I’ve got to pull myself together. First there was the dropping-the-iron-on-my-foot incident a couple of weeks ago, which put me out of commission for quite a few days, and then I went to Cyprus and came back with the mother of all head-and-chest colds, which had me bed-ridden for nearly a week. Meanwhile I watch all the conditioning I’ve built up start slipping away as I lie in bed and eat comfort food and gain weight. It’s depressing, to put it mildly. Tomorrow is the 31-week mark and I feel like I’m starting over from the beginning. Even as I’m typing this I’m having to stop every few minutes to have a coughing fit. Last night I got so light-headed I had to sit down halfway on my journey between the living room and the bedroom. I feel weak, and I feel pathetic. Factor in the sluggishness and self-pity brought on by the hot weather, and what we have here is a pretty sad disaster. Boo-hoo, poor me. I’m the only person in the world who’s ever been sick.

So this week I have to try to piece things back together. I need to eat right and drink the right things. I’m a singer and voice teacher; I know how to repair a throat problem. I need to take it easy on the exercise for a few more days, but I do need at least to start exercising again. If I see dust gathering on my running shoes it’ll be enough to send me to the crazy house, I know it. So I need to start doing something or this whole thing really will come to a screeching halt.

It’s a mixed blessing that Emirhan’s doing so well with his own training. On the one hand, it’s frightening and sometimes frustrating that he’s pulling away from me so quickly. He’s a natural athlete— being a bodybuilder, training comes easily to him, and his runs, even the long ones, are fairly effortless. Where I come home panting and exhausted after thirty minutes, he returns victorious and energetic after an hour. He’s going from strength to strength, and it worries me that I’m not doing the same. Aside from my own fears, I don’t want to drag him down with my negativity.

On the other hand, I couldn’t ask for a more supportive and inspirational partner. He’s forever telling me how great I’m doing (even when I’m not) and he’s more than happy to run with me if I want the company and encouragement, or stay away if I feel suffocated by his presence (I’m quite the pro-active introvert). Being no stranger to physical training, he knows exactly what to say and when to say it, and his natural enthusiasm is infectious. He says we’re a team and that the job of team members is to support each other. I’m so lucky to have someone around me who is competing in the same event as I am and can understand what I’m going through. He keeps reminding me that this obscene summer heat won’t last forever, and the cooler weather should be hitting just as I’m getting back up to my best standard again. At that point my training should run a bit more smoothly. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.

One thing I really need to happen is for Öger (the company sponsoring the marathon) to open the marathon registration. The web site promises that registration and full marathon information will be available from the middle of July. But of course this is Turkey and we run on Turkish time; “middle of July” means anytime between now and the new year. It’s now nearly August and there’s no sign of any changes on the site. I’ve heard from scores of runners that actually signing up and paying the registration money makes a big difference in the feeling of committment— this is no longer just a vague thing that’s approaching; once you’ve registered it’s a real event with a real date and real place at the starting line with your name on it. I want to feel locked in to that committment. I want to know that this is something I’ve promised myself to with more than just words.

I know that a couple of weeks of derailment isn’t the end of the world, but it’s easy to let illness spiral into self-pity, especially when two or three things hit in quick succession. So now with a new training week starting tomorrow, I’m going to spend this evening appealing to my friends, my fellow runners, and my readers— I need your encouragement. I need to hear that you, too, got knocked down for a week or two and managed to get back up and get everything back in order. I want to hear that your cousin ran a marathon after having recovered from brain cancer and that I need to shut the hell up and get on with it. I’m going to pull myself out of this regardless, that’s just how I am, but if I can have an external boost… even better.

Now I’m going to spend a few minutes making a training plan for the week and getting my running clothes ready for tomorrow morning. Even if I’m only well enough to manage a walk when I wake up, that’s okay, at least it’s something. For once I’m going to earn all those wonderful things Emirhan says about what a capable athlete I am. I’m not going to let myself or the team down. Being ill is okay, it’s not my fault, but now that I’m recovering I’m not going to let this setback or my self-pity stop me from getting the job done. This time next week I’ll report back with ferocious triumph the likes of which you’ve never seen.

