Quick Update

I've been busy, and I have been trying to get this blog migrated over to ChickenTurkish.com, which hasn't happened yet because, well, there's a lot to learn. Anyhow, it's gotten in the way of my writing, but here is a quick story about my day.

I bought fresh fruits and vegetables from the manav, the produce grocer, on my street. I always go to these guys for whatever I need. The produce is always fresh and tasty... the tomatoes remind me of those that came from my grandfather's garden.

In any event, I bought an assortment of things, and then didn't have the cash to pay for it all. "Sonra vereceksen," (bring it by later), was all the man running the store said. This is something I love about this country, I come up three bucks short for anything, anywhere in the states, and I'm putting items back on the shelf.

Then, when I arrived at the house, two children (who may be twins) were playing on the stairs. They belong to our kapıcı, which means "doorman", but is really more the building manager. I hate the guy, he's a bit of a hack and he only comes around when he wants the money for his services which are poorly performed... wait, the kids.

So, the kids were playing işçilik and evcilik, worker and housekeeper. They're adorable, and I don't say that about very many children, having worked with them for too long. The boy was pretending to be a shoe seller, and his sister encouraged him to sell me a pair.

For three lira (a steal) I got a great pair of completely imaginary shoes, that I took for a jog up the stairs to my place.

All the way home I had been thinking about a bowl of cornflakes. I realized long ago that certain comforts really fucking matter... they mean the whole world to me, and this is mine. I obsess about the taste and texture of cornflakes.

One of my room mates observed to me a few days ago, that whenever American films convey a feeling of monotony, of the mundane and completely normal, they run a scene of a misanthropic male eating a bowl of cereal. I, on the other hand, get a raging hard-on for corn flakes.

In any event, when I got home, said room mate had already warmed up börek, which is a kind of savory Turkish pastry (this one had spinach in it). It's tasty, but I wasn't about to let it get in the way of my hearts true desire.

As Murphy would have it, on opening the fridge, I noticed that we were out of milk.

All in all, it was still an amazing 20 minutes of life in Istanbul.

This is a cool story...

Feminism in an Anatolian Village

Teaching Moment...

I have never been happy with the English language as the global standard. A half-billion people get a pass on learning a second language, and everywhere else, those with a sufficient education in it will get a shot at middle-management in a foreign-owned conglomerate. It just seems a waste of human industry and creativity, but thus is the efficiency of capitalism, and I decry it.

Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that, as a teacher of English, I'm a beneficiary and fountainhead of this problem. I field questions and requests to teach from people in all walks of life, who sincerely and desperately want to improve their English as a means of improving their livelihood. I learn Turkish as a hobby, but these people need English... or think they do.

Spend a few months in Istanbul, and surely you will get a request to teach. A superficial look at the Istanbul Craigslist illustrates the demand for "teachers" of the language.

Fluency in a language is really, not as easy as most people think.

This happened a few years ago.

A room mate, who at the time was very interested in popular American hip-hop, yelled from his bedroom one evening a very pointed question: "Sean, what is this 'rim job' they are singing about?"

It's a fair question, and I was certain Erdem would encounter the phrase again. American pop-culture is littered with a wealth of scatological terms, and while Erdem's English is, grammatically speaking, near flawless, this wasn't the first time I had played consultant on matters of English jargon or slang.

I explained...

I encouraged him to note that it is a noun, not a verb, and provided verbal derivatives...

I even helped with a few example sentences, so he could practice correct use of the phrase...

Teaching moment, end of story.

Three days later, Erdem and I were on a bus together. It was mid-morning, and I have no memory of where we were heading, probably the Akmerkez. We caught a bus and sat in a forward section, where two pairs of seats face each other. Our stop was close to the bus terminal, and finding the seat and space to spread out wasn't difficult, but at the next stop, most of the seats filled up and a middle-aged woman sat down next to Erdem.

We had been quiet, still waking up, and suddenly Erdem's brain reanimated, as it were.

He let out a big laugh, and said, "Rim job, rim job, rim job. Isn't that kind of dirty?"

As he did so, I could see what he couldn't: the eyes of a horrified, middle-aged woman growing wider with each mention of the phrase. Apparently, she knew some American slang, too.

So get this...

As stupid as my ACL injury is, I heard a better story, yesterday.

There are a lot of ACL injuries at the clinic where I go for therapy. Mostly football and basketball players. Some professionals, others who are just generally athletic, but all are in their mid-twenties (which is kinda interesting, statistically).

