An American Life in Istanbul

You all remember this picture from my earlier post Back in Turkey:

Well at a friend’s birthday I brought the beers and we had a tasting. Most of the tasters were a mix of impressed, intrigued and shocked at the wide range of tastes. Most Turkish beer is made in the same way as the traditional German lagers, as are most of the imports that are available here. Drinking IPA’s, ales, stouts or fruity wheat beers is just not possible here. Therefore most of the tasters had never had beer like this. Anyway here are the pictures.

From the left it’s Erman myself and Izzy sitting behind the five beers.

Besides the beer tasting, it was after all Ali Emre’s birthday, so we grilled some chicken and beef. From the left is Ant, Adnan, Erman and Izzy all trying to get the grill going. It took quite a long time but they were eventually successful.

Thick, dark chocolaty Yeti Imperial Stout from Colorado. This and one of the IPAs were the favorite two beers. I personally don’t like it. but it seemed about half the guys liked it, half of them hated it. There was no real middle ground on this one

Ant and Izzy displaying their two favorite beers. An IPA and a normal ale. The bitter hoppy taste in these two beers happens to be what I like in beer as well.

Izzy’s beer rating system. He hated the stout.

Doruk with his favorite beer. A lot of friends have said he looks a lot like Jack Black.

Playing Ninetendo Wii.

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These are some pictures of the tulips sculptures that have sprouted up around the city. Most of them are around Taksim or Nisantasi, two of the more affluent neighborhoods in Istanbul. A few months ago it was lots of cows. They have since disappeared and now we have tulip sculptures. It’s nice to see outdoor public art around the city.

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I actually wasn’t sure that the Istanbul based soccer club Fenerbache had beaten London’s Chelsea last night during their champions league match last night here in Istanbul. Fenerbache is the most expensive team in Turkish history this year with a total cost for it’s players of 100 million euros. That’s quite an impressive number. Besiktas and Galtasaray are finishing somewhere around 50 million euros. Chelsea on the other hand is the most expensive team in history, coming in at 456 million euros per year. As you can see these two teams are of a drastically different scale.

However, since signing Roberto Carlos over the summer (See: Roberto Carlos is Coming to Istanbul) Fenerbache has seemed unstoppable. They are currently in the quarter finals of the most prestigious tournament in Europe, which means they are in the tops 8 in Europe this year. They are on pace to win the Turkish league again this year (they are currently on top).

Well last night I looked at my window to this scene:

Keep in mind I live in a remote sparsely populated part of Istanbul. The majority of the noise is from that darn truck which is out almost everytime there is a big win by a Turkish team, but you can hear the horns of all the other motorists. They are all stopped just before a roundabout where the people get out of their cars and run around and scream. Sorry I didn’t get a video of that, but I will have another chance the next time Fenerbache or the national team accomplishes some great feat.

Of course worse things can happen than losing sleep. If you remember (See: Wine-ing and Crying) I got teargassed standing in a crowd of Besiktas supporters last year. That was not fun.

Anyway, Fenerbache has to tie or beat Chelsea when they play in London next week on the 8th of April. If they score at least two goals, they can also lose by only one and still move on because of the away goals rule, but the finer points of the Champions Leagues rules are not interesting. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope for the best.

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Sorry I haven’t written much but my wrist has been bothering me a lot because I spend too much time in front of my laptop, which has a keyboard that is too small for me. Both of my wrists are killing me right now. I have been dreading typing anything lately.

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In December07, I got up and went through my morning routine. Everything was pretty normal; Bathroom, shower, brush the teeth, get dressed, breakfast.  On this particular gray and dreary morning, I poured the last drop of milk out of the container I had been using into my cereal, filling it far short of the desired level. So I took to the fridge rummaging around. I found one bottle and checked it over for the percentage. The bottle had already been opened and had not been bought by me so I assume Murat had bought it. It was in Turkish so I figured if I looked for a number I could figure out what kind of milk it was (I hate skim milk). After about a minute, I thought screw it, I am sure it’s fine.

