An American Life in Istanbul

Well, I finally finished making all the English catalogs. We took the last two to the printer yesterday (which is good because today I am in Hannover). It was such a relief to finally finish them. All in all, I made three real catalogs, and two last minute catalogs that I threw together in one day. The design was a joint effort between Murat and I, but the work was all me, and I am proud of it. It took a long time, and I had to learn a lot of things about Photoshop CS in order to lay these out. I probably should have been using a program like Adobe Page Maker, or Adobe InDesign, but I didn’t have either of those. So instead I worked many painstaking hours in Photoshop. I even had to make a call to my friend Jason Holt (an artist specializing in computer graphics), to get help doing something I couldn’t find a tutorial for online.

After all that work, after talking to the printers with/through Murat, after running around trying to get all the right photos with the right light (note: I did not actually accomplish that), and after reading through them for errors too many times (I think I missed one error that I noticed after the fact), holding that first copy felt great! I took it home with me too.

Everyone at the company liked the catalogs, except for a few minor things. This would normally be a good thing, except that they want me to use the same design on the Turkish catalogs, which means I will spend another few days doing catalogs. I am also afraid that when we start rolling out our next line of new products in a 8 months, they are going to ask me to do the catalogs for those too. Although then maybe I won’t mind diving back into photoshop. The print shop guys were really impressed also. They do design work for some companies and they said they liked my design a lot. So I am very proud.

Anyway, so enough said. Here is the link to the files if you want to take a look. Please let me know what you think. I of course hate the look of them because I have been looking at them for a week straight, 8 hours per day. The names for the series were my idea.

We started with “air. impecable”, which was Murat’s idea for a slogan for the whole company. I suggested “Powering Tomorrow’s Industries” and then renamed all the series….

Crap, as I am typing this, the word “impecable” has been underlined as misspelled. One of the down falls of Photoshop is that it doesn’t have a spell check, which means all the catalogs will have impeccable misspelled. You have no idea how embarrassing this is. That’s 2000 catalogs and several banners with a spelling mistake in rather large font. Anyway, look past that for a minute.

As I was saying, the letters are:

AI = air. impeccable.
AS = air. superior.
AC = air. classic.

Air Dryer
Compact AI Series

Alright I don’t feel like writing anymore. I can’t freaking believe I didn’t think to check the spelling of that word. I checked the spelling of so many words with a dictionary, but not that one. I am going to have to think of a good reason why we did that (NOTE: the use of both drier and dryer is intentional).

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Current Mood: Sickly

Sorry I don’t have much time today for a proper post, so this will be short.

1. Weight Set: We got a weight set in the apartment and Baris and I have started using it. The past two mornings in a row we got up at 7am and did about 45 minutes worth of anaerobic exercise. We plan to try to stick to this schedule during weekdays.

2. Still Jogging: I have been continuing to jog. The other day when I was going to go jogging Murat’s uncle, Ahmed, insisted I let him take me down to the shore and that I run there. Murat said Ahmed is worried that a dog will attack me (there are a few stray dogs here and there). So we went down to the shore, I did a quick 2km and then Ahmed and i went and ate. We were later joined by Murat, Baris and the vice president of the municipality we live in. It was kind of cool meeting him, and although we can’t really communicate too well, we had fun. Since the actual president of this municipality made a joke about Attaturk, this guy is the acting president.

3. Sick: I got really sick last night an almost threw up at the restaurant. I am feeling better today, but am still not doing that well. I want to go home and go to sleep.

4. Payday: I got paid yesterday! All in cash, in a white, unmarked envelope. Felt like a drug deal or something.

5. Rock Climbing: Since Baris and Murat are going to visit a friend in the army tomorrow, I going rock climbing with Izzy all day. I am looking forward too it. I really hope I am back up to 100% in time.

6. Antimoda: Murat’s uncle took me around to the other companies that rent space from us. One of them is a textile company run by a Turk who grew up in Germany. They are all very nice and always bring us tea every time we go up there. Today they let out the waist on my suit pants for free!

7. Germany Trip: The company needs someone in Germany on Thursday to take care of some stuff relating to our crates. So instead of going Friday afternoon, I am going Wednesday morning to Germany. That means I will be in Germany for 12 days! Hopefully we make many good contacts while there.

