Messin’ with Texas

Current Mood: Happy

It has been just over a month since I left for Turkey, and I have learned a lot. For one, I actually know something about air compressors, which is helpful in my line of work. I finally bought the aptly named “Teach Yourself Turkish” Book and CDs, so that I can start learning some of the language. In light of last weeks events, I have learned a lot about Turkish politics (if you are unfamiliar about what is happening in Turkey right now, read: Turkey, fear about religious lifestyle. Finally, I have been learning a lot about Turkish culture.

Tea it seems, is a very important part of the culture here (Check World Tea Consumption. Turkey was the 4th largest consumer of tea per capita in 1998). I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked to sit for tea by, well just about everyone. Shop keepers, hair dressers, people at the company… Even if I go to speak with Atila, our general manager, he asks me to sit down, and orders up two teas, so that we can have something hot to drink while we talk.

Tea is always on the menu, no matter where you go. It always arrives in smal funny shaped cups, with a spoon and two or three sugars. Upon arriving, the cup is often too hot to hold (I suppose that’s why the english put handles on their tea cups). Although it may seem silly not to have a handle, it actually is somewhat helpful. When tea is first poured, it is often too hot to drink and the cup, is therefore too hot to hold. You therefore won’t be able to drink the tea until it has cooled a bit, which is conviently about the time you will be able to hold the cup as well.

Tea acts as a medium to facilitate business. When sitting to discuss any kind of business, Tea, or sometimes coffee - in most cases, Nescafe - are always ordered. The time until you finish the tea is the perfect time to engage in casual conversation, and learn a bit about each other. Rather than cutting right to the chase, the Turks seem to like to take their time, and get to know the guy they will be doing business with. Business is of course, “just business,” but here, relationships seem to be a lot more important. Having tea together allows you to feel the other person out, see if you like the person, see if you trust them. It also works to build a bond, creating, over time, customer loyalty.

Now, my impression of this whole tea thing could be completely wrong. This is simply an observation I have had that I have not really looked into or asked about, so please, Turkish readers, feel free to correct me if I am wrong. I am quite certain my perception of the importance of customer loyalty is correct. For me, I like to go to different places and all the time have different sceneary, and different foods. For Murat’s uncle Ahmet and Murat, they seem to always want to go to one of two places. According to Murat, Ahmet is going almost everyday to the same restaurant. He knows the other patrons there, and the restaurant owners know him and treat him well. He has his own list of appetizers that they prepare just for him when he comes in. And of course, he is always having Raki there. I asked Murat point blank about this and he confirmed what I had suspected about the importance of customer loyalty in this culture.

The thing that first drew me to hanging out with the Turks at CMU was value they place on friendship (and all relationships for that matter). They seems to have a small core group of friends that they are very close with. Like us, they have many aquantances and people they interact with, but most seem to have a solid core group. Amongst Americans, you see this too, but it’s not the same. American society is much more individualistic and therefore friend groups aren’t as tight knit as the friend groups here, in a more community/group minded society.

Tea plays directly into this. Murat and I stopped at a hair salon to ask for directions near where we live. The owner invited us in for tea. Was he interested in a nice conversation, trying to snag a new loyal customer, or just a hospitable guy. I think probably all three of those were true. From what I have seen Turks are extremely hospitable - many pride themselves on “Turkish hospitatility.” It seems that when interacting within any community - even with the backdrop of a huge city - your relationships are extremely important. To be sucessful here you must have loyal friends and you must return that loyalty. If you don’t develop these relationships, you may find you are over paying for a beer, getting ripped off on a haircut, or you are simply lost in the sea of people, confined perhaps to the ex-patriate community.

“It’s all about who you know, and not what you know.”

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Here’s a picture of Liz and I the Sunday I left Hannover. Yes, she has short hair now.

