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The Lighter Side of... Turkey

Turkey? No, not what I am…It’s where I’m at.
Hello Everyone. I’m E-mailing you from the capital of Turkey...Ankara. Myself and six other engineers are doing cellular optimization for one of the wireless companies. I’ll probably be here for three months. We’re gathering information on the cell phone system and making changes to improve service and capacity for the customer. Ankara is a large city but no there are no buildings above about 20 stories.

Geography 101- Until this job I had absolutely no idea where to find Turkey on the globe. Turkey is both culturally and physically in the transition between the Middle East and Europe. You can see influences of both--everywhere you go. About 75 years ago some dude named Ataturk decided to convert the country to a roman letter alphabet and language. The new language incorporated all of the influences surrounding Turkey. The country is now named after this ruler.

Words – For someone like me who can’t spell even with a dictionary there are a lot of words similar to English. You can tell there is a lot of Euro or US influence on the Turkish language. New words that infiltrate the language are spelled phonetically. You can take a “Taksi” (taxi) to the “Seramic (ceramic) Center” to buy dishes which is next to the “Oto” (auto) store where you can buy a car. How do you say. "thank you very much"? “choke merci’”. I guess "choke" is something Arabic for “very” and of course “merci’” is French for thank you.

Smoking – It’s unusual to find a non-smoking area in a restaurant. The only ones that do are franchised ones like TGIFridays. Most older people smoke. It’s getting less common for the younger generation but many still do. Smoking here is like breathing; you do it everywhere, even in a crowded elevator. I figure I’m doing a half pack a day with the second hand smoke. I’m doing okay but, my eyes burn by the time evening rolls around. The Turkish engineers and management we work with realize none of the Americans smoke so they are pretty considerate. So, when they smoke...they sit at an open office window and blow the smoke out. I guess that’s better than nothing.

Two seasons - The weather started out chilly at night and about 70 during the day. It rarely rains here so it looks like it will be sunny every day.

The Heat - After 2 months it has transitioned into summer. It’s hot all the time which I love. But I’m amazed at the people. Men usually wear a long sleeve shirt and long slacks even while doing manual labor outdoors. I don’t think a single person in this city owns a pair of shorts. Our “4 star” hotel room doesn’t have A/C. Well, actually it does, they just don’t run it. Most people here just tolerate the heat. We’ve all bought fans to put in the window to try to cool the room but it does nothing more than circulate the hot air. And going on that same vein of thought...I think I could make millions by introducing window screens to this country. Nobody here seems to own any. Flies just wander in and out of the open window of my hotel room and the office where we work without the natives blinking an eye.

Target Practice - After about 2 1/2 months here we we're getting pretty punchy. Most of the time we're analyzing data on our computers. So we resort to the oddest things to break up the daily grind. Due to the lack of A/C, the open windows and waiting impatiently for a breeze, are our only comforts. Since there are no screens flies have free run of the building. The occasional fluffy seeds (like big dandelions but from a tree) drift in and decorate the office. One afternoon the biggest honkin fly I've ever seen made its way in to the office. He was so big that it couldn't help but catch our attention. The fly was buzzing around checking out the office, landing on different walls, then flying off to another location. One of the engineers--Mark--got this evil look in his eye and folded a small piece of paper to create a paper wad, grabbed a rubber band, loaded up the object of annihilation, then shot it at the fly....missing it completely. Seeing this was all I needed. Having been a former class clown, the art of shooting paper wads via the rubber band was a talent I'd mastered many years ago. The hunt ensued. Mark and I proceeded to fold and fire. As we got more accurate some of our shots actually got close enough to startle the fly and cause him to buzz to a new location. Not to be outdone, we redirected the trajectory of our aim, began shooting again, and then the fly got cocky and landed on some molding over the window. Mark and I folded our best paper wads and took aim. Almost as if on cue we fired at the exact same time. Both shots converged on the fly so fast and so dead-on is wasn't possible to figure out whose shot actually made the kill (I still say it's me, Mark claims otherwise). A victory cheer and numerous high fives finished off the event. Now that we'd gotten that out of our system we would get back to work. That's when I looked over at the office doorway. It turns out the Turkish drivers had been watching us the whole time. The Turks only real image of Americans comes from the news, movies, and advertisementa. At that particular moment I don't think we were making any headway as far as good PR went.

Nice sights to see - Before getting here, I expected to see all the women wearing Muslim veils. I’ve been here almost three months and I’ve probably seen only three women garbed in such a manner (they probably lived outside the city and were just visiting). It turns out that the 95% Muslim population practice the most liberal form of the religion. The standard attire of more than half the woman in Ankara is tight black pants and black high heels. They don’t show much skin but the shirt is always fitted...and some of these women look darn good! A few women wear head scarfs but no veil. The other day, I saw this girl walking though the park. She must have been 15 or 16 years old, wearing a light blue floral scarf, light blue knee length coat, white pants, and 4” platform tennis shoes! Hey, who says you can't follow the rules and still express yourself.

