Iowa, Day 2

Its good to be back in the Heartland and away from all the gangsta’ living in California. Yesterday I went to the Quad cities to see two friends from college (if you’re an ISUer, they were Chad White and Peter Chen). Both guys are married, working engineers and already have a few years invested into adulthood. It was an affirmation for me to see that, because I know or have heard of far too many guys in their late 20s or early 30s living exactly the same way as they did when they were 19 — doing stuff like skipping classes at junior college because they’re too busy playing online poker in their parent’s basement.

But being an adult doesn’t mean you can’t force yourself to eat a ridiculous amount of food. Peter and I both knew that our time together was short and my time in America was limited — so we did the most American thing possible and went looking for a greasy spoon to eat breakfast. I’m talking one of those places that has ceiling fans, stains on the booths, and a waitress with a beehive who calls you “hon.” We found something sort of like that and ate an enormous breakfast skillet each.

But the eating wasn’t finished. 30 minutes later Chad called us up and asked us if we wanted to hit up lunch at one of the most infamous restaurants in the Quad Cities — a hot dog placed called “Doggie Styles.”

The dubious meaning of the establishment’s name aside, this place was unhealthy food at its best (worst?). There were chili dogs, bacon-wrapped chili dogs, cheddar-bacon wrapped chili cheese bacon dogs, and the mother of them all — a foot-long beef frank covered in cheese, sauerkraut, bacon and other things and named the Home Wrecker.

We ate this 30 minutes after the skillet, which was difficult but Peter and I managed to do it. When we didn’t think it possible I told him to have the heart of a champion and keep going. And we did.

Silliness aside, its cool to see friends from past stages in life continue to grow. Both those guys are actively involved in their churches and taking new responsibilities such as working on the missions board, doing housing projects and even becoming a deacon in Chad’s case — he’s something of a spiritual prodigy, as it were.

Tonight its Knoxville and a real iowa dinner, complete with corn on the cob, steak and hearing stories from my eccentric uncle. Keep you posted.

Cali Highlights

I touched down in Iowa this morning so I thought it was high time to post some pictures from California before I get too far behind.

This is a “Double Double” from the greatest fast food restaurant in the history of digestion: In n’ Out Burger. I firmly believe that the wrapping for this delectible sandwich is not for sanitation, but merely to contain the gallamophry of ingredients inside. Feast your eyes, cause this franchise doesn’t exist outside of the West coast.

From left to right, here is Andrew, Kim, myself and Steve. Kim is the one to whom Derek wed, and she doesn’t like moustaches, which obviously prompted the three of us boys to grow them. Despite her happy appearance in the photo, she threatened to boycott the wedding if we still had moustaches at the wedding. I thought it was a bit of an empty threat.

But since us guys respect the sanctity of marriage we shaved off our moustaches right before the rehersal dinner. Here I am, unhappy.

Now its time to get to work.

The wedding party received awesome gifts from Derek and Kim: California Sandals. But these aren’t just any cheap Wal-Mart clearance bin flip-flops; these are Rainbow Sandals, as iconic as they are svelt. My feet are easy to spot in the picture, because they are the handsomest.

Here’s Derek, psyching himself up before the wedding. He looks like a professor in front of that chalkboard, giving a lecture in Econ 101 about guns and butter. Us groomsmen had killer suits to wear for the wedding; they are hard to describe, but we looked not unlike Brad Pitt from Ocean’s 11.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any other wedding picks of all the festivites that took place at the reception (and there were many). Overall it was an awesome week out there, and a great way to say goodbye to Derek, who has been a great friend in Turkye over these last two years. God shapes us and refines our character through the people we meet, especially those who have different abilities then ourselves, and that was Derek for me.

So that’s all. Special shout-out goes to Chappy, who smoked with us, and is probably en route to Chicago right now (make sure to see the Blue Man Group). I’m in Iowa now, so I’ll describe its grandeur in forthcoming posts.