A little further along in his recovery than myself, is a massive Turkish man, about my age. He must be close to seven feet tall, and he is a husky fella, probably weighing over 350 pounds. He is clearly not an athlete.

We had to share an elevator yesterday, and it felt like a very small small space. I swear he was ducking to fit inside.

He tore his ACL (same ligament and same right knee as mine) about a month before I did. We were chatting about our injuries, and after explaining how mine had happened, he began to relay his story.

So get this, the kid tore his ACL playing virtual ping pong on his Nintendo Wii.

WTF!?!

Smooth...

I'm really not sure what to say about this.

Obviously, the building was soundly built, which is encouraging (if I can assume that, perhaps, my own building is also soundly built).

At the same time, though, this kind of tom-foolery doesn't inspire confidence.

My therapist has a "kekekekeke..."

... a stutter.

This is not a therapist of the sofa variety, but a physical therapist, so we don't actually have to talk very much. The word, in Turkish, is kekelemek, and it is pronounced just as his stutter sounds.

I feel really bad, because I already have to work hard to understand Turkish, a language of many syllables. So, while I am desperately working to follow his directions, I now have the additional task of preventing my face from twisting into a grimace, or a smirk... worse yet, I'm also holding in the desire to laugh at the situation.

I mean come on... this is way over the top, and my poor sense of irony can't handle it. It's not his stutter that is funny, rather me, in the situation, trying to follow what he is saying. This is the kind of scenario that language school simply cannot prepare a person for.

When I say "gimmick"...

... you say "cheap".

50 Cent is in Turkey this week. Curtis Jackson, in the middle of a performance in the Aegean summer resort of Çeşme, draped himself in a Turkish flag and began holler'in at the crowd:

"When I say Atatürk, you will say respect."

He also went on to ask audience members where he could find some weed.

Hayatimda bu kadar aptal bir hedefi benim memleketimden buraya gelebilecektiğini inanamiyordum.

Or in English, "Why do only douche bags have passports?"

Atatürk is a debatable figure, particularly among the audience that would want to see 50 Cent in concert here. It's hip-hop for god's sake, anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and lots of shiny. Bling... bling... come on!

Is it poor planning on the part of his handlers? I seriously doubt Curtis Jackson would knowingly go to Spain and pay his respects to Franco, or give a shout-out to Mussolini in Italy.

It's crap like this that makes it distincly embarrassing for me to be an American living in Turkey. In general, Americans know two things about Turkey:
1. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (by that I mean his name)
2. A problem with Kurdish people is happening somewhere near here

Many would be hard pressed to find it on a map, because we haven't ever formally declared war on the country, so there's been little media interest.

Just as when Hillary, and later Obama, came to visit, I'll hear about this event for months; from taxi drivers and pastry sellers, and all sorts of people, generally on the right wing of Turkish politics that I prefer not to speak with because most of them will probably echo the same damn opinion. Somehow, this will get sucked into the nationalist rhetoric that I so frequently run into, and I'll be the ass (or worse, really offend someone) for pointing out that Curtis Jackson, in point of fact, is just an ignorant hip-hop star and not really the sort of person a proper Kemalist wants waving the flag around.

Seriously, every time an American gets a hold of a microphone in this country, they take a shot at exposing how fundamentally retarded and ill-informed we can be. I need my insulated, self-righteous indignation and sense of cultural superiority in order to justify continuing to live here. It's just too easy to connect the dots: Curtis Jackson = Tard, and Curtis Jackson = American, thus American = Tard, and in conclusion Sean = Tard.

Thanks a lot Curtis, keep on rockin.

I have a driver...

OK, not in the sense that I have retained a chauffeur to drive me around the city, but kinda. I have a 'friend' who drives a taxi and lets me pay him to drive me around, and he is pretty much on call.

I met Hamdi sometime in the middle of the semester, so around March. I was running stupid-late for school, and jumping into a cab was really the only way I could avoid a lecture, explaining to me that I was late (which would clearly be redundant as I was already aware of my tardiness). I've lived in Turkey long enough to know that avoiding such lectures is worth as much as fifty lira, because the process is essentially a long dialog where my mistake is explained to me, I accept my mistake, and then the mistake is re-explained in similar words, after which I take responsibility, and there is a final round of examining why my mistake is important enough to be noted.

