Critical Mass

On the last Friday of every month, people organize an event in every major city called a Critical Mass. It's a group of people, anywhere from a couple dozen to several thousand, that take over the city streets on their bicycles. They stop traffic and ride around the city in order to raise awareness for bicycling. Since I'm selling my car soon and getting more and more into biking, I decided to participate in Atlanta's Critical Mass with a couple friends. 

The Atlanta CM website said that they start meeting at 6pm at Woodruff park, which is right smack in the middle of downtown Atlanta. We headed down there from campus right around 6 and waited for about 30 minutes as bikers poured in from all directions. It was a beautiful day and the park had a celebratory atmosphere. By 6:45, there were several hundred bikers of all different shapes and sizes scattered around the park. I noticed so many different kinds of people: young, old, gay, straight, black, white, asian..even a guy riding a GIANT purple unicycle. Not to mention I got a chance to meet a local celebrity (sorta): Angel Poventud. And yes, he was wearing the same green dress that he's wearing in that picture.

The guy in the green dress yelled out "MASS UP!" and everyone got together and started biking. We rode the length of Peachtree Street from downtown to the south edge of Buckhead, through Tech's campus, up to Piedmont Park and through Virginia Highlands, and ended up in Little 5 Points. I felt like I was involved in a giant celebration of Fridays and Bicycles. Wherever we rode, people came out of their houses and restaurants and waved to us. The frat houses at Tech held up a sign that said something like 'You honk and we drink'. And even though we didn't have horns, I still saw them drink a lot of beer. Even drivers didn't seem that upset that we blocked up traffic along some of the busiest roads in Atlanta. Most of them just had a confused look on their faces. It's not every day that you see hundreds of bicyclists riding down Peachtree Street. 

I can see how a lot of people dislike the idea of a Critical Mass. It's a great idea to promote bicycles and to make Atlanta a more bike-friendly city, but it seems like CM might give cyclists a negative image around the city because we were blatantly violating traffic signals. It might not be a great thing if it happened more than once a month, but I'm all in favor for designating one day for the cyclists to take over the streets and not have to worry about the constant threat of cars. It seemed like the police were pretty supportive, or at least neutral, to the whole event because I didn't notice a large presence anywhere along the route. I look at the whole thing as a celebration and not a protest. And I'm all for celebrations.

I overheard one of the other bikers saying that being involved in CM is like turning Atlanta into a giant park. We had the ability to bike down some roads that I would never even dream of biking down because of the ridiculous traffic flow. We got the chance to see the city in a way that I've never seen it before. I felt like I was actually a part of a community because I wasn't shut away from the rest of the world in a car. I'm free to see all the people and places that make Atlanta such a unique city. Hopefully more people become involved in it in the future and our numbers grow from several hundred to several thousand. Can't wait until Critical Mass next month!

Two Sides of Atlanta

I went on a bike ride today through the Midtown/Virginia Highlands part of Atlanta. A lot of people might not think of it as the most bike-friendly city, but parts of it are actually pretty good. When you first drive into the city on one of the highways, it looks like a sprawling mess of roads and skyscrapers. It has some of the widest and most congested roads I've ever seen in my life.You can be driving on an 18-lane highway at midnight and traffic will still get backed up. How the hell does that happen? Most of the time, people can't even walk to the grocery store. The public transportation system is sparse considering the population of the metro area. Downtown is so spread out that it doesn't even really feel like a downtown. Buckhead is so far away that it looks like a separate city. It's been rated as one of the most wasteful cities in the country. This is the image of Atlanta a lot of people have. But I'm starting to see a separate side to Atlanta that makes me very hopeful.

The neighborhoods in Midtown and VA Highlands are a great start. They're mostly small houses with little gardens on tree-lined streets, right in the middle of Atlanta. When I was biking, I felt like I was transported back in time. I saw things that you don't see much in most suburbs. Almost no cars on the streets, people walking around and biking, neighbors visiting each other, and even some little markets advertising their ice cold Cokes and old-fashioned coin laundries. All within walking/biking distance of the shops, restaurants, and office buildings of Midtown. Not to mention Piedmont park, where there's lots of space for people to take a break from the city.

