An American Life in Istanbul

Current Mood: Happy

Well a lot has happened since I last wrote a real post way back on… December 12th! It was a real pain in the butt trying to get my domains transfered and set up my new host for my website, but it’s all finally done thanks to the help of Ant and Ali Emre.

So what has happened. I guess most of you know about the primaries in the US, which has been the news item winning most of my attention. I guess that’s not interesting for my American readers (everyone else go to cnn.com, they have good coverage).

Izzy and I went to Morocco for one week. It was an organized all expense paid tour. This was the first time I have done something like that and probably the last. I prefer to travel on my own schedule and to just wander around. Although it was a fun trip, I don’t think I will do it again. I covered four cities in seven days. On the way over I hadn’t quite gotten over a nasal infection. I couldn’t equalize the pressure when we went up and I nearly fainted from the pain. I spent the last two days of the trip praying to the porcelain gods. Anyway here are the pictures. Sorry I don’t have any of when they threw a monkey on Izzy’s head out of no where on the street. That was probably the highlight of the trip.

Morocco Pictures

My brother came to visit me right after Christmas up through New Years. We went around Istanbul, partied with my friends, did some shopping… it was a nice visit. I think he had fun except for a little problem with food or water, everything went well. Another friend of mine, James (aka Spags) was here as well. Graham, Spags and myself went to Kapadokya, ‘the land of well bred horses.’ Kapadokya is one of the most interesting places in Turkey according to my friends. It is full of bizarre land formations and underground cities that have been used by countless cultures for thousands of years. Because of it’s relative isolation on the high plateau of central Turkey, it was never a important strategic point to control so it was more or less ignored by conquering armies. I will let you look at the pictures for yourself. (oh I had a sweet new year’s eve party at my apartment. Those pictures are also there)

Pictures from Graham’s visit

Other than that I haven’t done too much. I went to Slovakia for an exhibition for work, but I haven’t posted any pictures. I finally got new climbing shoes. About one week afterwards Izzy hurt his shoulder so we can’t climb until it heals.

My gaming group has really taken off. We created “Istanbul Boardgame Enthusiasts” group on facebook and Izzy and I have been very aggressively trying to recruit new gamers. It has definitely paid off. The only problem we have had is about finding a place to play. Over the summer Wonderland started turning off the AC to get us to leave earlier. Then we moved to the Wrap which said they are now closing at 10:30 instead of 11:30. They had spent the weeks prior trying to kick us at at 11:00. Now we are playing at a bagel cafe called Tribeca. It’s definitely not the best place for us since we are so loud. When we are not there it is a very quiet upscale cafe. When we get there it gets a little wild, especially with the recent surge in people. I have a feeling we are going to be hassled there until we leave also. Here are a few pictures from our recent meetings:

Me explaining ‘Ticket to Ride’ to a captive audience.

In the back left of this picture is Ali Emre and myself. We are actually trying to get my webspace setup to transfer my blog in this picture.

This composite is courtesy of Rana. This was the final showdown in bang between Izzy the sheriff, and Turan the renegade. Izzy won.

On the political front, Serbs attacked the Turkish Embassy in Belgrade when Turkey backed Kosovo. Turkey invaded Northern Iraq to hopefully catch PKK terrorists. If you aren’t sure what the PKK is, I wrote about them in two previous blog entries: Turmoil in Turkey: Part I, Turmoil in Turkey: Part II. Turkey lifted the ban on women’s head scarves in all schools and other government institutions (this is a much bigger deal here than you think, but that’s for a later entry). Of course, that is only the last weeks worth of news in Turkey! To go with all three of those big events, there has been lots of protesting, especially in the east of Turkey where there has been daily rioting, vandalism and clashes with police. On the bright side of things after last weeks blizzard which dumped nearly 10 inches of snow in some places, the weather is warming up! Here’s a picture from trying to drive in the first, and the smaller of the two snow storms.

Alright, that’s all I have for now. Take care of everyone and keep reading. Thanks mom and Chris for bugging me about getting back to blogging.

