Dare I say more about this French lingerie designer?
I remember the day I bumped into my first Aubade ad inside a shopping mall in Georgetown. It was the day I decided there is no better cover for a woman’s tender rear bumps.
One thing I dreaded the most while in New York was the breakfast at the office. There was no place to diversify and no room to be creative. It was either oatmeal made somewhat tasty with maple syrup, honey and walnuts or cereal. And if it was ever a hangover morning at the office, the guilty solution would be a lunch sandwich from Subway topped with extra mozzarella, turkey and mustard (yeah at 9 a.m. in the morning) or a 2,000 calorie-croissant from the City Bakery.
Now that I am back in Istanbul, the ultimate breakfast heaven, my cries for quality, variety and healthy (with a few fattening delicious “junk” exceptions) were heard. Here is a snapshot of what I am having for breakfast at the office today: green olives, salted cherry tomatoes and cucumbers meet the croissant sandwich with a thick slice of kaşar cheese. No to tea, but a big yes to fresh orange juice with ice.
It has been a few days since I got back from my most recent trip in the South Korean gem, Seoul. Everytime I visit this place I find new things to be amazed by. So much is different here. One of the few places on Earth where I can’t relate almost nothing back to my culture. It is a thrill to watch how peace and harmony is found in places beyond one’ boundaries. It is an adventure to observe this completely foreign culture and a bountiful accomplishment to pin point the corners that also fit into your comfort zone.
I don’t know why but this time as I made my way around Seoul, I had one song in mind: Frank Sinatra’s “This Town”. Could be the fact that the last time I heard it was at the movie theatre, lost inside the fantasy world of Mr. Ocean and his gang. Seoul, although I already visited it 3 times, is still a fantasy world for me. Like gambling and fakery, it is set in a world and culture I am aware of, but can’t quite figure out how to handle.
This is my take of Seoul with a little bit of help from Sinatra:
This town is an immense town
Not your ordinary easy-to-walk-around town
This town is a clean-cut town
Or a get-you-lost and paralyze-you town
This town is a respect-you detail-you town
Or a no-boundary town like this town
At the end of an exhausting work day, after visits to numerous textile factories spread beyond Seoul, with the final drop of energy holding onto me, I asked our Korean liaison to recommend us a hip bar to let it loose. He had one place in mind: J.J. Mahoney’s below the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
Hotel bars tend to be the victims of a familiar urban legend. They are usually known to be packed with exhausted tourists and opportunistic businessmen who are looking to mix work with pleasure and do it within the boundaries of their hotel. So what you get at the end is casually dressed, aged couples enjoying cheesy cocktails around the bar while guys in suits are getting trashed in their lounges overlooking barbie type middle-aged women on a hunt. I thought J.J.’s would be the victim of this same curse until we made it into the bar.
The entertainment Mecca of the Grand Hyatt is divided into two sections: on one side you get the live-music lounge and on the other you get the rather cliché disco with pumped-up pop music. As a clueless first-timer I would have been hooked onto any of the two, but the only credential I depended on was the crowd and in that aspect the live-music section held the first place.
Dressed in a dark, Ralph Lauren-like decoration with dimmed lights, heavy wood, dark leather and numerous black & white photographs hanged on the walls, J.J.’s confirms its visitors that it is not new in town. It has been around since 1988 and continues to serve a certain type of clientele: domestic businessmen in suits, trust-fund kids in jeans, hip girls in tight fashionable dresses, international deal-makers in chinos and pumped-up bimbos looking to be trophy-lovers. This is certainly not the sophisticated crowd you would want see at a romantic date with your girlfriend. Yet when you consider the funky, mind-blowing live performance on stage and the 90-dollar-a-plate fruits and pizza on the menu, the crowd at J.J.’s seems to be the perfect photo inside the frame.
Despite its overpriced menu and diverse crowd, this bar turned out to be one of my favorite night spots in Seoul because of the entertainment it brought on stage. I have never been a fan of live music until I stepped into this place. Magenta (the American live band at J.J.’s) worked the magic with the hip Timberlake, Gaga, Perry songs and truly mesmerized me. This is the band that thought me what it takes to make a connection with the crowd. These are the singers that ripped their vocals to bring the funk and made it fun to sing along. These are the stars that made me forget about the audience (ok ok there was the occasional chit chat with the other tables) and focus solely on their performance.
If you are ever in town, make sure to check out J.J.’s and Magenta (they should be performing there until September 2011, 6 days a week). You can definitely enjoy drinks at the bar without any reservation, but if you prefer to have your own table, you need one and are required to order at least one plate of the “golden” fruits, nachos, beef kebab or pizza.
If you need more persuasion, watch the amazing performance of Magenta on Sinanation’s Facebook Page.
Turkish readers, check out Sinanation’s take on the 83rd Academy Awards in the latest issue of Fin Digital Magazine, the first professional online magazine in Turkey dedicated to movies.
Name: Begüm Salihoğlu
Nickname: Bego
Notable Apperance: Wild, long red hair and warm reddish freckled cheeks
Can’t do without: Sienna Miller headbands, long dresses, large designer bags, pumps, exotic tea, Apple iMac, big earrings, white furniture, exotic fabrics, costume jewelry, high heel shoes, loose shirts, the color red, fashion magazines, tea, coffee, woven fabrics, cashmere throws, decorative pillows, white, Vogue Magazine, oversized sunglasses
Notable Hobbies: Shopping, traveling, her fashion brand BegumSalihoglu
Weakness: Mushroom, linguini with rabbit, cooked liver dish, the cold weather
Favorite Quote: Ponchiii!
