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Posts Tagged ‘istanbul’
Butterfly plague in Istanbul
July 4th, 2010 | 
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It sounds unlikely, but then again this city is one of the most unlikely places on earth anyway: there’s an official butterfly plague going on in Istanbul. Yesterday I saw to my amazement that there were hundreds if not thousands of butterflies flying through the neighbourhood where I live. My wife told me it was all over the turkish news too. There’s a butterfly plague. I have never even heard of the possibility. What could have caused it?
It must have been that some natural enemy of the butterfly has been wiped out in some ecological disaster. Or could there be another explanation? Who are the natural enemies of butterflies anyway? Wasps perhaps. Haven’t seen a wasp in ages! And wasps are known to feed on butterfly larvae. But as butterflies also do pollination, they might be the solution for a lack of pollination due to bee or wasp starvation which is a huger ecological problem than most other ones. Once plants and flowers cant pollinate any more they are finished and you can say goodbye to crops, fruits and vegetables.
Meanwhile, I cant say this is the worst plague I have witnessed so far. The sight of hundreds of butterflies surrounding my house is a spectacular sight. My stomach feels differently, luckily, for falling in love must be one of the worst things that could happen to a writer. Or to anyone else, really. A writer should be jaded like the butterfly – spreading the golden dust of youth to intoxicate others but hardly touching it himself.
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Istanbul bars
I’m in bigghouse in caddebostance, chilling out. Istanbul must have around a million bars. There’s one bar for every 20 people in the city and they all 20 continuously hang around in it. Makes you wonder how on earth anyone makes money here. I haven’t got the faintest clue. I think they all get paid to sit in these bars. A great job, where you instantly spend your salary again on stuff that matters. One time I’m planning to walk from one end of istanbul to the other. Must be around 30 kilometres, but it will probably take 4 to 5 days because of the bars.Christ they are farming bars here. When you don’t have a bar, you’re simply not a real Turk. You’re doomed to spend the rest of your life roaming the bars of others. Fine with me, I’m macgowanising myself anyway. Name me a street and I’ll name you a bar…
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