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Current Mood: Cool

Yesterday, Tuesday, we had a long meeting to organize ourselves after the Hannover fair. Basically, Murat and I took all the contacts we made at the Hannover fair (a total of 75 potential distributors and 9 potential OEM customers) and divided them up. In a sense we were dividing up the world. I got most of Western Europe, the Americas and Africa. What does this mean? It means that I am responsible for following up on all the contacts we made in that area. You can see below, the complete list (notcounting OEM customers)

[[[Had to remove the table due to technical difficulties]]]
In 37 different countries we made 75 contacts. So it seems pretty successful. To make it easier to view the data, i have also included a map for your viewing pleasure. Click on the map for a full size view. Theoretically, we are going to be emailing a lot for the next week, and then going on the road, visiting all the potential opportunities that seem promising.

So right now, I have a big pile of paperwork and notes on my desk. I am going to have to do some research on each of the companies, and the markets that each company is in. Then I’ll start going through them one at a time. I have a total of 38 to follow up on, plus a few other random contacts.

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I posted some pictures at:

Hannover Pictures

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Current Mood: Angry

While we were setting up the stand, I did my best to take periodic pictures from the same spot. Since I didn’t have a tripod, and I wasn’t too disciplined about this project, it came out so so. There are about 60 pictures in this 30 second clip. Setting up the stand took us a very long time (you will notice it becomes night and then day again as the video plays).

As always, enjoy, and let me know what you think.
Video of our Hannover Stand being built

PS You have to click on the link, then a page with the embedded file will load. Unfortuneately, wordpress has some retarded find and replace function that checks all the code you enter. So whenever ‘em’ comes up in the code, it replaces it with ‘i.’ In html the ‘em’ and the ‘i’ tag are very similar. However, it also replaces the ‘em’ in the ‘embed’ tage with an ‘i’ which means I cannot put embedded videos on my blog (I don’t know why the apple one worked, because it to now has the tag ‘ibed’ (which does not exist) in it’s code, but for some reason still works). Anyway, if anyone knows how to fix this please let me know because I am so frustrated and pissed off right now I am tempted to break something.

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Here is a short story I wrote March 3rd, 2005. Anybody pick up on the significance of that date?

The story is supposed to be a metaphor for life. Let me know what you think.

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The Train Ride

It’s cold. It’s dark. The few lights on the platform appear to have been vandalized recently leaving you, and the other passengers, to wait in the dark. Without light, the others are amorphous shapes, moving very little or not at all. But you can hear them. Their voices are the only things you can hear. You don’t listen though; you don’t care. You just want the train to get there before you freeze. Your winter garments – gloves, jacket, hat, scarf – seem to be doing little if anything to hold back the ferocious cold. You fully realize how cold you are as you fumble with a match to try and light a cigarette. After failing with two matches, you give up – you need to quit anyways.

After what seems like an eternity, the voices are muffled by the grinding of the approaching train’s wheels. A flood of light follows, and then a flood of warmth as the doors open. You help an older woman get her bags off the train and exchange formalities with a young woman as you let her board ahead of you. Only a smile and a nod is exchanged. Then, it’s your turn.

It’s one of those nice new trains. There is still a relatively clean carpet on the floor – not too many stains yet – and the seats are not yet worn around the edges. There are nice wood tables with well-hidden garbage cans at the center of each four-seat cluster. Even the glimpse you caught of the bathrooms as you entered into the main cabin was impressive.

Now, a seat. There were plenty of free seats, but each cluster is already occupied by at least one person. You want a whole cluster to yourself. You don’t want to have to share if you didn’t have to. You want to be comfortable, to have your space, to have your freedom. Sufficient searching presents you with exactly what you were looking for: a cluster to yourself, with a pretty woman in the neighboring cluster. You ask her what time it was, but you can tell she isn’t interested.

Almost immediately after you had sit down, a woman with drinks arrives offering you everything the restaurant car offers but without the hassle of having to get up. “Coffee, Tea?” she says as she passes.

‘An excellent idea,’ you think to yourself as you realize she has already made the decision for you. It’s good to be served.