Fin.

This is what my housemates surprised me with this morning— an amazing Turkish breakfast on the balcony. We’ve each got a little omelet with chunks of sausage (chicken sausage, of course— it tastes a lot better than it sounds), there’s a salad for the table to share, a bowl of olives (my favourite), and of course plenty of fresh bread with stuff to put on it: chocolate cream, butter spread, honey, and cheese. To drink, there’s your choice of Turkish tea or freshly homemade ayran, which is a yogurt drink, but not sweet like the yogurt drinks we get in the West.

Needless to say, breakfast was great.

As for lunch, I’ve been eating a lot of salads lately because, well, it’s summer. I’ve been craving avocados— we only get them seasonally here, but when they finally start showing up at the bazaar they are unbelievably ripe and soft and flavourful. I searched and searched on Thursday and finally found one man who had a few avocados at an exorbitant price (it’s still very early for avocados here— another month or so and they’ll be much cheaper). But a craving is a difficult thing to overcome, so I paid the 4YTL and went home with two of the most delicate avocados I’ve ever held in my life. In fact, they were so delicate I could barely handle them at all, which means they were perfect. I cut one up at lunchtime with some locally-grown tomatoes and olives, and as a special treat I chopped some of the chicken sausage into teensy little pieces and fried it until it was crispy. Voilà bacon bits substitute! Normally I’d just drizzle some olive oil and a bit of salt and pepper over the whole thing, but since I was already going the decadence route with the baconesque bits, I decided to splurge and make a dijon-mayo dressing (I love mustard on anything, but especially on salads). I served the salad with toasted bread, and it made an extremely tasty and surprisingly light lunch. I’m looking forward to having the other avocado tomorrow, and if the bazaar guy has more next week, I’ll probably buy enough that I can have an avocado everyday. We only get them for a couple of months a year, so I have to take advantage.

So it’s not just my imagination, Turkey really does have the most expensive broadband in the world. As Cem points out, it’s not surprising to anyone who lives in Turkey, but it is surprising in the context of the general cost of living here, which is extremely low. Internet cafés are cheaper than in other countries (our neighbourhood one charges 1.50YTL an hour), but if you want internet in your home it’s gonna set you back. We’re currently paying more for a 512k connection than I was paying for a 3mbit connection in England 3 years ago. And our provider here doesn’t even offer a service as fast as 3mbit— 2mbit is the fastest available, and the monthly fee for that is nearly as much as we pay in apartment rent. So much for my live vlogging idea.

But the truth is, if people want something, they’ll find a way to pay for it whether it’s expensive or not. When I left the United States for good in 1998, gas was just over a dollar a gallon in Texas, and I could fill up my Tercel for less than $20 and still have money left for a burrito (incidentally, I miss burritos like you wouldn’t believe, but I digress). When I got to England, I shocked friends and family back home by reporting that gas there was over $5 a gallon and climbing steadily. Friends told me, “if gas were that expensive here, I wouldn’t buy it, I’d just give up my car.” Ha, sure you would. I’m certain it won’t be long before gas is that expensive in the United States, and so far I don’t see any of my friends throwing their keys away. The same is true of internet. Like cars in Texas (where there is next to no public transportation), for many of us the internet is such a key navigational tool through modern life that it almost becomes a necessity. Were it not for the internet it would certainly be nearly impossible for me to keep up with friends and family in my previous homes, and given the difficulty in finding English-language media in stores here (books, music, television, film), without international online shopping and downloadable products I might have long ago gone crazy from a feeling of alienation and isolation (though my Turkish would almost certainly be a lot better than it is).

I think what it comes down to is that for those of us living the nomadic lifestyle, the internet is the one country we can use as a constant homebase, and despite the fact that access charges vary wildly from place to place, you pay what you have to pay to have access to the parts of the world you want to have access to. I’m not quite willing to pay $160 a month for 2mbit, but I keep being told those prices will come down soon. In fact, they’ve already come down quite a bit— the 2mbit was $190 a month up until May of this year. Yeah, I know it’s shocking, but it’s even more shocking when you consider that many working class people here only make about twice that amount in total monthly salary. It’s amazing Turks can afford internet at all.

