Apples and Pears

The reality behind people's reactions to Steve Jobs' death striked me when I read a friend's tweet, which can be summarized as, "I don't understand the whole fuss that is still going on about his death. Did he give out those Ipads and Iphones for free?" Some people may judge, but I think there was a sincere criticism in my friend's reaction. I believe that the same type of cynical perspective towards people's reactions could be observed in a humorous Onion article, which was titled: "Apple User Acting Like His Dad Just Died." or this photo which I found posted on my friend's wall and has a clear social message:

To be honest, when I logged into my Facebook account on the day of his death, and came to the realization (for it took me a while to actually understand from the status updates) that Steve Jobs died, I was incredibly sad. There was a knot in my throat and a feeling of incredulity in my head. Was the guy who invented the gadget, through which I was reading the news of his death, really dead? To me, it was mind-boggling. But as Jobs pointed out in his famous Stanford speech, death is a reality that awaits all of us, and he happened to arrive at this ultimate reality at a relatively young age than most others.

I did not tweet or update my facebook status with Steve Jobs related content. But I was so moved with the homepage of Apple that I decided to send an e-mail involving a little anecdote of me and my father at the Apple Store to rememberingsteve@apple.com. However, my not tweeting or not writing a status update does not matter b/c facebook and twitter has been overflowing with Steve Jobs related posts since his death. It's no debate that many young people idolize him and put him in the ranks of many great pioneers and scientists such as Da Vinci and Newton. They believe that Jobs is the genius of our generation which people years from now will talk about. I cannot say I disagree with these opinions. I do agree that Steve Jobs was the genius of our generation who brought great change to the way we use technology. But my friend's tweet I mentioned earlier had a point. And it separates Jobs distinctly from those inventors and pioneers that he is put in the ranks of.

I believe that aside from having an ingenious mind, Jobs had an analytical perspective into the human nature. We can discuss whether this was from his own observations or his experimentation with LSD, which he seemed to value highly, but he knew that being a genius was not enough, especially in the societal and economical conditions of the modern world. To be labelled as a genius by the millions, he knew he had to sell that genius. And this is what distinguishes him from Da Vinci, Newton, and such. If he had not marketed the idea that he was the great, revolutionary renegade behind Apple, we would not still be writing about him now. I am guessing that his death would have been greatly mourned, but he would not have been idolized to this extent. And this is the reason I also agree with my friend who wrote that cynical tweet on Jobs. Yes, he was brilliant. Yes, he was ingenious. But he is not a scientist or a thinker who left behind a free heritage of thought. And if we are mourning his death and making such an idol of him, why not pay our respects to those whose inventions or discoveries might not seem as tangible as Jobs' Iphone, but nevertheless will have a great impact on our thinking and living in the future?

nothingness

As I was sitting in my room one day, I thought of how everything around us is man-made. You might reply with: "Oh yes, obviously", but the way we surround ourselves with things, and even our eagerness to build and make things, and if not, buy things is to some extent actually crazy. It is with our eagerness to make and build things that we found civilizations. And almost all of us cherish the concept of civilization. But sometimes where civilization brings us, imho, a little too much. As someone who had to move things back and forth for 4 years, at some point I couldn't help but ask myself: "Do I really need this much stuff?" I moved to the US and I bought things to decorate my room and then I would move back home and  buy clothes and bring even more stuff back with me to the US. That meant I would have to carry even more stuff when I come back home to Istanbul. The burden of carrying all my stuff with me back and forth really made itself obvious when I had to go back home from England and I had almost 4 suitcases of stuff when I was only allowed to carry 2 with me. A few weeks before I was to move to Turkey from England I watched the movie 'Up in the Air' with my roommates and remembered how George Clooney's character gave seminars on how to own only a carry-on size bag much of stuff. To me, that's something impossible to accomplish. However, I am also now more careful not to clutter my life with stuff I don't necessarily need. Remember the aphorism by the charismatic Tyler Durden of Fight Club: "The things you own end up owning you." And to some extent, this is very true in our culture. Fashion and trendiness is all about making judgements about a person by evaluating what they wear. We also tend to feel an affinity towards people who shop from the same places as us, or wear similar clothes to what we wear and use similar gadgets to what we use. I'm not saying I don't engage in any of these behaviors, but when I realize that I do, I tend to come to the conclusion that it's quite unnecessary.

