 2011, with one American and one Armenian student housed in a Turkish participant’s home in the first half of the visit and with one American and one Turkish student housed in an Armenian participant’s home in the second half of the visit.
  • Online interaction for joint design of cross-border and/or local community projects, and implementation of the designed projects

Fees

Youth Lab Logo

Image courtesy of US Embassy in Ankara

Youth LAB is funded by a grant from the Public Affairs Service of the United States Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, therefore there is no cost for participation in the program. Students are required, however, to possess a passport. If you do not currently hold a passport valid until at least July 2012, any passport application or renewal fees will students’ responsibility. U.S. students are also responsible for transportation costs to and from Sugarbush, Vermont in the summer of 2011.

Selection Criteria

Students must meet the following criteria in order to be eligible for the program:

  • Demonstrated leadership capacity and commitment to peer mentoring
  • Commitment to improving one’s community through the dissemination of information and ideas
  • Concrete ideas about how to use skills gained during the program in their home community
  • Strong academic record and expressed support from school representative
  • Team-oriented and able to work collaboratively
  • Open to working with peers from other countries
  • Willingness to engage in community service activities and outreach projects
  • Written and spoken English language capacity necessary for participation
  • Semi-regular access to computers and the Internet in one’s home or community
  • Ability to commit to all program activities and requirements, including full time participation during exchange periods
  • Potential to host one Armenian and one Turkish peer in a four-day homestay in July 2011
  • Potential to host one American and one Armenian/Turkish peer in a brief homestay in December 2011
  • Age 16-18 during the program, with a graduation date from secondary school of no earlier than June 2012 (students are eligible if they are 15 at the time of selection, but 16 during the Vermont camp)

In addition to completing the online application, candidates must submit two recommendation letters – one from a teacher and another from a community member, using the form provided for download below. Recommendation letters may be completed in English or Turkish.

This program is one of the things that changed whole my life from its roots. I’ll definitely write a lot of things about the program, even though I can not finish them by writing ’til the end of my life. It is not the program I have been involved in, but it is the best one so far. We hardly believed that we could go to the US and got educated about leadership and meet Armenian and American friends.

It means a lot of “firsts” for me. First time to stay away from the family for a long time. First time to prepare a luggage. First time to fly. First time to go abroad. First time to stay in a hotel… Aww, if I go on like this, I will never find the time to tell more about it!

I want to finish this post here, because I will post everything about the program, but time to time, not as a bulk. You will read a lot of it and see a lot of pictures.

Take care for now,

Ahmet.