As you indulge yourself in the warmth of the coffee, you begin to feel your face and your hands again. With the caffeine now pumping through your system, you feel wide-awake, you feel alive again!
The last few drops of your coffee disappear down your throat followed by hunger. When, after 20 minutes, she doesn’t come back you begrudgingly lift your self from the warmth of your seat, careful to place your jacket over both seats on your side of the cluster, ask your uninterested new lady friend sitting across from you to watch your belongings, and then head to the restaurant car to get the sandwich yourself.

While there, you chat with a young woman, but she has little interest in anything beyond the casual conversation over a drink and you both return to your seats at the same time with little said since leaving the restaurant car. The other one is still there keeping a watchful eye on your belongings, and you thank her as you sit down. It would appear you a riding alone tonight. Your seat, still warm, welcomes you as you take to looking out the window. Although it’s dark, there is an occasional light from a house, car or street lamp, which provides glimpses of the world outside the train. Although you certainly don’t want to be out there, you are curious to see, to know.

After an hour or so, your trance is interrupted by a ‘have a good evening.’ You turn and see the girl from the bar is leaving.

‘A pity she’s not getting off at my stop,’ you think to yourself as her, and the others step off into the darkness and are replaced by a group of new comers. When the new comers come through the doors into the main cabin, their cheeks are a nice rosy color. Yours looked like that when you got on the train. One of them, a young woman, not too much younger than you, enters and takes up residence in the cluster next to you. That is when you realize your neighbor has left as well. The new girl has a very unfriendly look about her and seems absorbed in whatever she’s listening to on her headphones, so you decide not to ask her the time.

Now you really are alone. Feeling this, you now notice now that newcomers search out the empty clusters, choosing to sit by themselves rather than try to enjoy the company of one of your mutual companions in travel. ‘What a silly practice,’ you think to yourself. Wiser after the girl in the bar, you are quite sure the ride would have been better spent chatting with someone. Perhaps you might have even learned a thing or two.

As your stop your approaches you realize it’s implications: cold and dark, again. Panicking a bit now, you quickly scan the cabin for the woman who had served you the coffee with such a pleasant gentleness in her manner. She’s nowhere to be found and you need a stiff drink to prepare you for what’s about to come. But there is no time. You recognize the area; you’re very close now. Gathering your things slowly and gloomily you say goodbye to the warmth of your chair. Someone else will be taking your space shortly, and there is nothing you can do about it. Could they possibly appreciate the warm cabin and soft seat enough? Did you?

Now the train’s breaks begin to screech as the train begins to stop. You feel the force of the deceleration. You hadn’t noticed it at the other stops, but now, it is all you can focus on. It’s as if it were out to ruin your last few minutes of warmth.

The doors finally open and a blast of cold hits you. It seems to be colder and darker than before. One, two steps, and you are back in the cold, in the dark, again.

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Sigh… It’s finally over. What an exhausting week. Today, Friday, was the last day of the fair so it was kind of slow. Murat and I went around and visited other companies: sellers of both competing and complimentary products. It was kind of nice. We had cappuccino with the general manager of Dominick Hunter, got a cool battery-less flash light from Kaeser Compressors, and had lots of cookies at the other stands. It was nice. We also made a contact with a lot of very good potential that we are all very excited about.

I spent most of my day first trying to get the CMU TV feed to work so I could watch the buggy races at CMU. After the races had already started, I gave up and just listened to the radio webcast, which was still fun. Last night, and all the way up until today I felt a little bit of that buggy excitement that I used to get in the days leading up to race day. Reliving the memories in my head and imagining my friends all back at CMU getting ready for race day was almost as exciting as being there.

We got a harness strap from the driver wrapped around a wheel, so our time was terrible. We finished about 6 seconds slower than last year, but still made it to second day in seventh place. As far as I can tell, all the men’s teams were much slower this year, so we have a chance to make it as high as fourth, which would be awesome (our best finish in five years I believe). Despite the cost, I ended up having a few short conversations today with people back at CMU. It was the closest I could get to being there. I think next year I will try very hard to be there, and I will hopefully drag Izzy back with me.

