Guinness Book of World Records

Longest Tennis Marathon, Doubles

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

Henry Ward Beecher

Like most offices, my office is a place where I can concentrate on my work and feel comfortable at the same time. Of course, I have all the necessary equipment on my desk. I have the telephone next to the fax machine on the right side of my desk. My computer is in the centre of my desk with the monitor directly in front of me. I have a comfortable office chair to sit on and some pictures of my family between the computer and the telephone. In order to help me read, I also have a lamp near my computer which I use in the evening if I work late. There is plenty of paper in one of the cabinet drawers. There are also staples and a stapler, paper clips, highlighters (to highlight important information to remember), pens and erasers in the other drawer. In the room, there is a comfortable
armchair and a sofa to sit on. I also have a low table in front of the sofa on which there are some industry magazines.

as sober as a judge

normal, not drunk
Surprisingly, Mary was as sober as a judge after the reception.

to run over
to practice, rehearse
Lana should run over her lines some more as she keeps forgetting them.

My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It's in the apartment somewhere!

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what would happen if you strapped toast on the back of a cat and dropped it?

I bought a dog the other day... I named him Stay. It's fun to call him... "Come here, Stay! Come here, Stay!" He went insane. Now he just ignores me and keeps typing. He's an East German Shepherd.

The place where I lived twenty years ago was a small and quiet place. Chalets which were no more than five, a mosque, seven or eight stores and many merry people… It was a place with much greenery in which we got lost while running around. In those days, if you were a naughty child like me, then you were in trouble. Because everyone knew each other which meant that you were always told on. We used to wait together for the only television channel to start broadcasting. When we were infants, our favorite place was the house full of cats which belonged to an old couple. Maybe, they didn’t have any children, but we became their grandchildren.

And today…
There isn’t a single house left from those days. In today’s complexes , the population is a lot more than our small accommodation unit. Artisans have already handed over their stores to big markets. Maybe more people encounter each other than the old days, but they are crestfallen and turning their backs on each other. And that old couple’s house isn’t there any longer, and Uncle Mehmet left this world long ago. His wife lives in a flat with only one cat. Grandfathers’ chalets whose doors were wide to their neighbors are now closed and their grandchildren have hung big signs saying, “Do Not Enter!” The states of the naughty children are much better now because no one tells on them. After all, no one knows anybody. I wonder if we have improved a lot or lost many things in the past twenty years. I don’t know.

As for me, our milieu and our circumstances have improved, but we have degenerated as much.

 FATİH ERYİĞİT
Kadıköy 2 Branch