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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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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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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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Current Mood: Esctatic

So yeah, I had the best weekend ever. Izzy and I went with a few exchange students from Koc University (where Izzy studies) to a rock climbing festival in Olympos outside of Antalya in the south of Turkey. If you want to skip right to the pictures here is the link:

Olympos Climbing Festival

For those that are curious, here are two maps illustrating where exactly Olympus is:

Olympus is somewhere south of Antalya. It took about two hours to get there, and the bus ride to Antalya was about 12 hours or so. The bus ride down there was probably the nicest bus I have ever been on. It was extremely comfortable and I was actually able to sleep (first time I have ever done so while in transit).

Everything about this weekend was amazing. First of all the climbing festival was great. There were a lot of us in our group so we didn’t get to do too many routes, but the routes we did do were great. My last climb of the weekend was probably the most difficult climb I have ever done and took some real technique. Although scraped up quite a bit, I was extremely satisfied with myself once I reached the top. After that climb, I think I am going to buy a good pair of climbing pants to better protect my knees.

The place we stayed in was called Kadir’s Tree Houses. Olympos is an ancient city built 2000 years ago. Today the ruins are still there, surrounded by some of the best rock climbing in Turkey. Just before arriving at the ancient city, is a few blocks of cafes and tree house hotels. Since it is a historical site, only wooden buildings can be constructed, so everything has a very ramshackle feel to it. Kadir’s was one of the first one there, and was by far the best.

Kadir’s had an eclectic mix of people. There were the climbers, and there were hikers, and beach bums, and bikers, and random travelers. There were people from all over the world as well as a sizable Turkish group. My first breakfast there I sat with a Polish girl and a Hungarian guy whom were more than happy to welcome me at their table (for some reason I awoke at 630 am. Since we had been up partying until 3am, no one else was up). That was one of the really great things about the place, everyone was very approachable. Everyone took all meals together, everyone went to the club together.

The club was something else. It wasn’t like what I have typically seen here in Turkey. First of all it had no roof, so in the middle was a big bonfire. Second of all, everyone was together, layered radially around the fire. In most Turkish clubs, people come in groups and stick to their groups. Their are little dense clumps of people, dancing amongst their friends. There is very little socializing with new people from what I have seen. At Kadir’s everyone was together the entire time. Breakfast, dinner, drinking, partying, dancing, regardless of the activity everyone was friendly and open.

The place was also quite a nice escape from the hustle and bustle of Istanbul. For the most part everyone walked so there was no traffic. Everything was built amongst the trees with many animals running around (chickens apparently keep the snakes and scorpions out of the tree houses’ area). The valley was flanked on both sides by tall mountains. There was always a cool breeze coming in off the sea. It was perfect. This was definitely a place I could see myself spending many weeks in.

The bartender at the Hangar Bar (Kadir’s bar) was an American who had visited there for a few days and never left. She was on her third month there while we were there. There was a cyclist who had planned to stay only one night at Kadir’s. He was on his sixth day with no end in sight when we left. There were countless other stories of people simply not being able to leave this paradise.

The last bit about Olympos was that all along the roads in the area were small crates for collecting beer bottles. In our climbing guide book, it warned us about Olympos: “This area induces heavy drinking.” Since climbers are not big drinkers, this is a sign that this area is more than just a paradise for climbers.

For any of you who may have wondered what place I would recommend as my favorite: go to Olympos and stay at Kadir’s Tree Houses next summer. Plan to stay a short time but be warned - leaving this place will be difficult.

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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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Current Mood: Happy

There are two reasons I haven’t written in a while. One, I am on a business trip through Germany, and then next week Poland. The other reason is that until about one minute ago, I had not finished watching all three seasons of the TV show Lost. Now that that is done, I can have free time again. A ward of caution to anyone reading this, do not ever start watching that show; I wanted so badly to stop watching it but my curiosity wouldn’t let me.

I am not going to complain about my love/hate relationship with Lost. Instead I would like to tell you about how my trip has been going. My first two meetings went fine. I spent my first day in Oberhausen with one of our suppliers. It was “Turkish Accounts Day,” something organized by the company for all of its Turkish customers. Not much interesting happened except at dinner. We had two big tables (there were a lot of us and a lot of them) in a nice Spanish restaurant. Since everyone was standing around waiting for someone to do something, I decided to quickly grab a spot. Within a minute or two everyone else was seated. One table was seven Germans and an American. The other table was eight or nine Turks and a Romanian. It was like no one even thought about it. Just instinctively, everyone sat down, perfectly divided. Once seated, the mistake was quickly realized, but no one said anything.

