Those Strange Table Habits!

One peculiar habit of the Turks that I find almost disturbing when it comes to the dining table is the lack of COMMUNAL SPOONS. I have no idea if this practice is a common sight in other countries but generally for the Asian culture, we do use communal spoons on the dining table mainly for hygiene reason.



I don't really get invitations to have dinners with Turkish families here, honestly I don't have loads of Turkish friends. I remembered my first time dining with with a Turkish family, everyone was digging their spoons in the same tub of youghurt and I watched in horror as the food residue from their spoons lingered around in the tub of youghurt. Though I had planned to have some youghurt with my pilav (rice) and meat, I decided against it eventually. I didn't have any salad either - the very salad whom everyone else dig into with gusto.

When I dined with E's family, it was de ja vu all over again as everyone started making their marks with their spoons and forks. I just don't understand why the idea of using communal spoons had never dawned to them. Don't get me wrong, I love his family, they are such good, kind people but no matter how good the food is, I just can't eat with ease.



Few days ago, I had dinner at E's family's again. His dad reached out for a couple of olives from a communal bowl using his bare hands. E's mom slapped his hand and scolded her husband in Turkish. I thought that was hilarious and I laughed at him. They don't speak English thus we have the funniest yet strangest way of communicating. Laughing at one another is one of them.

Later on, I noticed a weird thing happening like his mom running to the kitchen at the last minute before we started to bite in, and coming back with COMMUNAL SPOONS which she placed at each of the side dishes laid on the table. I smiled in approval though minutes later I started wondering why the change. E. Who else could it be?

I called E this morning and asked if he has anything to do with it and he said yea, I simply told my mom you don't like people shoving their cutleries in the shared dishes. I was like, "WHAT?! How could you tell her that?? She's probably think I'm such a freaking fussy princess!" He didn't think it was a big deal and I promised myself not to tell him anything anymore!

Another funny table habit is, Turks tend to place their bread or pastries on the dining table. Yea, you might think what's so strange? I meant placing their bread directly on the naked table, no plates or napkins whatsoever. So you'll see their bowl of salad, bowl of soup and their main dish and bread/pastries smacked right on the table. Ok maybe I'm being too anal about this but you know, my take is, the naked table isn't exactly CLEAN. Sometimes we rest our arms on the table, sometimes we spill stuff on the table only to wipe it with a 2 day old table cloth. Putting your bread on it can only makes it easier for your food to absorb all the germs and bacteria on the table! The very same bread you tear out into small pieces and have it with your soup!



Turks are also amusingly anal about...FISH. I find it truly amusing in a way. They are highly sensitive to fish's smell and some of my students told me they don't eat fish just cos they can't stand the smell! Weird huh? I personally have no problems with fish or their smell or whatsoever, in fact, I LOVE MY FISH! I don't mind going to the wet market with the strong smell of freshly caught fish - in fact, it's kinda therapeutic! lol... Whenever E's mom cooks fish for dinner, she'll make sure she wash and scrub the plates several times just to get rid of the smell... I mean, really? What smell? It just totally baffles me.



My Turkish friends find it darn weird too that I have fish for breakfast sometimes. I love my good old fish fingers, who cares in the morning, afternoon or night?! They generally don't eat fish for breakfast, they find it so gag-worthy. Strange. Needless to say, fish burgers in Burger Kings aren't really their best selling items. They don't even have my fave 'fish fillet' burger in Mc Donalds! Yes, absolutely no fish burgers in Mc D. Shame.



I guess how interesting can the world be if everyone's the same huh? :)

Too Busy to Write but Random Pics to Share...

Went to a Fashion Week event late last year. The event was meant as a platform for local inspiring fashion designers there to showcase their work.


I REALLY REALLY love this piece but it was around 70-80lira and I was on tight budget...It's just so unique and pretty... very lacy, Victorian inspired and love the magenta color against the sexy black lace. I really would have bought that had I had some extra dough to spare!!!! Urghh!








Galata Tower was nearby... went up there at their 360 degrees tower where I got a bird's eye view of the city... Feeling was amazing, such beauty presented in front of me... however it was FREAKING COLD.




What can I say.... I love Istanbul. ;)

My First Turkish Class

Slightly over 6 months of being here, the only sentence I could make in Turkish is - Benim adim V (My name is V). I need help, I know I do. Turkish is no joke yea, it's really hard to adopt and master. For once, their sentence structure is just so different from English.

How it works for the Turkish language is, the verb will come in the end. For example, in English, it's a grammatically correct sentence to be saying: I come home at 6 everyday. In Turkish, the sentence structure would have to be: Everyday 6 at home I come. See how crazy that is??!



Needless to say, whenever E or my other Turkish friends tried to teach me Turkish, I LITERALLY have a headache, no joke. It's just way tooooo foreign and being a very slow learner, it's not that appealing to me!

