Thursday, February 3rd, 2005

I’m writing today to tell about a crazy coincidence that happened to me yesterday. I left work at about 6:30 pm and headed to the Migros department store to buy an extension cord for my room. After a few months of toggling through laptop cords, phone chargers, electric razor cords and whatever else, I felt that a power strip would be just the thing.

Anyway, after I bought it (for a measly $2) I headed out the door. A guy came out behind me and caught up with me and began speaking in Turkish. I gave him my “I can’t speak Turkish” line, which I find funny because I say it in Turkish. Anyway, he says “Well how about English?” Problem solved. Turns out he’s looking for a computer shop so he can buy a Bluetooth dongle (yes, that’s the real word) for his laptop. Bluetooth is a handy, easy to connect wireless protocol that you can do all sorts of cool things with. Anyway… sure, I know a few places. Let’s go.

So, we start walking and talking. He wants to know what I’m up to in Turkey, so I gave him the whole story. After finding out that I studied Business Information Systems in uni, he says, “Oh, that’s what I do for a living.” Well, what do you do exactly? “I’m a consultant for Microsoft.” Oh.

More talking commences. Turns out this guy is my age (23) and is probably making six figures. He coded his first application when he was nine, got to go on a World Bank scholarship to England to finish high school, and has been working in the industry ever since. With no university education! Wow.

We found his Bluetooth, and then decided to hit up a café to drink some coffee and talk. This ended up into a chat that lasted a few hours! We covered lots of stuff, including IT, what it’s like to live in other countries (as he spends time in the US, England and Germany), girls (of course!), electronic music, and what else… I can’t even remember. It was a good time.

I joked at one point that I should send him my resume, and he readily agreed! Cool… I don’t expect much from it, but who knows. He has a lot of friends in the Istanbul IT world, and if he hears about anything he’ll pass it along. I never thought about picking up a job like that here, but if it comes along, why not?

More importantly, I made a new friend who is really nice. If I ever go to Istanbul I have a place to stay there, and a friend who I share a lot of interests with. What more can you ask for?