I left my bag in Oberhausen thinking I would travel east for my two Tuesday meetings, and then come back through Oberhausen before heading south to Dusseldorf. It was along the line, so it wouldn’t be too much of a problem to pick up my bag. Unfortunately, my third meeting, Tuesday afternoon, was cancelled because of a big fire in a factory, and everyone at the company I was working at was on site, trying to get things up and running again. I decided to stay in Bielefeld, and rescheduled my meeting for Wednesday morning, and moved Wednesday’s to Thursday. Unfortunately, after deciding to do that, I discovered that there was not one single available hotel room in Bielefeld.

Without any real aim, I wandered a bit upon arriving in Bielefeld until I happened upon a hotel that did not look too fancy. I went in and inquired about a room and was told there were none. Some big fair was going on and the hotel manager said it would be difficult to find a room anywhere. At first he seemed reluctant to help me. As I began making call after call to hotels I had in the list I had picked up in the train station, he eventually decided to help me. He said to come back in one hour.

After a bit of walking around, I came back. He said he had asked everyone he knew that could have a room and there were none. The Internet had yielded the same results. Luckily, he had two guests that had not arrived, and their reservation was guaranteed only until six. They called to confirm they were on their way within a few minutes of the deadline. Finally, after a few more tries, he said I could rent one of the unused, un-renovated rooms on the top floor. The room had no heating, so it was cold. The TV in it used an old fashion antenna. The only bathroom was a shared bathroom at the end of the hall, which also had no heating. No mini soaps or shampoos in the shower (remember I didn’t have my luggage). At least I got a room though, and at a 25% discount too!

My stay in Bielefeld was interesting, but not like my return to Oberhausen. I inquired at the train station in Oberhuasen – before fetching my bag from the previous hotel – about a hotel in Dusseldorf. A quick check online showed that the international furniture fair had taken all of the rooms. It also showed that nearly all the rooms in Oberhausen were also taken, except for one. I remember thinking to myself at least it will be a proper room in a proper hotel. The man at the train station explained to me that in order to get in the hotel I must go first to a butcher’s shop and inquire there about the hotel. Apparently – I am not joking at all – the family that owns and runs the hotel, also owns and runs the local butcher. Because they don’t have enough manpower, the hotel is locked during the day, with no one in reception. In fact I did not see the hotel open once in the evening, despite the fact that they advertise there is a restaurant there. I found this a bit odd. What was even more odd was that they simply handed me a key with my room number on it. Didn’t take a credit card, didn’t take my passport, didn’t even ask me my name.

The rooms were fine. Clean, had heating, had TV. They even had a free wireless LAN you could use from the first floor and the ground floor. I did notice two other oddities however. There did not seem to be a way to call an outside line from the hotel room, and pushing the button for reception did nothing because there was never anyone in reception. The second thing I realized while writing an email to someone who was going to meet me at my hotel. Nowhere in the hotel, not on any papers, not on the napkins, not on anything in the rooms or downstairs, was the name of the hotel. I had no idea where I was actually staying. Only on the front of the hotel, which was a small door that looked like a walkup apartment building, was the name of the hotel. To top it all of, their breakfast sucked.

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So I wrote an article for the web zine on the diplomatic pouch (www.dipom.org). You can click the following link to go to where the article is posted, or simply read below.

Diplomatic Pouch Zine: HuskyCon Report by Conrad Woodring

HUSKYCON V REPORT
by Conrad Woodring

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My family has been hosting HuskyCon at our home in Long Island, New York, for five years now as our contribution to the hobby (my mother helps a lot despite not playing at all). The event is entirely free — this includes lodging in our home, food all weekend and free drinks all weekend. My father covers the cost of everything from his own pocket. This creates a truly unique tournament experience that all of our patrons rave about.Our goal at HuskyCon is not to create a highly competitive event. Instead, we emphasize the social aspect of the hobby and encourage newer and younger players to participate. People have commented the level of play is not like at DipCon or Dixie, but that is not what we are going for. Often, it is my belief, tournaments can be too serious and some of the fun of seeing old friends, ripping on each other, playing poker and drinking and eating together is lost. This year we chose a placement based scoring system instead of our traditional draw based system in order to promote shorter games. This gave people more time to socialize.In the spirit of a truly family run event, we divided up the responsibilities as follows:

• Me: Pre-con work (website, guest list, updating guests, spamming mailing lists, advertising, etc), extra player.
• Graham: Tournament Director, extra player.
• Donald: Food and drink (shopping, cooking and drinking), house cleaning, extra player.
• Christine: House prep (setting up beds for everyone according to the guest list), house cleaning.

