An American Life in Istanbul

Yesterday I went climbing. It was great. I successfully climbed one of the routes for the first time and I climbed the very difficult slanted wall with relative ease. My grip still needs to be stronger to do some of the more challenging routes, but I am more determined than ever to improve. Erman came with us. He is very inexperienced but he said me making fun of him motivated him to reach the top of the wall for the first time in his life! At one point he commented that Izzy’s always doing weird stuff. Later while I was attempting a route that was very difficult for me, he said, “wow, you’re doing weird stuff so it must be right.” This made me start laughing and fall, and I had to wait until I stopped laughing before attempting it again. He was right though, I had my arms and body contorted in a bizarre way, but it wasn’t effective.

Today my wrist was killing me so I decided it was finally time to visit the doctor. I have a friend Demir who I met in Taksim, and who lives near me, that I go out with after work sometimes. He and his cousins are partners in a medical clinic near where I work. So I figured that I would go there. The good news is there is nothing wrong with my bones. The doctors asked me if I was doing any kind of heavy lifting, or putting a lot of strain on my wrist. Of course, I told him that almost everyday I am either climbing, wind surfing, or weight lifting, all three of which are a strain on the wrist. So can you guess what he said?

None of those things for ten days. I have to wrap my wrist during the day, apply some ointment on it at night, and take some pills. I am supposed to see him again before I go back to the states. This is terrible news. I was really looking forward to climbing everyday next week with Izzy before I leave for 17 days in the states. Now, apparently I can’t. I am actually debating holding off on the treatment until I am in the states. It depends on how my wrist is feeling on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

For those of you that are curious, the visit, and two x-rays was 100 lyra. The pills and ointment were 12 lyra. So the total for everything comes to just under 90 dollars. My health insurance will pay for it, but since they are not on their list, I have to take the receipt and send it to them. They will reimburse me afterwards.

I am devastated (again) though. No climbing for ten days! I think i will take my chances and wait until i go to the US to start the treatment.

NOTE: I am leaving for Bangladesh in one hour and will be back on Monday. I am excited for this trip, but not enough to outweigh the disappointment of not being allowed to climb.

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Current Mood: Happy

My weekend was pretty good. Unfortunately I currently only have pictures from Saturday and Sunday, but hopefully I will get some pictures from Friday.

Friday Night: We did an evening Bosporus cruise on Izzy’s yacht with a mixed group of about 12. Ant, Izzy and Erman were there from the people that I knew. Murat’s cousin Irem also joined us (she is visiting for the summer). At the end of the cruise we rolled up to Sortie (one of the clubs by the sea) and then spent the evening partying there. It was great fun. I met with another group of friends there (Nail’s friends) and we partied all night. Unfortunately Izzy went home before me and could not be woken by his cell phone’s rings. I therefore ended up having to wake up Tahsin at 7am and go stay at his house.

The rest of the weekend: I took a bunch of pictures over the rest of the weekend. Not feeling well from the previous night’s partying, we went bowling on Saturday with Izzy’s friends from high school. Turks have a way of sticking with their friends. From what I can tell, their group of friends hasn’t changed much since high school. Anyway, here are the pictures!

They spelled my name Korner for some reason.

That’s Adnan, one of Izzy’s friends. He lives on the Asian side but I still see him pretty regularly.

This is Erman. I have been hanging out with him more and more. He’s polite, friendly, and intelligent.

Ali Emre on the left and Dilek (sp?) on the right. I see Ali Emre often, Dilek a little less often. Dilek always seems to understand me, and responds to me, but I rarely here her speak english.

Adnan and his girl friend Amber. He looks very serious here because I was kicking his butt so badly.

So, the thing about Izzy and his friends is that they are all car fanatics. Jason (the closest one here), Adnan, Ali Emre, and Ant are all car fanatics. After bowling they all played racing games, and they all argued like crazy about some stupid cars.

It’s not just them either. I was speaking with Alper about how cars seem to be such a big deal here in Turkey. He said that because houses are very expensive, and apartments are difficult to be showy with, Turkish people like to have nice cars as a public display. This is similar in the US, but from what I can tell it is more so here. My friend Demir says that if you have a nice car, it is very easy to get a girl friend in Turkey. I guess Murat and I are the exception to Demir’s theory.

Jason playing some stupid punching game. Can you guess who scored the highest?

