After weeks of British and Czech weather reports taunting me with temperatures well above average whilst Istanbul remained distinctly chilly, I can finally say that summer has arrived. It usually bounces between 24 and 31 degrees. Which suits me just fine.
It was on one of these 30 degree days last weekend that a group of us went to a remote beach for a BBQ. Although the Black Sea was ball shrinkingly cold (mine all but disappeared) and full of jelly fish, we made a brave attempt at swimming anyway.
We were just finishing off the last of our beers when some men dropped from the sky and came to introduce themselves. And I mean that quite literally. Indeed, it was raining men. They did have parachutes and engines attached to their backs but drop they did.
And that’s how I met my new friend Ali. A photographer by trade, who flies around the coast on his para motor, travels to far flung places, goes deep water diving, white water rafting and just about everything else a real man should do in my book. Oh yeah, he is a qualified pilot too. And quite cute.
So I was more than a little excited when he invited me out to dinner. We had a smashing time talking about 2 stroke engines, great photographers, art and politics. He turned out not to be married and, unlike most Turks, had reassuringly large hands. He introduced me to his friends who were also great and we had a right rum old time and even found we had some friends in common. However, Effes beer in the midday sun does skew your judgement a bit and I have to confess that I discovered not so much of a slight age gap, as a whole generation gap. Damn.
I tried the older man thing once before and, I have to say, very much regret frittering away most of my youth on old farts. Never again in my life will it be acceptable to date someone in their early 20’s. But I didn’t know that back then. Ahh youth is wasted on the young.
Anyway I hope to stay in contact. He really is a cool bloke. On the way home the taxi driver asked for sex. There was once a time when I would have jumped out the cab, but if you did that in Istanbul you’d never get anywhere. And then I got home and saw my first cockroach and screamed like a girl before nuking it with every chemical I could get my hands on. Haven’t seen any more before or since so assume I am not on a nest, but guess what I’ll be googling this evening? Always wondered why there were so many cans of half empty bug spray in the cupboards. I think I just increased my carbon footprint to a size 12.
Work is, as usual, unnerving. I was just getting into the swing of things when Martin, my old boss from cz and my current boss here, announced that they had found his Turkish replacement and that he was either moving departments or moving opcos. I have not met the lady who will be taking his place yet but rumour has it that she is one tough cookie. I have been helping a lot with retail communications, and have been adding value, I have to say. The only thing getting in my way of doing a cracking job is the woman who is supposed to be doing it herself. A dinosaur who doesn’t much like the idea of change and has a sleeve full of excuses as to why things don’t get done. But I realised that I quite like doing retail comms. I’m good at it.
Mum comes tomorrow. Unfortunately I do have to go in and work now and then but no matter. We will have a smashing time. Haven’t actually seen her for 18 months which is a total outrage. I’m sure she will love it here.
Friday 30 May 2008
Tuesday 20 May 2008
Flying the flag
I’m not sure when flags stopped being a sign of all things good, and started being the accessory du jour of nutters, like fascist skinheads and Geri Halliwell.
When I was a kid, flags were a good thing and were often accompanied by street parties, cup cakes, jelly and ice cream, meat paste sandwiches, those weird little sausages on cocktail sticks and something called the ‘Queens Jubblies’. Or that’s how it sounded when I was 4 years old anyhow.
They was also a strange group of people who used to plant miniature flags in white dog poo on our estate in Bradford. But maybe that was just a Yorkshire thing.
And then, slowly but surely, flags started shifting in my perception. First they were coveted by nationalists who, my dad told me, didn’t like people like Mr Singh in the shop at the end of our street. This was bad. Mr Singh always gave me tons of free sweets and he always had a nice turban.
Then (probably around the advent of CNN and satellite TV) flags became something that dark angry looking people in far off lands burned and stamped on. In later years I wondered if there was a chain of American flag makers in Bagdhad or Pakistan who got very rich in the 1990’s and retired recently, because you don’t see as much flag burning these days.
But every ones perception shifted. A few years ago when England was good enough to be in the world cup, people decorated the streets of Bedford with the cross of St George, but the council came and took them all down because they said it had ‘racist undertones’ and had upset the Muslim population in the area. I quoted them on this, they then retracted their statement and tried to say that I made the quote up. A slight that still rankles to this day as I prided myself on being quite an honest journalist.
I always thought it was quite sweet in Turkey that they have no shame in being proud of their flag. You can see it hanging everywhere. On special holidays all the skyscrapers in the business district unfurl massive 50 metre long Turkish flags from the side of their buildings. They are very proud of their flag. Turks do tend to have a massive inferiority complex here and so are very touchy about their national identity. You’ll always be treated with kindness and respect as long as you NEVER say anything bad about Ataturk or Turkey in general. One terrible time in 2000 when Leeds were playing Galatasaray here, some Leeds football hooligans decided to entice the Turkish to fight by setting fire to the Turkish flag and wiping their bums with it. Big mistake. Two fans got stabbed to death. I have looked in the press for evidence that these two murdered men were totally innocent and had done nothing wrong but could find naught.