HuskyCon V Participant Statistics

This year we hosted players from all over the country and the world:

East Coast (25)	England (1)	Istanbul, Turkey (1)
Detroit (1)	Paris, France (2)	Seattle (1)
Milwaukee (1)	Canada (1)	Chicago (2)

• 35 total Diplomacy players
• 6 gamers not playing Diplomacy
• 19 returning players and 16 new players
• 16 of those returning have been to four or more HuskyCons

Next, here is a brief play by play of the weekend:

Friday

The weekend kicked off with the evening round, which quickly became an all night party. People that were eliminated early joined the other gamers who had come with no intention of playing Diplomacy. A variety of other board games were played as well as various games on my Graham’s Nintendo Wii, which was a big hit throughout the weekend. Carl Ellis, a man who has never missed a HuskyCon, brought a lot of beer and Andy Bartalone (he’s been to four out of five HuskyCons, and came to our pre HuskyCon tournament, DonnerCon) contributed a case of wine. There were of course various other things to eat and drink provided by the house.

The first night of HuskyCon was perhaps my favorite stab of the tournament. I was making a sandwich in the kitchen for myself when Bob and one or two other people asked if I could make them one. I said sure, no problem. Bob then proceeded to tell the rest of the house that I was making sandwiches and they should all run over to place orders. I ended up making a lot of sandwiches.

Saturday

Part of what made the weekend so fantastic was the weather. In previous years it was very hot and humid which put everyone a little bit on edge. When you have 30 people staying in one house together, without much sleep, with a lot of drinking, and who are competing against each other, the smallest little catalyst can lead to a drastic change in ambiance. We were very lucky in that the weather was cool with a light breeze and sunny. Our home is on a cliff over looking Long Island Sound, which makes for some spectacular viewing. The weather was so nice that Jeremiah Peterson set up a tent in my backyard and camped outside Saturday night. Our French guests — Emmanuel du Pontavice, Laurent Joly and France-May Martel — Peter McNamara and myself went swimming periodically throughout the weekend from our dock.

Saturday’s round started late, and it was set to start too early to begin with. Everyone had been up partying and 9am was just too early for a round to start. I had literally just put my head down after a 7am Starbucks run to end my night, when my brother woke me up to play in the Saturday round. I was exhausted, but still managed to top my board. I voted to end the game despite having a chance to solo and win the tournament. I did this because I was exhausted. The game was tremendously fun though. I had the pleasure of playing with Peter McNamara, Andrew Cassese, Benjamin Vazquez and Laurent Joly, all people I had never played with, and two old friends — Jon Hill and Bob Holt. In my opinion Bob is one of the most fun players to play with. We succeeded in driving Jon mad with paranoia. Jon and I worked well for most of the game with my Russia to his Turkey. I did at one point move to Black Sea after sitting in Sev for a LONG time for no other reason than I knew we had a half hour lunch break coming up, and I wanted to see him go crazy worrying about the game and not being able to talk about it. This worked like a charm, although may have led to his later stab of me.

Saturday Evening

The games finished in a reasonable amount of time — except for one lasting 11 hours. As usual we had a huge dinner. Some ate outside, some in the dining room, some in the kitchen. I guess you could say we all ate together. Saturday night of HuskyCon is usually marked by drinking excellent wine while eating fine cheese, and doing weird games. This year, my father sat at the wine and cheese table with about 10 other people. David Norman ran a double gunboat game. We had two games of gunboat going on at the same time on the same board! It was for all intents and purposes two completely different games with 14 players and two sets of pieces. They just decided to share one board since we have the giant 10-foot long board in the basement. There was a lot of drinking, silliness and joking around during the game but I think everyone except for Rick Desper enjoyed it (Rick played Russia and had Germany open to Bal, Sil and Pru).

As the evening wore on, I taught the French players how to play baseball on the Nintendo Wii. Emmanuel succeeded in smashing the ceiling lamp while trying to use an overhead smash to hit the ball (in all fairness we had been playing tennis right before and we were pretty drunk). There were a variety of other games being played.