Taxi ride from my home to school: 8.26 Lira

Hamdi is really outgoing, and overly friendly in a way that Turkish people can sometimes be, in cases where the extent of the relationship is a financial transaction. For instance, the simitçi from whom I purchased a morning pastry, twice, seven months ago, felt completely comfortable engaging me in a conversation about the state of my knee when he saw it in a brace.

Weird.

In any event, Hamdi continued to follow-up with me after our first trip together, greeting us on our way to school, or giving us hell for not riding with him. I maybe got a ride from him twice more. Three weeks ago when I tore my ACL, I knew I would need safer transport than the jostling around that the bus could provide. Calling Hamdi seemed logical, and for the past several weeks, he's been ferrying me to and from school.

Needless to say, we are now becoming 'close' in his mind.

I suppose this is what I really want to write about. Turkey constantly presents challenges to my personal space. I've lost count of how many times I, the only person on a wide sidewalk, have been bumped into by the only other person on the sidewalk, who would have cleared me by fifteen feet if they hadn't drifted my way. On a visit to San Fransisco, in the fall of 2007, I reveled in the freedom of movement and walked a deserted (by my Istanbul standards) rush-hour block, with both my hands completely outstretched to their full wing-span.

I didn't touch a soul.

For our purposes now, I am not speaking of personal space in the how-close-you-stand-when-speaking-to-me sense. There are additional challenges to my sense of friendship and loyalty. Hamdi is a nice example of one such challenge. We talk in the cab, and he is entertaining. I do not dislike him. He consistently picks me up, gets me where I need to be, and we have not been in anything resembling an accident (which I consider a perk). I offer what I feel is customer loyalty, calling him back because I trust and am pleased with his service.

I just don't know what to do, though, when the man begins asking me to get breakfast with him in the morning, or go to a cafe on the other side of Istanbul for an afternoon. The seeming homo-eroticism of a man-date with Hamdi does not bother me. I have lived here long enough to know there is nothing sexual about it.

Rather, I simply don't feel a man-date with my driver is appropriate.

More on Iran...

Just cause this stuff is important...

The writer of the blog and these twitter posts is an Iranian that Gregg met through a friend. He is in Iran presently.

South is South

Homeboy on Twitter


There's a lot of information, misinformation, and rumor going around, and this is probably the last I will post on the matter (as I am neither there, nor informed enough to be a source of quality info). His description of the protests seems similar to what we do in Istanbul on May 1, except that paramilitaries and cops are shooting people. I watched an incredibly disturbing video on Facebook, of a woman bleeding from several bullet wounds: one to the breast, one to the eye.

She is most assuredly dead now.

The tactics and approach of the Iranian leadership are nothing short of fascist. I don't know if the term "Islamo-fascism" is being thrown around stateside, but I wanted to offer that the term is misleading. What we are witnessing in Iran is typical of how states behave, when their power is seriously challenged. Islamic, Catholic, Communist, Democratic... everything happening in Iran right now has happened before elsewhere.

From what little I know of Musavi's politics, I know that I don't like them. This is surely the situation for many protesters on the street, who are agitating for wholesale reform of the Iranian mechanisms of government and economics. Revolutions make for strange bedfellows, just as they did in Iran's previous revolution. I hope that the Iranian left has enough sense to get armed and prepare for a backlash from the political right, should the present stage of dissent succeed.

Otherwise, we will probably witness a repeat of the 1980s, with a new pro-western face for the fascism.

Historically speaking...

A few days ago I was thinking about Columbia (it came up in a class I was teaching), and the thought led me back to Turkey. The thought was something like:

'Imagine a _____ [fill in a country] where there had been no US intervention in the 20th century. What paths would the many imaginative and beautiful people there have chosen for themselves? What lives would they be living now? What national obsessions and grass-roots initiatives would they be acting out?'

I don't think people fully realize, that an event like the Iranian revolution, in 1979, doesn't represent merely a serious change in 1980. Rather, it represents frantically dramatic and unpredictable changes for their culture in 2009. We are witnessing that play out now.

Turkey, which saw huge gains for labor and human rights in the 60s and 70s, is instead (almost thirty years after the last coup), now a country of high unemployment and authoritarian management-worker relations, a stifled press, etc. My school, for example, keeps taking parts of my paycheck, and that just doesn't happen in countries with strong unions.

