Teacher's Day

Today is Teacher's Day, an event initiated by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. Obviously this predisposes me to think well of Ataturk (along with the fact that he introduced Turkey to secularism, democracy, women's rights etc.). Teachers throughout the world are underpaid relative to people with similar qualifications, and Turkey is no exception, but at least here, as in other Middle Eastern countries, we get respect. There's none of this "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach" nonsense you get in anti-intellectual countries like Britain - being a teacher here is really something. If nothing else, people admire the fact that Turkish teachers do difficult work for minimal pay (I'm not so badly off because I work in the semi-private sector, but my wife, who is a high-school teacher, earns less than $3,500 p.a., and if she didn't have ten years' experience and an MA, she'd be on much less.).

On a less inspiring note, my wife says that at the time she started teaching, when she asked her students what they wanted to be in life, wuite a few of them said "teacher". Now the most popular professions are pop-star, con-artist and fashion model. Ne hale geldik.

The last of the chocolate spread

Many years ago, a born-again Christian friend tried to explain original sin to me. He said that there was something essentially flawed in human nature, and gave the example that you open the biscuit barrel (Americans read "cookie jar") and find there's only one biscuit left. You know you've already eaten a lot and other people deserve the biscuit more than you do, but you still eat it. "You bastard!" I said. "I'd never do that!"

It's true on the whole. Our fridge is full of mouldering food because neither of us will eat the last whatever-it-is because we think the other person might want it more. Yet here I am, spooning up the last of the chocolate spread. All I can say in my defence is that I promise to buy some more tomorrow, and it's been a shitty weekend. God damn it, I deserve chocolate!

See, not even solri can be a Stoic all the time.