Before we started building and making things like we will never be satisfied, there was the nothingness of nature. I found a photography blog with some photos of 'nothingness'. And here are two that are my favorites. I like these two because there is nothing in them that are man-made (like roads, houses, etc.) and no artifacts.

Here is the link to the website where I found them, if you want to look at more photos: http://www.photographyblogger.net/29-pictures-of-nothingness/ Also, there is a little story, which I heard/read a couple times before, about a fisherman and a businessman on the website that makes a nice point for our work- and stuff-cluttered lives.

posing tomatoes

LGBT Walk in Istanbul

I've been meaning to post this throughout the week, but I didn't have time. Last week, when I was in Istiklal Caddesi I ran into the LGBT walk. Seeing that this news was not covered in many of the Turkish news websites, I decided to share some of the photos I took (luckily my camera was with me). The scene and the atmosphere was pretty colorful, as you can expect. So here are my photos:

some reactions of the people standing by to the participants in the walk

street tango

Something strange happened half an hour before the walk: I was at a bookstore and people rushed inside holding their hands to their noses. Some of the patrons started talking amongst each other and I heard that a pepper spray was dropped in the street. Some people claimed that the spray was an early reaction to the walk.

The day that stage performances have a breakthrough...

is the day that the clones of the singer jump on the stage with the singer and surprise the audience. By the end of the choreography no one will have any clue who the actual singer is...

Laughing Feet

An intricate work I made with my feet

LinkedIn

I have just completed my profile on LinkedIn and even though it seems  to me that there will not be much of a professional benefit from joining, I tried to be careful in how I presented myself on a professional website.

Networking seems easy on LinkedIn. That is... if you have some big names already saved in your e-mail address book. If not, trying to include someone in your network, or invite them to be your friend/ colleague/ however the professional jargon puts it, is quite difficult. I do not know if I missed this as I was getting used to the interface of the website; however, LinkedIn makes it very hard if you are adding people one by one by clicking the "Add 'this person' to my connection" on their profile. For example, I joined my high school group Robert College, and I wish to add some classmates. I go on the group's webpage and start adding people who I'm friends with. However, once you click to add that person, you have to indicate how you know them- which is totally fine because LinkedIn wants you to send invites to people that you really know; probably to avoid people, especially the very important people, from getting annoying invites from randos. Once you complete your invite, you are directed to a page that simply says: "Your invitation was sent successfully" with a checkmark beside it. But that's it. What if I want to add more people from that group? I have to annoyingly click the right number of Back buttons to navigate back to that page.  What if I am on my friend's contact list, and wish to add some mutual friends? I have to click the Back button (I think twice) again. Or I have to navigate to his page from the very start. Why doesn't LinkedIn put on the invite completion page a link back to the last contacts page s, i.e. a link that says, "Go back to Robert College's contacts" or "Go back to 'your friend's contacts".

I'm sorry if I'm venting about something that's already there. I tried to contact LinkedIn for help; however, their 'Contact Us' box was grey and I couldn't click on it... I guess I have to get one of their fancy upgrades for my unfancy, college-grad self to ask one simple question.

Farm Animals... yet again

Although I realized there is plenty of farm animal photos in my blog, I still would like to put these pictures up of these farm animals (mostly birds) my dad grows. It is still interesting to me that the faces of animals represent the different types of human personalities. In my opinion, many of the domestic birds, such as hens and turkeys, look mean. And bunnies look playful and cute. Maybe you will see what I'm talking about once you see the photos:

                                                            the council of mean chicks

                                                                  my bunny friend

                     

 Once he was a flimsy dude...                                       Now he's a real stud.

(On a side note, there is about 10 minutes between the first shot and the second shot of the turkey. Yes, it's the same turkey. But it's incredible how the physical appearance of the male turkey goes through a transformation as he gets ready to copulate with its female counterpart.)

                                           Behind every successful man, there is a wise woman.

Photos from Last Summer

Here are some photos from last summer I took with my sister when we decided we want to do our own photo shoot. It took place in the small vegetable garden my father has put together. We also have a small chicken coop, which I wanted to take advantage of as part of our exciting photo shoot.