The consequences of these and other historic catastrophes make me uncomfortable. I feel both a sense of powerlessness and accompanying discomfort due to the awareness that, back home in the US in the same thirty-year period, we nurtured a culture of largely playful people, who are highly digital-savvy, and for the most part, pretty cool.

There's a bit of white guilt buried there, I suppose, but more than that, I am merely aghast at how horrifyingly wrong our foreign policy has been... pretty much as long as we've had foreign policy. From where I sit, I feel that the US and Western Europe are, or rather were, securely insulated by their prosperity. A lot of beautiful things resulted from that, along with a lot of waste.

With all this in mind, I found the graphic below, which made my jaw drop...


This image represents the catastrophic failure of free-market capitalism (if not, simply, all capitalism) over the last twelve months. Looking forward, I feel this bodes ill for the United States' future prospects, particularly if we intend to continue with a modified capitalist economy. We were a country that could spend on demonstrably influential projects (even if I don't agree with all/any of them). From here on out, I don't know that we will have money to spend at all.

Here is a link to the article.

I am trying to imagine how distinctly different American culture is now, from say the oil crises of the 1970s (I'm just choosing a random crisis from roughly thirty years ago). The America my kids (God-forbid) grow up in will be distinctly less-influential than that into which I was born. Who knows whether that will be a good thing, but I doubt it.

For real though, the AIG bailout costs the same as the Marshal Plan did!?!

Jumpin' gee wilikers!

Iranian Revolution: Part II?

I haven't said much about events in Iran, and I don't have much to say. I found some great info here, and a great list of links to read through here. Everything I could say is said more elequently by these writers, and they are worlds more informed than the US media, I imagine.

These things happen...

... I suppose.

I'll start with a story my friend Phil told me, one night over cards in Damascus.

One afternoon, whilst wandering the ancient paradise-turned-real estate venture we were using as a place for Arabic study and spy games, Phil had an epiphany: "The instance of random death or injury are much higher in the Middle East, than other places I have been."

This revelation was inspired by an air conditioning unit. Air conditioning units being not uncommon in desert climates, this unit was unique in that it had, seemingly out of boredom or discomfort, detached itself from the side of a tall apartment building. Without so much as a murmur to warm pedestrians, the air conditioner fell in a path predetermined by the Earth's gravitational pull, and crashed into the sidewalk fifty meters or less in front of Phil.

Friends may have noticed my habit of looking up whilst walking the city. This is an attempt to mitigate the threat of random death. If nothing else, this routine has saved me from having dirty laundry water dumped on me, and enabled me to avoid a few carelessly discarded cigarette butts.

Alas, in a world where the only benevolent force I observe is that of Murphy's Law (not so much a force as a universal constant), randomness caught up with me over the weekend.

Beşiktaş was in its final, and most important match of the past several years, Saturday night. Effectively tied with Sivas Spor, Beşiktaş needed a win in order to secure the championship. This has been a great season for my team (we won the Turkish Cup not two weeks ago), but I had never before had the pleasure of witnessing a winning season, much less a championship, for Beşiktaş.

I was excited.

Excitement took me to a crowded alley, that for the night of the match, was serving as a restaurant and viewing area. The match was taking place in Denizli, so television was our best option for watching it. Rakı, bira, peynir, yemek...

(Drunk + food)^match = good time

Here's a taste:




By the second half, we were ahead by a goal, and the news had come down that Sivas Spor was losing. You could smell the coming alcohol-fueled celebrations only 45 minutes away. We watched and drank and enjoyed the moment.

This is me, getting into the drama:




Sometime later, I noticed a few tourists walking past, gawking at the fervor. I thought to myself, "let's invite them to join us!"

So, I took my beer, left the throng of tables and people and food, and walked behind the TV to say "hello" to these Austrians, as they turned out to be.

The first rule about Beşiktaş matches: Never turn your back on the game. That's when you miss goals.

The second rule has something to do with fire...



Anyhow, I was separated from the solidarity of the pack... easy prey, as it were, for other drunk fans. When Beşiktaş scored its second goal, I didn't see it. I saw the reaction of my fellow diners, and I put my hands in the air. I began screaming some Turkish cheer (probably "Şampiyonluk bizim, kupa bizim!", the championship is ours, the cup is ours).

Then, someone picked me up...

I'm not sure why, but now airborn, I understood that this was all part of the celebration. I was fully held off the ground, by someone slightly shorter than me, but strong. Whoever he was, he was himself jumping around.