On the front porch we had my brother’s Turkish nargile (water pipe) going for a while with strawberry flavored tobacco in it. This was also popular and drew a devoted group.

Sunday

Unfortunately this round had to be timed, which it turns out does not work that well with our scoring system. David Norman got denied what was most definitely going to be a solo — and therefore the tournament — because of the time limit. There was more gaming, more eating, more drinking, more swimming, plenty of napping, and of course the awards. Dave Maletsky won for the second time — and if anyone is going to win HuskyCon twice, it should be Dave. Topping two of his three boards, and finishing second on the third was more than enough for Dave to win. One of our French guests, Emmanuel took second place (this amazes me, because he and I didn’t sleep for three days), and third place went to Chris Mann. Last year’s champion, Jonathan Hill took fourth place.

As is customary with HuskyCon, many guests stayed until Monday. The same wonderful ambiance continued all through Sunday and into Monday.

HuskyCon V Quotes

“…the social atmosphere which you provided was great for meeting new people and having an all-around great time. I appreciated the low cost of the trip since I’m a student and I will try to make it out again next year and bring some friends along too. It was relaxing and easy-going and everyone, especially the hosts were very nice and accommodating. Food was great, drink was great, people were great. Honestly, I don’t think I would change a thing.” — Grant Smith

“…this venue and these hosts make this week-end unparalleled in sheer enjoyment. Gracious hosting and good Diplomacy is to be had just by getting there. It is hosted complete with sleeping space and food.”

“[HuskyCon is] the best thing going in Diplomacy.”

— Buz Eddy

“I strongly enjoyed the fact that this was not an ‘all-Diplomacy’ tournament.”

— France-May Martel

“I had a great time. My game on Saturday… was a very good game, both from a tactics as well as a diplomatic standpoint. My overall experience with the Con itself was very positive.”

— Glenn Habibi

“Sleeping arrangements: worked well for me. I was very happy.
Food: kicked butt, and the wine was even better.”

— Erica Alemdar

“This Event is as good as it gets, just as she is. Comes the ?revolution, and we all have a full week off whenever we like, we can ?talk about it’s getting three untimed rounds. In the meantime, it’s the socializing, the tipsy gunboat, poker & Puerto Rico, Burgers & beer ?& Woodrings’ breakfasts… Compression wouldn’t improve it.”

— Carl Ellis

“First I want to say thank you to All the Woodrings, including the fury ones for having us at their house and having a wonderful event. Despite my travel arrangements getting there, [HuskyCon] was the most fun I’ve had at a Diplomacy event. …Saturday evening was “The Bomb” it was a lot of fun. There were a lot of people there that were not strictly speaking Diplomacy players. I think that you shouldn’t change it. For what agony was included for shorter timed event on Sunday was more than made up for by the general amiability and good will on Saturday evening. My vote is for Saturday evening to stay the same, it does nothing but add to the charm of the event.”

— Robert Rousse

“Conrad… it was a blast.
I had so much fun… it was scary how much fun I had.
I finished 28th and it still might be the best tourney of the year… I just didn’t care about my placement… it was too much fun.”

— Andy Bartalone

Conclusion

I was in a haze of exhaustion for most of the weekend. My family and myself did our best to be good hosts, and I feel it paid off. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. This year, my mother made a strong effort to make comfortable sleeping places for everyone. This was a tremendous effort and I think a lot of the tournament’s success is due to her hard work the week before HuskyCon. Except for Bob who passed out on the hard wood floor next to a sleeping bag, I think everyone was quite comfortable.

You can find pictures of the event here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/skyblueshu/HuskyConVI’ve also written about it in my personal blog: http://www.conradwoodring.com/archives/244And finally, you can find the results and a whole lot more on the HuskyCon web site: http://www.huskycon.com/welcome/welcome.htmI am tremendously pleased with the success of this event and I am looking forward to doing my part to run next year’s HuskyCon. I am confident that next year’s will top even this past year’s event, and I invite all of you, regardless of where in the world you are, to come and spend the weekend with us. I promise, it will be fun.Lastly, a special thanks to our HuskyCon veterans who have supported us year after year and who have been strong advocates of HuskyCon: Alex Amann, Bob Holt, Carl Ellis, Dave Maletsky, Melissa Call, Glenn Habibi, Adam Sigal, and Andy Bartalone.>>>>>>>>>>>

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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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Vacation is over! I am finally back from vacation and ready to get back to regular blogging. First order of business is to give a quick overview of my vacation. To see the pictures I have posted click here!