Last Seen: www.begumsalihoglu.com, Istanbul, New York, Miami, Godiva Istanbul, Den Istanbul, Lucca Cafe & Bar Istanbul, Paris
I have issues with shoelaces! I agree that they are an unavoidable part of most shoes and most of the times make them look sleeker. Yet why is that anytime I have my hands full on a muddy street, entrance or exit that is bombarded with a constant flow of people who are ready to run anyone over, these goddamn fake spaghettis decide to become loose? It is as if they despise me and wait patiently for the moment when I can’t kneel down to tie them back together. They know just the moment to spread their nit arms all around the muddy, shitty, spitty road and laugh at their helpless owner.
They have their fun now, but wait until the day when I completely lose it and pull out the shiny scissors. I will even be prepared to give up my shoes. Who will laugh then?
Shot in 1987, The Last Emperor is an epic documentary on China’s last emperor, Pu Yi who was crowned at the age of 3. I ran into this movie while I was skimming through historic academy award winners. I can never say no to a good biographic documentary and The Last Emperor made to the top of my “to watch list” with 9 oscars. Exhausted from a dinner engagement the night before, I covered every inch of my couch, fighting the urge to sleep and forced all my attention to this 163 min. movie.
The Last Emperor is a visual documentary of 1900s China and an incredible walk through the life inside the Forbidden City. It will show you what it took to be a Chinese Emperor in the ancient times. It will also brilliantly reveal how such privilege and wealth can lead to captivity, misinformation, anxiety and isolation, forcing the free mind to yearn for answers that can’t be given.
The Emperor has been a prisoner in his own palace since the day that he was crowned, and has remained a prisoner since he abdicated. But now he’s growing up, he may wonder why he’s the only person in China who may not walk out of his own front door. I think the Emperor is the loneliest boy on Earth.
Bertolucci’s camera will play brilliantly with color and scenery while depicting the shift from a time of extreme wealth and insouciance to a time of despair and turmoil. At times it will choke you in amplitude and other times it will shiver in vacancy, always leaving Pu Yi at the heart of it all.
The Last Emperor certainly satisfied my appetite for good history, but failed to impress me with its script. I expected a constant flow of speech to accompany the incredible cinematography, but there was an unavoidable lack of communication between the characters. I can tie this flaw to two reasons. First, Bertolucci might have used the power of silence to reveal the alienation and unearthliness of Pu Yi, which (if it is the case here) is a successful approach. He might also have been blocked by the biographic novel he based The Last Emperor on. It would be almost impossible to seek the help of fiction when the film relied on hard evidence: and Bertolucci needed this hard evidence to win the approval of the Chinese Government for the shots inside the Forbidden City.
Inside an unexpected residential Manhattan building, on an unexpected floor lies a 600 sq ft private club that I proudly refer to as Club M. Open only to the owner’s close friends and their referrals, this unofficial entertainment heaven is equipped with all the gadgets of a hip nightclub, the tools of a professional bartender and the alcohol of a well-frequented dive bar.
To the naked eye Club M is an ordinary living room furnished up to the limit with couches, stools, tables and a home entertainment system. One needs to look closer to see what lies beneath: a peek inside the refrigerator will reveal enough soda, alcohol and juices to fill up a bathtub but not a single nibbler to block the hunger. The cupboards topped with plastic cups and Alka-Seltzer. The walls decorated with souvenirs from nightclubs and jazzy illustrations. Numerous funky neon-colored sunglasses spread on the granite counter. All waiting anxiously for the moment when the lights go out and a static disco light covers the dance floor, an incredibly loud mix vibrates the windows and Musa preps up behind the counter for his famous alcoholic blue shot “the Windex”.
No set hours, tabs, reservations or bouncers (just Musa) Club M is there to cheer you up when you need it. Through my years in New York, this apartment and its extraordinary owner, my dear friend Musa have been amazing hosts to me. There hasn’t been a single event in this place that didn’t make me feel better than I did. It has been a second home, a cozy meeting-point and an ultimate nightclub (but, certainly not a reliable restaurant). Thus, I have all the reasons to be thankful for its welcome and dedicate this most recent mix to its ever-lasting legendary memory.
P.S.: Musa tells me he has another “dinner” party coming up soon at Club M. Won’t be able to make it this time, but I am sure it will be yet another amazing night.
Click HERE to download Club M.
We are in an era where clutter of prints and chunks of photo albums remind us nothing more than sweet memories pasted onto bulky old displays. We have gone digital and taken our memories with us. It is no more “glossy or matte” at the print shop. Today, we sit behind our personal computers and perfect our own frozen moment with the touch of a button. We “enhance” our photos (or better the computers do it for us). And if we still feel a little more artistic, we pop out our finger-sized HD cameras and record the moment, the day or the week. Once done, we take hours of recording back to our tiny, fully advanced home labs and turn it into a handful visual feast. Thus, we create our very own modern photo album.
The video below takes us through a couple’s vacation in Brazil. I think it is extremely well-done and is a remarkable example to our generation’s idea of a modern photo album.