The first spoonful of this milk had something wrong about it. The taste of the cereal hid the problem but not well enough. Something was definitely wrong with this milk. It tasted a little sour and salt of all things! It was definitely salty.  I smelled the bowl and it smelled fine. It definitely hadn’t gone bad. I smelled the container which also smelled fine. Perhaps I was going crazy?

After two more spoonfuls, sniffing the bottle of milk a second and third time after each mouthful, I had had enough. Something was wrong with this milk! I needed to get something else for breakfast because I couldn’t take it anymore. That’s when I noticed the big letters on the front of the bottle. I guess perhaps while looking for a number I didn’t bother to mentally process any of the writing on the bottle, or perhaps because I know so little Turkish I simply disregard text that I see written. This however, written in the biggest font on the bottle was a word that I did know. It said “Ayran.”

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 Ayran is a Turkish specialty. I made my parents try it once while we were in Paris together back in March 2003 and they both were disgusted by it. This is awful they said, how can you drink this? My mother then proceeded to say that Ayran tastes like “yogurt mixed with salt water.”

Well that is exactly what it is. It is yogurt, salt and water mixed together. It is typically served cold along side just about every dish. If you are curious, you can check out this Ayran recipe. Ayran and yogurt in general are incredibly popular in Turkey. Ayran is a standard drink and can be purchased anywhere that Coke or any other soft drinks. It can be purchased in small containers or many places have their own Ayran machines that keep it well mixed and ready for serving. Even McDonald’s here serves Ayran (note: I have been told this. I have never actually been in a McDonald’s here nor have I eaten food from there).

Variations of Ayran can be served with mint, black pepper, cucumber juice or garlic. I can’t say that I have had any of the variations, but I have seen a kind of cold yogurt soup made with cucumber juice. I haven’t tried nor have I investigated what it is really, but it looks like Ayran with cucumber pieces floating in it. It is common in the Middle East, the Balkans and Central Asia (in other words a lot of the territory previously under control of the Ottomans). In some places in Turkey it is the standard welcome drink for visitors - bumping tea from that spot (Wikipedia.org)

I am not crazy about the drink, but I have a taste for it. It is refreshing and goes great with a heavy meat dish such as a kebab or gyro/donner. From time to time I order it, but the availability of fresh fruit juice here means that I end up ordering those instead.

What I learned from this experience is that I really should start learning Turkish. I was briefly motivated for a few days. I am hoping that in the next few months I will find that motivation again. Perhaps a third goof (remember trying to do Laundry?) to really get me going.

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For those of you that didn’t read the first part of this entry here is the link to it. The first part of this entry got more feedback than any other entry by far (not necessarily in the form of comments on the page) and I have several people ask me when PartII will be posted.

Girls, girls, girls…: Part I

So yes, it’s finally here. I think many of you will be disappointed. The impression I got from family and friends was that you all wanted to read about specific interactions with Turkish girls and the juicy details. In other words my love life. Well sorry to disappoint you. This entry specifically addresses the comment Dancing Queen left on the first girls entry. His comment was as follows:

My question of course is “how are the boys?”

Do they treat their ladies well? I hear tell that Turkey is “progressive” — and remembering your culturally (in)sensitive entry, I wonder what you think about the gender conflict where you are?

So I suppose this entry should really be called, “Guys, guys, guys…” but then I wouldn’t be able to make a trilogy out of it.

Let’s start with some facts (before I give you my subjective opinions and observations): The Swiss-based World Economic Forum releases an annual list that ranks countries by gender equality. They judge countries on four categories: educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment, health and survival. The US ranks 31st, relatively low (this is attributed to low political participation by women). Turkey ranked 121st, which is terrible. It ranked higher than only seven other countries: Yemen, Chad, Pakistan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Benin and Morocco (think about who’s not in this list).

Clearly the swiss think that there is a huge divide between the genders here in Turkey. I have seen it, I have talked about it with friends and acquaintances. After reading the report, I talked about a bit more. Bit by bit I collected various observations about how inter sex relations work here in Turkey.

