An American Life in Istanbul

Last week I attended an exhibition on industrial technologies with my company. Alper and I went, and we were joined by Ahmet Aral, the owner of one our distributors and the manufacturer of our high-pressure products. This is the first of many fairs we are planning to attend over the next year, and the first we have participated in since the Hannover Messe back in April. Overall it was fun and productive. I really enjoy going to fairs because you meet so many people and they are asking so many questions. Often I feel like I am playing a game and you have to think on your toes to answer the questions well, give a good impression of the company, and to learn as much as you can about them and their company, all while being likable at the same time. I always get very excited and energized before fair time. Since this entry is going up a little late, I will just outline some things for you.

First of all a comment on the Ukrainian women: It was difficult to tell the regular women from the prostitutes because of the way people dressed. It was freezing cold and women were still wearing short skirts. In general I thought the fashion there did not look good, but some of what they were wearing was borderline inappropriate. Furthermore, my hotel’s lounge and bar was full of prostitutes at night. They would come and just hang around waiting to pick up a customer. I now understand why Ukraine has the reputation it does here in Turkey.

In the airport while we were waiting for our bags I noticed they had a beer-dispensing machine. First time I have ever seen one outside of a fraternity house. I was very tired and a bit ill so I didn’t bother to buy anything.

Here is our stand before we unpacked anything. We took four compressors with us. Two were high pressure compressors from Ahmet’s company and two were compressors from my company.

This picture may be hard to see, but our stand is on the right. It is the only stand in this picture with a red banner. In our hall we were one of three stands with a red banner and a red carpet (all Turkish companies had this design). This definitely helped us draw attention.

The best things about our stand were the banners that I designed for it. All the stands at these industry trade shows look the same, which I thought was a bit stupid. Since we are a very different company – young company, young people, different business model – I decided we should have a stand that looks different. So I found some pictures on the Internet and created the stand you see here. Not bad right? My bosses liked it and our Bursa distributor is also using it in their fair.

Alper. Now that Alper is working with me he will be attending all the fairs with me. We had a really good time together. In the past two weeks I have begun to realize how much Alper’s English has improved since he has started working with me. It’s really impressive.

 That’s me. I have gained a bit of weight since I bought my suit so it doesn’t really fit too well anymore, that’s why I am wearing a jacket

 Ahmet is our distributor in Izmir and the manufacturer of our high-pressure products. We have an excellent relationship with his company and we are working very closely together in many different areas. Even though I did most of the talking, it was very helpful to have Ahmet there. He’s older and better dressed than us which gave Alper and I a confidence boost when talking with guys twice our age (three times my age).

This is the three of our plus our translator Helen. She was an excellent translator and a big help. She even brought us a bottle of homemade cognac as a gift (no one has gone blind yet).

This is Valentin, one of the Ukrainian guys we were negotiating with. His company was very big and very professional. He and a colleague took all three of us out for a traditional Ukrainian dinner, which was excellent (some of the same foods my Ukrainian grand mother makes). All throughout dinner we had to drink vodka in shots. One guy was driving and didn’t drink, and Ahmet and Alper limped through the shots hardly drinking. The end result was Valentin and I drank two bottles of Vodka. I was hung-over about 12 hours afterwards.

This is Valentin, one of the Ukrainian guys we were negotiating with. His company was very big and very professional. He and a colleague took all three of us out for a traditional Ukrainian dinner, which was excellent (some of the same foods my Ukrainian grand mother makes). All throughout dinner we had to drink vodka in shots. One guy was driving and didn’t drink, and Ahmet and Alper limped through the shots hardly drinking. The end result was Valentin and I drank two bottles of Vodka. I was hung-over about 12 hours afterwards.

Ahmet and Alper not too thrilled about having to do another double shot of vodka so soon.

This is the view from my hotel room. That is Kiev Dynamo playing AS Roma for the Champions League.

Towards the end of the show we got a bit silly and decided to pose the same way as our pictures.

Snow!

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Leyla showed up by surprise last week and we all went out and had a great time this past weekend. I’ll just give you some pictures because as usual the weekend was pretty intense, and I am still tired from it.

