Sunday, January 30th, 2005

Well it has been a very relaxing weekend, for the most part. I have done a bit of work, and a bit of chilling out. So good things. I’ll give you a run down…

On Friday I skipped work because my friend Başak came to visit me. We had a great time wondering around Ankara, in Kızılay to be specific. I was going to take my camera but, being the goon I am, I forgot it. We wondered through book stores, ate some tasty dinner, hung out at a café drinking çay, and talked about all sorts of things. Oh, one interesting thing. At the book store we were looking at a book which tells the significance of dreams. Well, before I went on my Christmas holiday, I kept having these dreams where all my teeth would fall out. One would be loose, and I would wiggle it, and then it would pop out. Then another, and another… until all my teeth were in a bloody pile cupped in my hands! Bummer. According to the book, this is not good. Well duh. Apparently it means that I will either die or have really awful bad luck. So I guess be prepared for bad news from me sometime soon!

What else… on Saturday I woke up at noon and stumbled down to the café for lunch. There I ran into one of the Russian exchange students who lives here with us. Her name is Jenya, and she’s from Moscow. She’s here studying Turkish and is quite accomplished, as well as having perfect English! We chatted about our experiences as foreigners here in Turkey; all the good things and the bad things. All in all, I think she has a much more difficult time being here. There is a certain stereotype of Russian girls here in Turkey, because many Russians females have come to Turkey to become prostitutes, or “Natashas”. So Jenya has to be careful, otherwise men assume that she is one of these girls, and treat her as such. So that means no wearing sexy clothes, only speaking in Turkish on the street, and generally being very careful, especially at night. I was reminded of my time in Cuba, where the girls received piropos, or cat-calls, from men whenever they walked down the street. It must be frustrating at times.

In the evening I went out with some friends to the Rock Bar, a place in Kızılay with live music and beer. It was fun, although I ended up going back at about 11 p.m. I just couldn’t handle being out late. For some reason I have been so tired lately. I went with my good friend Mehmet, another guy from the dorm named Omer, and someone I had never met before named Alperen (I think). We had a good time, with lots of joking around and laughing. Omer and Alperen were chasing the girls, with little luck. Alperen would should “Negative engery tonight!!!” whenever he would come back from a failed endeavor. Ah well, maybe next time.

Today (Sunday) I did hardly anything. I spent some time reading my latest book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast. Fascinating reading. I also spent a large part of the day editing an academic paper written by a friend at the Çankırı Forestry School, entitled “The Usage of Multiple Correspondence Analysis in Rural Migration Analysis.” It was heavy going. He’s submitting it to an academic journal but they needed the paper to be reworded a bit before they publish it. So I tried my best. Who knows if it’ll help him, but at least I’ve finished it on time.

And now I’m just goofing around, listening to music in my room and playing my Settlers of Catan computer game. It’s 10 p.m., my eyes are getting heavy, and before too long I’ll probably drop off to sleep. I’ve been downloading David Sedaris mp3s, so I’ll probably play some of those and hope to drift away into slumber land.

So goodnight, everyone…

The 10 Worst Corporations of 2004

Since I forgot to write a journal entry last night due to my acquiring five DivX movies from my co-worker and friend Serdar, I have decided to post an article from AlterNet highlighting ten corporations that have done some devious things in their days. It’s recommended reading, no matter what your take on large corporations is, because I feel it’s important to be an informed person. So check it out!

Oh, I watched I, Robot and From Hell last night. Ended up going to bed at 3 a.m. But it was fun to watch some movies I had never seen before!

Monday, January 24th, 2005

Today I crashed back into the confusion that is Turkey with full force. It only took five weeks in “western” countries to forget that things here are often more easily said than done. I woke up a bit late, about 9:30 am, and prepared to head out and exchange my money. I had £40 left over from England, and €75 that Lufthansa gave me for getting bumped back ten minutes to another flight from London to Munich. So I thought, why not convert it? Plus, my bank account is drained from my European adventures, so it just made sense.