Near to where I live is a part of the city known for it’s “Russian girls.” I put the phrase Russian girls in quotes because the abundance of Russian prostitutes here in Istanbul has mad the phrase “Russian girls” synonymous with prostitutes. I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me:

• “You want Russian girls.”
• “Conrad, you go Russian girls?”
• “Conrad, you want go Russian girls?”

They love it. They love to talk about girls and sex. Some of it is very PG other bits are not appropriate for the content of my blog. The majority of the time, these questions are coming from people already with a significant other.

Several people have bragged to me about how they have been cheating on their significant other. Some of these people are hailed as ‘lucky’ or ’smart.’ They are praised and envied by their friends, which only reinforces the continuation of the behavior. They are held in high regards, amongst the men that is. Worse is the man who has a child at home.

From what I can tell, cheating appears to be rampant. Defenses to this criticism include, “but Turkish girls don’t put out.” I find this weak at best as I am reminded of people who have told me they only want to marry a virgin, or my doctor who told me it is important to marry a girl much younger than me (it’s about the sex, you don’t need to be friends he said).

A friend told me that most Turks are just talk. They said that because of the culture many Turks are celibate until they marry, and then have only one woman. For them it is exciting and entertaining to talk about the possibilities if they were to say, go to the Ukraine for a fair for one week. A significant number of men do not deceive their significant other in this way. I have seen more evidence to suggest that they do deceive their wives, but as usual, my experience comes out of the small bubble that I live in here in Turkey.

If we look at world wide divorce rates from 2002, we can see that Turkey ranks quite low at only 6% of new marriages compared to 45.8% in the US (if divorcing was a contest, it appears Scandinavia would win that too). But I don’t have a lot of experience with Turkish couples. I have been told that typically, wives will not ask questions of their husbands if they bring home the money. One friend told me that if a wife starts asking questions, the husband has only to give her money for new clothes and she will let it rest. Does this mean that divorce is taboo and that people are living marriages they don’t want to be in? I think so.

One evening some friends and I sat down to play a game. We played and I asked some of the girls there if they would like to join in. They had been watching us play and had asked a question or two. One of the guys interrupted and told me not to bother trying to get girls to play games. He said that this was not their thing and it was a waste of time trying to get them to play. What? This seemed ridiculous to me. Anybody can have fun playing a board game, a card game. Like Izzy’s mother and my mother, they are both very good bridge players. Many of my female friends from back home really enjoy playing some of the games I have. I of course said that’s silly, and that there is a game for everyone. So the girls joined in and they had a good time. A small victory for me!

I can say with reasonable certainty that Turks don’t have much respect for women (I make this as a general statement and not as an absolute truth of Turkish culture. There are many exceptions). I could go on and on here citing examples of Turkish men having no confidence in women’s ability for various tasks, or of great surprise when seeing a woman succeed, but I don’t want to sound like a broken record. You get the idea.

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Alper – who is now working in foreign sales and marketing with me – and I, often talk about the many things we don’t like about Turkey, Turkish culture, and Turkish people. I vent a lot of my frustration to him, and I return the favor by listening to his venting. We spend our lunch and during tea breaks complaining to each other. We are a bit better than say a five year old whining for a toy, but not too much some of the time. Last week, while I was complaining about the thick-headedness and narrow-mindedness of Turkish bosses, Alper told me a story that illustrated the essence of my complaining quite brilliantly.

One of Alper’s previous jobs was in the manufacturer of some small product. Let’s call it a thwap. Many workers worked individually to produce several thousand thwaps per day. When thwap production began, the workers worked eight hours a day and the volume they produced was enough.

As the months went buy, the number of thwaps produced each day declined with no change in the work force or the process. The decline was apparently for no reason. The boss of this company decided that if his workers could no longer produce enough thwaps in eight hours, they would just work ten hours a day. So he increased the length of the workday and sure enough, the number of thwaps produced per day increased back to where it had been. The boss was satisfied.

As the months went by, thwap production fell again for no apparent reason. The boss was no longer satisfied. He demanded answers.