Sisters: Leyla and Berna

From the Right: Erman, Kocas (AKA Patrick), Leyla, Kutsal (one of the other SigNus here in Turkey), Izzy, me and the other Leyla (she invited us out with her friends, but we kind of took over).

Kocas, Izzy and Lara (a Canadian exchange student at Koc University, the same place that Kutsal, Izzy, Kocas (aka Patrick) and Berna go to).

Best looking guys of the night: Kocas (aka Patrick) and I

We went to a really fancy roof top bar near the end of the night. Under the stairs they had a bunch of beach balls. Leyla (the first Leyla) and I hid under there and deflated a bunch of them.

I just like this picture.

Kocas (AKA Patrick) and Izzy. So as the evening went on, things got weirder.

Leyla, Kocas (AKA Patrick) and Lara. I like the look on Lara’s face. Notice the beach balls.

That’s all. I thought given my recent posts, this would be an appropriate change of style. Except for UK Trip 2: Part I: Lions entry, I haven’t had an entry recently simply about what I did.

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I just returned from a five day trip that was quite a headache. I think that most of you will not go through a description of the week, so I will give you a bulleted list. I am sure you can still appreciate the madness:

• WEDNESDAY: 5:30am - got out of bed and headed to the airport for my morning flight to London.
• 10:30am - landed in London, headed into the city to meet Arianna for lunch.
• Sometime after lunch I headed to Stansted airport (a different one than the one I arrived in). Apparently left too late because I missed my flight
• Spent most of the evening in transit and on the phone looking for another flight. Got back to Andra’s flat (where I was staying) at about 11pm.
• THURSDAY: 4:45am - Got up to catch my 6:20am. Had to take a taxi to the airport because of how early it was = 62 pounds
• 11:00am - landed in Seville and headed to my meeting.
• 8:00pm - Headed to the airport for my 10pm flight. Got slapped with a stupid 3euro penalty for not checking in online. Apparently it was in the fine print, but nearly everyone else on the flight didn’t know this.
• FRIDAY: 1:30am - Went to sleep
• 8:30am - Got up and hopped on a train to Birmingham for my next meeting
• 5:00pm - Meeting done, on the train back to London to spend time with my friends in London (Andra, Eric, Spags and Arianna).
• Had a great weekend!

After I got through those first three days it wasn’t so bad, but I was so incredibly tired and frustrated. It was great seeing old friends though.

Instead of actually writing an entry about my trip, I am just going to say a few short things and share some pictures with you. First of all the business of the trip went very well. The social aspect was also very good. My favorite place in all of London (although I haven’t been too many places) was Trafalgar square. The reason for this was the four giant metal lions surrounding the pylon on top of which a statue of Admiral Nelson stands. Why did I like these lions? I think it was because when I was small, we would often go to my father’s boss’ house. Near his front door, just inside the house, were two big metal lions. The lions in Trafalgar square are a lot bigger than the ones from my childhood, but then again I used to be a lot smaller. There was something very enchanting and familiar about climbing on these lions that made me feel very at ease and relaxed. I would have been satisfied to sit there all day in between the paws of the great lions, either playing a game, reading or just chatting. Anyway, here are the pictures.

Cool lighting I thought. That’s good old Nelson up there (obviously the admiral is the guy in the background, and not the one on the horse).

That’s the lion! (That’s Andra on the left. She’s a friend from high school who is doing her masters degree at the London School of Economics).

That’s Arianna, a friend from university. In the middle is a lion!

There is the three of us sitting in front of a lion!

That’s a lion! with some building behind it. I think it was some kind of museum.

That’s me checking out an ice climbing wall in central London. Unfortunately, all the pros had reserved it because of the approaching season. (Notice the absence of lions from the picture).

This was almost as cool as the lions. This was a charge station for an electric car right on the side of the road. This is evidence that London is a greener city than Istanbul (I am sure no one was doubting that fact, but I thought this was pretty cool). To operate the charge station you needed some kind of RFID tag to activate it.

And there you have it, that was London. Sorry I didn’t take more non-lion pictures.

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I went to a wine and cheese house party on Saturday night. It was composed almost entirely of female expatriate teachers in their 20s. So it was a pretty good party, and a nice change from hanging out with the guys all the time.