A lot of condos and apartment buildings have been coming up along Peachtree street and Atlantic Station. People that live there can use MARTA, work nearby, and walk or bike almost everywhere they need to go. This is the way a city should be. There's high income housing, middle income, and lower income housing. If you live at Atlantic Station, you can go almost anywhere you want without the need for a car. There's a movie theater, grocery store, restaurants, office buildings, gym, and almost everything else within walking distance. And if it's not close by, the shuttle takes you to the nearby Arts Center MARTA station. It's the opposite of the suburban sprawl that's been eating up the entire metro area and a model of how a community should be designed.

I guess it's kind of ironic that I'm so against the idea of suburban sprawl since I grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh. Being under the age of 16, there's no way to get around unless someone drives you around in his or her car. To me, the idea that I need a car to get anywhere is kind of ridiculous. That's simply not how cities should be designed. The suburbs were created as a way for people to escape the poverty and problems of the city. If there's a problem in the city, it doesn't mean that all the rich people should run away from it and have a nice house with a two-car garage while other people are suffering. They should come together and help the less fortunate people. It's too bad that this is just the way it works in America. I could go on about this, but it can wait until another post.

Back to Atlanta. Besides the new housing thats sprouting up all over the city, there are a lot of new initiatives to make it a more sustainable and people-friendly place. A couple weeks ago, the Freshman Council at Georgia Tech organized a "blackout party" in honor of Earth Hour. I was really surprised to hear that our city councilman Kwanza Hall was going to show up and talk to us. I didn't get a chance to meet and talk with him, but I really like that he showed us so much support by coming out to an event and talking to the students.

It really seems like Atlanta is committed to making itself a better and more progressive city. Every new building in both the city and on campus has to be LEED silver certified. There can't be a net loss of trees from this point on within the city limits. Downtown is aiming to be a 'zero waste' zone. The beltline initiative is gaining momentum and support from both citizens and congress. Suburban sprawl is slowing and more people are moving back to the city. Mayor Shirley Franklin is going to hire 200 new policemen. There will be an electric streetcar running up and down Peachtree Street. Georgia Tech will be reducing its energy usage by at least 15% by 2020. Trees Atlanta and other NPOs seem to be gaining more and more support by the day. Car sharing programs like ZipCar are making it possible to not own a car and still live in Atlanta, and bike lanes are popping up everywhere.

It's still no Portland or New York, but there's much more to Atlanta than meets the eye.

Costa Rica

I was lucky enough to go to Costa Rica with my family over spring break. We stayed in the capital, San Jose, but we ended up seeing a pretty big portion of the country by taking day trips. At first I didn't really know what to expect through these trips since they were arranged by a small travel agency in our hotel. I really didn't want to be those tourists who go around in a bus, get out for 5 minutes at a time, take lots of pictures, and continue on our way. 

Instead, I thought we should just go to the main bus terminal in San Jose, pick a place and visit on our own without any guides or anything. But now when I look back on it, I'm really glad we did a bunch of guided tours because we learned so much about the country and got to do some things that we never would've had a chance to do otherwise. Plus the only spanish I really know is what I learned in 11th grade, so I can basically just count to 20 and say the alphabet. 

I was going to meet my parents in Charlotte and fly straight from there, but we ended up in a little predicament with the airline. What is it with airlines? I think they all have a grudge against me. We ended up staying overnight in Charlotte and leaving the next day. It really surprised me that the flight from Charlotte to San Jose is only 4 and a half hours long. That's almost nothing! I was expecting something more like 6 or 7 hours. 