My sister is wearing my mother's vintage blue jacket, which we found as we were going through the closet looking for things to throw away. She complemented it with a skirt from Topshop and shoes from Nine West. This is our extremely amateurish attempt at a fashion photo shoot, inspired by a rustic themed fashion spread I saw in one of the issues of Vogue which starred Emma Watson. So here are the photos:

I was thinking... Body Worlds

Yesterday I went to Body Worlds Exhibition at Antrepo 3 in Istanbul. As impressive as the whole process of plastination is, to me the exhibition felt like an advanced biology course in a single walk-around than a work of art. By saying this, I do not mean to underestimate the effort put into getting this exhibition together; however, I would assume the information that was given would already be known by people who have taken advanced biology and related courses in college (such as myself, therefore I'm being a prick about it). I would also assume that people who have studied such subjects in college would already have known the main idea of the exhibition: We are only temporarily present in this world; therefore, we should maximize our physical and mental potential by living healthy, exposing ourselves to limited stress and enjoying life as much as possible by making meaningful individuals of ourselves. However, most of the time test-taking is much easier than taking another step and applying our knowledge to practical life. Therefore, we eventually make stress-driven individuals of ourselves who live fast, feed fast, work long and sleep little (Refer to post "I was thinking... Jobs).


Although I just criticized the exhibition for being too much like an advanced bio course, I still enjoyed it. I especially liked the video at the end that explained how the plastination process worked and what Gunther von Hagens' motto in creation of this exhibition is. It simply said: "People push death to the backs of their minds in their daily life, thinking it won't happen to them." When I heard these words I let out a little "Yay!" inside (yes, I did, as morbid as that sounds.) Having just watched Mar Adentro by Alejandro Amenábar, I was thinking of life and existence (no, I'm not an emo.) and hearing these words by a respectable scientist felt as if it validated my assumptions about people's attitudes towards life and death. 


With the constant feed from religion and media in our daily lives, many of us are tricked into believing that there is in fact an afterlife, which gives us another chance to achieve and own all the great things we couldn't in our current lives (In most religions, it is not even a chance, you're directly given all the great things without a bargain.) But coming to terms with death shows us that in actuality, just like Javier Bardem's character in Mar Adentro bluntly states, there is nothing after death. We didn't know anything before we were born, we will know nothing after we die. So the title of the exhibition speaks for the life itself: This world is just Body Worlds. When your veins can no longer pump blood to your brain, and your heart stops beating, you are back to that state when you never were and never knew, which we ominously call 'death'. 

So the concept of spirit is just a remedy for your current soul; actually, it's more like a placebo.

I was thinking... Clothes

Recently I read an interview with Tom Ford, the ambitious and successful former designer of the fashion house Gucci and YSL creative director. One statement that he made in the interview really caught my attention. When the interviewer brought up the topic of sex, he said (translated by me, I read the interview in Turkish): "I hate talking about sex. The thing is: People look so much better when they are naked. They are all the same color, and there is almost no fault in how they are built. You see somebody at the gym [changing room] and he looks amazing. But then he puts some clothes on..." (trailing off to disappointment, I guess?). I thought it was very ironic that such an influential fashion designer actually thinks and asserts that nudity is more sensual than being clothed.  When I first read Ford's words, I thought to myself, "If he is the one to say this, then hell with clothes. Why do we even bother?" And many other skeptic and insubordinate thoughts on how we are forced to behave a certain way by the society, the nudity of undeveloped and obscure societies, and so on rushed to my head. But when you ask most people, they would prefer some coverage over to being fully naked (and thus the money flow to brands like Agent Provocateur, Victoria's Secret and Calvin Klein). Some would even argue that complete nudity is quite unattractive. I'd argue that there is perhaps something carnal about being butt-naked, but then it hit me that our lives are structured so that we do not behave like animals. We wear clothes because we love the tease. All the paths to arousal and the satisfied cessation of arousal are structured into fun little social games (but I'd say in most cases, dramatic and unnecessary). So although Mr. Ford's words seem to denote that clothes are an impediment against what's natural and what we all secretly want to happen eventually, they also miss the point: Clothes are essential to the mating game of humans. Otherwise we'd be no different from rabbits.

But what do I know? When I was reading the wiki excerpt on Tom Ford, I came across the link of his long-time boyfriend Richard Buckley, and I have to say, I was utterly disappointed. Maybe Tom and I look for different things when we see somebody naked...

