Plane Luck
I was thinking about my last four plane rides and the people I ended up talking to. They were all quite lucky I suppose. Simply by being outgoing, friendly and by wearing a smile, I have managed to meet several interesting people.
First, on my flight back from the US, I met Leyla. She’s half Turkish but grew up in New York. She has sort of become a part of our group (Izzy, Tahsin and I). She’s visiting her grandmother for the summer and I am assuming we are more fun than her grand mother is. Through her, we have also befriended her sister, Berna, who is a student here in Turkey.
Number two, my flight to Tunis. In the airport, while waiting in line to check in, I struck a conversation with the guy behind me. He’s an Algerian businessman who owns some textile factories. We talked for about half an hour (all in French) about lots of things. He was impressed by my story and gave me his cell phone number and office phone, and took my card. He said he would help me find a distributor for our products in Algeria. Of course this all sounded great, but these things usually are quickly forgotten. People like to talk about big ideas that are different and exciting (everyone wants to be part of something bigger than themselves) but they are usually forgotten because neither party follows up. Well, I am not like that. I ALWAYS follow up. 95% of the time I make people put their money where their mouth is. When I was in Switzerland, Daniel in my French class said I should come to Barcelona sometime and visit him while he’s there. Three weeks later I was in Barcelona, and Daniel was very surprised.
Anyway, so I called Mr Mohamed and he said that he would return to Turkey in two to three weeks and that we should have dinner together. After that he would arrange for me some meetings around Algeria. How excellent is that! Algeria is one of the biggest markets for compressors in Africa so Murat and Atila were excited to hear this news.
On flight number three, I had the luck of sitting next to two beautiful Tunisian girls. We talked (in French again) about various things. They were on vacation with their family so I offered to have them come out with us. We exchanged numbers and they actually did call me back. It never materialized but hey, I did get a phone number ?.
On flight number four, my flight to the UK, I sat amongst the English wheel chair basketball national team (not sure how that is actually played). Bored, I struck up a conversation that ended in me getting invited to one of their games this weekend. Unfortunately I will not be here as I am returning to Istanbul on Friday evening. I have a very important person coming to visit us on Saturday so I will have to be in the office.
In addition to all of that, don’t forget that on my flight back from New York to Istanbul they thought they were going to have to bump me so they gave me a $400 voucher for use with Delta or any of its partners. When I didn’t get bumped, they said I could go ahead and keep the voucher!
Anyway, so I just thought I would take a minute to brag to you all at what great luck I have been having lately. Keep a good attitude and be friendly, and you can do the same.
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