An American Life in Istanbul

Current Mood: Happy

Since I don’t have anything of any real interest I feel like writing about, I figured I would give you all a little update on how work is going. Albeit a bit boring, it is nonetheless a large part of my life. For the ease of your reading, I have divided up into three categories. First of all before I forget, Baris is gone. He is working in a summer camp – we knew this since before he started. His last day was Friday. He is still in Istanbul, but is no longer staying with us, nor is he coming to the company. I am hoping to see him this Friday.

The Company’s School of Business: I am slowly learning the many aspects of international sales, and it is no easy task. Communication problems with my colleagues, and Murat’s… I am not quite sure what, but he has a lack of it. I really haven’t received any kind of direction from him, and no one else really speaks English now that Baris is gone. So, for the most part I am learning things on my own.

In my trip through the UK last week I learned a tremendous amount. I was meeting with various managers and directors all of whom have tons of experience with compressors. In noting their questions and concerns (I attempted to answer a few as well), and listening to them talk about their local market; I managed to put together a plan in my mind about how to tackle the UK market. The thought of setting up a UK-wide distribution network makes me laugh. Who am I to do something like this? I have no qualifications for a task like this. That doesn’t bother me though. No one else here can do that, so why not give it a shot. In my mind it’s like a game, say Railroad Tychoon, only more in detail. We have to think about the overall market, look at what niches are under served, look at various localized markets, work with distributors to modify our product to make it more tailored to UK preferences (mainly energy efficiency concerns), consider various options, look at each distributors credit and weigh the risks, create pricing lists and schemes, and in general come up with a strategy for positioning ourselves in one of the most difficult Western European markets. So I ask again, who am I to be doing this? I am excited about the challenge, but am afraid of under performing, and ultimately letting myself down more than anything. Unlike in a computer game, there are many unseen factors, hidden information, and various other obstacles that cannot be seen. It is not possible to sit back and look at all the governing rules of this world as I do in a game. Thus there is no optimal strategy. It’s a lot of guestimation. I suppose in one year, we will see how successful I have been.

There other thing that has been quite educational for me here at the company was my meeting yesterday with a representative from the shipping company we are planning to use for our international sales. Alper (purchasing manager) and I met with her (she spoke English very well) and went over everything there is to know about shipping logistics. I could pass for knowing-what-I-am-talking-about if I had to. We covered various methods, political issues, export-import disparity between countries, critical density, taxes, customs, risks, strategic scheduling of shipments… the list goes on. It was actually very interesting, and I feel like I learned more in those few hours than I learned in any one week since I got here.

Of course, I know a thing or two about compressors now, but that is by far the least interesting. I have also been using my French reasonably often (some random guy from Algeria showed up today unannounced who didn’t speak English, so I took him around).

Reassignment of responsibility: Murat is a busy guy. Since it’s his family’s company, he is involved in every aspect of the business. Also, Murat is not the most effective person when it comes to communicating with people. He is not responding to emails promptly, he is forgetting things, he is sometimes ignoring people he doesn’t want to talk to. He is by far the most knowledgeable person in the company, but he doesn’t make that knowledge readily available to the rest of the staff because of a lack of documentation. To put it short, he’s not very well organized.

He therefore has been passing more and more of his workload to me. Remember the map I put up of how we divided up the world? It showed which contacts we would be responsible for following up on organized by country. Well Murat has been redrawing that map. It seems I am picking up Spain and Portugal now, and probably Southeast Asia as well. When I asked him about this he said take everything (except for the OEM customers). He says I am better at that kind of stuff. Good management decision I think. Until we start getting some contracts signed, I don’t have much to do except communicate back and fourth with potential distributors, and visit them. I don’t have any trips planned at the moment, but in the back of my mind, I will hopefully be going to Germany, Spain, Bangladesh and Egypt in the near future.