What do Burt Reynolds, Tom Selleck and Recep Erdogan have in common?

Weird sleep schedule aside, California has been great. Its the opposite of Istanbul in every way — people wear shorts and flip-flops 12 months out of the year, even people who you normally think would be too professional to do that sort of thing (like associate professors). And unlike Istanbul, there’s actual ethnic diversity. I was somewhat tempted to hug the first Mexican person that I saw, but then I realized that probably wouldn’t score me many points in the try-not-to-get-yourself-killed category.

And ambiance aside, it’s been awesome to kick it with Derek and meet all of his friends. For him worlds are colliding because about 5 of us who live in Turkey are here for his wedding, meeting all of his California friends. Its always a surreal moment to have one group of your friends meet another group of your friends. We’ll be sitting in a group and I’ll meet the Californian that I’ve only heard about in myth or legend for the last two years.

In other important news, three of us groomsmen have enormous moustaches. We decided before we came to Turkey that we would grow them out in order to weird out/trouble Kim (Derek’s fiance). Don’t worry — we’ll shave them off before the wedding.

When people asked me why I was growing it (mostly girls, with a look of complete revulsion on their face), I would tell them that as Kim and Derek stand on the altar and exchange vows, I wanted the three of us with moustaches to show our respect for vows, as we have made a vow not to let a razor touch the flowing locks that are pouring forth from our upper lip.

A few times this week when I caught myself in the mirror, I noticed that I looked like the pictures of my dad from the 70s. Maybe I should keep this thing. It’ll help me fit in better with Turkey.

Once I get a hold of a friend who has a camera I’ll post some California and moustache-tastic pictures.

Victim of a Soviet experiment?

It’s 8:15 a.m. and I just finished working my shift for the newspaper in Turkey. You heard me right — I’m still working for the newspaper, except I’m doing it online and have to work according to the newspaper’s schedule in Istanbul. California is 10 time zones behind Istanbul, so I start my shift at 1 a.m. and finish around 7.

 Yesterday I slept from 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., then got up to do some groomsman stuff with Derek.  After getting back to the apartment I slept from around 5:30 to 7:30, then that night i slept from 11:00 pm. to midnight. My shift started again at 1 a.m.

 Within all that time was much merry-making. But this odd sleep schedule makes the day feel completely homogenous. I feel like the subject of a Soviet military experiment made to find a sleep regimen  for their super soldier. I think I’ll be able to hold up for this week, but we’ll see.

If you are a Seinfeld fan, this is not much different from the episode where Kramer tries to mimic Leonardo da Vinci’s sleep plan of sleeping 10 minutes every three hours.

I’ll have more info about California and what’s going down in my next post. Until then, it’s time for me to go dance with the sugar plum fairies.

I’m going, going; back, back to Cali Cali

The headline of this post is a shout-out to my man, Notorious B.I.G.

So I touched down in Los Angeles yesterday at 6 p.m. Derek was there to pick me up, which was a bit surreal because in the 2 years we have been friends we have never seen each other in America before.

After that we went to In n’ Out Burger, a fast-food chain indigenous to California (and non-existent outside of California). It is also the best place to get burgers in this spiral arm of the galaxy. There are only four things on the menu and they are all variations of the same basic hamburger, but you don’t need lots of extraneous food items that Burger King has (like a tofu-spiced capuccino crossainwich) when your basics are so good.

I also met Derek’s California friends that I had only heard of him describe in the last two years. Meeting people that you’ve heard much about but never met is always interesting because the mental image that you have of that person is often way different than how they actually are. Anyway, they were all very cool and reminded me a lot of friends I had back in Ames, except they used lots of cool words that I had never heard of; either due to them being from California or that I’ve been out of the country for a while and am getting more and more out of the pop culture loop as time goes on.

I mentioned in my last blog post that I would probably pick up a Dan Brown book because his books are the essence of airport fiction. The chapters are only 2 pages long, there is are constant plot twists and the book requires absolutely no critical thinking on the part of the reader.