But that is not the interesting thing I would like to share with you. In the morning when I was driving back to Izzy’s, I saw this a few blocks from where the party had been. Keep in mind this is a bus stop really in the city.

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 I had one heck of a weekend. Since Ramadan ended, I had a four day weekend. Thursday Izzy and I went rock climbing; we were the only ones there. Then Thursday night we took a 14 hour bus ride to the south of Turkey to a charming little diving town called Kas. The three days I spent there were relaxing and extremely fulfilling and satisfying. I am however exhausted. Anyway, I am not going to go into great detail about how things went. Instead here are some pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/skyblueshu/TwoWeekendsHikingDivingAndClimbing

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This entry will be mostly pictures.Well I had a busy weekend. On Friday, I got up at 6am to take a bus to Ankara where I had a meeting with one of our suppliers. After my meeting, I met with a friend of Parisa’s (one of my friends), whom lives there. I spent Friday night and Saturday morning with Gokce and her twin sister Goken. They had an impeccably clean house that was very well decorated. Each room looked like something out of catalog. They said this was a point of pride for their mother and she was pleased to hear this from me.

They had both been exchange students in the US so their English was good. Their father liked speaking English but didn’t speak perfectly. The mother only spoke a few words here and there. They were excellent hosts.

That’s me and Gokce, who was an exchange student during high school, at Parisa’s high school. The two of them kept in touch all this time. After dinner, we went with a group and played monopoly at a nargile cafe. Being the last person to go, I got my butt kicked. I hardly even had a chance to buy any property. I also got my butt kicked right before that in backgammon, by Goken’s boy friend.

This is Goken and her boy friend who’s name escapes me right now. He’s really good at backgammon.

This was one of Gokce and Goken’s friends. I like this picture for some reason.

Because of plans on Saturday afternoon, I could only stay one day. After a breakfast at TriBeCa - a decent bagel shop that has a location in Istanbul as well - I met with Kenan who was coincidently in Ankara as well. We drove back to Istanbul together. This picture is a picture from the car as we were driving. I was in a bit of a hurry to get back so we didn’t stop for any sight seeing. It’s quite an interesting drive though.

Saturday afternoon, my important event was playing Diplomacy! We were partly the same group - Izzy, Adnan, Berna and myself - plus three new players. Amber, Adnan’s girl friend played as did Erman. Izzy’s father as it turns out played Diplomacy a long time ago so he joined us. I think that most of the people that have played so far have enjoyed it quite a bit and that we will be playing again soon. I am hoping to build up a group for Diplomacy here in Istanbul, but it is a slow process. In this picture from the left you see Amber, Adnan and Izzy, trying to figure out how Adnan can fight back against the stab I had just made against him.

Sunday morning we got up early to go hiking! We drove for about four hours almost all the way to Ankara (I should have stayed there Saturday). The scenery was great and it was a lot of fun. Of the people I know, Berna, Izzy and Erman came. The other 80 or so people were mostly students at Koc university. The trip was organized by the Koc University Diving and Mountaineering club, which Izzy is the president of. It was exhausting though.

That’s Murat (Izzy’s friend, not the one I work with) heading back from peeing off the cliff. I snapped this picture about 10 seconds too late.

I like the way the colors looked in this scene. The ferns were are dead and dried out and were very read. The mountain was very gray and the sky was blue. The contrast didn’t come out as clearly as I would have liked. It looked much better in person.

Izzy and Erman. For the second half of the hike, the three of us walked in the back to make sure no stragglers got lost.

Finally, on our way back down to the lake. That’s Izzy striking a pose with the walking stick he stole from me.

There were more pictures taken, but I haven’t gotten them yet. When I do I will upload them to my Picasa webalbum and post a link here.

NEXT WEEKEND: Climbing in Ballikaylar on Thursday, and a three day diving trip Friday, Saturday, Sunday!

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Current Mood: Happy

I was supposed to diving on Saturday, but on Friday night the guy running the trip said that I couldn’t go because I was a foreigner and they needed to file some extra paper work because I was a foreigner. So at the last minute my plans changed. I ended up doing nothing on Saturday instead.