Greater comfort in my job: I am a lot more comfortable with my job than I was before. I was extremely stressed out about not having a good idea of what I should be doing and how to do it. Now I am gradually finding my place here. The others in the company seem to trust in me to be responsible and do my job well. They don’t seem to have much interest in watching over me like a manager. I feel that I can come and go when I please without repercussion. This is a very nice feeling. So easily being shown this kind of trust is tremendously motivating for me. I feel like this kind of situation is rare and that I should do my best to ensure that things stay this way. For example said I will not work Saturday anymore because there isn’t much point to it. I was met with no protest. The downside to this is that if I don’t perform, I am going to be in trouble. Kemal and Atila have high expectations for our international sales that I feel confident I can meet if the rest of the company is supportive. It will start slow the first year or so, then our international sales will climb rapidly if we support our distributors well. It’s like planting Pachysandra or poison ivy. You plant a few seeds (I know that no one plants poison ivy but I couldn’t think of another example) scattered about and slowly the first few plant break through the soil and mature. From there, the plants spread like wild fire and will eventually fill the available area. If your garden was a map of the world, that’s sort of how our international distribution network will grow as long as we stay price competitive.

In summary, it’s getting better all the time. I am learning a lot, gaining respect and trust, and gradually finding my place here. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but I will take what I can get.

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Current Mood: Angry

So I had another little run in with the police. You can read about my first run in with the police by clicking here. This time, it was completely retarded. Two weekends ago, was the first time I had the car for the whole weekend, all to myself. It was great! It felt so liberating to be able to drive where I wanted to when i wanted to without having to wait for anyone. Izzy and I went rock climbing, I drove, Tahsin, Leyla and I went to Kemer country, I drove. It was also nice not having to listen to Murat’s music choice for a change. Overall the whole weekend was fantastic except for one little run in I had with the police.

To get to Tahsin’s house, you take the highway east until the last exit before the bridge. I managed to miss the exit since it is not very well labeled and it sneaks up on you. Being my frist time driving this way to Tahsin’s it slipped past me. I only realized I had missed the exit when I arrived at the toll booths for the bridge at which point I stopped and pulled off to the right. A bit unsure of what to do, I decided to backup into a coned off area where two police cars were. I figured I could call Tahsin and he could ask the police for me how to get to Etiler and ultimately Tahsin’s place. Below is a picture showing how things went:

Following the image, the area enclosed by the yellow dots is the coned off area, the red dots are my path, and the blue is where the two police were. As I was entering the coned off area to ask the police for help, the police came running over yelling. I called Tahsin and had him translate between me and the cops. First things first was that I couldn’t drive there. Then they said my US driver’s license wasn’t good for Turkey (it is). After some discussion they wrote on a piece of paper 200 Lira (150 dollars) and held their hand out. I said no that I wouldn’t pay that I didn’t have money. Then they wrote 108 on a piece of paper and again held their hand out for money. Finally, after Tahsin argued more with them, they said they would send the ticket to the residence listed on the vehicle insurance. The ticket came last week.

I was talking about this with Alper and apparently the way things work is like this. If you are not Turkish and/or you are driving a nice car (both of which were true in this case), the police will try to find something wrong so they can get a bribe from you. This is just the way things work in Turkey. Thus, it is quite a disadvantage to have a nice car. Infact, even when parking in lots, they will charge you more if you have a nice car. I suppose it is a way of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but I don’t like their methods. I am all for a romanticised story portraying some Turks as modern day Robin Hoods, but it is not the case here. The police here are a corrupt brotherhood that watch out for each other, and collectively try to wring as much under the table money out of the people’s pockets as they can. Shame on you police.

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Current Mood: Sad

This past weekend was pretty great. For the first time we got all four Sigma Nu’s that are here from CMU together - Kutsal, Basar, Izzy, and myself. As was to be expected, we had a blast. All in all, the weekend was pretty great.

Next weekend is shaping up to not be so great. Basar will be heading off to China to do an internship there for most of the summer. He was supposed to have left yesterday, but he decided to stay a few extra days. He will be gone before the weekend is out. Izzy has left for a five week internship in Scottland. That’s another of my weekend group out of the picture. Leyla is gone for 10 days. Berna has to study for an exam this week and then is heading out as soon as it’s over for a short vacation. That leaves Tahsin and I.

I am not sure what I am going to do with everyone gone. I could call Baris, or hang out with Murat, maybe find some new people, or call other friends. However, I think I will take this weekend easy. All of my weekends have been rather intense and a good rest will be nice. Play soccer, go climbing, maybe Tahsin and I will head to Kemer Country again and go swimming. This will also keep my expenses down. I realized last night, that I spend nearly half my money on going out Friday and Saturday night. Between cab fares, drinks and snacks, most of my paycheck dissapears. So I suppose the theme of this weekend will be responsibility!

