The sweetest sight

...is seeing people lying and chatting on the bouncy castle in the garden. My parents will be along later to see this too.

Special Animals

I had a bear, no name, but with velvet paws. It went to live on a shelf above my parents' bed. It is still there! You can imagine how dusty he is by now.

I now have a shelf of special little creatures, most of whom do have names. They haven't been needed for a very long time, but they are carefully stored and displayed near my bed.

Is there a name for this tradition of the parent winding up with all the soft toys in the end? They probably mean more to me than to anyone else now.

Reflections on the events in Turkey

Humour http://creativetimereports.org/2013/06/14/here-we-are-the-imagination-of-public-space-in-gezi-park/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=tweet&utm_content=gezipark&utm_campaign=CTRsocial

Mothers http://twitpic.com/cx114p

Standing Man http://www.duranadam.com/

Standing Man on livestream http://www.ustream.tv/channel/duran-adamlar

Playing chess

We are back to board games again. Mr and Mrs has been fun. Monopoly is never dull. Now it's scrabble with help from a laptop! and chess.

I think it is to do with the colder weather.

I try to lose quickly in order to get it over with as soon as possible, but get involved and then lengthen it out in order to win or lose as well as I can. This last game involved me spotting towards the end that both my bishops were on white squares. How did that happen? Was it set up wrongly, or did H move a piece while I had my back turned? Did I somehow move it there? Did the cat kick it?

An explanation of how I look up an Arabic word I don't recognise, but should know...

It's Google Translate, but using the Arabic keyboard onscreen which works really well. It even did the 'Do you mean ...(correct version)?' thing, which puts me in my place each time I make a spelling mistake!

I did have the link on here, but I now see that it gives my YouTube name and direct link to my now unused Google+ account.

Try it and see how easy it is to use. Just to make things more complex, the letters are arranged in a version of Qwerty, not in the alphabetic order which I am learning so I can use my new shiny dictionary. And, yes, the letters are very tiny, I'm sure English is written with bigger letters. The numbers are across the top in order though.

Turkey - getting the news out

People have started to create blogs to carry information about the current frightening situation in Turkey. They are putting several paragraphs in Turkish, then adding translations in other languages.

7 different languages - lgbthayat.blogspot

LOTS of different languages - fakfukfon.wordpress

Twitter hashtag mainly being used by people in Turkey is #direngeziparki

YouTube videos being used - noises and switching on and off of lights in Istanbul right now & includes some amazing car horns