Tuesday, March 17th:  We got to San Jose in the afternoon and didn't really have time to do much except go downtown and walk around the city. It had a really nice downtown area that was really pedestrian friendly. There were lots of tourists walking around intermingled with all the "Ticos", which is a nickname for people from Costa Rica. Even though the downtown is small, the city is enormous and very sprawled out just like most US cities, and traffic there was terrible. I thought Atlanta traffic was bad..it doesn't even compare to San Jose. We ate dinner at a small restaurant downtown that someone at the hotel recommended. I had my first taste of fried plantains there. They serve them with every meal in Costa Rica and they're incredible.

Wednesday, March 18th: We decided to go on a big day tour on Wednesday. It seemed like we did so much that there wasn't a moment of resting. But I really got to see the landscape and the people of the country, even though we were going everywhere in a mini-bus with a tour guide. The first thing we did was go up to the top of a volcano called Volcan Irazu in the Central region of the country. Apparently if you get there early enough before the clouds get really thick, you can see the Pacific and the Caribbean from the peak of the volcano. We ended up getting to the top around 11:30am after picking up lots of other tourists that were staying all over San Jose and eating breakfast at a small restaurant on the way up the mountain. This particular volcano had a road that winded all the way up to the peak, which is about 12,000 feet above sea level. I thought we were going to die a few times because they don't really use guard rails in Costa Rica, but our bus driver was great. The tour guide Victor did a great job of explaining to us the history of the still active volcano. Of course I took lots of pictures from the top of the volcano and some of them actually turned out really good. Unfortunately there was a lot of cloud cover so we couldn't really see much past the mountain except for the peaks of a few other mountains. But it was still incredible to be so high up and looking down at the clouds and everything else.

After the volcano, we traveled north through the rainforest for a boat tour of a river called Rio Saripiqui. Costa Rica does an incredible job of protecting its land and it seemed like every hour or so we were driving through another enormous national park. It's really incredible how the scenery, weather, and landscape changes in Costa Rica. It seems like every possible type of ecosystem is packed into this country that's not even as big as West Virginia. It went from being dry, warm, and sunny in the central valley to being incredible humid, rainy, and even a little chilly in the rainforest. I heard Victor talk about how 6% of the world's biodiversity is in Costa Rica. It may not seem like much, but he compared it to 3% in Brazil, which contains the Amazon Rainforest. We made it through the rainforest, stopped and got some snacks, and got in our little boat, which Victor nicknamed "The Titanic". It held about 20 people. I decided I like the Costa Rican sense of humor.

We traveled north along the river for about an hour and a half, almost to the Nicaraguan border. We would stop about every quarter of a mile and Victor would point out various plants, animals, and birds. At one point we stopped and he said, "on the right you will see two homo sapiens fishing. They are really rare around here." Victor was the man. When they decided to stop the boat, I knew they saw an animal that they wanted to show us, but I could never see it until they actually pointed it out. At one point we stopped under a giant tree and Victor pointed to some small black shapes high up in the branches. He said that they were howler monkeys, and as the captain turned the boat's motor back on with a rumble, the howler monkeys responded with one of most unique sounds I've ever heard. It was incredible. We saw a lot of other animals, including bats hanging from a tree trunk, some ducks, more homo sapiens, an iguana, a blue heron, and a couple crocodiles.

Thursday March 19th: We were exhausted from our day trip on Wednesday. We decided to go on a tour of a coffee plantation, since Costa Rica is so famous for its coffee. The place that we went to is the packaging and roasting center for a company called Britt Coffee. If you go to the San Jose airport, you'll know how big of a deal they are since every store in the airport is a Britt store. 

The plant was about 15 minutes from our hotel, just north of San Jose. They had a small field of coffee plants just outside and two tour guides took us through the fields and explained the entire process to us. They told us that coffee plants can produce fruit (coffee comes from a fruit!) for up to 30 years. I thought it was really exciting to hear how committed they were to waste reduction, organic coffee production, and overall sustainability. They don't use any man-made chemicals and pesticides on the coffee plants. This prevents chemicals from seeping into the ground and ending up as run-off into streams and rivers, and eventually the ocean. Also, it's much healthier for the workers, since coffee has to be picked by hand. Also, they use all of the remnants of the processed coffee fruit as compost for the fields. As one of the tour guides put it, they mix it with "chicken shit" first.