8. Appolgies: Sorry I don’t have any new pictures. I have been very busy trying to finish these catalogs.

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From America: 011-90-539-474-4817

From Europe: 00-90-539-474-4817

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Current Mood: Happy

This is a delayed post. I was a bit lazy and didn’t get around to downloading the pictures off of my camera. First of all, this is Baris. I know it looks like he has a strange look on his face, but that’s actually not too far off from normal, especially come the end of the week.

Ok, now that you have met Baris, you should meet Ahmed, Murat’s uncle. He doesn’t speak much english, but he’s a very nice, very out going guy. He always makes an effort to communicate with me using the english he knows. We go out with him fairly often and he always pays for dinner. He is the one taking care of my visa stuff.

You notice in the picture he has a white liquid in his glass? That’s Raki (not really pronounced how it looks, so don’t try). That is the traditional drink of Turkey and I think it is very similar to the Italian drink Grappa. If you want to know more about Raki, check Wikipedia’s Raki page. It’s interesting, but nothing beets a good old beer after work. I am drinking Efes, the beer of Turkey, in this picture.

Apparently, Murat’s uncle frequents this restaurant so much that he has his own list of appetizers that they serve for him. Below is one of them. It’s olives with olive oil and walnuts. Not bad. The taste is a little strong, so although I like eating it, I can’t eat very much of it.

Lastly, here is a picture of some tea, in the little cups they serve it in here. It’s kind of cool, but the glass gets hot when it’s full of tea making it a bit tricky to drink when it’s really hot. You usually have to wait for it to cool down rather than doing the traditional sip and blow technique. You may or may not be able to tell, but it’s a pretty small glass. Turks seem to be always having Tea.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures!

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Current Mood: Confused

Well this news will be arriving a little late, but I want to tell you about my weekend. To make the story easier, I have modified a simple map to illustrate how my Saturday night went. Sorry that it is low resolution.

This map illustrates where my CMU friends live in Istanbul (the ones that have moved back to Istanbul) except for Arin, because I don’t know where he lives. The hazy red circle is just a circle I put on there because that is where most of the known monuments are like topkapi palace and haiga sophia (sp?).

Anyway, so my evening started out in Caddebostan with Murat. We walked around a bit, had a drink, talked. Nothing big. From there we planned to meet up with Baris, at which point we would split. Murat was going to go and spend time with his cousins, and Baris and I would go off to some bar where a high school friend of theirs was celebrating her birthday. I of course had called Izzy to see if he was free, but he was and still is on a diving trip. I called Kutsal, but he said he couldn’t hang out because he had other plans. So I joined Baris for this party which was in Taksim (check map).

When Baris and I arrived, Kutsal was there - small world for such a big city. I hadn’t seen Kutsal in three years, so we had a lot of catching up to do. I spoke mostly with Kutsal and a friend of Baris, and before I knew it, Baris was tired and wanted to go home. Here was my faux pas.

Murat had explained to me how to use the Dolmus - a kind of public transportation system using these little vans that drive around all over the place. They are cheap, but very confusing. As is typical of me, I forgot which one to take and from where. But, that was supposed to be ok. Murat told me there was no need to write it down, because Baris would make sure I got back alright. And thus my error was made. Kutsal wanted to head to some club with two other friends and he asked me to come along. Since Baris was tired, I figured he would go to sleep soon, so I followed Kutsal to a place in Levant (I think), near to where he lives.

I had fun with Kutsal for a while, but I got very tired around 3am, and the loud music was starting to get to me. We finally left at around 4am (a whole big group) and met up with a member of the first group, and went for soup (most people ate what they referred to as ’stomach soup’ - I had lentil). With no where to go I went and crashed at Kutsal’s place. No problems.

In the morning, Kutsal’s phone was dead and his charger was at his flat outside the city, not at his parents flat where we were staying. He couldn’t recall anybody’s cellphone number except for two people who weren’t answering, and I had no idea how to get back, nor did I have any contact information for anyone. So we spent about an hour and a half trying different things before finally getting Murat on the phone. I spent those 90 minutes quite stressed about what to do - not normally like me, but I was still very tired, a bit sick to my stomach, and a little hungover from the night before. I wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep. Of course, Kutsal’s parents thought this was hilarious, as did Kutsal.

Looking back, it was pretty funny. I am usually more prepared for sitautions like this. I guess I still have a few things to learn.

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