Jul 6 2007

Murat Asci and the mystery of the same window

Current Mood:Angry emoticon Angry

Yes, the same (@!*%#$()%*&@ window got smashed again (to read about what happened last time read The Mystery of the Window at the Windsurfing Club). We got the car back last Friday and last night some @%*#)% smashed the window again and stole Murat’s father’s bag which was in the back. Nothing serious was lost except for his passport. Murat took the car to visit one of our distributors in Istanbul and after the meeting he came back to find that the car window was smashed. As a consequence, I will be car less this weekend. This is not such a problem because Sakir is here this weekend with a car and I think we will be hanging out together all weekend. Perhaps someone cast a curse over the car. When Murat gets back (he left for Izmir today) I am going to suggest taking the car up on top of a mountain and sacrificing a few camels and a goat or something.

On a side note, I managed to organize some people together last night for board gaming. The turnout was great - 11 people - but the gaming was frustrating to say the least. I am going to try and organize a weekly gaming session so hopefully next week we will be more organized (I will also take pictures).

It’s cloudy today!!! Cloudy, windy and cool. It is so so so nice out. I love it. I hope it rains. I kind of want to skip going to the city and go windsurfing because the wind is very strong, but if I do this I will have no way of getting into the city.

Alright that is it. Sorry i don’t have much today.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!


Jul 5 2007

Police Part III: Where’s my car?

Current Mood:Angry emoticon Angry & Confused emoticon Confused

You can still read up on what happened in Police Part II and Police Part I

I had very mixed feelings about the events that happened yesterday. For the most part they were frustrating and I was pissed off. I had to go to the police head quarters in Topkapi, Istanbul, to get my residence permit (which I now have!). I got directions from Murat’s uncle and then took the Mercedes (the one Murat said to take).

Before the journey even started, the car had no gas and I had very little money. Last week when I opened my bank account, I stupidly put all my cash in the bank thinking “how long could it possibly take to get my bank card?” It’s Turkey, so forever obviously. Murat never has any money, so I couldn’t get any from him, and his uncle had none, so I had to get all the cash his father had, which almost none. No money and no gas, these were the first two memorable things of my day.

On the way to Topkapi there was unbelievable traffic for 2pm. It took me longer to get to the city than it does when I leave here at rush hour. That’s number three.

Number four is that this place wasn’t where Ahmet said it was, nor was it close. I drove around asking everybody and their mother for directions, everyone of course giving me different directions (not speaking Turkish didn’t help here). I eventually found it and found a convenient spot on a side street not to far from the station. I met with some random guy and he took me in, I signed some papers, they did some photocopies, and I was done in 5 minutes, maybe less.

When I get back to my car, it’s not there anymore. I freak. I look and see there is a no parking sign. Nobody ever pays attention to those signs. The cops go around the city picking up cars with their little crane trucks (it’s actually quite impressive how they lift them right out of the spaces onto the pack of their truck). So I start checking the streets near the intersection and I see my car, traveling away from me about 100 meters down the road.

I break into full sprint (keep in mind it’s 90 degrees with a very intense sun overhead), dodging people, carts, food stalls, tables, cats, sometimes running in the street. I felt like I was running an obstacle course. After about 200-250 meters of sprinting, I caught them and jumped in front of the police car sweating and panting. Some how I managed to communicate that the car was mine, and I called Murat. I gave them 40 lira (about 30 dollars), and they let my car down. I know what you are thinking; Conrad, why would you illegally park near a police station. In hindsight, yeah that was pretty stupid. I later missed a turn and ended up in Asia (not many can say they missed a turn and ended up in another continent). For the whole rest of the day I was a disgusting sweaty mess which was unfortunate because I had a cocktail get together with the Istanbul Ex-New Yorkers club, which as it turned out, only had two Americans (myself included). It was fun though, and now I have a resident’s permit.

Total fines and bribes: 148 lira = 115 USD

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!


Jun 16 2007

Home: My Apartment

Current Mood:Bored emoticon Bored

This is the post that many of you have been waiting for. I hope you all appreciate how much time it took me to do this entry. I admit, the photomerges are not very well done, but there were a lot of them and I had to resize everything! In other words, it took a lot of time. Anyway, here it is, enjoy!map.jpg

Let’s start with a simple map. Here you can see the basic layout of our apartment. I drew this quickly in photoshop so the scales aren’t exactly right. The bathroom across from my room has as a jacuzzi tub that we have never used. In the living room is the weight set. The 3rd bedroom is where Baris used to stay and is now empty (anyone want to visit?). Let’s start the tour with that room.

baris-room.jpg

All three bedrooms face east, so we all get woken up in the morning by the sunrise. It’s actually quite nice. If I am in the apartment on Saturday mornings, I open the curtains and lay on my bed in the sun.

baris-room-pan.jpg

As you can see, we are now using Baris’ room for our laundry. You’ll have to excuse the bad photomerge. I did not feel like putting in any effort into making them good photomerges. It would have taken way too long considering how many I did.

murats-room-pan.jpg

This is Murat’s room. Murat’s is the biggest, then mine, then Baris’, but they are all pretty much the same size. The door at the back there leads to the bathroom. The door on the left to the hallway.

my-room.jpg

Not that much different than Baris’ room.