Basar and Izzy, we’ll miss you guys!

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Current Mood: Confused

Normally when I socialize, or interact with people, I am usually very aware of each thing I say, and what it says about me. I somewhat treat it like a game of Diplomacy, where it is important to shape other people’s perception of you in a favorable way. I always used to be aware of the impression I made on people, but was not so good at controlling it – after all, don’t we all worry how we appear to everyone else. Since starting to play Diplomacy, I have gotten much better at it. Writing often has made me aware of who I am, and how others perceive me, whereas Diplomacy has trained me to control others perception of me.

I don’t do this so much with my friends (although sometimes I do) since I usually don’t give a damn what they think. However, when meeting new people, interacting with professors in the past, or as of late, meeting with people for work, I am always on my toes. My Diplomacy instincts kicked in full force during the six meetings I had in the England this past week. It almost felt like I was actually playing. I did research on each person I was meeting and their company (know your opponent!). I also asked around a bit to see what I could gather. I was really looking for anything that could impress them, or give me the upper hand in our meetings. Anything useful. Since I am only 23, it is vital that I give a very good impression of company, by giving a very good impression of myself.

Most of meetings went very smoothly except for one. I won’t say which company or whom the meeting was with. Let’s just call him Mr X. Mr X had a morning meeting and we talked about lots of things (mostly compressors obviously). I had asked him for some documents that he said he would get for me a bit later. Then we got to talk about the Hanover fair. The conversation went something like this:

X: So how did Hanover go for [your comapny], was it very successful?
C (that’s me): Yes, it went very well. We made a lot of good contacts all over the world and we believe we will be able to enter many new markets.
X: Did you get to visit any other stands while you were there?
C: Not really. Murat went around and visited many other stands, and had several meetings with other Turkish companies that were there so he wasn’t at the stand that much. Often it was just Alper and I at the stand that could speak English so I didn’t have much chance to go around. I did visit the DH (the name has been changed) stand several times.
X: Oh, for their cappuccino right.
(I am very surprised that he knows this. I did keep going to DH’s stand just to drink their cappuccino. I think I went four times. I was a little nervous that he knew this. What else could he know I thought?)
C: Yeah, that’s right (I attempted a weak smile). How did you know that?
X: I read it on your blog.

At this point, terror set in. What else could he have read?! My mind began racing over all the things on my blog. Was there anything bad there? Had I portrayed myself in a bad light? How the hell did he find my blog anyway? Who is this guy? If he found my blog what else did he find?

I had that terrible sinking feeling in my stomach, the smile I had on my face disappeared, my heart started pumping loudly in my ears, the adrenaline was going. I am sure my face showed my fear. I somehow had completely lost any footing in this discussion and was now complete at the mercy of Mr X’s follow up comment. Would it be possible, I thought to myself that what he was about to say could be of incredible importance? Had he made up his mind and strung me along this whole time? There was nothing for me to say, so I waited, terrified, for what he would say next.

X: Why don’t I get those documents for you, I’ll be right back.

The worst! That is the worst possible thing he could say! Well I guess it wasn’t. It gave me time to think, and recompose myself. My mind raced over what else he could have found out about me for another 30 seconds or so, finally concluding that I had to assume the best and not worry about it. By the time he came back three or four minutes later, I was back to normal. He put the documents down and laughed.

X: You should have seen the look on your face when I told you I read your blog!

So X has a sense of humor. I liked him a lot, and I hope we will be able to work with his company because they seemed to be the best suited to act as a distributor for us. He explained to me that when he was searching for information on my company, my blog happened to come up, and he read my entries about the Hanover fair. We both had a laugh about the whole thing and X was kind enough to drive me quite far directly to the door of my next meeting. He instantly gained my respect for having found and read my blog before my arrival. He did his homework, and he did it well. A+ Mr X. Now I know that my blog is findable on the internet and I will not be so easily caught off guard next time.

