Yaramaz Went Away

From

redsnake05

 , when it was most needed.

Since you’re having a crappy day, I am doing you the instant I got the email with your comment. I hope it’s still in time to be useful. *mentally calculates time differences*

6. Tell you my favourite user pic of yours.
I like the one with four photos set in the square. I don’t know why.

Today just sucks on so many levels. 

I taught several managers in the Vodafone law department that fine ode to spring yesterday during a tea break with Letafet.  We examined the grammatical and syntactical errors in the writing– all that wondering where the boidies is and all, and whether ‘is riz’ is passive or adjective, and they all scribbled it down in their notebooks and under their breaths practiced their recitations until memorised.  

Then Letafet and I sat down to a second hour of analysing the policies and tactical moves of Ralph Nader from a Turkish legal point of view. 

It was a good day.  The sun is shining bright again and my brainfog is lifting and last night I was able to laugh off the stupid criticisms of the reception staff at work, who said my 9-11 hour days were too short and I need to be seen sitting at my desk more (hard to do when teaching 15 hours, 6 of which are in company with an extra 4.5 hours travelling time. ). I came in at 10am this morning and declared my arrival to all concerned so could they see my 11 hour day begin. When I leave at 9:30 tonight, I will also note that publicly. After a week of this I will go back and ask if they still think I’m not  putting in enough face time. Hell, if I could, I’d love to be like some of the admin staff, sitting with tea glasses and solitaire game and facebook, for their required 9-6 stint, with a long lunch in the middle.

But I laugh this off. My office is light and bright and I had a brilliant cup of tea and some lovely fresh börek from the chatty Persian börekçi near the Osmanbey metro and I am writing here and already checked out icanhascheezburgers.com and alternet.org and I am contemplating another tea before I head out to Vodafone.  Only nine and a half  more hours of complete and utter productivity to go.

I’m actually looking forward to goingto Vodafone today— road trip in sunshine! Wooo! Sure Maslak isn’t exactlyinteresting or beautiful or down a distant waterside winding road in Baja but at least I can sit with the windows rolled down for 25 minutes of  being outside and moving.

A bright and beautiful weekend passed by, with the balcony door flung wide to the cool sunshine and newly spring-cleaned flat. It feels most excellent now- all the stupid extra boxes from the air mattress and heater have been sent out and Lola is boxless;  the jute rug is dusted and de-furred and at the right angle; D’s suitcase collection is tucked in between bookshelf and chest now instead of spread out into the hallway with both of our Christmas baggage remains poking out (for me, a few skirts as yet unworn, a calendar I forgot to give as a gift, some socks, a book). Everything is swept and dusted and tidied and emptier. Cathartic.

We walked down through Maçka park yesterday afternoon after the cleaning frenzy to Beikta, to find season 2 of House. We sat in Çtr, the window-ful pub above the frenzy, and had our fist spring beers in the lovely bright sunshine. When we got back to the flat, we discovered that the season 3 of House that I bought last winter was in fact a mislabelled season 2 so we now have 2 sets of season 2. Sigh. 

My back molar is very electric today, sending out zinging shots through my jaw. No pain, just sparks. Odd.

I keep thinking about the sliding glass doors at Mardin airport, the kind you step in front of and they slide open with a happy hum: Except the ones in Mardin weren’t connected to anything electric and you had to jam your fingers in between them and pry the two panes apart.  

My new office is very sunny. I am staring directly at the post modern blue reflective glass of the Garanti Bank plaza and it is reflecting the whole neighbourhood back at me with it’s curved sides and angles of mirror.

The day started out so sunny that I could see every dust bunny and LolaFur-clump and every dusting of everpresent Istanbul dark dust in every corner and under and over everything.  Spring is a brutal wakeup to my inner virgo- I spent the noontime with balcony door open and broom out and swept up and tidied up and feel much better now in the relative emptiness.  Made chicken madras with buttered lavas and katmer and blops of super kaymakli yogurt and we watched Anthony Bourdain in Singapore then Juno and I feel better. Balcony still open. 