I left the dormitory and thought to myself, “Ok, I can either walk for 15 minutes to Kızılay and go to the exchange house, or I can just go to one of those banks a few minutes away here in Maltepe. Since I had no money with which to use the bus, the banks were sounding pretty good. I headed to the first one, AKBANK I believe. And there was a line. No problem, just wait it out. I waited for 40 minutes before getting to the teller. No problem, I am a patient man, right? I hand the lady my £40 and say, “Türk lirası lutfen.” She looks at me, and then says in perfect English (well done lady!), “Have you seen our exchange rate? It’s really bad. Look..” and shows me theirs compared to other banks. She was right, their rate sucked. “You should go to Şeker Bank down the street, their rate is the best.”

Well, how nice of her. I was truly surprised; she had no reason to say it. Well, she probably just felt sorry for the goofy clueless American. Anyway, I said my thank you and headed about 20 meters up the road to the bank she recommended. Where I once again waited for 40 minutes. I got up to the counter, give my money exchange sentence, and got completely shut down! This lady spoke no English but I got the message. I sputtered around for a bit, and a guy in line said, “Sorry, she can’t accept the British pound. Why don’t you try AKBANK?” Well, because they sent me here. I then asked him why the bank lists the exchange rate if they don’t accept the currency. He asked her, and she gave me the most evil stare I have received in quite some time, and then called the next person in line to the counter. Woof. The funny thing was that people were giving her all sorts of currencies. I saw American dollars, euros, and some other stuff I didn’t even recognize.

So, with my head hanging low, I trudged onward to the next bank, whose name I can’t even remember. And this one seemed promising. While the others were just mad queues with people jostling around, waiting to be served, this one hard a large lobby and a little ticket machine that gave you a number depending on what you wanted to do. I pressed the button for currency exchange, became #686, and sat down on a plush bench to wait. And wait I did. I waited and waited and waited. The funny thing was, the majority of the wait was taken up by one couple who had the currency exchange teller running all over the bank. It almost became obscene after a while. I had been there close to 50 minutes when I noticed that the lobby was thinning out. Oh god, they don’t close for lunch do they? Please hurry…

Finally the couple leaves. My number should be popping up. But it doesn’t. The teller is just sitting there, fiddling around. It’s 12:25 and I’m not getting called. I go up and try my exchange sentence on him. He starts talking and I have no clue. So he gets one of the other tellers to come over and help. “I’m very sorry,” she says, “but we’re closing for lunch now. You can come back at 13:30.” My jaw dropped. But there’s still five mintues, and I’ve been here for almost an hour! She relays the message to the teller, who starts ranting about something. The only word I recognize is “sigara”, which is cigarette. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes, “there just isn’t enough time. You can come back at 13:30.” And I was shown out!

Amazing. Three banks, almost three hours, and at the end I was defeated because some dude needed his cigarette break to start early. At this point, I think I could have used the cigarette more than him! So, I turned around and walked for 20 minutes to Kızılay. Frustrated, upset, and INSTENSELY hungry. I made it to the exchange house, walked right to the counter and received my 100 YTL (no more millions!) in under a minute. Good grief. Now I know better. What started out as a time saver in my mind turned into a three hour epic of dead ends and bitterness. What an experience to have on an empty stomach.

I remedied the morning’s frustrations by heading to a restaurant and getting a huge pide (thin pizza thingy), a nice salad and an ayran to drink, all for only 3 YTL (around $2). The cheap and tasty meal brightened my spirits and helped me see the humor present in all of this. At least I didn’t freak out and start screaming in classic obnoxious tourist fashion. And I learned two important lessons: (1) always carry some money, and (2) stay the hell away from Turkish banks!

Sunday, January 23rd, 2005

So I’ve been back in Turkey for two days. And I’ve spent most of them asleep! It’s funny what I night of drinking in the Munich airport without sleep will do to your constitution. I got back to the dormitory about 5:30 pm Friday. Bed was immediate. I slept until about 10 am the next day, then decided to wander around Ankara for a while and reacquaint myself with the city. That lasted until about 3:00 pm. I then went back to bed and slept until noon today! I don’t know if it’s smart to sleep that much, but I did. Perhaps it’s my body fending of the stress of a transition… I don’t know.

Anyway, today I wondered over to the internet café and did some surfing and emailing. Afterwards I decided to give my friend Mehmet a call, just to see where he was. I figured he would be at home, since it is a holiday at the moment, but fortunately he was in Ankara! He came back to the dorms and we hung out until about right now. I asked him if anything at all happened while I was gone. But nothing had. I don’t know if I should be glad that I didn’t miss anything, or sad that it was so boring here while I was absent.