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My weekend was once again fantastic! Murat asked me how my weekend was when I got back last night (he stayed in Buyukcekmece) and when I told him how great it was he replied, “you always say that.” I went outdoor climbing, swimming at Tahsin’s house outside the city, partied it up on Saturday. I won’t go into too much detail, but let’s just say Saturday felt like I was back in the fraternity. Respect to Leyla for going drink for drink with me. Pictures from the weekend can be found at the link below:

Weekend Photos

Although my weekend was excellent for me, I don’t think that it would be so interesting for you. It was great fun, but not all that unique. Today, for a change of pace, I am in the UK. I got up at 6am this morning to catch my 8:05 flight. I had planned on an afternoon meeting in London before heading to North Hampton (where I am now), but that got cancelled. So I have done very little today. Having not slept very much, it is probably good that I haven’t done much. I have been in a zombie like state all day. I haven’t quite recovered from my weekend, and am exhausted from having to take a plane, then a train, then walk a bit, then another train, then walk then a bus, then walk… you get the idea. It took me a while to get to Wellingborough.

Wellingborough is exactly what I imagine an English town would be like. It’s old, cloud and green, with cars on the wrong side of the road. The commercial part of the town is very small. Everything is packed together around its small center. My hotel is less than a kilometer from the center so I was able to walk around and do a bit of shopping that I haven’t had time to do in Turkey (I know it would have been cheaper in Turkey, but I have no time). The buildings are all small, and there are plenty of trees around. Furthermore, there is lots of nice green grass, something you don’t see too much of in Turkey.

My first time crossing the road I made the mistake of looking the wrong way – this must be classic mistake made by people form countries where they drive properly. After the adrenaline of almost getting hit had worn off, I wondered how many foreigners are hit by cars each year because they look the wrong way. I imagine this statistic would be interesting. More interesting and more amusing, is how many British are hit by cars per year because they look the wrong way in other countries. You could look at how many people total from countries driving on the wrong side of the road get hit in countries where they do things right, but I have a feeling that statistic would be 95% British.

On the train – it was a very nice train – I was watching the weather report. The weather was, and I quote, “cloudy, with sunny spells developing.” Depressing isn’t it? I don’t think I have ever heard the weather put that way. The word ‘developing’ is always used to describe thundershowers, or hurricanes, or low-pressure systems or anything really, except for sun. You can have rainy days with the sun ‘peaking through,’ or ‘partially sunny.’ ‘Sunny spells developing,’ seems to imply that the weather here must really suck. I have heard stories that British weather is bad, but I had never been here before. In my first hour in the country, I happened to catch the weather report and it was pretty dismal. I must say I am glad I don’t live here. Istanbul seems to be sunny all the time, which is quite nice. Maybe the crappy weather is why it seemed nobody smiles around here. (If you are wondering, the weather was sunny and warm today).

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I was thinking about my last four plane rides and the people I ended up talking to. They were all quite lucky I suppose. Simply by being outgoing, friendly and by wearing a smile, I have managed to meet several interesting people.

First, on my flight back from the US, I met Leyla. She’s half Turkish but grew up in New York. She has sort of become a part of our group (Izzy, Tahsin and I). She’s visiting her grandmother for the summer and I am assuming we are more fun than her grand mother is. Through her, we have also befriended her sister, Berna, who is a student here in Turkey.

Number two, my flight to Tunis. In the airport, while waiting in line to check in, I struck a conversation with the guy behind me. He’s an Algerian businessman who owns some textile factories. We talked for about half an hour (all in French) about lots of things. He was impressed by my story and gave me his cell phone number and office phone, and took my card. He said he would help me find a distributor for our products in Algeria. Of course this all sounded great, but these things usually are quickly forgotten. People like to talk about big ideas that are different and exciting (everyone wants to be part of something bigger than themselves) but they are usually forgotten because neither party follows up. Well, I am not like that. I ALWAYS follow up. 95% of the time I make people put their money where their mouth is. When I was in Switzerland, Daniel in my French class said I should come to Barcelona sometime and visit him while he’s there. Three weeks later I was in Barcelona, and Daniel was very surprised.

Anyway, so I called Mr Mohamed and he said that he would return to Turkey in two to three weeks and that we should have dinner together. After that he would arrange for me some meetings around Algeria. How excellent is that! Algeria is one of the biggest markets for compressors in Africa so Murat and Atila were excited to hear this news.

On flight number three, I had the luck of sitting next to two beautiful Tunisian girls. We talked  (in French again) about various things. They were on vacation with their family so I offered to have them come out with us. We exchanged numbers and they actually did call me back. It never materialized but hey, I did get a phone number ?.