Then, he lost his balance.

As we tumbled I planted my right leg to stop the fall, and immediately felt the pop, which my doctor later identified as a torn ACL. Despite my effort, I didn't stop falling, and managed to end our trip ground-ward by planting my face firmly into the corner of the table which held the TV.

In the aftermath, as I collected my pieces, I noticed that the man was gone. I don't know who it was, and never saw him. My glasses were on the ground, and before I could collect the pieces, I had to wipe the blood off my face.

Then, for the first time that evening, I set down my beer.


Go Beşiktaş!

Not helping things...

I was reading this week that Turkey is using thermal cameras in airports, scanning international travelers who enter the country as part of their entry/passport control procedures. The effort is to detect those infected with swine flu, whose feverish symptoms are easily recognizable in the camera.

Libertarian concerns aside, I think it's a neat idea for finding infected people, ensure that they are treated, and containing the spread of a deadly disease.

Similar cameras are in use at the Bulgarian and Greek border crossings.

A colleague traveled to London, over the weekend, and so I asked her about the entry procedure. As she explained, there are two lines for passport control, one for Turkish nationals and another for foreign nationals. The line for foreign nationals was apparently backed up for hours, because each individual entering through this path had to pass through one of the cameras. However, it is a lucky time for Turks. They don't have to deal with the uncomfortable wait, long lines, or the thermal cameras: the only people being scanned, before entry into Turkey, are those who do not possess a Turkish passport and ID card.

I can only speculate, but the logic must run something akin to: Turkish people are Muslims and Muslims don't eat pork. Thus, Turkish people can't have been exposed to swine flu.

One of my colleagues has swine flu...

OK, we don't actually know for sure, because as I've explained before, having the shits can be part of the experience of living in Turkey.

His return to school this morning prompted a conversation, and then some internet research, to see if swine flu (domuz gribi in Turkish) has come to Turkey.

On May 4th, in the southern city of Antalya, a panic broke out following the announcement that a patient of Akdeniz University Medical Center had died from swine flu. The Health Department was quick to issue statements to calm the populace. The kinds of statements you would expect from the government were issued: "The deceased had not traveled abroad, and preliminary tests on the body have yielded no evidence of the H1N1 virus. An autopsy will be performed, but as yet there has been no death due to swine flu."

Turns out, they were wrong. Start panicking.

People in Istanbul began panicking about swine flu two days ago. I need to catch up! An American traveler brought the disease through the Ataturk Airport sometime last week, and separately, a Korean traveler did as well. While yesterday, two cases were reported in Kadikoy, a busy ferry stop on the Asian side of Istanbul. One can only assume that it is now everywhere.

Special thanks to Mr. MacDaniel for bringing this pandemic to the desk abutting my own.

Turkish Children Speak the Truth...

From a friend's classroom:

Question: "What are some reasons that people are treated badly?"

Answer: "The Turkish people"


There was no period... but I wonder whether the child intended to complete the sentence.

THIS is our TOOTHPASTE...

Which we use after eating our cookies.



And people still say there is no racism in Turkey.

Pete, Pete, and Repeat walk into a bar...

Let me try to connect the dots...

I've been listening to a podcast called "The Best of the Left", and last week there was a discussion about metaphorical echo chambers. According to Wikipedia, "the term echo chamber is any situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission inside an 'enclosed' space." I gather it is not an actual enclosed space, but instead the simple act of talking to, reading, or listening to opinions that already agree with one's own (thus reinforcing them as correct).

When you hear someone say, "you're preaching to the choir," they are basically saying to you that the echo chamber of your relationship is redundant, in this case.

The point made in the podcast, or what caught my ear, dealt with a study that sought to determine whether readers of online news were ghettoizing themselves into echo chambers, and only reading information from sources that reflected their opinions.

Turns out, they don't, defying the expectations of researchers.

The study showed that bloggers and their readers alike, prefer to read what the other side is saying. Thus, ideologies are defined dialectically, in relation to one another, rather than through echo chambers. Blogs go a step further, creating a venue where people can interact with the "other" side. Posting comments to a blog is one example of how this process works, mechanically speaking.

Another nail in the coffin of the newspaper industry!

This relates to Turkey, in a minute...