I picked up “Digital Fortress” and the plot is nearly identical to other books he has read. To give you an idea, here is the blurb from the book:

“When the National Security Agency’s invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls in its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage — not by guns or bombs, but by a code so complex that if released would cripple U.S. intelligence.

Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves…”

I was very inspired by that thrilling blurb. I will close this blog post with a brief blurb of what a Dan Brown book would look like if it were written about my life. Enjoy:

“When a newspaper in Istanbul discovers secret messages planted within the text of its articles, it calls in its top proofreader, Michael Remington-Essex, a professional text checker as articulate as he is arrestingly handsome. But even his abilities are pushed to the limit with what he discovers. Within the pages of the newspaper are subliminal codes created to enslave the minds of Turkey’s population.

Determined to crack the codes, Remington-Essex is soon caught in a whirlwind of deceit, corrupting, plagiarism and fabrication. And every step of the way brings him closer to discovering the true identity of the code masters — an ancient religious cult preparing the final stages of its plan for world domination.”

“Wow! The blockbuster of the century! Brown has once again sketched a brilliant hero for us all: Michael Remington-Essex” — THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Smartly clever… A brain-teasing, pulse-stimulating adventure. Stop the presses — Brown has done it again!” — ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

At Istanbul airport; prepare for take-off

I am sitting in the Istanbul Ataturk International Airport, waiting for my 4:30 a.m. flight. It is currently 3:20 a.m. and I am doing my best to bide my time until boarding starts at 4:05. D&R Book Store is closed right now and if it weren’t I would plop down $8 and buy the best mind fodder airport fiction that money could buy — like Dan Brown or Michael Crighton.

The only thing I want to do the next 22 hours until I get to California is to keep my mind distracted from the reality that I am trapped in a tiny airplane seat. But I’ll most likely collapse in a heap once I get on the plane; its been an exhausting evening. Tonight was my last night at Zaman, the newspaper, so I bid my farewells to co-workers, which was a bit bittersweet and (for me at least) also a bit akward, as I will most likely never see most of them again. But isn’t that what office good-byes are all about?

I’ll keep you posted when I get to California. The first item on my agenda when Derek picks me up is to go to In n’ Out Burger. Upon arriving at said burger establishment, I shall buy a 4×4 and some animal style fries. If you don’t know what I am talking about go to Wikipedia’s entry on In ‘n Out. You’ll see.

OK- that’s all for now. Scott is out.

4th of July, a la Turca

I didn’t have high hopes for this Fourth of July in Turkey, particularly since a recent international survey says that 92 percent of Turks dislike America, the lowest rate on earth. Nationalist Turks are fond of protesting and whenever anything happens in the West that remotely sets them off they will burn an American flag, even if America isn’t involved in the incident.

But what good is patriotism if you aren’t willing to stand by your country through thick and thin? I considered this, and realized that there is something to be said for having pride in ones country. My American co-workers and I though we would bring a little bit of good ‘ole patriotism to our conservative Muslim newspaper, and get in your face, as only the Greatest Nation in the World can. So we went to www.printourflag.com, which allows you to create a massive flag by printing out 10 sheets of paper and taping them all together. The end result was a flag that covered the entire end of our copy desk.

We also taped a few signs next to it in Turkish, which says “Happy 231st Birthday, America!”

As you can see from this next picture I got a little bored at work so I printed off an outline from the internet for a Statuette of Liberty. Here’s the Grey Lady adorning my office computer

At first I was reluctant to put up all this America memorbilia in our office, particularly since my editors frequently write columns portraying America as a bunch of bloodthirsty neoconservatives who want to carpet bomb the Middle East and take all of its oil.

