“Curious Souls Get Together” – 9th Meeting:

Dear Friends,

On February 9,2014, Sunday, we met again at Art350 Gallery&Bar on the Anatolian side of Istanbul.

As you know, the venue is a magical place and we were surrounded by the paintings of artists Görkem Dikel and Emre Doğrusöz. Just have a look at these dance of colors:

We started our meeting by watching a very interesting and enjoyable talk of David Binder on “The arts festival revolution.” This talk was fastinating as David Binder, who is a Broadway producer gave us examples of festivals that broke the boundaries between audience and performer and that “transformed cities into communities.”

Please click on the photo to watch this talk:

My good friend Zeynep Kunt moderated our discussions on this talk. As I know Zeynep since many years and observe her interest and enthusiasm in cultaral and artistic events, I thought that it would be fantastic if Zeynep moderated our discussions. Well, I was not wrong at all! Her intelligent and interesting questions, coupled with her enthusiasm, made discussion a very enjoyable one. I would like to thank Zeynep very much for her hard work and contribution.

The second talk we watched was an extraordinarily beautiful talk of a 17 year old boy called Sam Berns with the title: “My philosophy for a happy life”. He is the victim of a genetic disorder called “progeria” that results in rapid and premature aging. It effects only 1 out of 4.5 million birhs and there are approximately 350 children in the world that has this disease.

In this beautiful talk, Sam talks about his life, gives us examples of how he deals with progeria, mentiones the documentary that was prepared about his life and he he shares with us his secrets for a happy life.

Sam summarises his philosophy as follows:

1. “Be ok with what you ultimately can’t do, because there is so much you CAN do.”
2. Surround yourself with people that want to be around with.
3.Have a forward thinking state of mind. Always have something in your life to look forward to.
4. Never miss a party if you can help it 🙂

Please click on the photo to watch this talk:

Unfortunately, we were very sorry to learn that Sam passed away about a month ago on January 10,2014 :-(. At his death, he was planning to apply to colleage where he hoped to study genetics or cell biology. See what New York Times wrote about him upon his death.

I would like to acknowledge that Sam, despite his brief presence in our world, was a great inspiration to millions (look at the inspiration he gave us at our Curious Souls meeting). I would like to express our heartfelt condolences to his family and the ones who loved him. Rest in peace, dear Sam!

The third talk we watched was an entertaining talk of Amy Webb with the title: “How I hacked web dating” It was interesting to follow how Amy -with full dedication and determination – searched for his soul mate. Watch this talk to see if she succeeded 🙂

Please click on the photo to watch the video:

As you can guess, our discussions on this talk was extremely entertaining! Among all the laughter, there were some lessons to be learned as well! My dear friend Petek Uner volunteered to moderated this talk. She was so open and connected with us so well by sharing her own personal thoughts that we all felt very connected and started sharing our own point of views as well. I would like to thank Petek very much for her volunteering.

During our discussions, we talked about the importance of finding a life partner, why it was becoming more and more difficult, how men and women viewed this issue and what could be some lessons to be drawn from this talk. Evidently, we were not able to bring solutions to the issue, yet we agreed that it might be an interesting idea to read -with an open mind- a book like “Dating for Dummies” and discuss it together :-))

The final talk that we watched was quite an entertaining one of Reggie Watts with the title “Beats that defy boxes.” However, we could not comprehend what he was saying- nor could anybody at TED 🙂 No wonder this talk is rated as the wierdest, strangest talk in the history of TED.

Please click on the picture to watch this talk:

With this talk, we ended another interesting “Curious Souls Get Together” meeting.

As usual, together with the ones that joined us, we continued the evening with a lively dinner at Kirpi reastaurant. We had no reseration and we had to sequeze around a table; but none of us complained. Our meeting brought us all so close together that simply we disregarded all imperfections.