Everybody Loves Brighton

The title is the feeling I had when I lived in England for the short duration of 6 months. Everybody in England, at least the people I met, loved Brighton. They called it "sunny Brighton" or just "the beach". Wikipedia calls it the "gay capital of Europe", and it is also very well-known for its edgy population, most of which knows no boundaries in clothing, hair and make-up. I personally think Brighton is a heaven for hedonist, music-loving bohemians, and elderly people who are happy to live with younger, colorful personalities. I came to love this small city located in southern England by the English Channel as I was doing my photography project, from which I posted photos before. But I found another bunch that I liked and had edited. So here they are:

some pub at the North Laines

some street art in the North Laines

some street

Street musicians are abundant in Brighton, especially in the North Laines. And they are very friendly performers, interacting with the passers-by and maybe having a beer or two along the way.

Sometimes people noticed my semi-voyeuristic scrutiny and asked me with their eyes what the hell I was doing as I stood there directing the camera at them.

The best thing about Brighton is that on a cold spring night you can walk down the street beside a musician who is playing his guitar as the stores roll down their shutters. And whoever is left on the streets either hurry home or to the nearest pub.

And he said to him: "Let's loot this place."

I was thinking... Jobs

After struggling for weeks trying to write my thesis, once I was done with it, I lapsed into thinking nothing. My brain was free; no worries for the next day, no deadlines, no meetings, no more running participants and adjusting your schedule for the day according to them. And I enjoyed my new-found liberation by doing mundane things, such as riding the bus, doing my laundry, packing my suitcases (although I should say that was still a 4/10 on the stressful scale), watching shows online and reading. Nevertheless, I relapsed into thinking again at some point, but this time it was borderline philosophical: It wasn't about what I had to do in the next few hours, but in general what my life would be or could be like in the future.

Estimating from my performance and stress level scale in the past 2 months, the future is nowhere near a fun party, but rather a life-long performance that mostly asks you to sit on your ass and stare at pixels on something-inch rectangular frames. When you're in standing position, you mostly have to walk in anxious, hurried steps to wherever you have to make it, on time. Or stand in desperation in public transportation. Or if you've sat on your ass enough to afford the luxury, then ride in a fancy car, stuck in terrible traffic.

Well it's no wonder why we work our asses off: money. The strongest secondary reinforcer of our lives that enables us to buy all the other reinforcers that we want and need. I am in no position to cast doubt on the importance of money, but my wanderings were more about what usually is associated with money: jobs.

When you're born, your parents give you a name, and everybody usually calls you that. Or you might have a nickname, same thing. Basically, you are just a name. When people describe you, they say your name and they might also say something about how you look and your character. Perhaps these times when you're just a name (usually between the ages of 0-7) is when you're a person in your purest form, physically, mentally, emotionally (as we know and assume), (but) even occupationally. Because once you turn 7 and you are sent to primary school, perhaps the first innocent step towards a lifelong (literally) working, or even maybe for some, suffering is taken. Because once after you turn 7, you cannot just be a name; you will always strive to be something else, other than just your simple name. (Of course, for some this might start a little earlier or later, but it starts for everyone at some point.)

This fight for an occupation, status or position, whatever you call it is so fierce and demanding that the society even has a title for those who do not care to have a title. You could be an "unemployed Alfie", "homeless Harry" or "stay-home Stan". But you can never simply feel proud of all the good adjectives that meant so much as you were growing up. Being just (the good-old) "good Gaby" does not earn you applause anymore, you'd rather be the "good housewife Gaby" or  maybe "sweet stewardess Sally". It is also incredible to me that we are pulled into this competition, which underestimates our simple name and identity, so discreetly; we never question its necessity, and for those that do we do have a not-so-coveted -ist title: anarchist.

And many a times, having as many of these new shiny titles as possible is associated with money and fame. Think of the times you wikied a person and they were: a singer, recording artist, designer, writer, entrepreneur and an actress (i.e. Madonna) and you let out a little "Wow!" at how that person manages to do it all. There is a reason you wiki that person, they are probably rich and/or famous. But I also wonder if these people actually do have a life, a time when they are free to do anything with no worry about the next day. Of course in the case of some very famous people, it is those people around them who do all the planning and the menial stuff. But for most of us, our work is simply our life and even a significant part of our identity.