On Sunday, Izzy and I joined Cem (this is the Cem that works at the climbing wall we go to regularly) and two of his friends and went to Ballikaylar, the park we always climb at. The weather was absolutely perfect. Cool, but not so cool the rocks hurt your hands, and it was sunny. There was a refreshing breeze. We timed our climbs so that we could stay out of the direct sun light. Everything was just great.

Most of the climbs I did I climbed lead. That means the rope wasn’t set. I would climb a bit, find a comfortable place to hold on with just one hand, then use one of the clips on my harness to clip to the bolt, then run the rope through the clip. This way of climbing is more dangerous. Normally when you climb top rope, the rope is already set so that if you fall, you don’t really go anywhere. When climbing lead, if you fall right before you clip into the next bolt, you can fall down past the previous bolt and can bang yourself up a bit. I fortunately did not fall, but it was scary. On one of the routes, there was at least two meters between each bolt, so falling would have meant picking up some good speed before being jerked to a halt.

Anyway, here are some pictures. I am pretty sore still, but that won’t stop me from going indoor climbing this afternoon.

That’s me getting ready to belay one of Cem’s friends. My shoulder was killing me from a collision I had playing soccer the weekend before. I took 4 Excedrin and made sure to keep my shoulder warm all day.

It may be hard to tell, but this is the longest route I have ever climbed. It was exhausting, especially climbing it lead.

Triumphant at the top of the route from the last picture.

Izzy climbing the same route. He of course made it look easy. You can see how the rope hangs down because it’s not yet clipped into anything. The first clip is already in the bolt from when I climbed it. You can see it just above his head.

From that angle you can get a better idea of how long the route was.

This route is not one that we climbed on Sunday. I have tried it before and have gotten to about where the horizontal red line is. This is the route that Izzy says is a good measure of whether or not you are actually a climber. If you can climb this one, you are no longer a rookie. I think I will get this one next time.

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Pictures from my Germany and Poland are up at:

Germany and Poland Pictures

I have been really busy since I got back so i haven’t had much time to post. This weekend I am going diving one day and outdoor climbing the second day, so I should have some good pictures for you on Monday, and maybe a story or two.

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Ant’s Birthday was about two weeks ago, but I just got the pictures from Izzy (he was on a week long hiking trip in the south of Turkey). Still exhausted from my vacation in the US, I took a nap and showed up for the clubbing half of the night (I skipped dinner). We went to a club who’s name escapes me at the moment. The club is characterized by having waitresses and other employees that are transvestites (as you will see from the pictures) and has very live performances throughout the night. The performances were great, and the music was good. Drinks were too much, so I kept myself to two (first one was free). Overall it was a good time. Click Ant’s picture to see the photo gallery.

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This is my 100th blog entry!

Before I went on vacation - way back in the end of July - I went to Bangladesh. I have been meaning to put up a post for a long time now but never got around to it. Since my post is so late, it will be less than what I had intended. Here are some pictures with some text for reach one. You can jump straight to the pictures by clicking here!

When I changed money, I had only two 500 Euro notes that the company gave me to use on my trip. The bank would not make change so I had to change one 500 Euro note. What I got was a pile of money! It was somewhere in the ballpark of 45,000 Taka, which you can see, is about as thick as my cellphone. They gave me mostly 500 Taka notes, which turned out to be too big to use in most small shops and food places. Consequently, I spent no money except for my hotel bill. On the way back, the bank in the airport refused to buy back the Taka so i came home with a ton of Bangladeshi money.

That’s me one hour into the fair. The fair was not a closed in space and so there was no air conditioning. Banglades is extremely humid (I don’t think it was less than 90% while I was there) and very hot. It was the rainy season while I was there so it was raining all the time, and everything was wet.

This is a picture from the fair ground. That is the part that was enclosed. I think it was being used for something else.

This is one of the two Turks I was with, Hilal, and her agent in Bangladesh, Rhiya. Hilal and Kenan are from another company that we do business with here in Turkey. Since the Kenan didn’t speak English, I ended up talking with Hilal a lot. Hilal and Kenan really did not like Bangladesh. They complained a lot about everything. It was actually kind of funny.