Now we are packing up the stand, which is exponentially easier than building it. In just two hours, we have completely disassembled everything. Now we are just waiting to get our boxes back and pack up our compressors and stand materials. It will be nice to go back to being me for a while (I have been making a huge effort be more outgoing and friendly than normal). Tomorrow I will have the day off. Liz is in Hannover visiting her grand parents so we will spend the day together except for during the races. Then Sunday it’s back home, marking 12 days in Hannover. It will be nice to be home and wash clothes, have my desk, get back to weight lifting, get back to regular running… the list goes on. If Murat and I are going to spend the next couple months or so traveling, I am going to need to buy more clothes.

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Sorry it has been a while. We have been super busy with the fair. I made a short video by taking pictures periodically, of our stand being constructed. I will edit and post when I get back to Istanbul. Unfortuneately this post is not going to be a long one. I would just like to cover a few things.

1. So far it has been a lot of fun. I have been talking to people from all over the world for the past four days. Mostly about screw compressors, but it has still been fun. I always get the same reaction from people: they cannot believe that me, an American, is working in Istanbul for at Turkish company. The French guys are even more surprised when I speak French to them. An American who speaks French is rare, but one who also lives in Istanbul is more rare, they say. One American guy even gave me his card and told me if I decide to come back to the states to contact him and he would have a job for me.

2. These past two days I have not spent evenings with the group. They are all smoking and speaking Turkish, so there is not much point in it. Instead I have been going home and jogging at the end of the day. Afterwards I have been eating at a cafe and reading my book: “The Secret History of the Free Masons.” It’s a book I borrowed from Izzy’s dad, who is a free mason. This weekend I will also break from the group. A friend of mine is coming to Hannover for the weekend so her and I will tour around the city together. The Turks are renting a car and driving to Hamburg, or something like that. Murat said they just want to be able to say they went somewhere else, which seems stupid to me. Hannover is one of the nicest cities I have ever been in. There is so much to see and do here.

3. Since I have been trying to be very friendly and outgoing for the past four days, I am exhausted. I feel like I am not going to have any desire to meet new people for a week. I have been shaking so many hands, collecting so many business cards, regurgitating again and again the same speech about our company and our products, and eating so many Turkish delights that my head is spinning. The people with personality are fun to talk to, but many of these people are lame. They have no sense of humor, or they don’t smile.

4. Since Murat is god-knows-where all day, I have been talking with Alper a lot. Alper is the purchasing manager for the company. He is 31, married with a few month old daughter. He is one of the few guys at the company that can communicate well in English. Of the english speakers, four of us, he is one of the three that has a sense of humor. So when no one is at our stand, we are joking around, or he is questioning me about english words and expressions. His English has gotten a lot better since we came to Hannover. He also has arranged a wind surfing teacher for me at the wind surfing club near where I live (so he says). He also said he will try to find me a Turkish teacher.

Alright, that’s all for now. Ciao.

PS Visit the fair’s website, and our website:

http://www.hannovermesse.de/homepage_e

http://www.tecompressor.com

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It may seem like I am not posting, but I infact have two blog posts
sitting on my laptop in my room, waiting to get mailed out. I just
haven´t had an internet connection in two days, so they are just
sitting there. Hopefully they will get posted tonight.

So, this is my second full day in Hannover. Last night I ran into a
bunch of Germans who are doing some training for some bank. It was
seven girls and two guys, all about my age, so I joined up with them,
and went around Hannover to different bars and clubs. It was
excellent.

The majority of my day yesterday was spent trying to get our shipment
to our stand site. I did not think this would be such a hard thing to
do, but I was wrong. Due to some misscommunication errors and my lack
of German, it took forever to get our boxes. When the truck arrived,
all the other companies had parked their trucks and boxes on our stand
site, so I had to get them all to move. Of course it took forever to
get the cleaning crew to actually clean our stand area from all the
rubbish other people had left there. Lastly, we had to get electricity
to the stand, which I still havent done yet. Had there not been this
worker there from New Zealand, I would have had a much longer and more
difficult day.