So let’s see, what to talk about. Well, I woke today to find tons of snow all over the place! Quite a contrast from the pretty decent weather I experienced in England and Switzerland. Oh, and I will write about Switzerland soon, but it’ll take a while to get it all down. I won’t attempt a day by day run through; I’ll just do the highlights. But it will be done!

Tomorrow I will go to Tandoğan and say hi to all my friends there, and leech off their high bandwidth. Hopefully I can get the Switzerland bit taken care of then.

I’m sorry I haven’t updated this thing at all, but time just slipped away from me. I promise that I will start doing semi-daily updates again now, so all twelve of you that actually read this (if you haven’t given up by now) can once again live vicariously through me.

Thursday, January 21st, 2005

Well, I’m sitting in some café in an airport in Munich. The Erdinger Sportsbar in Flughafen Munchen to be exact. I’ve been drinking since about midnight. It is now 9 am. However, I have interspersed the booze with tasty sandwiches and cups of coffee, so all is well. And before you judge, realize that drinking in an airport seems to be very culturally appropriate in Germany. At least all the Germans I was drinking with said it was appropriate. So there. And, just so you know, the Weissbier is fantastic!

Sunday, January 2nd, 2005

Well, I’m a large failure as far as updating is concerned. So, I’ll give a little paragraph here and then just show you some photos. New Year’s was cool, we ate a great curry dinner at Martin’s house, a friend from the village. We played a quiz game, then went off to the Red Lion. I drank a lot and swore a lot and generally had a very good time.

Then on Sunday, I went with Stuart and his friend Matt and did some serious hiking up rather large hills along the coast. It was simply gorgeous. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Now I’m in Switzerland, having arrived on the third. I’m staying with my friends Andi and Anja. Andi is from south London and I met him during my year in London. Anja is a Swiss girl who worked at the same place we did. They got married in May of 2001 and have been living in Switzerland ever since. I’ll give you some more updates on what we’re doing here soon.

Anyway, here are some photos from our big hike. Enjoy!

Saturday, December 25th, 2004

Well, there’s no way I can actually remember all the stuff that’s happened to me over the past few days, so I’ll just tell you about our Christmas!

I rolled out of bed on Christmas morning at 10:00 a.m. to find a bit of snow! Nothing heavy, but some nice flakes that covered the roofs and ground and made everything more festive. I joined up with Uncle Ian, his dad Don, Stuart, Victoria and Georgina. We all had mince pies and coffee and opened our stockings. I even had one, and received a good deal of Guinness merchandise as well as some England football socks. We all admired each others stocking stuffers, then climbed into the car and went off to the Kilmington local, the Red Lion. The whole village was there, and the landlord was evening offering the first pint on the house to celebrate the holidays.

After a few tasty pints of Guinness we returned to Merton Cottage. Stuart and I decided to take the family dogs out for a walk. We went to a beautiful valley, whose name escapes me, and did some hiking about while the dogs scurried through rabbit warrens and barked at birds. It was absolutely gorgeous. The hills are just remarkable here. The interesting thing about the valley is that a road runs next to it which has been in use since Roman times! We also found a mile marker from the 1750s, when I think the road served as the main link between London and Exeter. I love the way history is present everywhere you turn.

We came back home and the drinks continued to flow. Oh my. My boozing was perhaps a little overzealous, due to the fact that my tolerance has gone down since living in Turkey. Anyway, I called home (which was lovely) and then continued to happily down my Boddingtons until dinner time. And what a dinner it was! The roast turkey was the main feature, along with roast potatoes, sausages wrapped with bacon, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cheesy cauliflower, Yorkshire pudding… oh man. I can’t even really remember. We also had a great Christmas pudding for desert, which unfortunately landed all over my lap! I think the red wine on top of everything just got me a bit too lively! But all’s well that ends well, and the dogs got to enjoy a nice taste of the dessert as a result of my clumsiness.

We then retired to the living room and sat next to a pleasantly warming fire. I don’t even really remember what happened. I just nursed a beer, sat with a very full tummy, and just enjoyed the Christmas spirit that the room was almost thick with. Mmmm… I really enjoy the British Christmas traditions.