On a side note, I would like to tell you a story of what Jason did to his room. This is, one of the most bizarre stories I have ever heard, and as soon as I get the pictures, I will post them. While out at Home Depot, Jason’s friend told him jokingly it would be cool to make his room like a beach. Jason took this as an honest piece of wisdom and got a little carried away.

He waited until his room mate was gone for a week and then went out and bought:

• A hammock
• A palm tree
• 1 ton of sand (I am not exaggerating in the slightest)

sand+tree+hammock = beach. He even put heaters in to heat the sand in the morning so it wouldn’t be cold. Keep in mind this is an apartment, not a porch or anything outdoors. So after a month or two, he has been having back problems, the hammock stretched so now it’s so deep he can barely get out. There is sand everywhere. He managed to lose an unfinished burger in the sand which led to an ant infestation, which he solved with a flammable fluid and a lighter, which then led to his curtains catching on fire. Furthermore, because the hammock swings side to side, it has punched a whole in the wall of his room. With the new wisdom of what a sandy room is like, Jason is now left with the challenge of getting rid of all of the sand. He certainly is bold and creative. Good luck with your sand Jason.

Sunday afternoon we went climbing. Jason was terrible.

This is the first time I ever climbed lead. The lead climber is the one who sets the rope. So you start climbing with no rope supporting you and you hook it in as you go. It can be tricky when you have to support yourself in an awkward position with one hand while the other fumbles with the rope to hook it into the hook. I did two lead climbs. I was very proud of myself.

Since I weigh so much, Izzy and Jason had to hook to each other to make sure Izzy wouldn’t get pulled up as I fell.

So that was my weekend. It was pretty great. On a side note, my wrist has been killing me and I don’t know why. I will go see a doctor tomorrow. I have a feeling he’s going to tell me to stop climbing which will suck.

Also, I feel more and more like I am becoming a member of Izzy’s group of high school friends. It’s good to feel like I am part of the group.

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Current Mood: Happy

Part of keeping my sanity during the week when I only have Murat and Alper to talk to is staying very active. I try to do some kind of sportive activity as often as possible. I feel it is very important to keep your body healthy (this is obvious) but it is also a great way to relax and get rid of frustration. I have four activities that I have been doing pretty regularly:

Gym Membership: Right around the corner is a small gym (very small gym). It’s about 50$ for one month, and cheaper if you buy several months. I decided to try it out. It’s a about a half mile walk so it’s very convenient. I plan later to post some pictures, but that won’t be for a while. Not a single person speaks English there, but I like it.

Wind Surfing: This one you all know about. I have only been going about once a week. I picked up the basics immediately so now I just go when there is a strong wind and I can really test myself. It’s nice to play in the water (reminds me of summers at home), but I question how clean the water is. When there is a south wind, tons of trash blows up on the beach (thankfully it’s almost always a north wind). Also there is the smell of sewage in the air (there is a nearby plant). It’s no mystery why the bay isn’t heavily used.

Rock Climbing: In a desire to meet my goal of becoming a better climber than Izzy, I now try to go indoor climbing every time I go to the city. I don’t think I will be able to surpass him, but it is good to have a goal. The sport is a great workout for your whole body and it is very challenging. Really though, all the indoor climbing, although nice, is just practice for going outdoor on the real thing.

Soccer: This is probably my favorite thing to do in the whole world. Unfortunately we only play once a week on Sundays, and there are a lot of us, so not everyone gets to play every week. I would like to play more often but I haven’t had the opportunities. Typically we play six on six on a small field that is surrounded by a fence with a mesh netting over the top so that the ball doesn’t get lost. It’s expensive to use the field for an hour (they are very strict about this limit), but it’s worth it.

So far this week I have done the following:

• Sunday: Soccer
• Monday: Gym
• Tuesday: Climbing
• Wednesday: Windsurfing, then jogging, then gym (Murat wasn’t around and I didn’t have a car so I was very bored)
• Thursday: I was supposed to go climbing, but I was alone and the guy that works there wasn’t there so no one could belay me.

Hopefully on Saturday and/or Sunday I will do more climbing. Whether or not I go is typically dependent on how much partying I have done the night before. There are also a few other things I am looking into doing.

• Izzy recently got a wake board, something I am hoping to capitalize on as well.
• Sakir introduced me to the Istanbul paintball team, another sport I am willing to try
• My friend Selim recently returned to Turkey after graduating from CMU and he is interested to start learning to kite surf. This is something I really want to do, but I am afraid the logistics of doing it here are too difficult, at least for this year.
• Sakir also introduced me to the nearby diving club which organizes trips almost every weekend in the summer and early fall. I may join them for a trip or two.
• I would also like to play Tennis, but I am not sure where I can fit that one in.