There are numerous baseball lovers everywhere. You can easily find thousands of fans of Boston Red Sox and why not this Boston based team is world series champion. For the baseball lovers there are a number of free baseball games available on Internet, which you can play online or download to your computers.

Oh my. Scorched. Hate summer. Moving right along.

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Okay, sure, this isn’t Turklish, but I figured a picture paints a thousand words. Check out her face— she looks like the second unhappiest overheated human on the planet (first is me, hands down).

Dark Loon, The – see also: previous photo. I still can’t believe she’s dressed all in black in July.

More like “Elephant’s creepy love story,” if you ask me. Have a good look at Elephant’s face… and teeth.

Yeah, the “slumber party,” where we will have the “party punch” with the “cheap vodka.” I used to have “slumber parties,” too.

Funny, I thought forgiving meant forgiving… maybe that’s just in my dictionary.

Talking ’bout my age generation…

Well, I’m not even from here, so all these districts are foreign to me. But thank you for putting it on a t-shirt so I’ll remember.

That’s the address where we pulled up the African tree. You’ll find the African roots there.

Yeah, you… you… you shoe, you shoe with… er… teeth? Yeah, teeth, I guess. You have ruined my life, with your… shoe teeth.

If you want to see more of these, the bazaar archive is here, and if you’d like to purchase a shirt or two yourself don’t forget to stop by the store and have a look around.

Please send snow.

About a week ago the weather cooled down to the mid 30s (low 90s F) but the humidity soared. I didn’t handle it very well. As most of you know, like many Turkish households we don’t have an air conditioner, so we’re pretty much at the mercy of the fan and the weather. I got excited when I saw forecasts for temperatures I thought sounded reasonable, but my hopes were destroyed when the moisture in the air combined with the warm weather kept everything (including me) sticky and uncomfortable all the time. Add to this the fact that I was nursing a head cold, and the result wasn’t pretty.

When the temperature went back up to 50° (122°F) three days ago, I noted that I was actually a lot more comfortable, simply because the humidity had burned off. Sure, 50° is hot, but at least when the weather is dry the sweat evaporates quickly and you stay feeling somewhat clean, or as clean as can be expected considering your life has become a sauna.

Yesterday was an ugly combination of 43° and humid, which made last night nearly unbearable. Sauna turned quickly to steam room. I couldn’t get to sleep until almost 7:00 this morning.

And then at 9:00, the unthinkable happened— the electricity went out. This is something you just have to deal with when you make the decision to live in Turkey (I understand it’s much the same situation in India). The power grid isn’t up to handling the increasing numbers of air conditioners being installed in homes, and when the load gets to a certain point, the whole system just shuts down. Sometimes it’s only out for a few minutes; one time during my first summer here the power got knocked out for four days. You just never know. I tried to continue sleeping, knowing the best situation would be if I could wake up after the power was already back on and the fan was working again. That plan lasted about half an hour before I finally gave up and peeled myself off the damp bed. There’s no way I could ever sleep in this weather without the fan.

So there we were— no fan, no refrigerator, no freezer, not even any television or music or internet to distract us from the rapidly increasing humidity and heat. As temperatures soared up into the high 40s, I sat down at the balcony table and read a story in the newspaper about the several hundred heat-related deaths in eastern Europe this week. Great. I put the paper down and wandered around the house looking for the window with the best breeze coming through it. Nothing.

Noon came and went. Still no electricity. Missing my fan desperately and trying to take my mind off my pining, I read a magazine that a friend had given me two weeks ago and that had been sitting on my desk ever since. I slowly worked straight through from the first page all the way to the back cover. I pretended to be interested in the latest fashion trends, and marveled at the models on the pages, these miraculously sweat-free people who somehow managed to walk through a summer day without melting, smiles on their faces as if hot weather were something one could be remotely pleased about in some twisted alternate universe. I closed my eyes and dreamed of autumn, mentally working out how many days left until November.