However, being here for half a year, I've met pretty awesome Turks that I would simply love to have a conversation with but can't due to language barrier. For this reason, I badly want to learn Turkish. And yes, also for survival cos I can barely get around without knowing Turkish here.

O School is offering free informal Turkish conversational class for the foreign teachers as of today. It's a once a week thingy and the director, an American, has kindly offered to teach. He has been here for 2.5 years and speaks very fluent Turkish - pretty impressive I must say.

During the class, N, the director, spoke in Turkish and NOT A SINGLE WORD OF ENGLISH. I started to rub my temples... my headache was starting to stir. The more I tried to concentrate, the more dizzy I get! lol... From wild gesturing and simply common sense, I understood couple of things he said.



There were 3 foreign teachers there - a Scottish lady J, an English guy T, and myself. J's pretty decent in her basic Turkish, she's been here for 2 years. T, like myself, has been here for slightly over 6 months and our Turkish's pretty much rubbish or non existent to say the least. But... come to think of it, mine's worse than T!

We learnt things like: Ismin ne? (Ismim V) Nerede oturuyorsun? (Bostancida oturuyorum) Nerelisin? (Singapurlayim) Ne is yapiyorsun? (Ben ingilizce ogretmenim) etc... Honestly it's in the right ear and out the left for me. I could barely remember a thing now! I had to refer to my notebook just to cite these Turkish examples down. Oh God bless me.

It made me think how my students must have felt. In the Turkish class just now, everything was said in Turkish. Even when I had a question, I have to struggle to ask and it was mostly in shattered and broken Turkish like, " Pardon, bir soru..ne?" (Sorry, what bir soru? which I meant to ask, Sorry what's 'bir soru'?)
My thoughts went back to my students whom I kept on chiding, "Guys, NO TURKISH in MY CLASS. English please!" How helpless they must have felt, at not being able to express themselves! Not to mention my pre schoolers whom I teach purely in English, and whom I only shook my head to and said, "English please?" when they tugged my jeans and spoke/pleaded to me in Turkish in their little high pitched voices.



Putting myself in their shoes made me understand and respect them more... for their dedication and peserverance in mastering what must have been a totally new and foreign language to them - ENGLISH.

Since I was fired from M.E College, I won't have any class tomorrow thus I'll put in time to study my Turkish and to prepare my lesson plans for my weekend classes in advance. Oh well we can always make good from the bad things that happened! :) Till then, hope you guys have had a great day today!

Sick and FIRED

Last week I was EXTREMELY sick. I've been sick for quite some time, especially in this unpredictable weather. Nonetheless I still work like a dog cos no work = no money. I'm on an hourly wage here and there's no such thing as medical nor vacation leave. Yearly bonus??? NON EXISTENT.

I was really sick last week, especially on Tuesday. I felt like fainting literally but still dragged myself to class on Tuesday morning in O school. 3 hours felt so freaking long especially when I have to be bloody entertaining, energetic and forever on a roll in class. Schools and students don't really give a damn if ya sick - you are paid to perform and you are paid to do it well. Which is really understood, I mean I've never expected any form of compromise on my performance to deliver when it comes to work even when I'm sick... When I was in the design industry back in Singapore, sick or not, I have to make the deadlines- basically clients don't care even if ya working whilst on a drip. That's the working world alright.

Anyways back to the story, on that very Tuesday, I have another class in the evening with M.E College. It'll be my first day with them thus I did not want to call in sick. Though I was REALLY feeling like crap when I got home from my morning class, I still intend to teach in the evening. First day of work and calling in sick is definitely NOT a good thing.

However 2 hours before I was suppose to teach, my temperature rapidly shot up to 38.7degrees and by then I couldn't even sit straight. I was so freaking weak, I couldn't think and I was shivering non stop. I knew then it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to go for my evening class. E helped me up to go to the hospital and to call the school to inform them of the situation.

In the hospital, I was sent to the emergency ward and had to be put on a drip for hours.





I have no idea what liquid that is... looked like diluted urine huh? I suppose it's glucose... I don't know. I was too weak and just layed in the hospital bed, going in and out of consciousness.

To cut the story shot, M.E College decided they do not wish for me to return back to teaching the class that I was suppose to. They simply said they'll call me when they want me to come. To put it simply, I was fired. Nice.

Aah well... I guess health is far more important than work or rather money. I wish I can drill that in my head, I think my health got worse simply cos I continued to work, putting in the late hours and having the stress got to me. I guess I should be kinder to myself cos seriously, no one else will...

GROW HAIR GROW!

This is my current do which I really hate. It appears decent now but only God knows how many hours I spent on a bloody flat iron! I miss my long hair where I can just bun up on a bad hair day! ;( Grow hair grow....

Hell in Cyprus Part II

I'm still sick as it is now so doubt I'll go into much details in this post. Basically I didn't enjoy my N.Cyprus trip at all... The only close contact to a Turkish Cypriot I've had was my cab driver. Though English is more widely spoken there than in Istanbul, I think the people of Istanbul are far more friendlier and approachable.