It's crazy how much the coffee fruit has to be processed before it can actually be used. Once the fruit is skinned and processed enough to get to the coffee bean that we know inside, the beans have to be dried on a giant patio and constantly raked by workers. After that, they take it to a roasting oven where it's roasted for a different amount of time depending on what type of coffee it is. I also learned how to make espresso and cappuccino at the end of our tour. The people at Britt were really friendly and knew just about everything that you would want to know about coffee.  

Friday, March 20th: This was our last full day in Costa Rica. It seemed like the only part of the country that we hadn't seen was the coast, so we scheduled a boat tour to an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean called Isla Tortuga. Even though the island is a big tourist attraction, it wasn't that crowded and it was still in beautiful condition. A bus picked us up from our hotel and we headed out to the pacific coast while stopping about halfway for a delicious breakfast of rice and beans, scrambled eggs, some cheese, and of course fried plantains. 

The boat was pretty large and the crew even played some music for us. I got a chance to meet some really interesting people from all over the place. Of course there were a lot of Americans but I also got to meet a couple Costa Ricans that were on the tour as well. When we got close to the island, most of the young people separated from everyone else and went snorkeling. The water was incredibly clear and a couple of the tour guides came with us. I really appreciated them coming because every few minutes they would swim to the ocean floor and pick up some new and interesting creature to show us. They pulled up a couple different types of starfish, a sea cucumber, and even an octopus! The water was really clear, which I wasn't expecting at all since it was in the pacific ocean. 

Saturday, April 21: Our vacation came to an end on Saturday. I was definitely not ready to leave Costa Rica. I'm really thankful that I got the opportunity to see such a great country. The thing that I liked most about Costa Rica is the beautiful scenery and national parks. It seems like the country is making a real effort towards conservation. During the dry season, the entire country is powered by renewable energy and it seemed like most people are pretty environmentally aware. Since it doesn't have an army, it invests that money into healthcare and education which I think are two of the best possible uses for government money. What a great place.

Powershift 09

This past weekend I took a break from the academic rigors of Georgia Tech and attended a summit in Washington DC called PowerShift 09. It was an environmental summit for college students across the country, and it turns out that over 12,000 people showed up for this event. I think the main purpose of the summit was to deliver the message of climate and clean energy policy to the lawmakers in DC, but the lobby on Capitol Hill was on Monday and I had to get back to classes before that. I still learned so much and got some great ideas of ways to organize my fellow students and follow through on environmental campaigns that we believe in.

All in all, it was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. I got to meet some really interesting people and learn about environmental issues. The summit was set up as a series of panels and workshops on Saturday and Sunday, along with a graduate school/opportunities fair and individual state break-outs to let students from each state communicate with each other. Also there was a concert Saturday night with the Roots and London Soul, which was incredible since the Roots are one of my favorite hip-hop groups.

We also ran into an enormous snowstorm on the 10 hour drive back from DC, so we had to stay in a little motel just south of Charlotte. I ended up missing every one of my classes on Monday, but I'd say it was worth it since we ended up in 7 inches of snow, making a huge snow woman, and getting in a snowball fight with some random people in the parking lot.

Here are some pictures from the weekend. You can click on them for a bigger version.

The Road to DC

I'm excited for Powershift

We found a delicious kebab place in China Town, but it had no sitting room. So we settled for a stoop outside

Dinner and some beers before the Roots concert

The Roots!

The crowd went outside after the concert

A cool photo of a party that we went to Saturday night

This is a pretty rare sight..a Waffle House sign in a snowy landscape

This is our snow woman

Grey's car was covered in snow

AirTran

AirTran is by far the worst airline I've ever had to deal with. Here's a copy of the letter I sent them, for your viewing pleasure. It tells the story of what I had to deal with a couple days ago, so I don't have to explain on here.