At one point in the late afternoon my face was so red from the heat and sweat was running down my cheeks so quickly that my housemate asked if I was crying. Ha, as if I could muster the strength for a reaction that strong. I mumbled something indistinct and went back into my daze. It suddenly dawned on me that countries that observe siesta time don’t do so voluntarily— they simply slip into a heat coma during the hottest part of the day.

In the early evening, having exhausted our supply of newspapers and magazines, I found myself wandering around the house looking for something, anything to take my mind off the heat. Then, a miracle— I heard the alarm from the refrigerator, the beeping noise it makes when the temperature is too high inside. Electricity! I hurried into the kitchen, switched off the alarm, and dashed into the bedroom where my lovely fan was waiting for me. Sweet, sweet fan, how I missed you!

I noted the time— 19:03. We’d been without electricity for ten hours.

At least we’ll have the fan for sleeping tonight, with any luck…

I finally felt well enough to go out this evening, and took a walk down the Lara Beach strip of 5-star all-inclusive hotels. When I passed the Delphin Palace I remembered how gorgeous the light fixtures are in there, and management were kind enough to let me in to snap a couple of photos. This is a lamp about two metres high, designed in the shape of a perfume bottle. It’s very intricate and breathtakingly gorgeous.

The equally breathtaking lobby chandelier, which as you can see is several stories tall.

You can learn more about the Delphin Palace hotel at delphinpalace.com, and if you choose English as your language you’re in for a wealth of Turklish. My favourite bits are the “jackuzi,” the “minibar hair drier” (wtf?) and the promise that the bathroom will deliver “ultimate satisfaction.” Link

Last week I went to Cyprus to do the visa renewal thing. Normally I renew my visa by taking a boat trip to Meis, but this time around I left it a bit too late and just needed to get it all done as soon as possible, so a quick round-trip flight seemed to be a more reasonable idea. I’d gone to Cyprus once before for a visa a couple of years ago, but I really didn’t like doing it that way. Aside from airports being a big hassle, I find Cyprus a bit spooky— it’s like a Turkish version of England. They drive on the left, they use the flat 3-pronged UK electrical plugs, and they sell English food in restaurants and markets. It’s kind of freaky. But I had to go, so I went. It was an exhausting day, and to top everything off I came back with my typical sore throat (I almost always pick up a throat bug during international travel), and by the next day it had blossomed into a full-blown head-and-chest cold. So I’ve been pretty much bed-ridden for the past few days (sorry for the lack of posts). Yesterday was the most intense as far as the illness goes; today I’m full of cold medicine and feel nearly human. I think the worst is over.

Couple of things I spotted in the Antalya airport on the way out:

You know the time that has no end? Well, you’ve reached the end.

I had heard legends about the Antalya airport Burger King being the most expensive Burger King in the universe, but I never quite believed the reports of just how expensive it was until I saw it for myself. See that Big King meal advertised in the centre? The price you see there in Turkish lira, 25.75… that’s twenty-one United States dollars. Ten UK pounds. Fifteen euros. I’m not kidding. For a burger, fries, and a drink. The girl at the counter informed me that there is no 18k gold plating on the drink cup, nor are the fries sprinkled with diamonds. The Whopper combo meal is a bargain at 22.75 YTL ($18 US, £9 , €13).

Now, I don’t smoke, but it’s good to know I can bring back a Bugs Bunny or two whenever I want. In fact, I can bring up to nine of them. Score.

Thanks for waiting around while I recovered from the throat bug; I’m up to posting again and will be resuming normal service presently. Hope you guys have been well.

Emirhan has been known to let conversations from his dreams spill over into real life, so this morning when we were fast asleep and he started yelling “it got me, it stung me!” I didn’t think too much of it. Groggy and out of it myself, I attempted to go back to sleep, but he shook me awake and repeated, “I’m serious, it stung me, wake up! It’s over there now, just sitting there. See?” I didn’t have my contact lenses in, so I couldn’t really see what he was pointing at. I shook the sleep out of my head and asked him to tell me again what happened. Apparently while we were sleeping peacefully, a lone waspy-type thing landed on his leg and started walking around. The tickling sensation caused Emirhan to reach down, and I guess the intrusion of a hand annoyed the wasp and it stung him, which of course woke him fully. It then flew away from the bed, but settled on a ledge about an arm’s distance away. There it sat, staring us down.