On flight number four, my flight to the UK, I sat amongst the English wheel chair basketball national team (not sure how that is actually played). Bored, I struck up a conversation that ended in me getting invited to one of their games this weekend. Unfortunately I will not be here as I am returning to Istanbul on Friday evening. I have a very important person coming to visit us on Saturday so I will have to be in the office.

In addition to all of that, don’t forget that on my flight back from New York to Istanbul they thought they were going to have to bump me so they gave me a $400 voucher for use with Delta or any of its partners. When I didn’t get bumped, they said I could go ahead and keep the voucher!

Anyway, so I just thought I would take a minute to brag to you all at what great luck I have been having lately. Keep a good attitude and be friendly, and you can do the same.

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Current Mood: Cool

I finally got around to picking out a new theme for my blog. Like it? Notice anything about it? Mac users, this should be easy. The theme is called iTheme, and is designed to look like the apple OSX operating system. Go ahead, you can say it, I am a tool. If I get enough “I hate it comments,” I have a couple more themes that I like that I can use instead.

Also new is I added another page with a list of places I have been. From there you can link to related photo galleries. I also updated the about section of my blog by adding a picture.

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Current Mood: Esctatic & Happy & Playful

Ce poste est pour ce qui parle français. Je suis désolé si vous ne le comprenez pas.

Alors, je viens de rentrer chez moi après trois journées a Sfax, Tunisie. C’était un voyage pour mon travail, mais c’était tellement bon. Il m’a relaxé beaucoup. J’ai visité une petite entreprise qui fait le service pour des compresseurs. Monsieur Kamel Hachicha était mon hôte et aussi la chef de l’entreprise. Je pense que le voyage va être un grand succès. Le Mardi, on a passé onze heures ensemble entrain de discuter beaucoup de chose et faire des visites a des clients. Je pense qu’il y a un grand désire de travailler ensemble sur les deux cotes (Je l’espère).

On fait, la chose qui était intéressante n’était pas le travail. C’était la payse. Il m’a pris a l’aéroport de Tunis, epuis on a conduit pour trois heures et demie jusqu’au Sfax, a la centre de Tunis (il n’est pas une aéroport près de Sfax). Le voyage était trop long et chaud. La soirée auparavant, j’ai dormi seulement quatre heures, donc j’étais tellement fatigue. Mais, j’ai aimé le voyage. On a vu beaucoup du paysage et des bâtiments (vieux et nouveaux) qui m’intéressent. Tout le paysage est couvert par des arbres d’olive, et la terre et rouge sans beaucoup d’autres végétation. Les feuilles sur les arbres d’olive sont un vert très pale. Les troncs sont foncés et ils ses tondrent beaucoup. Contre la terre rouge, ça fait une bonne contraste de couleur. Aussi l’odeur du paysage était incroyable. Il a senti comme la vrai terre. Je ne peux pas le décrire en français ni en anglais. Il faut aller si vous voulez le connaître. Je suis désolée, mais je n’ai pas prix une bonne photo du paysage.

Des villes sont aussi très bonnes. Au centre ville, la plupart des bâtiments sont blancs, ou presque blanche. Ils sont vieux (je pense qu’entre 40-80 années) et petit. La plus grande au centre ville a eu quatre étages. J’adore l’architecture de ces bâtiments. Je pense qu’ils sont indicatifs d’une colonie française.

La dernière journée, quand on était en train d’aller a l’aéroport, on a arrêté a un vieux bâtiment construit par les romans. Je ne sais pas comment il s’appelle en français, mais je vous pressente des photos. Amuse toi bien !

Other News: I played soccer with Murat, Baris and their friends last nighta t 11pm. It was a team we didn’t know at all so it felt like a real game. Although only having slept 4 hours the night before, I was so tired, but incredibly energized because of excitement about the game. We won 4-1 - I scored one and assisted one! Because I was so excited to play, I ran my heart out and was extremely exhausted. I don’t think I have ever run so much in one hour. Right at the end of the game though, I slammed my head extremely hard and was quite dizzy for a while.

In summation: we won, I scored, I had a non-debilitating injury => Great game!

On the way back I layed down in the back and all my muscles tightened up while I was napping. I had a really hard time trying to walk up to my apartment afterwards. My head still kind of hurts.

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