But it was fun! It was exciting to be in charge.For those of you from
CMU, imagine midway, when everyone is working on their boothes all the
time. That´s what the fair setup is like. There are lots of loud
tools, boxes and junk being moved, walls being built, people running
around yelling orders, beer, trucks, ladders… the list goes on. The
main difference is the building I am in, is about 10 times the size of
the CMU booth area, and it is building 27 of 30 something. So you can
imagine how massive the fair is. Hopefully I can get some pictures of
the cool technologies people are show casing (only a few stands are
setup, but they are very impressive).

Alright, that´s all for now. I have a tour of hannover starting in one
hour. I finished everything yesterday and now I just have to kill time
until the rest of the group gets here this evening. Then we will be
burning the midnight oil setting up.

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Sorry, but since I have limited access here in Germany (or at-least so far), my posts won’t be very visual. I am posting via email, and I am not quite sure how to include pictures, nor do I have any good maps or pictures to include without the internet.

Anyway, I am here in Hannover. Yeah! The other four members of the team will not come until Friday because their visas are for then. Since I am American, I don’t need a visa, so they sent me ahead to take care of all the shipments when they arrive Thursday morning. I am a little nervous I am going to screw something up, but then again how hard can it be? I just need to find the electrical technician, and confirm our power order, and then move the power cables to the right place. Find our truck, and unload the 15 boxes in the right order. That is first the boxes with our stand need to be unloaded. Then I have to lay the carpet and place the boxes containing our compressors in all the right places since you have to pay for each use of the forklift beyond the first. Of course we didn’t send a protective plastic layer to put over the carpet until show time, so I have to find a place in Germany to buy it, and then put that down too. I have all of customs paperwork incase there are any problems. Although I don’t have to, I imagine I will start setting up the stand by myself on Friday since the others won’t arrive until the afternoon.

All that doesn’t amount to the truly intimidating task that lies before me at this very moment. I am sitting in a biergarten (beer garden - it is exactly what it sounds like, sit in a garden and drink beer) somewhere in Hannover. Normally, I am very good at remembering places and navigating metros and things like that. When I got here, I immediately went running for a few kilometers and found my way back no problem. I found my way to the fair ground no problem. I made my way to the city center no problem. My year abroad has made me very good at navigating Western European cities. This time however, I made one very bad mistake. A very bad mistake.

I didn’t sleep very much last night because we had a meeting that ran until 1030 or 11pm about the fair, then I had to watch the Manchester United Game until 1am or so (Man U beat Rome 7-1!!!!!!!!!!!!! ). I got up at 6 to go to the airport so today I have not been 100%, and therefore my mistake is not completely unjustified. For all you future adventurers out there, I cannot stress this enough: it is so so so important to know what stop in the public transportation system that your accommodations are at (or at-least in what part of the city you live) Yes, I did indeed forget where I am staying. I would actually have no idea which line it was on if I didn’t have a small note saying which lines to take to get to the fair ground. I am hoping when I take the tram back, I will recognize the red store, or the penny markt that I remember are near where I am staying. If not, I am sure I will be able to figure something out; I am rarely one to worry about things like this. It’s just, I have never made this mistake before, and it’s funny. Fortunately, I have a backup plan.

P. S. On a side note, I bought some flower pots, and some seeds, and some potting soil. I am hoping to grow some spices on the porch, and maybe buy a few hanging pots for out there (make it a little more like home). If anyone has any suggestions for a vine plant that will grow down from a flower pot and does well in a lot of sun, let me know. I also want to get a plants for my room, which has a new apartment smell that I hate. I want it to smell like earth, or dirty clothes (like my room in New York). Unfortunately, I don’t have enough junk yet to cover the floor of my room.

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