Wednesday, December 8th, 2004

I had quite an abnormal day today. It started out quite normal; I went to the IT department at Tandoğan campus. We had a fun morning; they received some new network switches to support the new faculty system that is in. So they unpacked the things, stacked them up, ooohed and aaahed, and basically geeked out. This lasted until lunch time.

Then I departed with Okan and a few others for to find some food. We crossed the street and went into some random administration-building, although I’m sure it was not part of Ankara University. We made our way to the basement and headed to the cafeteria. As we got closer, there was smoke in the air. Not like a fire, just cooking related smoke. I was quite curious. Finally we arrived. An older lady was there working in the kitchen, sitting on the floor and cooking gözleme. This is a really great dish and apparently is quite traditional. She rolls out dough into a large thin circle. Then she places items on one half, maybe white cheese and spinach, or a potato mixture of some kind, or spiced eggplant… whatever. The empty half is folded onto the full half, both sides are lightly brushed with oil, and then it is placed on a little gas-powered cooking stand. It’s toasted on both sides, cut into strips and served up nice and hot. What a tasty meal. I couldn’t decide which filling to have, so she made me one with everything! Yum. I hope we come back for another meal sometime… I really like gözleme.

We then returned to campus. One of the hardware guys, Tolga, came up and said “Come to Kizilay with me!” So off we went. Our mission was to purchase: one Ethernet card, one DSL modem, one computer case, and one CPU fan. Tolga is building a computer for the department director and needed to finish it by the evening. At our first stop, we found everything except the fan. So we went to another shop. No fans. Kept on searching. Another shop. No fan. This happened again and again. I think we visited 14 or 15 shops before we finally found what we were looking for. It reminded me of being in Cuba, where almost everything ran out all the time. Just replace “no hay” with “yok”. The meaning is the same: there isn’t any.

After we found the fan we were so tired that we got a cab to take us back to our car. I was completely knackered. And I still had to walk home afterwards! With the walk to Tandoğan, the walking in Kızılay, and then the return walk to Maltepe, I think I was walking for about three hours today. Wow. I’d better be loosing some weight for all of this trouble!

To end the entry for today, here is a picture of my friend Mehmet. He is eating a really tasty fruit that I at first mistook for a tomato. But it’s not. It’s a bit more orange, but really looks and feels tomatoey. However there is one medium sized seed in the middle and it is really sweet. So tasty! I wish I could remember the name but unfortunately it escapes me at the moment. Anyway, super-yum. Mehmet is a good friend of mine. We talk almost every day. He is studying public finance, which essentially seems to be government oriented economics. So we have some things in common. He’s quite liberal in views as well, so I don’t have to worry about asking a question that will make him mad. And he plays geeky games with me… what more could you want in a friend! ;-)