I was raised, like most Americans, on the assumption of an objective media. The idea that journalism should report "just the facts, ma'am", and that the field brought with it none of the dishonest taints which accompany academia, politics, or discussions around the water-cooler.

Thus was I in for a shock, my first summer in Turkey. Myself a young leftist at the time, I learned through leftist friends of leftist newspapers and leftist magazines. These were clearly and aggressively ideological publications, and available in most news-stands (except those owned by the political right). A magazine rack provides a number of political stances, and while searching for one, a reader inevitably learns about others. Publications are also pressed to keep each other honest, because what could be more fun than discrediting your ideological foes.

Some of these papers are sufficiently extreme, that they are constantly being closed by the government, and then re-organizing under different names. One specifically, Gündem, used to print a "Victims" column, everyday featuring a journalist, lawyer, or revolutionary killed by the Turkish "Deep State". To carry Gündem in public was to declare to other Turks your ideological stance.

I remember a man in Tatvan, who was holding up his Gündem such that any passerby could see the headline and title as they passed. I felt that he wasn't reading, so much as making a statement about his politics, a proclamation of his leftist-ness.

Certainly, it was an act of defiance. Gündem was shut down in 2005.

The New York Times seems intended for hippy-pussies by comparison.

I noticed long ago that Turks are generally more politically aware. My political persuasion often differs from those with whom I speak, but there is clearly a mutual understanding of the political spectrum, the agents of political change, and the means available for exercising power. We disagree, but we understand one another. It's like we're speaking the same language, even though we're not.

Turkey is a military state. What I find interesting, is that with political action literally paralyzed by the threat of imprisonment or extra-state assassination, dissident voices constantly emerge from all points of the political spectrum. Their contribution to the larger conversation resonates meaningfully. The closest thing we have to this is Jon Stewart getting into an argument with Tucker Carlson.

Either ours is a fundamentally conservative country, or our leadership has complete control, for the differences between liberals and conservatives never come down to ideology, but rather policy. Americans all seem to want basically the same things. I know I'm failing to define this clearly, but I'll need to think on it more. The Turkish Left and Right want radically different things for Turkey (different from each other and different from what the Turkish state presently provides).

I could be wrong (and perhaps I ran from the America of my parents' generation, and not mine), but I get the sense Americans just want a middle/upper-middle class, college educated, nuclear family, lifestyle. Something which could be described as "Compassionate Capitalism", which is maybe also eco-friendly.

My ideology leads me to want collective ownership of the means of production and democratic participation in all levels of society, also maximization of local political authority into smaller geographic areas than nations (of our size) would be appreciated.

Those are distinctly different goals...

Some links on the right...

I'll be posting several links to other material on Turkey, the little gems that one runs into on the internet.

For now, there is only Arse About Fez, the site of a Brit living (I think) in Izmir. It's all funny, but take a look at the posts tagged "Fezasaurus" for a quick laugh. It's a list of ornate Turkish swears. The phrases are not nearly as interesting as their contexts and explanations, which are generally more bewildering than the chosen phrasing.

The list makes it clear to me, that I have for too long allowed myself to believe I really could swear well in Turkish. There always seems to be a bigger fish... amına koyayım.

1:02 minutes in Istanbul...

This is what my street sounded like at 11:21 this morning.

I like having the week off from work, cause it gives me time to actually live here.

The gentleman you hear yelling, intermittently, is selling pastries from a cart he is pushing through the street. He is one of several such men, who all push carts, either collecting or distributing something.

More on them later.

...

When I began cycling in the city, cars were a problem. Actually, cars were THE problem. I had my first near-death experience next to the Sisli Mosque, the first week I started riding. My death would've irked my parents to no end, having to travel to Istanbul and visit my grave in the grounds of the camii (Muslims bury their dead in the place they died).

I managed the car issue by learning the best times to ride, where to be when, and where to stay away from altogether. I've got a bajillion lights on my bike, and they are all bright enough that I only worry about the worst of drivers, these days.

Pedestrians presented the next obstacle. For whatever reason, I'm not deemed as serious a threat, by the Turkish pedestrian, as a car. In the opinion of any home-schooled physicist, I'm probably not. Still, I've been hit by a cyclist, and it sucks. The number one problem I've had with pedestrians, is that they step out in front of me within distances that my brakes cannot solve. I haven't hit anyone, yet, but I've come close. The deer-in-headlights effect that my squealing tires produces leaves me responsible for avoiding an accident. If it wouldn't hurt me too, I'd probably just roll on through them. Not injuries yet: so far, so good.

