The Escape Plans of the Apartment-Kids to get out of the SYSTEM **

4 years ago I decided not to live in an apartment in a city. Aaaaand, I moved.

The distance between my office work and home is 32 hm, round trip 64 km. Except from the people living Istanbul, this is a very long distance for most of the people.

From Monday to Friday:

06:15 I wake up.
07:00 I take the Urla- Ückuyular “mini-bus”
07:20 I get off from the bus at Narlidere
07:25 I take the bus number 554 from Narlidere
08:15 I get off from the bus in Alsancak
In total it takes 1 hour 15 minutes to the office.

In the evening when I leave work, the same 50 min long Urla-Uckuyular minibus trip takes 90minutes. It is very hard not to be a murder for minibus driver.
Anyway, in short I spend 2.5-3 hours on road every day.

I complain about not having enough time in a day, but yes I spend 3 hours on road.

Why?

I don’t want to live in an apartment anymore.
1) I don’t want to live in an apartment anymore because I want to make a little start for an Alternative Living. I should learn how to grow vegetables and fruit in my tiny garden by trying how to. What I have learned from this practical-real-live-education are:
* If you don’t catch the clock of the nature, all your effort is going to be wasted. You have to find the correct time to ground the seeds, to move the sprouted plants to the garden, to hoe the land, to give it water, to collect the product and to hoe the land again.
* It is not easy to deal with land. My garden is 50m2. It makes one very tired even to hoe that of a small sized garden. This tiredness leads to the question:
- What if I had a 1000m2 of a garden? Well, am I not having a target of having a Alternative Living based on farming?
Solution based human brain part is searching in the internet. It came out that the tractor option is not a optimal solution for small sized land. Remaining search you end up to have the option of an hand tractor or hoe machine.
After hoe’in the land, the land pieces become apprx 15-20 cm. You need to have smaller pieces in order to grow the small vegetable sprouts.

2) My wife and I, we are “musicians”. It is difficult not to receive complaints when you try to play with your drums in an apartment. Sometimes we even forget what the time is because we keep on playing when we start. All of a sudden we realise it is midnight already. It is a different taste to be able to make music in the middle of the night and not receiving any complaints. Single house is a must!

3) I only can take care of my dogs, chicken and ducks when I have a house with a garden.

I have a registered-to-home-belongings, advanced obedienced, educated in attack and defense Rotweiler branded dog. His name is, Ozzi. I named him Ozzi because I like Ozzy Osbourne. I owned 4 street dogs which were not owned by anyone. 3 of them are female and I arranged them to be fix’ed (kisirlastirma). Since ever we started to take care of them, they improved to a serious extend both in health and socially.
I have a poultry house and I had 4 ducks, 3 cocks and 2 hens. I said I “had” because I annihilated them. The interpretations of having a poultry house are:
* 80% of the chicks you buy from the bazaar are male!!! If you have the expectation of growing them up and having eggs, then dont buy chicks.
* The Turkish saying of “1 poultry house can only have 1 cock” is correct. When the chicks turns out to be cocks then they fight for the leadership of the poultry house. That will only work when you want to open a bet for the cock fights.
* If you dont have a big garden then the poultry house turns to a noisy source only. The poultry house must be far away from the house.
* If you dont have a wheat and grain farm then you should not try to have a poultry house because the money you spend to feed them is much more than you just would spend just to buy the eggs directly from the grocery store.
* As we city people would think, the hens are not keen on egg’ing and lay for their eggs. You need to train them first to make them lay for eggs.
If you can not make your hens lay for eggs, then having a poultry house does not make any sense.
* Turkish saying: “The cock who shouts without a time schedule, is to be executed”. Officially registered and been proved very correctly by myself.
* Hens can still lay eggs without cocks….

My efforts for escaping out of the system has the purpose of being prepared to the alternative living, when (if) the time comes. Therefore, I am struggling to get as much as experience I can get, by trying all the things I can try.

I am adding my picture the first time to OUR blog. I named it “Farmer smurf”. The interpretations of this picture are:

* Image is nothing, thirst is everything….
* Turkish baggy trousers are not comfortable working with land and farm. The cross-section is too low and gets confused between your legs when moving.There is no rubber-belt kinda thing in these baggy trousers, it has a string named “uckur” and you have to tied it up, so not comfortable. Sweatpants are definetely much more comfortable.
* Boots are mandatory, nothing wont work without them….

Book of the day : Island / Aldous Huxley
Album of the day: First of Million Kisses / Fairground Attraction

** this post is the English translation of its original “Şehirli Apartman Çocuklarının SİSTEM Dışına Kaçış Hazırlıkları” posted by Faik Murat in this blog, translated to english by dbadioxide.

Alternatif Yaşam

Tags: 15 Minutes, Alsancak, Apartment, Bus Number, Clock, Correct Time, Human Brain, Istanbul, Live Education, Long Distance, Mini Bus, Monday To Friday, Optimal Solution, People, Seeds Plants, Target, Tiny Garden, Tiredness, Urla, Vegetables