Interests and Activities
You will find more than what you were looking for about me in this page or the linked ones (but not all since I always have more to tell!).
Social Life
Being a PhD candidate I did not have much time to make many friends or enjoy the beautiful city Montréal in my first 3 years other than attending a few festivals, however now I have a good circle of friends and also I am an event organizer for Montréal graduate students mostly dominated by McGill students. Group events such as bowling, dining, playing pool, book reading days, skating, ice fishing are some of the examples. Our book reading group proceeded well and it is extremely useful to exchange knowledge on literature, authors and to build solid relations with each other. Actually, So far all the organizations were appreciated by the attendees so I am confident and happy :) Also, when I go to festivals or other events I really enjoy making video recordings and interview with the people attending them. It is so fun, and since I figured that ambition of mine I recorded long videos and shared them with my family and friends. The most amazing part of it was to see the continuous smile on their face while watching those recordings so I was really encouraged and now I want to shoot a short film :) I do not know where, when and with which scenario but for sure I will give it a try. Painting Since my childhood I paint, I never carried this passion to the professional level but my technique is changing with me and becoming more mature (at least I think it does :) ). I like watercolor, acrylic painting and would like to try oil painting in the near future. The truth is that I always overlooked watercolor probably because it was the first technique I learned at the age of 5 in the kindergarten. Until my 20's it did not change. I had the chance to take a 2 week course on watercolor during one of my summer holidays I think it was in 2001 and my perspective changed dramatically. Now, I can tell that watercolor is one of the hardest techniques and you can create impressive art pieces with it so if anyone who is reading this is also overlooking watercolor please don't! :) I started acrylique painting in Montréal during my adaptation period to my new life it was a salvation for me. I always liked the animals with a defined shape and outlook such as horses, danois (a dog breed) and lions. Now, most of my paintings is horse themed and I am planning to work on the other two as well. Currently, I am trying to finish another painting on canvas which was influenced by a piano recital which I have been to a year ago in McGill college. This is the largest canvas I used ever and took some time... To see some of my acrylic paintings follow the link. Digital arts and 3D animations I adore digital arts as well as the classical ones. Since years, I created many digital arts for my taste ( not for the public, not for the art :)) and for scientific demonstration purposes. I do not only create them but also follow some of the digital artists as well. In fact, I met very cool digital artists in person or online! I am not going to reveal all the names however one of them did also painted my portrait, Ramon Miranda a very talented artist (if you are reading this page: thanks again!). For some of my work please follow the link. This is definitely not a complete set but I promise I will add more :) I use different softwares to create these pictures or the 3D models. My favorite ones are: Blender 3D, MyPaint, Gimp, PaintNet, Krita and Inkscape. I use all of them for different properties. Some are for vector graphics, some are raster and some has very cool filters to modify the images etc. but one thing is common about them which is that they are all free and open source code softwares! If you have scripting capabilities or programming background you can edit them all for your own use and I find it impressive. Web design We are in a digital world so I have been a bit busy with the online tools for some time (Oh still I am!) and I developed my skills as much as I had time. I had a very nice blog with plenty of followers, however I shut it down and deleted the whole content which was called Le Rouge. I have plans for it, I will reorganize the content when I have time and put them online again. For the moment, I am busy with a few other websites including this one. I like to deal with these things, I learned a lot about html codes etc. and this is really exciting for me :) This is a world in itself.
Music Singing is one of my favorite hobbies, it is very relaxing. Here in Montréal I became a member of Chorale de musique turc de Montréal and have been to two concerts with the group. One of them was for the 10th Asian week in Ottowa. We were the first group to take the scene and it was really exciting since it was my premier :) The members of the choral are like a family and each of them are so kind. I am grateful for taking part in this choral. Our second concert was a mini one for the Turkish community to raise funds for the choral activities Do not take mini so "mini" it lasted about one hour :). Because, I felt very attached to the group I decided to make a surprise and created a webpage for us for the new year also I administrate our Facebook page). I also do sing myself and do some recordings and I use a software called Audacity, which is quite professional with hundreds of filters. This is also an open source code software and you can download it online. Agriculture Although we are in the digital age it is also true that there is only one world ( at least what is known for the moment) and we need to be more careful about the environment. In my opinion, agricultural areas need to be protected because the so called civilization is destroying all kind of natural sources. Th importance of the fresh food, vegetables, fruits can not be overlooked but if we go on destroying the world with the same speed the agriculture will come to an inevitable end. My family owns an agricultural field in Turkey and I know how it feels to eat a vegetable or a fruit right from the tree or the plant and I can assure you that it does not taste like anything we buy from the markets or stores. In Montréal, there is one small field that is separated to small parcels and some Montréal locals are planting their own food there. The first time I saw it I was really excited about it and followed the process as I passed by the field. Many of the locals took good care of their own parcels and in the middle of the summer they had lots of vegetables there :) When I saw it I decided to start planting my own vegetables ( cherry tomatoes and strawberries) in the pot but the quality of the earth I can find scared me because I was not able to figure out what was already in it, so I had to give up with this idea. I am planning to prepare a little garden in my balcony if I can find quality earth for pot planting. I encourage you all as well! Cooking Not the last but one of those important hobbies I like to cook! I try different kitchens of the world, I had the chance to see a few countries and regions so I try to cook the food I like in the same way as they do. My favorite recipes so far are strawberry cheesecake (my parents receipe a bit modified to fit Montréal shops), carrot cake, chicken tikka masala (indian), flammenküche (Alsacienne), poutine (Montréal), macaroons (French), manti (very similar to Italian pasta actually Turkish people do eat as much pasta as Italians do! Mostly in the agricultural areas of Turkey farmers prepare their own dough and pasta in large amounts as a preparation for the winter time), yaprak sarmasi (grape leaves stuffed with rice), midye dolma (mussels stuffed with rice), börek. I have a long favorites lists for cooking but I think this is enough for now. Translation It is not a big deal but I also do some volunteer translations for Turkish. I am still working on the translation that is called GRAPH %77 done. Another one is: patternsforyou.com for Turkish ladies who like beading activities :) |
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