The latest threat on the road, as the economy turns people to more economic transport, is other bikes. Last night, lights flashing and obviously travelling quickly downhill, another biker pulled into my path.

I'm still not sure what to make of it.

This never happens...

After passing through the turnstile, while heading towards the escalator, a woman with Metro Security stopped Gregg and I to scan our bags. The hand-held metal/drug/bomb detector read our laptops as trouble, and we were asked to open our backpacks. A glance at the assortment of gym clothes and work papers and she let us go.

Busy with the task of profiling us, the obviously foreign John Does, a black man also walked past. If there is any single group of people who stand out more that WASPs, in Turkey, it's black people. I even catch myself staring at them, just cause there are so few around that I feel a surge of excitement when I see one on the street. It's probably the same feeling that a birdwatcher gets when sighting a rare bird.

Seeing that bag-checks were taking place, he actually asked if he should open his, but was waved on.

Maybe I've been watching too much of The Wire, but I'm seriously shocked that I live in a place so backward, that it fails to harass a black man...

He was even prepared to accept the profiling; ready to get it over with by opening the bag himself.

I wonder if he felt weird about the situation.

Our house...

...is quite literally, in the middle of our street.

So, we live in Ova Apartman (that's right, Ova) on Hanimefendi Street (which means something like, "Yes Ma'am"). The neighboring apartment is Beyefendim, or "yes sir". I've got some pictures of the house and the street below. At some point, I'll try to post a full expo on our district, Şişli.


My ride, and the front door to our apartment.

The dining room.
The kitchen.


The living room (the dining room is behind me, for this shot).

My bedroom, at it's cleanest.

Drop on by anytime!

Istanbul is a jungle...

I've been here long enough that much of the shiny-newness of this city has rubbed off. It might be that I need a break from the extant stupidity I've dealt with over the last several months, but I really think that time, in any place, tends to do that. The colors dull, the novelty rubs off, and then there is the routine of sleep, work, play, repeat...

That's why meeting people, who are new to the city, can be really refreshing. They seem both childishly fascinated with this new place, and woefully naive of its pitfalls.

One such person, a Belgian I shared beers with on Monday, felt Istanbul offered an escape. Europe, as he explained it, was bureaucratic, over-regulated, and repressive. Istanbul offers him freedom, relaxed controls, and something wild.

"Istanbul is like a jungle," he said to me, "but Belgium was a zoo."

I haven't thought, in some time, of dependable infrastructure or safe traffic practices as signs of control... but I've also dealt with the lack thereof for nearly four years.

I appreciated his perspective. It was a reminder. At the same time, as I've aged, and protection from needless injury or unlawful treatment has become an increasing concern, I begun behaving as though Istanbul is indeed, a jungle. I'm no streetwise thug, but I believe this jungle has wrought changes that have made me a tougher, slightly more cunning, and more aggressive and empowered.

I'm not certain that all of these qualities are good things, in and of themselves.

Jungle or zoo, if nothing else, this city is definitely not Jacksonville...

It's all in a name...

Having suffered my share of childhood torment over my namesake, I wanted to post some details from a conversation shared with several Americans a few nights ago. We were discussing Turkish names.

The friends in question are relatively new to Turkey, and commented that Turkish names sound similar to those of Klingons. It was a welcome reminder of my first year here, as I long ago adjusted to the sound Turkish names, tending now to get stuck on their meanings.

Being in a school setting, myself and fellow teachers have encountered a few that are especially worth sharing.

Hurşit (yep, that's "horseshit")

Tuba (pronounced just as it looks)

Tunacan (pronounced "too-na-jon", but who's going to guess that?)

Nigar (uh...)

Incidentally, my name is a disaster here, as it both uses a character that doesn't exist in Turkish ("X") and is not written phonetically. People remember my first name easily enough, as it is similar to the Turkish word for the vocal arts. Whenever someone has to spell it, however, or reads it from my passport, it becomes "Sea-an Jocks".

Not so bad, considering the case of an American woman here, who goes by Tash (which means "stone" in the native speak). She had to shorten her moniker from Natasha, which is Turkish for "prostitute".

Knee deep in 'Bul...