Here is a picture from the streets of Dhakka, the capital of Bangladesh. You can see the bicycle taxis that are commonly used in Bangladesh. They are called rickshaws and they were everywhere. I thought they were great fun to take. Hilal and Kenan thought I was crazy for taking one, and even crazier for having enjoyed the experience. I was also clipped by one in a narrow street, but no real harm done.

Bamboo seemed to be a very popular building material. Even for the construction of big buildings, bamboo poles were used as support until the building had the strength to stand on it’s own support.

Just some picture that I liked.

A close up of a rickshaw.

A picture from one of the poorer districts of Bangladesh. I went with Hilal and Kenan to visit one of their customer’s factories. We took a long drive through the city and I got to see a lot of Dhakka. From what I saw, Dhakka appears to be very poor and living conditions are quite bad. With all the flooding from the rain, it is very difficult for people there to keep good living conditions.

If you look closely at the building being built, you can see how the bamboo poles are used for support for each floor until everything else is ready.

The factory I visited with Hilal, Kenan and Rhiya was in a very poor part of the city. Walking up the stairs to the offices of the factory felt like walking in some WWII movie. It was raining, many buildings around me were destroyed or falling apart. There was not railing, not carpet, not windows or no lights. It looked as though the stairs had not been swept in ages. However once you went through the door into the factory it looked like this!

Unbelievable huh?! The factory was immaculate! Everyone was barefoot in order to keep the floor clean!

A cool picture I took of a truck at the side of the road.

An old river boat on the side of the river. It was turned into a restaurant 40 years ago. It still floats, but by the look of it, it’s never going to move on it’s own power ever again. If you look closely on the right on the water are two small boats. One is completely out of the water on top of the other.

A picture of the river. All the smoke stacks you can see are for making bricks. There seemed to be a ton of smoke stacks and a ton of bricks around. There also seemed to be a tone of people breaking the bricks up into small pieces. My guess was to use them to mix with concrete.

Goats on a boat! The boat behind the goat boat is so heavily loaded that water is coming up into it. It seemed like most boats were this heavily loaded.

Hilal was pretty short.

Some cool looking government building. The intense humidity reminded me of my time in the Marshal Islands.

There is your proof that I did in fact get on a rickshaw. Since I am so much bigger than everyone else in the country, I was afraid I was going to break it.

Traditional Bangladeshi food. My hosts were actually nervous that I would get sick from eating this but I insisted. I fortunately did not get sick from this (I was sick the two days prior, during which I spent a night praying to the porcelain gods). You know that you are playing with fire when even the locals are nervous about eating it.

The food is eaten with your hands (just one!). It was really cool mixing all the sauces together with your fingers. The food was mostly vegetarian and very good. I ordered some chicken, which Faziul (the guy to my right in this picture) would not eat because of concerns about bird flu.

It seemed like there were cables everywhere above your head when traveling around Dhakka. I can’t imagine anybody knows where any of these wires go.

Some of the guys I was meeting with play soccer every Sunday. So I decided to join them! The field was extremely muddy and slippery so I couldn’t do much other than fall in front of the other players (I am standing on the only dry spot in the filed). Even though it was very humid and raining most of the time, things would get dusty as soon as it stopped raining for an hour or so.

This is Rofique. He is the agent for my father’s company in Bangladesh. I figured I would email him before I left. I ended up spending most of the time with his son Fazlul, but dropped in to chat with him. Fazlul and Rofique gave me the excellent shirt that I am wearing in this picture.

That’s Fazlul on the left. This is me with a group of three friends (there are more in the group) who have been friends since childhood, and business partners for a long time. The story goes that they all went abroad, living in England, Switzerland, and other places. After some time, they all returned to Dhakka, and reformed their group of friends. Now their children and wives all spend time together. They have a weekly tradition that they have kept for a long time of having dinner together once a week. They also started a sports center with tennis, basket ball, soccer, pool and many other things for their community. These guys were amazing hosts and were so much fun. Fazlul is one of the most interesting people I have met. I hope that I can start something for the company in Bangladesh so that I can travel there again.

After returning from Bangladesh, Hilal confirmed what I had suspected all along - she did not, nor did any of the other turks, enjoy Bangladesh. Oh well, their loss.

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