One of the older workers at the plant came to the boss and proposed to him an idea. He pointed out to the boss that most of the workers were women from two income families. All these women had husbands and children at home. They did not want to work longer hours and they were not happy with the previous increase in the working hours. He suggested that the boss should say how many thwaps he wanted to be produced each day. Tell all the workers that if they hit the daily quota they could go home. This older worker thought that with this strategy, the women would be motivated to work hard, and work fast, and that they could produce the number of thwaps they had been producing in only six hours.

This is a good solution, isn’t it?

The boss did not like this idea. His response was they are my workers and I am the boss. They will work as long as tell them for as hard as I tell them. There will be no incentives like that. Instead he would increase the length of the workday until he was getting the right number of thwaps, and he would fire all of the workers if he had to. He would rule his company with an iron fist.

Unfortunately the story ends here because Alper quit that job. Alper found his boss to be a very stupid man and Alper did not like working for him. According to Alper, this is the mentality of the bosses in Turkey. They have grown up, and have made their money by working very hard, by being fighters. They view their workers as a commodity and have a very Machiavellian approach to management – “it is better to be feared than loved.” According to Alper, this is changing, but not fast enough.

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As I have already said, I had a short trip to the UK and to Spain last week. The trip was exhausting, but very successful and fulfilling. Except for missing a flight, everything went brilliantly well. In the madness of my travels, I picked up on a few things that stood out in sharp contrast to life in Turkey.

Lines/Queuing: British people are really good at forming lines, or as they say ‘queuing’ or ‘queuing up.’ When I first went to Switzerland, I quickly noticed that people had no mob etiquette. I know, mob etiquette sounds like an oxymoron - especially to Europeans - but there is actually something to it. Let’s an easy example from my life and the life of my parents: Ski-lift lines.

How a line should look.

How lines in Europe (minus the UK) look.

You will notice a few things here. First of all, the people in the poorly organized line are far more. This is actually an illusion. The ordered line and the unorganized line both spill out of the picture which therefore make it impossible to judge how many people there are. I will tell you that regardless of how people line up, the person processing the line cannot go any faster.

The second thing, and this is a bit misleading in the picture, is that the unorganized line seems to be completely chaotic except that they are facing to the left, with parallel lines of sight. This is misleading. Typically, people orient themselves radially, with everyone facing towards the processing point of the line. People typically try to form a semi-circle surrounding the processing point of the line. While the processing point is very narrow, the diameter of the circle is quite large. In fact the shape that the line forms is not quite a semicircle. It is actually a shape similar to the three-point arc. The arch method of lining up is a very Darwinian approach as I discovered. By becoming the outermost edge of the arch, I realized that my size and strength allowed me to get to the front of the life-line very quickly. Is that fair? Of course not. I got so annoyed though that I decided I would throw away civility and beat them at their own game.

While in London, I noticed that the English are the kings of queuing. At one point during my travels, I was trying to get to the Underground, from the inside of a train station. The train station was very crowded and there were more people trying to get down to the underground than the sole staircase could handle. There was therefore a backup. The crowd formed a nice, neat line that curled around the outer edge of the train station. Several people commented that they had never had to queue up for a staircase, but they did it anyways. This was of course quite a change from the free for all mentality of Turkey and the rest of Europe.

Riding the Escalator: Perhaps an excellent compliment to the English’s queue etiquette was how they rode the escalator. I always understood that you are meant to stand on the right while riding an escalator. If you are walking, you can go on the left. This is the general rule for all things: driving, cycling, escalators, stairs. Slower movers stick to the right, faster movers stick to the right. If you aren’t moving, you start moving as soon as you get off the escalator so that the flow of people continues successfully.

Well I have never seen such devotion to this rule as I have in London. People kind of stuck to it, and would move to the side in the US, and in general, you can pass the non-movers in most countries if it’s not too crowded. In London, literally everyone immediately moves to the right. It was unbelievable. A very crowded subway station, you are waiting to get on the escalator. You turn the corner and see that the people on the escalator have occupied every other step and are all standing on the left. Even my friend who live in London have readily adopted this bit culture - they scolded me for standing on the wrong side.