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Current Mood: Happy

So my little boardgame project seems to be taking off. For the past few weeks I have been making an attempt (with the help of Izzy), to organize a standing weekly gaming session, and it seems to be working out. I had originally discussed the idea with Izzy and had decided to wait until his return from Scottland before making an effort. However I played a game with two of Izzy’s friends - Ali Emre and Adnan - whom prodded me to start sooner than later, so I did. The first weekend was hectic and unorganized. We have 11 people show up and most people just hung out as I was locked in a game and couldn’t help new comers.

The second week was a sad showing. We had three people. Tahsin and I, who will be regulars every week (me because I am organizing it, and Tahsin because I don’t think he has anything better to do). A friend of Izzy’s, Selim, was our third. The first week he didn’t join an game, but instead watched us play Settlers and was intrigued by the game. So the three of us played a board of Settlers of Catan which he seemed to enjoy.

Last night’s session was exactly what I envisioned it being. We were six so we played Union Pacific (a train game). Izzy and Tahsin were there. Selim came again and brought a friend. Adnan came with Izzy. Everyone arrived nearly at 8pm on the dot as anticipated. The venue we play at we chose because people game there regularly (mostly family, social and classical games), and because they have a big and interesting menu. It is also very near a big university so I am hoping we will snag a few curious onlookers and grow our group.

The game went very smoothly. I encouraged everyone just to play easy and to enjoy it because it was most people’s first time. I tried to push people away from being competitive. As I soon realized this was not possible. Izzy commented in the beginning that it’s always competitive, and then proceeded to win his first time playing the game. The other players all took great pleasure in battling each other for control of the various rail companies, ignoring the ones that were unowned in favor of fighting each other. All in all it was a fun game (I finished last) and I think everyone enjoyed it. I am hoping as people learn more games, it will become a more stable group. Between Izzy and I, we have 25 games here in Istanbul, so it shouldn’t be a problem to keep things interesting. It also helps that all the people we had last night are all intelligent, analytical and competitive; the perfect mix for a gamer. A tip of my hat to Adnan who figured out his strategy for the game after hearing the rules only once.

Afterwards we went to Tophane for Nargile and I didn’t get home until very late. I am very tired right now.

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Current Mood: Esctatic

Look very closely and see if you can figure out what is in these pictures that is making me so happy.

Did you get it? It’s air conditioning!!! After two weeks of asking Murat’s uncle Ahmet to arrange air conditioning for us, it finally happened (it takes forever to get anything done around here that isn’t of the utmost importance). Words cannot express how unbelievably nice it was to sleep in an air conditioned room. It was amazing. I guess I was kind of getting used to the heat, because until I slept in the AC this morning I didn’t realize how hot it is in the rest of the apartment. It would seem that this is a bad thing to have adapted and to now get AC, but let me tell you, it was so nice not to wake up wet with sweat. It was also nice to be able to wear a t-shirt and pants to bed and to use two blankets! Two blankets! One was a heavy down comforter, so you can get an idea for how high I had the air conditioning.

And today, I feel well rested, and ready to take on the world! I can’t wait to get home today and jack up the AC again, have an ice cold beer, and go to sleep.

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Current Mood: Angry & Confused

Here, to catch up read Crisis and Crisis Update

The good news is, I have my laptop back it’s working. The bad news is, it has a new hard drive in it and I am now starting the slow and painful process of going through externally saved data, and reorganizing myself. I am going to take it to a professional data recovery company when I get back to the US in August, but it doesn’t look good. The Apple service guys I took it to ran some data recovery software on it for 4 days even though the hard drive was making horrible noises. It specifically says not to do this on the website of most data recovery websites, because it may cause severe physical damage to the hard drive. So if it was recoverable before, chances are it’s less recoverable now.

To add to the general crappyness of this situation, I do not have a MacOffice CD here. I took a CD that says:

“

Microsoft Office v X for Mac

Professional Edition

(Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1)

“

Apparently what the above CD means is that it is in fact not Microsoft Office for mac. Instead it is Virtual PC (let’s you run window’s software) for Mac, which has a Microsoft Office component. This is completely useless because Virtual PC is generally not a very good program, and it takes up a lot of system resources. Only being able to run excel through Virtual PC is useless.