Wasps/bees/hornets are my only real phobia in this world. I can handle just about anything else, but I’ve been stung too many times and had too many trips to the doctor (due to an allergy to certain stings) to believe that nonsense myth about “if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.” That’s just not true. Believe me, there is no one on this planet who stays out of the way of wasps more than I do, and still they come after me. Just talking about it makes my stomach turn. The very thought of their existence chills me and elevates my heart rate. So being shaken to consciousness with the news that there was an angry wasp hovering over our bed and that it had already attacked once, got my wheels in motion to say the very least. I told Emirhan to get as far away as possible, and I ran out of the room after him (he was a lot more calm about the whole thing than I was).

We inspected the sting on his leg, which was red and swollen and apparently quite painful. He asked me if he should clean it, which I thought was a great idea. So after he disappeared into the bathroom, I braved a trip back to the attack site to see if the wasp was still there and if I could get a close enough look at it to Google it.

It was still sitting right where we left it, not moving at all except for a pulsing of the lower abdomen <shudder>. The tell-tale yellow stripe told me this wasp was one of those aggressive ones that flew into my hair a couple of years ago <SHUDDER>. I never did find out what that thing was, but we have them everywhere around here, so I figured it would be easy enough to find on the internet.

Sure enough, it’s a local variation of an Oriental Hornet. I looked at several web pages about this hornet and learned that it has one of the most painful stings in the world. I also learned that they tend to travel in families, and that the venom from the sting has a scent that alerts and attracts the other family members to the scene so they can help with the attack. Oy. The fact that we hadn’t been subjected to that horror, combined with the failure of the hornet to fly away or move much at all afterward, led me to believe that he was probably injured and confused and acting on his own. When Emirhan came back from the bathroom, I explained my findings, and he put the hornet to rest.

Anyway, so that was the end of that drama, but now anytime my hair brushes against my neck I jump about a mile in the air. I have no idea how I’m going to get to sleep tonight.

Emirhan seems okay; the swelling has gone down considerably and the redness is almost completely gone. He says he’s just glad it wasn’t me, because that might have meant a trip to the hospital. Indeed. But I still don’t like that it happened at all.

Everything’s gotten hot and sluggish again… temperatures are up and therefore mobility is down. Getting around the bazaar was like treading through molasses today, but I suffer gladly to bring back the freshest Turklish available.

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Here’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the arrival of the Kingly To Live.

I like how they had to print this sideways to get it to fit— I guess the Papeete Authority didn’t authorise a smaller font size.

Huh-huh, juicy factory.

What exactly is the official size and weight in NYC world?

I think X is not the only mystery.

Please tell me that one of you is from Duluth and that this shirt has a perfectly logical explanation.

I looked this one up, and couldn’t find anything… can anyone fill us in? I suspect the tiger of Sweden would be a dead one, in that climate.

Not sure how this equation works, but sign me up.

It seems that hard-to-get cruiser wouldn’t agree to being on a shirt.

If you want to see more of these, the bazaar archive is here, and if you’d like to purchase a shirt or two yourself don’t forget to stop by the store and have a look around. Many thanks to those of you who suggested new shirt designs— you’ll see some of them in the store next week. Have a fantastic Thursday, folks!

Our good friend Emre Kızılkaya posted this awesome photo yesterday of a message written on a rock cliff in Antalya (probably). The text reads, “committing suicide is dangerous and forbidden.” Fantastic. Emre goes on to point out that this is typical of the Mediterranean sense of humour.

But if you’d like just to accept the joke and go on your merry way, I’d advise you to stop reading at the end of Emre’s post and not continue on to the comments. It always amazes me how keen readers are to take even the most lighthearted blog post and turn it into a serious discussion or argument of some sort. It seems like people expect a serious blog to be serious 100% of the time, even if they have to force it to be so. It makes a stark change from the sort of comments people make on this blog (which is how I like it— please make sure all comments here are of the “me like blog, I has a cheeseburger” variety. We don’t take kindly to no brainiacs here). Link