A normal tabloid article would scream that these were ‘two innocent men who had no ties to violence of any sort and were in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ But the papers are strangely quite about their pasts and their connections. They just tell you that one of them was a father. The lack of outrage at their senseless murders could be telling. As is the fact that the Sun newspaper lost 3 million readers overnight and nearly went bust after printing that some Liverpool fans were responsible for the Hillsborough disaster. A faux pas from which it has never recovered and which no paper worth it’s shareholders would ever dare to repeat.
Of course I do not advocate murder. And stabbing anyone is clearly repugnant. But right now a flag is driving me to thinking about other forms of criminal behaviour. Such as vandalism and/or arson.
You know my lovely Bospherous view that I am so in love with? Behold. On Friday morning I woke up to an entirely different kind of vista as a 20 metre long Galatasaray flag was hung down the side of my building. At first I tried to be calm, after all it was a national holiday of sports and children on Monday. But it’s Tuesday and the flag shows no sign of being removed. Now I can only see the Bospherous if I go out on my balcony or stand at the top of my staircase. I was hoping that the fact that it completely obscured the views of 3 other flats might prompt enough complaints to see it removed quickly. But maybe the others like it there because still it flaps. In any case. I will be forced to make a complaint tomorrow to the traditionals (i.e. headscarfed family) two floors above who hung it out and whose view, I might add, is in no way hindered. I hope they do not know I am from Leeds and that I like Fenerbahce. Like I say, flags are usually coveted by nutters.
This weekend was fantastic. So there was a German, a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Australian and a Turkish dog and they all went to Assos, a lovely little town on the Aegean sea. There is no joke there. But we did have a great time. We didn’t do much except take long breakfasts, pootle about, and sunbathe. It was heaven.
Every morning we ate local cheese, olives and an egg dish called menemen and looked out from the terrace at the incredible views of the mountains and sea. I read two books. I also learnt that I cannot make a Turkish male do my bidding (even if he has 4 legs and fur). It was a constant 33 degrees. Summer has arrived. It seems set to be over 30 from here on in.
I finally found a Thai boxing class today and, joy of joys, the instructor speaks English. I start tomorrow. I will be the only female, which isn’t a huge surprise, but I do wonder how the macho Turks will take me. This is a great thing. I need evening sport otherwise I just sit watching the Bospherous, smoking fags, drinking wine and ship spotting. I guess the curtailment of my view spurred me on to get things done.
By the way this was my old view
When I was a kid, flags were a good thing and were often accompanied by street parties, cup cakes, jelly and ice cream, meat paste sandwiches, those weird little sausages on cocktail sticks and something called the ‘Queens Jubblies’. Or that’s how it sounded when I was 4 years old anyhow.
They was also a strange group of people who used to plant miniature flags in white dog poo on our estate in Bradford. But maybe that was just a Yorkshire thing.
And then, slowly but surely, flags started shifting in my perception. First they were coveted by nationalists who, my dad told me, didn’t like people like Mr Singh in the shop at the end of our street. This was bad. Mr Singh always gave me tons of free sweets and he always had a nice turban.
Then (probably around the advent of CNN and satellite TV) flags became something that dark angry looking people in far off lands burned and stamped on. In later years I wondered if there was a chain of American flag makers in Bagdhad or Pakistan who got very rich in the 1990’s and retired recently, because you don’t see as much flag burning these days.
But every ones perception shifted. A few years ago when England was good enough to be in the world cup, people decorated the streets of Bedford with the cross of St George, but the council came and took them all down because they said it had ‘racist undertones’ and had upset the Muslim population in the area. I quoted them on this, they then retracted their statement and tried to say that I made the quote up. A slight that still rankles to this day as I prided myself on being quite an honest journalist.
I always thought it was quite sweet in Turkey that they have no shame in being proud of their flag. You can see it hanging everywhere. On special holidays all the skyscrapers in the business district unfurl massive 50 metre long Turkish flags from the side of their buildings. They are very proud of their flag. Turks do tend to have a massive inferiority complex here and so are very touchy about their national identity. You’ll always be treated with kindness and respect as long as you NEVER say anything bad about Ataturk or Turkey in general. One terrible time in 2000 when Leeds were playing Galatasaray here, some Leeds football hooligans decided to entice the Turkish to fight by setting fire to the Turkish flag and wiping their bums with it. Big mistake. Two fans got stabbed to death. I have looked in the press for evidence that these two murdered men were totally innocent and had done nothing wrong but could find naught.