my-room-pan.jpg

My room is the only room with any character to it. It has a nice big flag to add some color, my bed has the quilt my mother made for me when I graduated high school, and there is usually crap all over the floor. The cleaning lady had just come the day before so my room is uncharacteristicly clean in this picture. She comes and cleans the apartment, washes the dishes, and does our laundry. Murat and have ahd our clothes mixed up pretty much every week and have been thinking about how to remedy this problem without having to do the laundry ourselves.

my-closet.jpg

My closet, or at least half of it. You can see it’s full of lots of good stuff! The shirt on the right isn’t blocking anything secret, so don’t worry. Just some wine and scotch bottles.

my-flag.jpg

America! Yeah!

hallway-pan-1.jpg

This is a picture taken from the entrance to Baris’ room. It’s a photomerge showing the hallway. From the right, you have the third bathroom (just a toilet and sink), the entrance to the apartment, the kitchen, and further off to the left is the living room.

hallway-pan-2.jpg

This picture is also taken from infront of Baris’ room. To the right is my room, then Murat’s room, then the second bathroom.

living-room-pan.jpg

…keep going down…

living-room.jpg

…keep going down…

weight-set.jpg

Now we arrive in the living room! Wooo. This is where Murat sleeps most of the time. On the table there you can see a game of Axis and Allies. There is also the weight set, which only I use for the most part. I think Baris and Murat have used it three times each. This room is very well lit and is in general a very comfortable and soothing room to be in.

kitchen.jpg

Of course, here we have our kitchen. It is extremely understocked! We have one proper knife, one frying pan, two pots… you get the picture. I live a very hard and difficult life, don’t I? In general, we never use this room.

porch-view-pan.jpg

The view from our porch. There are always lots of kids playing here. It’s difficult to grow grass in Turkey (at least that’s what I am told), so there isn’t a whole lot. It’s always dusty in Istanbul, the kids playground is no exception.

view-1-pan.jpg

And the view from the east face of the apartment (my room). There is a nice bay there which is supposed to be the second best place in Turkey to windsurf (the best place in Turkey is one of the top 5 places in the world). Murat is going to join the windsurfing club there and I may as well. The sport doesn’t seem intense enough to satisfy me so I am hesitant to make the investment.

the-car.jpg

That’s my ride yo. Pretty pimp isn’t it?

Here’s a bunch of pictures of the flower boxes I have set up. I only have four or five boxes and two small plants. Every pay check I spend a bit of money on new plant stuff, so next week I will be adding some new plants.

flower-box-1.jpg

The flowers are doing really well, but some other plant got in the other box that started to take over. Because I didn’t remember what I planted there, it took me a while to realize it was a weed. But now everything is ok, I think.

flower-box-2.jpg

Snap dragons. They do well in the climate.

flower-box-3.jpg

So I bought some peas, put them in the firdge and forgot about them. They started growing in there so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to plant them. They grew really fast.

flower-box-4.jpg

Some random red flowers I planted from seeds. They also grew fairly quickly.

flower-box-5.jpg

Basil, slow to start, but it came in quite nicely.

flowers.jpg

The one on the left is my favorite plant. The one on the right is really lame and I don’t like it. The one on the left though is great. I have on in my office also.

And that’s it. I hope you enjoyed these pictures and my little virtual tour of my apartment.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!


Jun 12 2007

Police Part II: My first fine

Current Mood:Angry emoticon Angry

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

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

police-partii.jpg

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

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!


Apr 6 2007

Update

Current Mood:Sickly emoticon Sickly

Sorry I don’t have much time today for a proper post, so this will be short.

1. Weight Set: We got a weight set in the apartment and Baris and I have started using it. The past two mornings in a row we got up at 7am and did about 45 minutes worth of anaerobic exercise. We plan to try to stick to this schedule during weekdays.

2. Still Jogging: I have been continuing to jog. The other day when I was going to go jogging Murat’s uncle, Ahmed, insisted I let him take me down to the shore and that I run there. Murat said Ahmed is worried that a dog will attack me (there are a few stray dogs here and there). So we went down to the shore, I did a quick 2km and then Ahmed and i went and ate. We were later joined by Murat, Baris and the vice president of the municipality we live in. It was kind of cool meeting him, and although we can’t really communicate too well, we had fun. Since the actual president of this municipality made a joke about Attaturk, this guy is the acting president.

3. Sick: I got really sick last night an almost threw up at the restaurant. I am feeling better today, but am still not doing that well. I want to go home and go to sleep.

4. Payday: I got paid yesterday! All in cash, in a white, unmarked envelope. Felt like a drug deal or something.

5. Rock Climbing: Since Baris and Murat are going to visit a friend in the army tomorrow, I going rock climbing with Izzy all day. I am looking forward too it. I really hope I am back up to 100% in time.

6. Antimoda: Murat’s uncle took me around to the other companies that rent space from us. One of them is a textile company run by a Turk who grew up in Germany. They are all very nice and always bring us tea every time we go up there. Today they let out the waist on my suit pants for free!

7. Germany Trip: The company needs someone in Germany on Thursday to take care of some stuff relating to our crates. So instead of going Friday afternoon, I am going Wednesday morning to Germany. That means I will be in Germany for 12 days! Hopefully we make many good contacts while there.

8. Appolgies: Sorry I don’t have any new pictures. I have been very busy trying to finish these catalogs.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!