However, I do need Excel and Word to do my job. I know I own a license somewhere, but the question is where the heck is it? I suppose I will start calling around to my friends until I find someone with a Mac who has MacOffice. Perhaps Istanbul’s software black market may have it as well.

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Current Mood: Alarmed & Angry & Confused & Mischievous & Sad & Sickly

So the guy I took my laptop to could not recover the data. He expected so and he told me, but I was hoping beyond all hope that this wasn’t true. There are however more advanced data recovery services that will be my follow up. There are two problems with this however:

1. It is going to take a while. A couple of weeks maybe.

2. Well just read the following from the FAQ on datarecoverygroup.com:

Data Recovery FAQ - Are there instances where lost data cannot be recovered?Yes.

There are instances where the damage to the hard drive is so severe that data recovery is not possible. This usually occurs when the read/write heads actually “crash” and gouge the magnetic storage media to the point where the data is destroyed.

However, in a number of cases data recovery was possible at the time the damage first occurred, but became non-recoverable through the use of commercial recovery software. This software is designed to recover data from working drives. If your drive has experienced a mechanical or electrical failure, the use of recovery software can cause permanent loss of your data.

I of course did not use commercial recovery software since my computer went from working to completely not working. I am afraid however that the service guys simply used commercial recovery software not aware of the fact that if the hard drive is making funny noises, there is a hardware problem which cannot be fixed with software. I am afraid what he did may have made the problem worse.

My immediate reaction of course is the flip out and tear this guy apart. He’s a professional and he’s supposed to know these things. Of course, this is Turkey, and you cannot have the same expectations as in the US. To be a consumer here you must be much more knowledgeable as it seems that a lot of the burden rests on you, not the vendor. For me, this is a hard lesson learned. If my data is permantly lost and whoever I go to next says you shouldn’t have hand it over to them, I can assure you no computer technician is ever going to touch my laptop anywhere outside the US again.

Now for my own interest I will compile a list of what I lost:

1. All pictures taken after September 2006
2. All movies made after September 2006
3. All contact information in my address book. This includes many people from Switzerland and the Marshal Islands
4. The newer  episodes of Southpark, Big Love and The Office
5. All the information and prices lists for our potential international clients.
6. All the information for the English manuals and documentation that I was working on.
7. A lot of other work files.
8. A boat load of software. Actually Leyla has a CD with all of it, but she didn’t give it to Patrick as she said she would, so I have no idea what happened to it.
9. All my information for my various online accounts, bank accounts credit cards. I might have a copy of this file from September 2006, but I have added a lot since then.
10. The worst thing of all is how nicely organized I had everything. It is going to take me a week or so to get back to that level. I am hoping I can import the backups I made of my old emails so that i can get back most of the email addresses I had in my address book.
11. All my music.

If there was one person responsible for this (obviously not me), just someone I could scapegoat, they would be really really sorry. More sorry than I am that I didn’t back up in like I had planned to.

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Current Mood: Angry & Confused & Sad & Sickly

Some of you will appreciate the magnitude of this crisis more than others. You need to know that I was very very very attached to my laptop. For the past few weeks, my computer has been acting funny when it heats up. To prevent this from happening, I didn’t run too many programs at once, and I would shut down for a while when it started acting up. This seemed to be working. Tuesday night I left it on at work, and on Wednesday it was really acting up. So, Thursday morning I decided to do a back up of my hard disk just in case something went wrong.Thursday morning, when I got into to work, I set up my external hard drive, opened my laptop and pushed the power button. Instead of being greeted with an apple on my screen during booting, I was greeted with a question mark. When I booted from disk, my computer said there was a serious error on my hard disk and that it could not boot from it. So I took the computer to one of two apple repair shops in this city. They are currently doing some four day data recovery process on my hard drive, but they said by the sounds that were coming out of my hard drive, it doesn’t look good. Fortunately, I backed up my work documents about 1 month ago, and I backed up most of the stuff on my computer in September, but still. My laptop was my life. Hundreds of people’s contact information was in there, everything was so organized, all my personal documents I created since coming to

Turkey, my various tooling projects. Since getting that laptop, I never went anywhere without. Now on month shy of the three year mark, my hard drive has failed, the day I intended to back it up. With the uncertainty over the question of whether or not my data can be recovered, I have not been able to sleep very well lately. I am currently using Murat’s crappy Window’s laptop. I will be able to pick up my computer tomorrow with a new hard drive. Whether or not I get my data back is a question still unanswered. I am not usually a religious person, but I think  it is time to start praying.So for the time being there will be no more picture of the week, if there are any pictures at all going up on my blog. I am actually hardly in the mood to write anything…

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Current Mood: Confused

Last night after work I went to the city with Murat. He dropped me off at the indoor climbing place in Etiler where I did some climbing by myself for about an hour. After that I met with Tahsin and we went to Tophane where we were to meet with Ant and some other people. For those of you that don’t know Tophane is a place by the sea with lots of nargile (hookah) cafes. It is famous for its nargile cafes. I end up there about once a week. I am sure there are other note worthy things about the area, but I haven’t discovered them yet.