A normal tabloid article would scream that these were ‘two innocent men who had no ties to violence of any sort and were in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ But the papers are strangely quite about their pasts and their connections. They just tell you that one of them was a father. The lack of outrage at their senseless murders could be telling. As is the fact that the Sun newspaper lost 3 million readers overnight and nearly went bust after printing that some Liverpool fans were responsible for the Hillsborough disaster. A faux pas from which it has never recovered and which no paper worth it’s shareholders would ever dare to repeat.
Of course I do not advocate murder. And stabbing anyone is clearly repugnant. But right now a flag is driving me to thinking about other forms of criminal behaviour. Such as vandalism and/or arson.
You know my lovely Bospherous view that I am so in love with? Behold. On Friday morning I woke up to an entirely different kind of vista as a 20 metre long Galatasaray flag was hung down the side of my building. At first I tried to be calm, after all it was a national holiday of sports and children on Monday. But it’s Tuesday and the flag shows no sign of being removed. Now I can only see the Bospherous if I go out on my balcony or stand at the top of my staircase. I was hoping that the fact that it completely obscured the views of 3 other flats might prompt enough complaints to see it removed quickly. But maybe the others like it there because still it flaps. In any case. I will be forced to make a complaint tomorrow to the traditionals (i.e. headscarfed family) two floors above who hung it out and whose view, I might add, is in no way hindered. I hope they do not know I am from Leeds and that I like Fenerbahce. Like I say, flags are usually coveted by nutters.
This weekend was fantastic. So there was a German, a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Australian and a Turkish dog and they all went to Assos, a lovely little town on the Aegean sea. There is no joke there. But we did have a great time. We didn’t do much except take long breakfasts, pootle about, and sunbathe. It was heaven.
Every morning we ate local cheese, olives and an egg dish called menemen and looked out from the terrace at the incredible views of the mountains and sea. I read two books. I also learnt that I cannot make a Turkish male do my bidding (even if he has 4 legs and fur). It was a constant 33 degrees. Summer has arrived. It seems set to be over 30 from here on in.
I finally found a Thai boxing class today and, joy of joys, the instructor speaks English. I start tomorrow. I will be the only female, which isn’t a huge surprise, but I do wonder how the macho Turks will take me. This is a great thing. I need evening sport otherwise I just sit watching the Bospherous, smoking fags, drinking wine and ship spotting. I guess the curtailment of my view spurred me on to get things done.
By the way this was my old view
Tuesday 13 May 2008
Toilets, South Africans and green shots.
It seems like quite a while since my last missive. I have been a busy girl, which is always a good thing as we all know that the devil makes wine for idle hands.
The last few weeks have seen me trying to get approval for Madonna promotions, F1 sponsorship madness, putting together a new direct marketing strategy with a woman so dim it’s a wonder she remembers to breathe, as well as trying to initiate a new project involving a Vodafone product from South Africa. Of course I have not thought at all about the possibility of a business trip to Cape Town. No not once. I was also not at all swayed by the 6ft4 vision of lovely rugbyness that came to present to us. Do they all look like that in SA? I thought it was only on the telly and that the SA rugby team had been genetically modified. It’s the first bloke I have seen in months who doesn’t look like he’s been dipped in a bucket of pubic hair. Anyway I was disappointed to note that, when he used his wife’s ID to log onto an account and show us the product, that she was born in 1984. Biatch. It won’t last you know.
I also had some visitors. Pavel Jirat, who flew in from Kuwait, joined by Pavel Zingle and Petra from CZ. Pirat (as we call him) has been living in a dry state for a couple of years now meaning that there is NO alcohol. Not in hotels, not anywhere. And as Czechs drink more beer per head of capita than anyone else in the world, you can imagine that he had quite some catching up to do when he got here. His attempts at smuggling medical grade ether from the local hospital and mixing it with pineapple juice resulted in near blindness. Now he adds yeast to grapejuice and has made a variety of of different wines including a Kuwingon Blanc. He insists I come to visit but I am worried that the Nurofen will cost more than my flight.
So Thursday night appeared to be a race for the Czechs to cram as many pints, shots and Lord knows what else down their throats before closing time. I realised when I was up against forces greater than myself when they started dropping unidentifiable green shots into their pints of beer and necking them in one. I eschewed the shots and bowed out gracefully at about 11 by switching to tea.