I came to think about all this after having read the wikipedia excerpt on Mila Kunis. In explaining why she quit That '70s Show, she mentioned: "[I had] and epiphany. I decided I wasn't going to take my career so seriously and make my job who I am. I just want to be happy with my life." The majority of us let work take over our lives and define who we are. And we accept sleep-depriving, hair-whitening stress as a normal factor of work life. Some of us are even so consumed by work that when given free time for a quite a long stretch of period, we do not know what to do with ourselves.

Should the shiny occupational label be as core to our identity as we make it and take it to be?

Marrakesh (1)

It feels as if it's been ages since I've been to Marrakesh, when it has only been 2.5 months. When I was there, I already started writing a blog entry, but then at some point I felt too impatient and restless to write because of all the things I could have been experiencing instead of writing. But I never forgot Marrakesh, and it still keeps its place as the most unique place I visited during the Spring Break travels.

We flew from Madrid to Marrakesh in the morning, mostly uncomfortably sleeping on the plane. We landed, got out of the plane to be welcomed by a two story airport mostly made of white concrete and red bricks, simple, but still reflecting the semi-modern, semi-palace-like Moroccan architecture. Another welcomer was the distinct heat that seeped us in itself like a vacuum. I was ecstatic feeling the hot temperature; although Spain was warm, it wasn't summery hot and after months in England, one yearns for the hot weather. We went through the passport control, picked up our luggage and hurried for our first adventure in Marrakesh: haggling with the cab drivers. What basically happens is you get out of the airport, trying to look cool and indifferent to the cab-men (I don't think all of them drive the cabs, some of them are sort of like 'cab-pimps', trying to get you to take the cab they own.), but however cool you're trying to look, they know that you're a tourist and they know that you're dying to get a cab to wherever you will go to save yourself from melting in the hot weather and make it to cooler temperatures in which human metabolism can survive. So they approach you, "Take this cab, madam." and you ask, "How much?", "Three hundred dirhems!" (approximately 30 euros) and you know that's way too high a price, and having read many forums on taking cabs in Marrakesh, you say "No." They object to your objection, saying things like, "Well, that's the price, I can't go any lower. It's actually 500 dirhems (no, it's not.)." So you walk away, not knowing where you're actually going, or even if you will find another cab-pimp, but it's a part of haggling, so you do. They finally ask, "What's your price?" and although you sort of know what to say from the forums you've read, you're still hesitant, because what if you say a lower price and they do accept? But you still play it safe, because you know.. you're actually dying to get a cab- the thought of cool sheets in your bed, the mint tea and hookah they serve at the hostel (you've read about this in the hostel reviews, too.), a cold shower... And you say your final price, "200 dirhems." The cab driver stops in astonishment. He has that look in his eyes that says, "How can you even think of that?" for a split second, but then he reaches his hand for you to shake it; it's a deal.

African Pneus, which we ran into quite often.

If your accommodation is in the old city part of Marrakesh, then your cab stops at Aragana Cafe. From there, our host from the hostel, Ali, picked us up and we walked to the hostel, which was not that far away. The hostel, La Casa del Sol, was the nicest place we stayed during our travels. Sipping delicious mint tea and learning about how we should act in the old city, we payed our hostel fees. That first night, after we came back from a traditional meal at  Djemaa el Fna, the main square in Marrakesh, we went upstairs to the terrace and smoked hookah in the calm, warm night of Marrakesh.

Old men conversing at Djemaa el Fna

The things you see in Djemaa el Fna do not just surprise, but fascinate you. It is a fusion of the unexpected and the outrageous, with snake charmers and musicians, story-tellers and fortune-tellers, food-sellers and tricksters. At around 8'o clock, the square lures you in with the smoke coming from the kebabs grilled at the portable food stands. You take a step towards one of them and a guy dressed in a white jacket like a lab coat starts cracking jokes at you: "Come on skinny, eat at my food stand." You walk away and hear him call, "Twiggy, slender, skinny, slim, scrawny! Why are you leaving? Eat here!" behind your back. The mere fact that he knows so many synonyms of 'slim' cracks you up and you walk back to that food stand, smiling. He shouts in absolute joy, "You're back! You won't regret eating here. The bread is free. We have the best food. All the food stands charge the same, but it's about quality. This is where all the Moroccans eat." So you sit down and order from the menu in which the most costly food is 70 dirhems (7 euros). Of course, you read online that people get food poisoned in Marrakesh, and their whole trip gets ruined. But you see other people, Moroccans too, dipping their bread in the juice of the Tagine and you ask yourself rhetorically, "Why not?" The food looks delicious, although the conditions don't seem all that sanitary... Eek.