Mother’s Birthday (2 days): I arrived at home on my mother’s birthday. My aunt - her sister - was there so we had a nice family weekend together: my brother, my mother, my aunt Candace, my father, the two dogs, and myself. Weather was a bit muggy, but it was so nice to see green! Turkey is so dry and parched during the summer. It’s very brown and full of earth tones. Here is a picture from the front of my house. Since my computer got erased, I don’t have any of my old pictures from Turkey that I could put as a contrast. It was very nice and relaxing to have clean air, lots of green, and be right on the water.

Family Visits (3 days): I went up to Hazleton, Pennsylvania (my father’s home town) to visit my family that still lives there. I saw my grand parents, my aunt Debbie, my aunt Beth and her two young daughters Miranda and Olivia. I saw my cousins from my aunt Debbie; John, Grant and Dawn (including dawns husband Brian and two kids Zack and Nicholas). I would post pictures, but, my computer got erased a month ago and I didn’t take any pictures while I was there. Sorry :-(. It was an excellent visit! I really wish I could have stayed longer, but my brother had a flight to catch.

Boston (6 days): I am not a fan of Boston so I will keep this short. I visited some friends there which was nice. I got dragged to a 6am rowing practice which started out badly because I was really tired. However, once I woke up, being out on the river early in the morning was really nice and relaxing. It was really enjoyable (even though I was in the trainer’s power boat). I later went kayaking on the river which was also nice and against the doctor’s orders, I went climbing twice at an amazing indoor rock climbing. My wrist was killing me afterwards but it was worth it. I have since decided that I am not doing any sports until my wrist is better (which is driving me crazy).

NYC (2 days): After dropping by home to pick up two guests staying at our house from France, Laurent, Emmanuel, Graham and I headed into NYC. I planned to show Laurent and Emmanuel around, meeting David (another guest of ours from England) the following day in the city. I also had the chance to see a bunch of old friends. Unfortunately, since my time was short, I didn’t have the time to do everything I wanted to and see everyone that I wanted to. So I took one evening to see friends, and one day to act as tour guide before returning to Long Island.

HuskyCon V (4 days): For those of you that don’t know, one of my main hobbies is playing the boardgame Diplomacy. In my opinion it is by far the best game ever made. I am not going to get into any serious details. If you are curious you can contact me directly, or read wikipedia’s inadequate diplomacy page. Every August, my family hosts at our house a small diplomacy tournament with free room and board all weekend. This year was our fifth year hosting the event and was in my mind the best year we have had so far. Here are some pictures from the event:

Our driveway was rather full

As was our house. We had 35 people sleep in my house over the weekend (that’s not exactly true. Emmanuel and I didn’t sleep the whole weekend, and Jeremiah slept outside). Here are two of the sunrises I watched. I hardly slept in five days! I was so exhausted on my way back that I slept with all my free time when I got back to Turkey.

My brother’s Nintendo Wii was immensely popular. Emmanuel liked it so much, he decided to smash the ceiling light while trying to do what looked like an overhead tennis smash, during a game of baseball (he was hitting at the time, not pitching.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the game of double gunboat on the giant board that my father made. According people who know about these things, this may be the biggest Diplomacy board in the world! If you look closely you can see small pieces and big pieces on the board. There were 14 people playing two seperate games on the same board at the same time! Most people were drunk so it got pretty silly.

Of course, there is always lots of room for other gaming at HuskyCon. After all, the best part about these tournaments is socializing and having fun!

Lastly, my favorite picture from the whole weekend. My father put out this bucket with this sign. At the end of the weekend, when the bucket was full of money, my father complained that he had enough money and that we were out of beer. He asked if people could read properly.

In summary, HuskyCon was a huge success. Everyone enjoyed themselves especially me. I am really excited for HuskyCon VI which will be next August. This was the first year that I took an active role in the tournament. Until this year it was my brother doing most of the work. This year, I did all the pre-con work and he managed the tournament. This worked out very well, and it made it more fun for me when I got to see my hard work pay off. Thank you to all of you that came to support us, and hopefully we will see you again next year.

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