Any kind of mental work-out will help the brain. I don´t enjoy chess at all, so I don´t think playing chess will help me battle Alzheimer. It will just give me raised blood pressure But it has already been shown that doing word puzzles, or even painting (artistic paintings, not the walls of your house) help with slowing down Alzheimer´s.

A work permit and a student´s permit are two totally different things. If you just have a residency permit as a student, you´re not allowed to work. If you are serious about going to university, it is better to contact the international office at the university of your choice. They can tell you far better about everything that you need and everything that you are allowed to do while living and studying in Turkey.

Take into account that if you are studying in Turkey, either your Turkish needs to be very high, or you need to go to a university where they teach in English. Most of the universities that do that are private universities and the tuition fees can be high.

I was having a conversation the other day about prejudices that Turkish people might have of Western women. People have told my other half many times that he might as well dump me, since all Western women cheat. The people who have actually met me have (slightly) altered their views, but still. It sucks But I deal with it. Just like I deal with the prejudice that every Turkish man must be a dudu. However, I have this idea that if a Turkish man would be portrayed as a dudu in a Dutch tv-show, all hell would break loose, with ofcourse outcries over racism and moslim-hatred.

Now... somebody told me that there was a Turkish tv-show (aka serial) with a Dutch woman in it. Cloggy as I am, I watched "öyle bir geçer zamanki"... and how disappointing First of all, the Dutch woman on the show isn´t Dutch but German...but okay, it´s acting. Than I found out she was from Amsterdam in the show. Oh well, I guess most foreign people think the whole of Holland consists of Amsterdam. But than she turned out to totally fit the prejudice that most Turkish people have about Western women. She is just a total evil biatch, cheating like a pro! Great image for us cloggies

Should we change the "Turkish Translations" tab to the "Sooree´s request" tab?

On the Dutch news it said that the roof had been destroyed, but it was a bit unclear on other damages. Can a local-reporter tell me the state of the building at the moment? I love that building.

 Yeah, that was the only part that actually surprised me a bit. Other news like "Berlusconi is a pompous *ss" is not really news, is it

I think it is impossible to know the first language of the world, because language existed before documentation of language. And also, what is language? Do grunts count if they can actually bring across a message?

You are not wrong to say that some people feel like this. If this is the majority is a question. The majority in my family was content when they died. The only person who I can´t say that about was one aunt who died very suddenly at a young age, so she wasn´t aware of what was happening.

I hope I will follow the example of my family, and be content with my life once it has reached it´s end. I don´t want to believe in heaven, simply because I´m unhappy with my life.

I used my grandfather as an example because you said something about old people all wanting to be young again and live more. In my experience (with my grandfather, but also his father, and other older people that I have watched) this is not always the case. Yes, there are older people who are like this. But people who are happy with what they have accomplished don´t want to go back in time.

I think a lot of what you say here is about unhappy people. The day my grandfather died he said he was proud of what he had done with his life, and he was ready to go. He was never a religious person, and he didn´t believe in god. He had a long life, he used it well, and he was done. Some people are happy with this, they don´t need to have more. He had raised his children well, all his grandchildren had also become adults with good jobs and happy lifes, and he even had wonderfull times with his great grandchildren. Perhaps it´s hard for some to believe, but he didn´t need the notion of heaven to be okay with the idea of death.

I don´t think "betting on God" is a win-win situation. Sometimes people use the idea of heaven to not do anything about making the world better today. They limit their good deeds to not creating a better world, but to getting "plus-points" on the scoreboard to heaven. Parying five times a day at home for plus-points, instead of going out in the real world and helping people... That is why I don´t count on the idea of heaven. If I would do that, I would accept all miserable things in life and not try to make them better. I would see life as a waiting room, instead of the wonder that it really is. I don´t want to live my life like that. I believe, if you get the best out of your life itself, you don´t need to believe in afterlife to be happy.