My cab driver, Camil, drove me to Nicosia from Lefkosia airport. He tried to make conversation with me in his limited English and likewise, I did the same with my utterly pathetic Turkish. After Camil dropped me off at Nicosia, I asked him if he can pick me up at half past 4 to send me back to the airport and he readily agreed. Why wouldn't he...It's 40+lira per trip!

Like I mentioned before, I was merely walking around in the heavy rain, not finding anything nice or interesting to buy. There were some small and humble cafes there, barely with anyone around. At times, there'll be some over friendly waiters who'd shout at me from afar in halting English, asking me to have tea at their cafes. They were mostly filled with men and I just politely declined, sometimes it can be a curse to be a female foreigner travelling alone. I spent my next two hours in an internet cafe.

At 4pm, I left the internet cafe and decided to make my way to the venue where I was suppose to meet Camil, my cab driver. On my way there, I heard someone shouting, "Hello!!! HELLO!!!!" I turned and there Camil was, outside a cafe, waving at me to come over. He was having his lunch there and I decided to join him cos I was just famished. We ate in silence, conscious of our differences in languages and limitations of communication. But despite that, I was happy for his company. I was just happy to eat silently in his company, he was like a father figure in some ways like how he pulled my arm when I was standing too near the road or how he just nudge me to look at the news flash on tv in the cafe on the flooded areas in Cyprus.

Father figure or not, he still did try to cheat me of 10 lira when we reached the airport! haha... He asked for 50lira and I sulked in disapproval. I gestured wildly with my hands on how I paid 40 lira to go Nicosia and how can it be 50 lira to go back tot he airport from the place he first dropped me off. He grunted and agreed to let me pay 40 lira. He then tapped my shoulder and said sorry. I smiled and touched my heart to show my appreciation and said 'Tessekur ederim (thank you) Camil'. He then passed me his namecard and asked me to call him next time I visit N.Cyprus again...(err never?).

In the aiport, my flight back was delayed. Announcements were all made in Turkish. It was a very small terminal and I was going from one end to another cos there was no gate number information on my ticket thus whenever there was a queue, I dragged my backpack along to wherever the queue was just to check if it was indeed my flight. I thought I got smarter when I simply sat down and relied on the flight information on the tvs there. My flight was delayed to 20:05 and it was 20:00, there were still no updated information on the screen. Announcements were still made in Turkish and my eyes stayed glued to the screen, waiting for my gate info to appear. Nothing.

For some reason, my gut instincts told me to go to the security officers to enquire. I walked over to them and was stunned to see my flight number flashing at one of the gates! For gawds sake, flight information wasn't updated on the television screen, announcements were all done in Turkish, how on earth could I know when it was time for me to board?!! I passed my boarding pass to the security and he said something through his walkie talkie and the whole lot of them gathered around me. They then told me to hurry up as the plane was leaving. I ran all the way to the flight of steps leading up to the plane. Everyone was there.

I was just darn pissed. It's like it's their own little world, it's not foreigner-friendly at all. When I got in the plane, the steward said in English,"We are all waiting for you." Everyone was staring at me. Wow. I caused the whole plane to delay.

I was so darn pissed, I just snapped,"I know, I know, I'm sorry ok! I just don't understand a single thing here and..." My voice just trailed off. What's the use really? What's the use of telling them or even bothering to explain? I'll end up looking like a deranged foreigner anyways. "It's ok, it's ok," the steward replied, kindly this time, perhaps noticing my exasperated look.

A kind man seated beside me helped me to store my heavy backpack on the top shelf. Thanking him, I retreated back to my seat as tears flowed down my cheeks. It was just horrible.

Back in the Istanbul airport, when it was my turn to have my passport stamped, the officer did the typical routine I've gotten used to - making calls, reading out my passport number to the other person on the line, forever taking ages to scan my passport and going through all the previous stamps I've had in my passport.

"Take off your hat, stand back and look at the camera," the officer ordered, interrupting my thoughts.

"I really have a bad hair day," I told the officer. Tough luck, so what, he's not gonna hand you a hair spray, idiot, I scolded myself. He didn't look amused too. I shrugged, took off my hat and my half straight-half curled hair (all the walking around in the rain in Cyprus ruined it!) sprang out in the most unglamourous way. There goes whatever remaining dignity I had, I thought. haha.... He must have pitied me for in a very dramatic way, he stamped really hard on my passport and passed it to me. I was grinning at this time and thanked him. 90 days!!! WOoohoo....

Was it all worth it? I don't know. I'm never gonna return back to Cyprus ever. That much I know.

Northern Cyprus Pics...

This is the Lefkosa Airport....



This is what greets me when I stepped out of the airport...





This is basically what Nicosia has to offer... I was walking in the heavy rain around streets like this just to find souvenirs for friends back home but alas, NOTHING.




It was raining so bad, I believe some parts of Cyprus were flooded. These pics were taken when I was in a cab on the way back to the airport.