I am writing to file a complain about my recent experience with AirTran. Being a college student, I am a frequent user of the AirTran U standby program. On January 4th, I went to the Pittsburgh airport at about 8:00 am to fly standby on a flight at 10:38am from Pittsburgh to Atlanta. Being a frequent flyer, I checked just before I left for the airport and saw that the flight had eight available seats. The check-in agent was very friendly and attempted to check us in for the standby program. When he realized it was not working, he got in touch with his manager, who informed him that the AirTran U program does not exist anymore. We politely told the employee that the website had not changed recently, and I could still link to the separate AirTran U website from the main AirTran.com page. Afterwards, I attempted to call 1-800-AirTran about four or five times; each time, the automated call system hung up on me. 

I informed the agent about my difficulties and asked if I could speak to his manager. However, he could not get in touch with the manager and asked us to wait for a little while. After about 45 minutes of waiting, the manager, Bryan Sharky, finally showed up. Mr. Sharky treated us with utter disrespect and contempt. His only words were "The AirTran U program is over," and he turned away dismissively. While it says on the website that the last day to fly is December 15 2008, it says nothing about the state of the program in 2009 and beyond. Also, from the AirTran U website, one can click on a link that says "Destinations" for a map of cities that AirTran services. Directly under the map, it says "Effective March 7, 2009. Routes and schedules are subject to change without notice." This makes it seem like the Air Tran U program will still be available in 2009.

I showed the website to Mr. Sharky and told him about the ambiguity of it, but he told us that there was nothing he could do. He could not even give us a discounted fare to make up for our troubles. Also, he blatantly lied to our faces by saying all of AirTran's flights to Atlanta were overbooked for the day. Apparently, we had no chance of getting on a flight that day, even though the employee told us just a short time before that there were plenty of seats on the 10:38 flight. Either Mr. Sharky was completely misinformed, which is inexcusable for the general manager, or he lied to our faces. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Sharky tried to sell us tickets on a later flight to Atlanta for an exorbitant amount of money, although just seconds before, he claimed that every flight was overbooked. Needless to say, I booked a flight with another airline that offered a much more reasonable price than AirTran.

I have dealt with AirTran many times before and had decent experiences. Mr. Sharky showed us that your company has some extremely rude and contemptuous employees. I was extremely frustrated with the whole experience, and the terrible customer service deeply disturbed me and caused a great deal of unnecessary stress. If the AirTran U program really no longer exists, please make it more clear to your customers on the website. I would recommend some large print across the front page that says "AirTran U Program is no longer available." Also, please remove it from the list of programs which is accessible from the main AirTran site. It would have saved me a great deal of time and money if you had done this a long time ago, since my entire trip was planned on the basis of AirTran U. Thank you for your time, and I really hope that this type of experience never happens again to me or any other traveler.

Food

It amazes me how much my outlook on food has changed throughout the years. Years ago, I would consume meat (except pork) at every opportunity. I loved getting a huge steak and baked potato at Outback and devouring all of it. Nowadays, I can honestly say that I don't even crave beef or steak anymore. It's funny how I used to tease my sister for being a vegetarian and an environmentalist, and while I would definitely consider myself the latter now, I can see myself getting closer and closer to the former. Maybe the two go hand in hand--while my first instinct is to admit that environmentalism and vegetarianism (even veganism) are directly related, I realize that it is debatable and can depend on a variety of scenarios.

Nowadays I find myself eating vegetarian whenever possible. I realize that my days as a consumer of the products from an unsustainable factory farm system are numbered, but I find it very difficult to stop immediately. A gradual decline seems like a much better option for me. Why have my views on meat and vegetarianism changed so much? Perhaps the answer can be found in the modern factory farm system. The deplorable conditions for animals in these factory farms, along with their enormous usage of almost all natural resources, plus the overall inefficiency of eating meat (think of all the water, grains, corn, grazing land etc. required to feed millions of cows), in addition to the harsh environmental impact, generally turn me off from basic supermarket or restaurant-found meat.