I give a second tip of my hat to the English because they are all driving on the wrong side of the road, but the stand on the right side of the escalator. I was very impressed.

Team Thinking: My last little anecdote does not worship the English as the previous two did. Instead, it is a tip of the hat to my own country men.

I typically avoid Americans, but cannot help but notice them when I am traveling. Clothes, accent, the way they walk, many things give them away. Regardless of what it is, I can pick them out. This time it was in Heathrow airport in London that I picked out a group with American accents. I was at the border control filling out my landing card when I heard them the first time. As they picked up their landing cards, the group of about 15 quickly organized themselves. One girl in the group asked the others to all get a pen and a landing card and to inform of when they were ready. She then proceeded to read the address, flight number and other common information on the card to each of the other people in the group.

This is what I miss about the US I thought. The sense of teamwork, and the forward thinking approach to things. This girl had quickly realized that everyone would be writing the same information and created a plan to expedite the process as much as possible. The plan worked without fault. Based on my experience so far in Turkey, this would NEVER happen. A loosely associated group of students traveling together would not have the foresight to work together on something as simple as this. The group would have already have already been divided into sub-groups of students who were friends before the trip had started and mixing between the groups would be limited. Despite the benefits of acting together, each group would remain separate from the others, and would act independently.

On a whole, they would not take longer to get through customs. After all, the customs officer can only process people at a certain rate. That’s not the point though. It’s about the mentality. I see this mentality in other Americans, but not so much in other cultures. I find this extremely ironic, and I am sometimes nearly convinced I must be interpreting things in the wrong way. The US is considered a very individualist society. The socialist democracies (whom I praise) do a great job of taking care of their people. The less developed third world countries form very close bounds with the people around them, and use this network to support each other and to survive. In general, it has been my experience that Americans are heavily focused on ourselves and our wealth. I have found that people from other cultures usually make better friends than Americans. However, Americans do seem to think and behave very successfully as a group.

I know that Americans you see abroad are a different breed than the majority. I also know that while abroad many Americans are a bit on the defensive. With US popularity at it’s lowest point ever (is that accurate?), we Americans need to stick together and look out for each other right? Regardless of the factors involved, seeing this behavior at the airport made me smile. I was annoyed by how loud they were, but it was somehow comforting to see them coordinate so well together. If only I could create this kind of mindset at work.

Americans in the airport, the address

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A friend of mine contacted me a few weeks ago to ask for my help. Her mother, Kathie, is the assistant dean of Duke’s business school (I think that is her position), and she is interested expanding Duke’s executive MBA program to Istanbul. Kathie asked her daughter if she knew anyone in Turkey and my name came up, and Kathie contacted me a couple of months ago.

Since Kathie was looking for both business leaders to partner with, and prospective students, I put her in touch with Murat. Murat went to Robert College, and American high school her in Turkey. This high school is hands down the best high school in Turkey. It is very expensive and very hard to get into. Each year they take between 100 and 150 students, and pretty much everyone in Istanbul wants to go there (at least from what I have seen). Murat’s high school friends are among Turkey’s brightest, and are generally from very wealthy, very powerful families. My thought was that if Murat wanted to help, which he did, he would be able to put Kathie in touch with some very well connected people.

The dinner was wonderful. Including Kathie and her husband we were eight. We had dinner in an old palace on the Asian side of the city, with beautiful views of the Bosporus. The architecture of the restaurant was more or less unchanged from the original style of the palace, and they had a great wine menu. Need less to say, I ate and drank a lot.

The eight of us chatted about Turkish culture and what obstacles Kathie and Duke would face in trying to create something here in Istanbul. The other young people Murat had invited were all very well spoken, and very intelligent. They went on and on about all of the various problems they could foresee Duke having, as well as possible strategies for overcoming it. The exchange between Murat’s guests (whom were all my age), Kathie and my guest (Erman) was very intellectual and very professional. I was very impressed and almost a bit intimidated by them. My contribution to the conversation was of course my impressions and interpretations of Turkish culture from an American view point.