But then I realized that if there was any tension that resulted from us putting up an American flag, the problem was not with us for being jingoistic, but with them for not having enough intelligence to distinguish between the symbol of a country that pioneered democracy in the modern world and has done more for civil rights than any other country could hope to claim, and a few years of George Bush’s unpopular foreign policy. After all, I don’t characterize all Turks who wave a Turkish flag as ultranationalists so for them to put pressure on us for displaying a flag would essentially mean that they expect us to feel guilty for being patriotic, or even American for that matter.

The reaction in the office was suprisingly good. I think people respected that we were patriotic in an environment that didn’t make it easy.

Next year I’ll make them all eat Freedom Fries.

Back from Ankara

This weekend I headed to Ankara, Turkey’s capital, for an interview with professors at a grad school to which I am applying. I could have flown to Ankara, which would have taken 50 mintutes, but the melodramatist inside me opted to take the train instead — which took 9 hours — with the chance that I could be inspired by viewing the countryside by train to write some wretchedly horrible prose about my romatic journey throught The Orient.

Anyway, I got in town at 7 a.m., changed into my suit in a public bathroom stall, and arrived at the university through a tricky comibinatino of buses and shared vans. I was interviewed by two professors who were both well-settled into their middle ages and ready to grill a young buck such as I on history knowledge. The interview lasted for an hour, mostly due to the professors’ tendencies to ask me a question, which included a two-minute monologue; then once I gave my answer to comment on it with a five-minute statement. They were somewhat quirky, but in a good way, so if I get accepted at that university then it won’t be too bad being those guys’ grad student, having to run their errands and get them coffee.

After the interview finished I met up with a Turkish Christian friend for lunch and we made fun of the dorky tendencies of American Christianity. We also hypothesized that Jesus and the disciples were actually turks, because the way that they hung around and ate fish sounded suspiciously like a meyhane.

Then I got on a 5-hour bus back to Istanbul and returned home at 9 p.m. there you have it: Within 24 hours, 16 of those were spent on some form of public transportation. I believe that there should be some fruits of my sitting around for all that time, so my next blog post is going to be a melodramatic travelogue inspired by my train trip across The Orient.

History nerd

Today I gave a presentation on Ottoman history to a group of 20 Americans passing through the city. It was a Powerpoint presentation full of arcane quotes, maps, and an alphabet soup of unpronounceable Turkish names.

However, I gave it at 9 a.m. so it was quite an effort to keep everyone awake. A couple of guys were nodding off, which is what I did in virtually every class in college so I didn’t take it personally. In fact, there was a political science class I took where I nodded off so much that I had one of my friends stationed next to me, ready to elbow me somewhere between the ribcage and the solar plexus if I started to lose it.

I also realized that many people aren’t as enthusiastic about Ottoman history as I am (OK, about 99.999 percent of people) which is important to keep in mind because if I dont then I will cross the line from nerd to spazz — which is someone who assumes that all the world is equally fascinated by their silly interests, and will talk for 3 minutes straight about some incomprehensible topic while their listener pretends to show interest while at the same time trying to find an excuse to leave.

Nobody likes a spazz. Nobody.

Le Grand Voyage’

Since my homeboy Derek is getting married in Los Angeles on July 21, and he asked me to be in the wedding, I’ll be in America at the end of next month (he actually asked me 5 months ago, but writing in a more annotated fashion works better for blogs, doesn’t it?).

I’ll be in California from July 14-22, and the Midwest July 22-Aug.4. While in the midwest I’ll work my way from Ames to Knoxville to Kansas City, with about a week spent in the latter. So if you happen to be in any of those spots while I am, make sure to swing by! Most my time will be spent filling up my flesh in what is lacking in regards to food available in Turkey, i.e., pork, pork rinds, pork fritters, and frittered pork.

However, while I’m back in America I’ll still be copy editing for my newspaper in Turkey, albeit online. But thanks to Time Zones, I have to work on Turkish time, meaning my “workday” will start at midnight and end at 9 a.m. But hey, I worked with this schedule at a gas station for two months, so there’s no reason I can’t do it for three weeks.