One of the engineers--Ian--and I, took an 8 hour bus ride to Istanbul just to visit some fellow engineers and get away for a while (we've been here over two months now). Istanbul is on the Western most end of the country and it’s the only city in the world that lies on two continents (Asia and Europe). Due to it's location it has more Euro influence in having more languages spoken and displayed. There you will walk through the mall and find tank tops and shorts on women. So nice to see. We visited the famous Turkish markets where you can buy hand made leather and trinkets, carpets, and spices. We also took a boat tour of the Bosphorous. It's the body of water that connects the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, dividing Asia and Europe. This is also where some of the scenes from one of the latest James Bond were shot. We visited the fort that used to guard the river passage.

The Turkish Gym - about a 20 minute walk from the hotel I found a weight room. Myself and two other engineers joined. It comes out to about a buck seventy-five per visit. I soon became a regular fixture of the place.

Going for a run - about every other day I would go for an early morning run through the city. No doubt, this is very strange to the locals. I got lots of long looks. First, you never see people jogging. Maybe power walking but that’s it. Second, with my long blond hair I stand out like a sore thumb. Everybody here has black hair. Third, when it got hot there was no way I could run with sweat pants. I had to wear shorts. That prompted a few catcalls from some of the guys at the local bus stop.

I’m a Turkish Millionaire - and I can prove it. I have a wad of 1 and 10 million Turkish Lira in my wallet. 1 million Lira is about $2.50. Our client talked about the lease on our office space in “billions” of Lira. Buying stuff here is a little confusing, because you need to count all the zeros on the paper money. Is it a 50,000, 500,000, or 5,000,000 Lira bill?

A Night Out - Friday night we did Hard Rock café. It was just like any other Hard Rock but thanks to the conversion rate the hamburgers weren’t over priced like usual. Unfortunately, there are no Hooters restaurants here.

The McLamb – Ah yes, nothing like traveling to an exotic country and eating at....McDonalds. It’s neat eating all the exotic food but every once in a while it’s nice to get something familiar. They have the standard selection. Big Mac, Filet-o-fish, fries. But this time I saw the "McExtra". Oh yea, I'm thinking, those are good, so I gave it a try. I bit into it and something was a little strange. Familiar, but different. After a few more bites I figured out the meat tasted like a Gyro. Gyro meat is made from lamb, beef, and spices. Whadda know I’m eating a McLamburger!

Music – I just heard a remake of Eric Clapton’s song “You are Wonderful” on the radio as a funk/reggae tune with a rap singer. Kinda odd. I hear everything though...Metallica, Rap, Pop, it just has a Turkish twist to it, including the DJ.

Traffic – I sure wouldn’t want to have a heart attack during rush hour. The traffic is jammed so bad that the ambulance can’t get through. People don’t try very hard to get out of the way either. The Turks are generally very nice people...until you put them behind the wheel. One word sums it all up: impatient. Ya know in driving class, you're taught to place your hands at 10:00 and 2:00. In Turkey it’s one hand at 12:00 and the other on the horn. They drive with the horn. They honk at everything in front of them. At soon as the light turns green the cars two or three back honk their horn. If there is a traffic jam people honk their horns as if it’s going to make the line move. I couldn’t figure out why people were honking when they drove through this one intersection even though there was no one around. I know now. They honk because it warns drivers on the crossing street that they plan on running the stop sign. People spin their tires all the time. These old streets are worn to a smooth finish and don’t have much traction to begin with plus I think people run the treads a little thin. They don’t seem to understand that a front wheel drive car going up-hill from a stop sign, on a slick street, is not going to perform well. As soon as the front wheels break loose they just give it more gas. It’s funny watching someone who wants to jump out in traffic, but the wheels just spin and they’re standing still. The nose of the car starts to drift sideways. What do they do? Give it more gas!

Food – I’m not going to go hungry here. The food is great. There are “sis kapop” (or shish kabob as we know it) places everywhere.. The Izkirda is awesome. A reasonable meal is about $2. The only thing I haven’t liked is the yogurt drink. It’s just plain yogurt watered down so that it's a drink. Not very enticing. The yogurt or flavored yogurt that's used as kind of a dipping sauce is pretty good though. We all know how to order water in Turkish now, su (pronounced "sue")

An eye opener - I was sitting in Burger King eating breakfast near the front window. The street kind of reminds me of down town Orlando but with wide sidewalks. I was the only customer in the place. …just watching the people go to work and start the day. This kid walks by the window (about 9 or 10 years old) and sort of catches my eye because he was looking around a bit. I then notice something tucked under his arm. It was hiding a semi-auto pistol with a stainless steel frame. The clip must have been empty because the slide was locked open. The gun was bigger than his arm so I could see the butt and barrel sticking out. I think to myself...whoa dude! Me and the guys here are still wondering if it was a real gun or just a very well made toy. I’ve been around a lot of guns in my life and I didn’t see anything fake about it.

Damn that had ta hurt - I noticed one of the Turk engineers had this nasty purple fingernail. Ouch, he must have closed it in the car door or something. A while later I saw a bank clerk who apparently did the same thing. He had a purple fingernail. When I saw the third person with a purple fingernail I thought either the Turks were very clumsy or something else is going on. I finally asked the engineer what was up. It turns out that when people vote, the voting officials put an indelible purple dye on the person’s nail to prevent people from voting more than once.

~Evan Scott