The suffering from jet-lag lasted through Friday, which is to be expected, and the return to Istanbul has been otherwise rocky, with visa responsibilities and such. We have furniture in our living room, so be looking for pictures in the next few weeks. My school is still crazy (no surprise). The weather is unusually warm, for February, and I've gotten the bike out again. I'm getting back into the rhythm of life abroad, and there's only one nagging problem...

I am having difficulty weening myself from the excesses of the past two weeks. In fact, I think they may finally have broken me down, as I sit here with a lung and tonsil infection, and a rather high fever.

Isn't the road to wisdom paved in excess?

I'm estimating some of these, but the numbers for Sean's two weeks in America break down roughly so:

2,978.6 miles driven

12 tanks of gas ≈ 120 gallons

≈ 4.5 gallons of beer (good stuff too, and PBR)

1 cigarette

14 slices of pizza

7 pancakes

3 plates of hashbrowns, eggs over medium, and some greasy meat

7 egg/cheese biscuits

a milkshake the size of my head

1 salsa lesson

7 places slept (including the car)

1 car battery killed
1 car towed

2 episodes of Gossip Girl watched

I missed the USA.

I also discovered a few things that I didn't think I would miss... among them, TELEVISION! While I've been gone, TV made radical improvements, and Veronica Mars and The Wire have dominated much of my sick-leave. I know it's old stuff, but who can really expect me to keep up on trends. Better to wait for the DVD anyhow, which offers hours of instant gratification, as I lay shivering in my bed.

Being on the road as much as we were, I observed a lot that I wasn't prepared for. The state of the economy is showing, or at least seems to be. I was shocked at the condition of the roads, which reminded me of Istanbul's, and New York's subway was pretty assed-out. Also, the people in gas stations were no longer peers (as they were years ago when I worked in such an establishment). Rather, the folks behind the registers were consistently older, over 30 and maybe even 40. I also distinctly remember a kinder gentleman in his 50s, who delivered a Dominos pizza to us at a friend's home.

That's probably the most alienating experience I've had, since moving abroad: realizing that I am doing very well, while our people suffer.

Here's hoping that people get organized...

Re-entry...

I'll be coming back to the United States in a week, along with a room mate, for a two week whirl-wind trip to visit EVERYBODY. As we ate lunch yesterday, we started to rattle off a list of the things we missed and looked forward to. I pressed my memory to remember as many of those things as I could below:

A cooked bird
Stuffing
Hash Browns
Waffles
Filtered Coffee
Milk Shakes
The Greasy Diner
Thai Food
Options other than Turkish cuisine
Making fun of Democrats
Driving
Infrastructure
Grids (City Planning)
Personal Space
People not caring about our behavior
Guiness
Red Stripe
Being funny
Being understood
Talking to girls

I'm excited to be heading home.

I'm not smoking cigarettes...

... this year.

In the tradition of recycling New-year's resolutions (in 2007 and 2008, I resolved to brush my teeth three times a day), I've decided that the cigarette I smoked the morning of January 1st is my last for the year. Since I wasn't smoking that much to begin with, this is more like an extended Lent, as I'm giving up a pleasure and less an addiction.

Turkey is the reason I smoke at all, and a testament both to the power of peer pressure and nostalgia. The conniving, insidious Turk, is always ready to offer their cigarettes to others: leaving them on tabletops to be plucked at will, offering them with glasses of tea, and insisting that the always-within-reach pack be shared. Also, and I know non-smokers won't understand this, a cigarette ties together the experience of a full Turkish meal quite nicely.

Three years ago, my friends Gregg, Mahir, and I, took a trip to the south-east of Turkey, hitchhiking our way around. You meet a lot of people that way, and Turks are probably friendlier than most Americans are either used to or able to fully appreciate. This "Turkish hospitality" often involves offering whatever is available to be offered: tea, food, wall decorations (true story), or smokes. After a week on the road, I had mostly filled an empty pack, graciously taking the gifted cigarettes and storing them away. After that week, I just started trying to smoke them, and thus, another bad habit was born!

I've never been more than a pack a month smoker, and often much less, but the considerable body of evidence showing how bad smoking is for me, and the mysterious cold I've had of late, have led me to abandon the practice... for now.

I haven't been put to task yet, but temptation will surely be a problem the next time I sit down for mezze and fish, reach for my rakı, and watch all my friends light up.

To be honest, just thinking about the experience makes me a little sad that I've taken the vow.

Maybe I'll just try to keep the number of cigarettes I smoke this year under twenty or so...