I personally never got sick in Marrakesh, although we ate at the portable food stalls every night. And also I never came across malicious cat-calling (although when it was only me and Sharon walking around without Ben we heard more "Nice ass!"es and "Sexy!"s.) In that sense, my fears about what we would experience in Morocco turned out to be much better than what I expected. The people are a little xenophobic towards Americans and it's much easier to negotiate and become friends with them if you can speak French. Nevertheless, the variety of the languages the Moroccans can speak amazes you. Anyone we met could speak Arabic, French and English fluently. Many street-vendors also can speak Spanish and they also can welcome people in Japanese (we know this because Sharon is Korean, but people thought she was Japanese and we heard "Konnichiwa"s screamed at us quite often.) Also, if you yourself greet people and thank them in Arabic, it definitely earns you some friendly tourist points. I personally even played the Muslim card in several occasions, and although it helped quite often, it didn't prevent my getting ripped off when buying a pair of silky shalvar trousers (which I blissfully show off below).

Me at the Madrasah

Love Triangle at "Au Rendevous des Amis"

Having mentioned Kiki de Montparnasse, I just remembered this little story of three people of whose entangled little love story we just happen to share at a cafe in Paris. Not having anything else better to do, Ben and I were playing chess at this little cafe, (preciously) called Au Rendevous des Amis while sharing a jug of beer. There were groups of people occupying the other tables, but most particularly two girls and a guy were sitting at a table right next to us on my left. The guy and one of the girls, the red, curly haired one, were sitting next to each other and were acting like a couple, kissing an cuddling now and then, and at times engaging in lively conversation with the blonde-haired girl (who Ben and I thought was the prettier one). The guy was wearing a black turtleneck, which Ben thought was very French of him; I thought it added to his later-to-be-more-evident suaveness.

The blonde girl seemed quite drunk, kneeling towards the guy and saying stuff in French, then switching to English and Dutch at times with the red-haired girl. At some point, she stumbled out of the bar, most probably to have a cigarette. With her fortunate absence, the couple started making out passionately. At this point nothing is wrong, and it's not like we're watching the couple make out you know, it just happens to be in our visual periphery while we were playing an absolutely fun game of chess, which I was shamefully losing.

So after a while the blonde girl came back, the couple stopped making out, and for some reason this time the red-haired girl decided to leave, I'm assuming to have a cigarette(?). All the while the suave French guy didn't move, he surprisingly didn't need any cigarette breaks (although he's French-stereotyping? yes.), and thus he became the very vertex of a feisty love triangle. During her friend's absence the blonde girl started flirting with the guy, kneeling towards him in drunken demeanor, mumbling stuff, which in my imagination was something like: "I'm so jealous, I can't stand the way you are so cuddly in front of me with her." And the French guy replied: "Oh, don't worry, you're always on my mind. She just happens to be my girlfriend at the moment." And boom! All of a sudden they started making out like there's no other. At this point, their table was not the bewildered focus of only our table, but of the table next to us, and of the other standers-by at the bar. The new couple went on and on, until three minutes prior to the red-haired girl showing up, who was completely oblivious to the betrayal that's going, literally, behind her back.

The red-haired girl took her place next to her supposed boyfriend and without any words spoken they start kissing. The whole thing became even more strange when the blonde-haired girl started sleeping on the table with her head covered between her arms, and the couple continued making out as if she did not even exist. Not paying attention to the apparent misery of the blonde-haired girl, the couple went on and on for about ten minutes. Finally, prodded by some conscience, the red-haired girl asked her friend if she was okay, to which her friend curtly replied, "I'm fine." Not satisfied with her friend's half-hearted answer, the red-haired girl urged her boyfriend that it's in fact time to go. They left the cafe, the red-haired girl holding her boyfriend's hand, and the latter holding the blondie's hand. And as I watched them leave, I wondered if the whole thing- the longer than necessary cigarette breaks, the turtleneck guy never leaving the table- was actually a little plan with more unscrupulous and perhaps more scandalous intentions on the girls' part.