I think the dinner wasn’t quite what Murat had intended. In typical Murat fashion, he waited a bit too long to start planning this evening. It still went well, but there was one point shortly before the dinner where Murat was quite nervous that things would not come together and that everything would fall apart. This captured two very big cultural aspects of being Turks: being hospitable and not planning ahead. When Turks have guests, they seem to bend over backwards to ensure their guests enjoy themselves. Murat’s worry this past week was his instinctive ‘Turkish hospitality’ taking over and pushing him to do some planning. I of course found his distress wildly entertaining as I am always the one preaching planning ahead, and proactive approaches.

This brings me to the point of this entry. Living in the Marshal Islands, Switzerland and now Turkey, I have looked at  cultures in terms of where they fall on the proactive-reactive continuum. Coming from New York, I learned a proactive approach to problem solving. Planning ahead and taking preventative measures is the way I like to do things. I have a really hard time functioning in a system that does not adopt this same mentality. The Marshals and Turkey definitely do not share this mentality.

I am constantly frustrated by what I see as Turkish people’s inability to plan. When I make a business trip, I print out every train schedule, all the hotel information, meeting times, and any other information that could potentially be important. I always take an extra tooth brush, paper and pen with me wherever I go (even in Turkey). I always plan for the worst, and try to always have a backup plan. I can be flexible if I need to, but I like to know what’s coming so I don’t have to be. Most of the Turks I have met do not do this. They leave work to the last minute, the do one thing at a time and plan for the next only when necessary. I have always seen this as a reactive approach which is bound to be more costly and therefore inferior in my mind. I simply cannot understand why someone would approach a problem in this way.

During this dinner Murat captured this aspect of Turkish culture in a very poetic way. He said that while American’s plan ahead and work hard towards something, “Turks save the day.” They wait until the last minute and then throw all their energy at the problem. If they are capable, they solve the problem. Murat used as an example his time spent in the US at Carnegie Mellon Unversity. He said many of his class mates would study for days before a test, and Murat would only study for a few hours right before the exam, and would do just as well as the rest of his classmates. Having been his classmate for some time, I can attest to the validity of this statement. Murat always left work until the last minute, and he usually did well.

The trouble, according to Murat, came when it was time for him to do group work. The save-the-day approach does not work well when you have a group with several other people in it. Not being able to plan ahead, divide up work, stick to meeting times, and in general function productively with in a group is a huge detriment when you have a long term project. I can also attest to the fact that Murat was indeed not very good at group work. At this point, please note that I am not making any claims about my own abilities. I am simply using Murat as blanket example for the majority of Turkey, compared against what I saw in my peers at Carnegie Mellon.

Putting it that way, and hearing Murat describe what I have seen as a flaw in Turkish culture, casts things in a different light. It is simply a different approach to things. But which way is better? Of course a mix. A healthy mix, or taking things in moderation is the best approach most things. You want to be able to plan ahead and go over everything in great detail so you are always prepared, but if you cannot ’save the day,’ you will find yourself struggling with unexpected bumps in the road that perhaps a Turkish person would have no problem handling. Vice versa, if you cannot plan ahead, you will always be under pressure, and always stressed trying to ’save the day.’

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I meet a lot of people. For work, when I am out, through other friends, I am meeting people all the time. Regardless of who they are or where they are from, they start with more or less the same question: What are you doing in Turkey?

There is always a hint of surprise, or disbelief when they hear an American has decided to come to Turkey to start what they perceive as a real career. It is common for foreigners to come here and either take high paying jobs at huge companies, or take jobs as teacher that pay very little. The latter is mostly people who say “it’s only six months or a year,” and are here for the adventure and the experience. But those people all have a short term plan for Turkey. Even the people working for huge companies are only here on short term contracts for a few years. I fall somewhere in between I suppose. I don’t really know when I will leave Turkey, and I could get a higher paying job in many other countries. This question is therefore always the first.