The nargile cafes in Tophane are wonderful (sorry I don’t have pictures of them yet). You can sit either on bean bag chairs, or on benches. There is cafe after cafe next to each other in  a line of about 100-150m. It is near the sea so there is always a nice breeze which carries the sweet smells of fruity sheesha (the tobacco in nargile) to the nearby street. As you approach Tophane, you can smell the nargile before you see it. My favorite part of Tophane is the many people that walk through the area selling all kinds of fun things to eat. Cold wet almonds, cherries, cookies, apricots, grapes, green plums, those weird pretzel bread things, tea and some things I haven’t eaten nor been able to identify yet, but they look good. Ant is a regular there, so since I am always with him, they recognize me as well, and I am therefore greeted very warmly.

The reason I am writing about Tophane was because of something very interesting I observed last night. While Tahsin and I were sitting waiting for the other three, a family of Dutch tourists came in. It was a father, his wife, and four children, the oldest being in high school. They were clearly trying to communicate with the servers there, whom do not speak English. Tahsin therefore volunteered to translate for them.

The question they had was whether or not it was ok for the women to sit there. This question seemed a bit strange, but then I realized, there were not any women sitting in the area we were sitting, a just question I thought. The answer was of course, it is no problem. So they took up a spot next to us. Ironically the father’s name was Conrad also (although spelled the Dutch way). I talked with them (mostly the father who was sitting next to me) and found them very nice.

Tahsin’s reaction was quite different. Tahsin seemed insulted and angered by their question. His reaction to the tourists asking if women were allowed to sit there was that these people were insensitive to Turkish culture. According to Tahsin, had they done some research before visiting Turkey, they would understand how secular the country is, and that there is no strict division between women and men as in other Muslim countries.

The read the book argument is a little exagerated. I am evidence that you cannot read about a country’s culture and understand yet. Culture is very complex and it takes years to fully understand a new culture. Furthermore, I don’t believe you can do it through books. You must live the culture to understand it. I assumed that this was simply Tahsin being a pessimist and seeing only the bad side of things.

In my mind, they were being very culturally sensitive. They are in a country that they do not know much about. What they do know is from the media which is biased in its coverage. Furthermore they had only been two days in Istanbul. So when arriving at Tophane, what is one to think when they are in a culture they do not know and suddenly they see no women. I think their question was warranted. Had they not asked and had they sat down without asking, they would have been accused of being culturally insensitive. It’s kind of a lose-lose situation.

I didn’t pay much heed to Tahsin’s comment until Ant and the others arrived. After telling them the story of these Dutch visitors Ant’s comment was “they think we are barbarians,” and the others seemed to agree. I was shocked. I thought they were being cultural sensitive, and I am sure they did too. Many of you would agree, wouldn’t you? Apparently there are some who find it to be just the opposite. Is the fact that these tourists did not understand  Turkish culture before coming to Turkey is culturally insensitive in itself?
It is important to note at this point that the Turks are not Arabs. I am not sure everyone is aware of this. They are from a completely different genealogy and have a completely different language.  They are from different parts of the world. The Arabs and the Turks simply share the same religion (the same goes for the Persians - Iran).

What do I make of all this? It seems the Turks defaulted to a defensive stance in this situation.  I think everyone can agree that each side to this argument has a valid point and both sides are reasonable. So then it comes down to the difference between cultures. What does this incident say about Turkish culture?