All that aside, would I not be turned away from the meat industry so much if it were more ethical and earth-friendly? I guess the industry can only be ethical to a certain extent, then your own judgment comes into play. After all, they are in the business of killing animals. Lets say the world totally did away with the whole factory farm system. All farm animals are sustainably farm-raised, fed organic and natural vegetarian food, killed "humanely", and only sold locally to minimize transportation. This type of meat exists to a certain extent, but is much more expensive than your average Tyson chicken or Bubba burgers found at a grocery store. Also, if all meat was sold this way, Americans would have to drastically cut down on their meat consumption, because the supply would be nowhere near the current demand for meat. In a country with meat so deeply rooted in the culture, and expectations for cheap meat in the local supermarket, would the average American be willing to pay extra for sustainably raised meat?


There's no easy way for such a utopian meat industry to be created, especially with so many big businesses being almost completely reliant on cheap meat (McDonalds anyone? Even one of my favorites, Taco Bell). Something so huge would have to start not with businesses, but with people. This is why I think twice nowadays before eating meat. This is why I support vegetarians, vegans, and environmentalists so much. Since looking at the negative effects of the industialized factory farm system had such a huge impact on my views of food, I believe it may have a similar effect on lots of other people. However, one of the most difficult subjects to talk to people about is their food choices.

I've noticed that when people ask a lot of vegetarians exactly why they decided to become a vegetarian, they tend to brush the question aside and give kind of a general answer. I have experienced the same trouble when some people ask me why I decided to stop eating beef. No one wants to be in an argument about their food choices; personally, I tend to get uncomfortable when someone else criticizes my choice of what I will or will not eat. Sometimes it's difficult to explain your motives, whether they are environmental or moral, to another person without sounding preachy or snobby. The last thing that I want is for someone to feel like I am telling him what he can or cannot eat, and his food choices directly lead to him being an ethical/unethical person. This is probably the main reason that when someone asks me a question like that, I'm somewhat hesitant to tell him or her the real reason behind my choice.

My lack of willingness to explain myself is something that I need to work on as long as I believe that industrialized factory farming is unethical and unsustainable for the world that we live in. One day I hope to wean myself off of it completely, but when that day comes, I will probably cut my losses and pay more for sustainably raised, locally farmed poultry. Maybe in the long run it actually won't be as expensive because of my newfound appreciation for vegetarian meals.

On a different note, happy birthday Dad! And happy one year to Lisa :)

First Post

Hello everyone, and welcome to my Blog.

This is an experiment, and depending on how successful it is, we'll see if I continue posting on this thing. First things first, I'm going to lay out some basic rules.

1. I will not update you on the boring and mundane aspects of my life. It's not going to be play-by-play commentary of the life of Sinan, such as "today i woke up and then i brushed my teeth and then i put on my favorite jeans and then i walked to class and then i fell asleep.." etc. You may be wondering what exactly I'm going to write about, because if you know me decently well, you know that my life isn't the most exciting and eventful thing ever. Read on...

2. A lot of random and interesting things pop into my head during the day. Some people say I live in my own little world, and I sometimes feel very disconnected from outside occurrences. Most of the time I'm just aimlessly spacing out, but sometimes--believe it or not--my brain is actually functioning and I'm thinking about all kinds of bizarre things.

3. I'm not going to consistently post articles that I found from some random news source and talk about it. A few days ago, someone begrudgingly asked me if that was the intent of my future blog. No. I may post an article if I think it is exceptionally interesting and that the majority of people need to know about it, but for the most part, it's not going to happen.

4. I will express my strong and earnest opinion about a variety of subjects. You may disagree with me, and I always love hearing other people's opinions. As a reader, your duty is to post a comment (it doesn't always have to be meaningful) to let me know what you think. I get very worked up about some topics that I feel strongly about. However, I am always willing to discuss things and respect everyone's point of view.

4. If you don't like this blog, don't read it.

6. I can number my rules however I want.

7. If I travel anywhere out of the ordinary, like Europe, India, Turkey, or Alabama, I will be sure to talk about it and put some pictures on here.