The second, comes with the first as often as peanut butter comes with jelly (If you are not American, just trust me that these two are served together on bread quite often): “So how are the girls?” Turks, Americans, English, they all ask the same question. It is worded in a variety of ways: “Do you have a girl friend here yet?” “What do you think of Turkish girls?” “How’s the lady scene over there?” I was actually talking on the phone with a guy at work the other day and he said he had been meaning to ask me this for quite some time. Foreigners seem to be genuinely curious, Turkish guys seems to be fishing for compliments to their culture. Regardless, after I tell my story of how I have come to live in Turkey, question number two is always the same.

The problem arises in the fact that I never know how to answer this question. The fact of the matter is I don’t know. I hear all the time that foreigners are popular with Turkish girls, that if you have nice a car, you’ll be beating them off with a stick, that if you are tall you will have an advantage… the list of attributes that I have that are supposed to be beneficial goes on. Except for a few drunk flirts at bars trying to drag me off with them, I would say I haven’t interacted very much with the female half of the Turkish population. I don’t think I have forgone any opportunities, although some would argue otherwise, I just think I haven’t been in the right places making the right efforts.

I have my theories though. I can answer this question in a wide variety of ways based on what I have observed, overheard and been told, and I often attempt to do so. My lack of knowledge of this subject is more catered to the inquirer. Based on their tone, their wording, and the overall flow of their sentence, I can usually tell what answer they are looking for, and without disregarding the truth, I give them that answer. It’s usually short and does not leave room for the discussion to evolve from there.

When I thought about the frequency at which I receive this question, I asked myself what do I really think? What is the answer that encompasses all that is in my mind. Finding this answer made me wish I hadn’t attached my name to this blog. Some weeks ago I made a decision to remove all instance of my company’s name including its address. I did this so I could have more freedom to talk about what I want to talk about without effecting the image of the company. This wasn’t so much liberating as it made me feel safer about my existing words. If you look back to the following entry, you will be reminded of how one of my business contacts found my blog before I had even met with them: UK Trip Part II: Fear for the Fearless

Having my name attached to this blog means that I have to be wary of who my readers are, and how they know me. I have many theories, complaints, funny stories, observations, etcetera that I cannot put here because of the potential repercussions. I almost crossed this line with the entry Culturally (in)sensitive, which was discussed on my blog and amongst my friends. That said, my choice of content is somewhat censored and therefore not an objective account of ‘An American Life in Istanbul.’ I am sorry to those of you that thought it would be. The day I created this blog, and attached my name to it, I have signed away some of my freedom.

That’s enough of the ethical dilemma I am in. I think I can voice my real opinions without violating anyone’s confidence. I may offend them, but should the subject come up in discussion I will say the same thing. I therefore not be afraid of stepping on people’s toes, and further more, I welcome any intellectual debate that may follow. (I must add that I am a bit intimidated by Turks’ sense of nationalism and will continue to avoid commentary that could mobilize my Turkish readers’ patriotism. I do this out of respect to my host culture more than anything, but also because I don’t want my blog getting blocked)

Eight paragraphs of setting up for the answer to this question. Well sorry, but I think I am going to disappoint those of you that have read this far. You will have to look for a part two to this entry. Keep in mind, what you are going to read in it, is not coming from someone with any kind of idea of what they are talking about. I am hoping that the entry will provide a truly American view point, that I can provide the view point of an outsider (after all that is what I am, no matter how hard I try not to be). I am hoping it will come off as somewhat uneducated. This blog is about my life in Turkey. If I have arrived at the wrong conclusions or ideas about life here, I expect my Turkish readers to correct me, and to educate the rest of my readers.

Stay tuned…

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Current Mood: Alarmed

The parking space that Izzy got his car into was so small I thought I should take a picture and share it with everyone. In general in Turkey, people park very close together. After successfully parking his car without hitting the car in behind him, Izzy took a picture of the other car just in case it hit him. Note that the post in front of him is fixed.

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