This week:

My set of books for my frustrating pre-int group went missing from my office on Thursday, with their completed and marked (but not yet entered into the reporting system) mid-term exams and a lot of my supplementary materials tucked inside. I sent out a resignedly panicked mass email to all the teachers, asking for at least an anonymous return of the tests if not the books. They showed up on my desk friday morning, with a note saying they’d been found in a scrap box in the teachers’ room next door. 

My purse with my passport, residence permit, wallet with all cards, changepurse with cash and Omani amulet pendant, housekeys and random necessary things disappeared for most of yesterday afternoon while I was displaced from my office due to painters. I finally found it in a cupboard in the canteen downstairs, where someone had safely put it away without telling me. I was dreading having to go through the process of replacing all my bank cards and passport and residence permit for the third time in as many years, and dreaded explaining to Miss H. how her third gift of a funky wallet was stolen.

My internet connection disappeared without warning this morning. D. went out to the SmileADSL outlet up the street and they said they couldn’t help him because, oh, hilarity, their internet was down too. They gave him a number to call and we called it repeatedly trying to find a human voice other than that horrible nasal recorded woman who is hard to understand.  After pushing a lot of random number after being sent around in confusing circles by the illogical menu, we reached the tech department, though not through the tech number extension (4) but rather through 5, which wasn’t even given as an option. After several hours on the phone (not toll-free) and several declarations by the techie that my modem was broken (it isn’t) we finally sorted it out by establishing that they had changed my account and password without letting me know.  Sometimes Turkish service gives me an ulcer.

I have been dreaming of plane crashes, of planes just falling from the sky and landing on their bellies with a thump.  In my dreams last night, I remembered at least 5 crashes, none of which involved me- they were just background scenery to the rest of my story– like in an example of past continuous  and past simple: “While I was dreaming normal dream stories, 5 planes fell unexpectedly but not surprisingly out of the sky.”  No one was hurt.  They just fell and that was that.

I had problems with the slideshows, linking problems and connectivity problems, so I have temporarily just added a link to the photopage. It isn’t as lovely or seamless but it works.

Fingers frozen from a morning out at the saffron monastery outside of town. The old Syriac patriarchy used to hang their hats there until the 1930s when everything went bottoms up and things shifted to Damascus (as things are wont to do). We stood on the golden stone rooftop of the caravansaray-styled building and saw rolling muted empty hills rolling on for an awfully great distance. It was deeply calming. Our ancient driver waited patiently in his disintegrating yellow taxi as we roamed the subterranean sun temple that the monastery subsumed. Huge and heavy stone blocks arched to form a semi underground ceiling with a single window slit to the east.
Back in Mardn now in the same internet cafe as yesterday filled with young boys (not adolescent scary young- these boys are nicely pre pubescent and relatively calm) and outfitted with an isp that blocks livejournal because it contains porn (bless webproxybox.info) and a keyboard with several jammed keys which include the oddly and unecpectedly necessary comma.
Yesterday we roamed the city literally up and down the steep hills and steep narrow alleyway stairs. Up to the military barbed wire fence keeping us away from the hilltop castle and down to the cliffedge rim of the hill’s perimeter. Following the path 50 metres above the ringroad below and passing through archways and past very old goldstone churches and mosques and people’s courtyards both open doored and closed. Passageways and alleyways and hidden tiny grocery stores on the edge of the cliff selling arab banana cakes and sickly sweet peach nectar juice boxes. Lots of cats. Boots caked in mud from the trek up to the barbed wired military fence.
The food here is hearty and heavy and belly warming. We have had içli köfte for three meals and concluded that steamed is better than fried. The bread is gorgeous and fresh and chewy and shaped like giant donuts or surfboards. The cheese is pungently villagey and crumbly and stuffed with flakes of herbs or round and curly and rubbery and salty like when you take a melon baller to a tub of butter.
The tea is very good.