The next morning, while they all were unconcious, I tiptoed to work, looking slightly worse for wear, because I had a very important meeting. A few minutes before it was due to start I went to the ladies only to break the lock and find myself trapped in the cubicle with no means of escape. Eventually the cleaning lady came who spoke absolutely no English whatsoever. Note to self, learn how to say ‘help’ in Turkish. So there I sat for quite a while longer until an English speaking colleague happened upon my predicament. She called security who tried brute force, then they called the handiman who started to dismantle the lock only to find that he didn’t have the right tools. Meanwhile the very important meeting that I dragged my sorry ass in for looked in danger of being cancelled due to my non attendance. I suggested, via a messenger, that my boss slide the presentation under the door so we could discuss the project on conference call, but he was too busy pissing himself laughing to consider it seriously. The worst thing was that I was trapped in there for so long that I started to need the loo again but was unable to go, oh irony, because I was afraid they might bust the door open at any moment and a small crowd had gathered to point and stare at the locked toilet door.
By Friday evening, after all that excitement, my guests and I were all too tired to do anything. We went for a nice meal with my boss and his wife, although I barely ate because they forgot my order. I realised that my czech is not as bad as I supposed and actually managed to grasp the nuances of the conversation most of the time. On Saturday we went to the grand bazaar and then to a BBQ at a friends house where we drank very expensive 25 year old rum. And Sunday, after they had all gone I went for a short 10km run, despite buying new fancy trainers to counteract my knee problem and running on the flat, it still started to hurt, will try yoga this week and see if I can cure it.
Next weekend I am off on a trip to Assos, a quaint little Turkish town by the sea with an Aussie, a German, a Frenchman and a Turkish mountain dog called Gin. I am very excited by the prospect.
The last few weeks have seen me trying to get approval for Madonna promotions, F1 sponsorship madness, putting together a new direct marketing strategy with a woman so dim it’s a wonder she remembers to breathe, as well as trying to initiate a new project involving a Vodafone product from South Africa. Of course I have not thought at all about the possibility of a business trip to Cape Town. No not once. I was also not at all swayed by the 6ft4 vision of lovely rugbyness that came to present to us. Do they all look like that in SA? I thought it was only on the telly and that the SA rugby team had been genetically modified. It’s the first bloke I have seen in months who doesn’t look like he’s been dipped in a bucket of pubic hair. Anyway I was disappointed to note that, when he used his wife’s ID to log onto an account and show us the product, that she was born in 1984. Biatch. It won’t last you know.
I also had some visitors. Pavel Jirat, who flew in from Kuwait, joined by Pavel Zingle and Petra from CZ. Pirat (as we call him) has been living in a dry state for a couple of years now meaning that there is NO alcohol. Not in hotels, not anywhere. And as Czechs drink more beer per head of capita than anyone else in the world, you can imagine that he had quite some catching up to do when he got here. His attempts at smuggling medical grade ether from the local hospital and mixing it with pineapple juice resulted in near blindness. Now he adds yeast to grapejuice and has made a variety of of different wines including a Kuwingon Blanc. He insists I come to visit but I am worried that the Nurofen will cost more than my flight.
So Thursday night appeared to be a race for the Czechs to cram as many pints, shots and Lord knows what else down their throats before closing time. I realised when I was up against forces greater than myself when they started dropping unidentifiable green shots into their pints of beer and necking them in one. I eschewed the shots and bowed out gracefully at about 11 by switching to tea.
The next morning, while they all were unconcious, I tiptoed to work, looking slightly worse for wear, because I had a very important meeting. A few minutes before it was due to start I went to the ladies only to break the lock and find myself trapped in the cubicle with no means of escape. Eventually the cleaning lady came who spoke absolutely no English whatsoever. Note to self, learn how to say ‘help’ in Turkish. So there I sat for quite a while longer until an English speaking colleague happened upon my predicament. She called security who tried brute force, then they called the handiman who started to dismantle the lock only to find that he didn’t have the right tools. Meanwhile the very important meeting that I dragged my sorry ass in for looked in danger of being cancelled due to my non attendance. I suggested, via a messenger, that my boss slide the presentation under the door so we could discuss the project on conference call, but he was too busy pissing himself laughing to consider it seriously. The worst thing was that I was trapped in there for so long that I started to need the loo again but was unable to go, oh irony, because I was afraid they might bust the door open at any moment and a small crowd had gathered to point and stare at the locked toilet door.
By Friday evening, after all that excitement, my guests and I were all too tired to do anything. We went for a nice meal with my boss and his wife, although I barely ate because they forgot my order. I realised that my czech is not as bad as I supposed and actually managed to grasp the nuances of the conversation most of the time. On Saturday we went to the grand bazaar and then to a BBQ at a friends house where we drank very expensive 25 year old rum. And Sunday, after they had all gone I went for a short 10km run, despite buying new fancy trainers to counteract my knee problem and running on the flat, it still started to hurt, will try yoga this week and see if I can cure it.
Next weekend I am off on a trip to Assos, a quaint little Turkish town by the sea with an Aussie, a German, a Frenchman and a Turkish mountain dog called Gin. I am very excited by the prospect.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