I think it is indicative of the Turks being stuck between a rock and a hard place for a long time now. Since Turkey is a secular Muslim state, they aren’t very popular with their Arab neighbors, but since they are Muslim, they haven’t gotten along too well with Europe. People like Sarkozy in France, who had a campaign platform saying under his watch, Turkey would never join the EU, make Turkey feel rejected from the West. I am sure there is an eastern anti-Turkey counterpart, but I don’t know enough about the history and the politics to cite any names. Furthermore, allying itself with the US for so long has dragged Turkey’s popularity down as US popularity declines world wide. The divide between Turkey and the west has clearly led to a mutually lack of understanding. The rejection coupled with Turkey’s intense national pride may have turned them off to the rest of the world. Ant and Tahsin both saw this as a stealthy attack on their culture, would many other Turks have drawn the same conclusion? Would many other Turks agree with them? I don’t know.

I am now somewhat inspired to read deeper into Turkey’s history since the becoming a republic in 1923. They clearly  don’t like being rejected, but I am curious how they have responded to others. There is the issue of the incident with the Armenians, but there is also the Ottoman acceptance of the Jews when they fled Spain. Is this a case of a self fulfilling prophecy or have the Turks simply been backed into a corner by the forces of global politics?

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Current Mood: Confused

You may remember a post from way back in March where, I talked about some of the clear differences between Murat and myself. If not click here to catch up.

I am reminded of this entry because of my recent interaction with Oytun, the consultant we are paying to take care of our stock database and to create a website template with a user friendly content management system (don’t worry about what that is).

Since I am the most skilled person when it comes to Internet stuff, Murat appointed me in charge of the website. He said I can do whatever I want with it, just take care of it. To check how serious he was, I asked if I could fire Oytun and find someone else. He said yes. So I took this to mean that he didn’t want to hear about it, just that in a couple weeks, he wanted a functional high quality website. Before taking on this responsibility, I made him sit down and together we clearly defined what the goals of the website were, and each group that the website is meant to serve. This way I could have an idea of what he wants.

I have been going back and fourth with Oytun constantly since we met on Friday, bombarding him with questions and commands about things to change. In the email he sent me today, I was reminded of my earlier blog entry. At the bottom of a long list of things I wanted him to do, which I prioritized for him, he had the following response to my last request:

“Me: Sixth I don’t want to see any turkish anywhere in the content management system.
Oytun: You are too aggressive for someone working in a Turkish speaking country, anyway I will translate them as I encounter.”

I am not sure if he meant this to be critical or as a joke, but I took it as a compliment. This is certainly not the first comment I have received like this. After a series of emails back and fourth with Ant (one of Izzy’s friends), he commented

“I guess you were out before 9 months ? :p”

He means that I am always in such a hurry that I must not have waited 9 months to be born and had come out early. There was also Baris’ comment:

“You are the most American guy I have ever met.”

This one I was insulted by at first. I have a bit of euro-envy and I try to associate myself with European culture, so I was shocked when he said this. Then I realized it was because of my approach to work that he said this, and that it was kind of a compliment.

As I have commented on in other posts in this blog, and in my blog while in the Marshal Islands, I find that the American approach, or at least the approach I have always been witness to, is a very proactive one. This may be because I studied engineering, but I believe it is always better to take initiative and solve problems before to occur, to plan things out well in advance, to create opportunities for effective communication between colleagues, ect. I have in my mind a model for how a business should be run, and the culture of the people I would want working in that business (If I ever do have my own business, I have a running list in my mind of friends I have met that I would hire).

The Turkish method here is very different. I don’t want to comment too much here on Turkish culture because I do not have the experience to distinguish between what is Turkish work culture and what is my company’s work culture. My work experience at the company is frustrating from at times. It does not opperate in the same as the states and the differences bother me.

This entry isn’t meant to talk about Turkish culture so much, but to point out how Turkish culture is interpreting me. If you look back at my “Fear in the Fearless” entry, you can read about how I see myself as good at making a positive impression on people. It appears however, that this is becoming less and less true. I have had four people now tell me that at first they thought I didn’t like them, that I was giving off hostile energy. I am not aware of doing this, which leads to one of two conclusions: I am not myself lately (possible), or I am missing some key cultural cues (equally possible). How to figure out which of these two it is, I am not sure. I can only try and learn more about the culture, learn more about myself and ask my friends for feedback. These comments from Oytun, Ant and Baris illustrate that I am distinctly different and that it is more obvious than I had previously thought. Perhaps Oytun and Ant were turned off to me when they saw this. Ant studied at Penn State, so he is familiar with my kind of attitude, but I don’t think that Oytun has studied or worked outside of Turkey. I wonder what he really thinks? Perhaps he sees this characteristic in me, understands it, and offers his words as a warning. “Conrad, you will go crazy if you try to function this way within a Turkish run company,” is what he means to say.

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