An American Life in Istanbul

Current Mood: Esctatic

Yesterday, Murat and I got up at 630 in the morning to go to Izmir to meet with our partner company, Arcom. I think I explained it a bit in the previous entry so I will just give yous ome pictures to look at. Enjoy!

This is Murat and Sakir standing outside one of Arcom’s two facilities. This is where they do compressor maintenance and repair. Their other facility, just around the corner, is where they do their manufacturing. They have 20 employees in manufacturing, 4 in R&D and have a 2000 m^2 manufacturing facility… or at least that’s what they told me.

Here is a picture of Ismael explaining to Murat some of the more detailed technical aspects of the high pressure booster compressors. We spent most of our day in this room going over everything relating to high pressure compressors. Since we only do low pressure compressors for industrial applications, their products will compliment ours nicely. When I commented that it was a bit too warm in there for me and it was making it hard to concentrate he replied “you are in for a real treat during the summer.” Fortuneately, my desk is smack between the two air conditioners in our room.

So there is the so called 2000 m^2 manufacturing facility with 20 workers. There was one worker, and it was a lot smaller than that. I think they were trying to get my goat.

This was a cool statue on the road between Izmir and… the name of the city escapes me. It’s where Telset, Murat’s father’s big company is located. It was a cool statue though. It’s a woman and a soldier holding an olive branch with the head of Ataturk above them. Izmir and the surrounding area was 100 times nicer than Istanbul. If I stay here long enough, the company will move to Izmir (they already have the land), and I may get to move there

Here is Murat, Sakir and I at Telset. We got a tour of the facility. They employ about 2000 people which is pretty big compared to our 30 employees.

And the nice dinner we had.

I bought a pair of these things for 8 lyra (5 USD) so that I can strengthen my hands for climbing. Being heavy doesn’t help, but not having strong hands is a bigger problem. During down time at work, I have been using them to hopefully build up some grip strength.

Finally, the two random calculators that appeared on my desk while I was in Izmir. The strange thing is that there was mine, then somebody brought a second one to my desk. Then in the same day, someone brought a third calculator to my desk. I know have three calculators on my desk. Oh and incase you can’t tell, that plastic bottle has a spoon in it. There is no mystery there though. I did it. I like it.

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Current Mood: Esctatic

So I read somewhere that someone had torn their adaptor apart and resoldered a connector. So I decided what the hell, why not tear mine apart as well. I went to the electrical guys in the company and they helped me cut it open (we had to use a hacksaw) and resolder the main cable coming into the adaptor and… great success! It seems to be working fine now. Of course nothing looked wrong with the connector. While they were doing the soldering, I did my best to clean the connector that plugs into my laptop. So it could have have been either of those two things that did it.

Here is a picture of what my power adaptor looks like now. Since we had to hacksaw it apart, we needed to add a lot of tape to it.

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Current Mood: Angry

Yesterday Murat and I went to Izmir to meet with members of our partner company Arcom. Since we will be selling their products along side of our products internationally, it was important that Murat and I get a good understanding of their high pressure compressors and the market that they cater to. It was a great day. I learned a lot and we had a fantastic dinner with Sakir and Ahmet (not Murat’s uncle). Ahmet, who is in his mid 30’s I would say, has been working in compressors since he was 10 years old!

I would post pictures from the day if were not for the computer problems I am currently facing. My laptop power cord has completely died. For a year or so now it has been having trouble making a good connection. It will be plugged in, but often I will have wiggle it around to get it to actually supply power to my laptop. Over the past few months it has been getting progressively worse and worse. Finally, on Thursday, it gave out. I have 1 hour and 57 minutes of battery life left in my laptop. I therefore cannot write too much today. I will say something to those other frustrated apple users out there that this is a common problem. The power cords that Apple sold with its G4 laptops suck. They are complete junk. From what I have read, some people have replaced theirs three times in the first year they had it. To make matters worse, it’s 80 USD for a new one!

Of course, I saw this problem coming before it happened. I did little about it until a week and a half ago when i did some research. I found that in Turkey I could get a power cord made by Macally - a company that specializes in apple accessories - for about 50 euros (http://www.macally.com/EN/Product/Homes.asp). This was still a bit pricy so I ordered one of their products to the US where it is theoretically happily waiting for me at home in New York. The cost, a mere 32 USD. Based on reviews of both power cords, these are ugly, but they get the job done and are far more robust than Apple’s flamboyant white power adaptors. Sorry readers, you will just have to wait…

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Current Mood: Happy

Hey everyone, I have been very busy this week so I am just going to post a few pictures with some descriptions. Last weekend I went indoor climbing with Izzy, did some shopping, went out, played soccer and went outside the city to see some house that Tahsin’s family has. Tahsin is a friend that I met through Izzy. He studied at Syracuse so he’s been to one of my parties (don’t remember which one) in New York. Murat wanted to stay in the city Sunday evening so I stayed at Tahsin’s flat. After soccer, Tahsin and I played raquet ball at the health club he is a member of (it is so unbelievably nice). Afterwards we relaxed in the sauna watching TV (yeah the sauna has a tv in it!).

As for this weekend… well I will go to Izmir tomorrow, I will meet a friend of a friend on Saturday, play soccer again on Sunday. Probably do some shopping (a lot of big days coming up!). Saturday is a very very important soccer game between besiktas and fenerbache, so I will probably watch that with Izzy. Alright, for your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures.

Since Alper (left) is from the area where we live, he took us to a pide place (Turkish pizza). It was excellent, although the restaurant was suspiciously empty. I am not sure why Baris (right) is so happy in this picture.

Murat and I at the same place as in the above picture. The sign I am making with my hand (fist over the heart) is a symbol of respect. I am actually not sure if it is a real symbol or not. I just kind of started doing it one day not really aware of where I picked it up from. Anyway, Alper, Baris and I are doing it all the time now. It caught on very quickly and will probably die very quickly. It kind of reminds me of the way all the various birdisms (only cmu people will understand what that is) came and went.

I was too lazy to right this picture. I realized it was crooked after I uploaded it and couldn’t be bothered to change it. Anyway, this was a bottle of wine I ordered at a restaurant that was actually very good. Murat says it’s one of the better Turkish wines. In the store it costs 22ytl which is something like 15 USD.

My whiteboard! In the first week I insisted on having a whiteboard in the office so we could record stuff, and write our goals. My thought was that with your goals staring you in the face, you cannot forget or ignore them. Second, if you have a list of your goals and you cross them off as you go, there is a sense of accomplishment. As your list of tasks for the week decreases you get a feeling of satisfaction. Well of course Murat thought this was stupid, and all the other Turks were a bit confused, but it has actually been a huge help. Murat, Baris and I have all been using it and it has had its exact intended effect. I think all three of us have been working more effectively, and it has facilitated communication between the three of us. Furthermore, the guys upstairs were impressed as well.

Lastly, that’s my desk! Remember how empty it was in the earlier picture? Well now it’s full of crap. Papers, documents, equipment… It’s actually not too bad here because I tidied it up a bit. Murat is sitting at my desk because we were working on creating list prices together for all of our products. I actually just finished that today.

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Izzy’s friend Ant, who is a computer/Internet tool, helped me find this plugin for my wordpress blog that lets me embed videos! Yeah! Thanks Ant. Anyway, so here is the Hannover Messe video except now it’s embed in my blog.

messe-stand-compressed-2.mp4

and music!

Song: Nice Weather For Ducks

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