Messin' with Texas

Yesterday we had a brief office conversation about politics. I don’t remember the whole conversation or how it went. I do remember that when I said “I prefer the european model of social democracy,” I was met with the following response:
That’s communism. Are you a mother #*!%*#& communist? Do you want us to be like [...]

Current Mood: EsctaticGuess what? I am no longer employed! How’s that for big news? Didn’t expect that did you?
If you were one of my friends here in Istanbul, you probably were expecting it. Over the past few months it became clear that things just weren’t going to work out between my employer and myself. It [...]

Check it out:
Turkish Government Bans YouTube!
No more YouTube!
In Turkey there is a law called article 301 which has made it illegal to insult ‘Turkishness’ since coming into effect in June of 2005. The article states:
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Article 301 states the following.[6]

A person who publicly denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be [...]

Current Mood: HappyWell a lot has happened since I last wrote a real post way back on… December 12th! It was a real pain in the butt trying to get my domains transfered and set up my new host for my website, but it’s all finally done thanks to the help of Ant and Ali [...]

In case you missed it, here is part one of this entry:

Our New Employee

Pasha is gone. They tied him up for a bit two weeks ago. As soon as he got off the chain, he dissappeared.
Ahmet is very bored at work.

Alper – who is now working in foreign sales and marketing with me – and I, often talk about the many things we don’t like about Turkey, Turkish culture, and Turkish people. I vent a lot of my frustration to him, and I return the favor by listening to his venting. We spend our lunch [...]

I hear it everyday; “Conrad, you are so lucky.” Friends, people I meet, coworkers; They all share this opinion. I have been called “[my company's] spoiled child,” “the luckiest employee in Turkey,” and many other things. On more than just my life in Turkey, people say that I am so lucky, that they can’t believe [...]

This week we have a visitor from Tunis. Yes it is the same person I visited some months ago. If you like, and you speak French you can read about how my previous visit went (at the bare minimum you can look at the pictures):
La Tunisie
Now the Tunisien, Kamel, is here in Istanbul to meet [...]

The newest addition to my company has got to be the cutest pair of legs to walk through our doors since I have been here, and I think everyone would agree. Pasha is a huge hit with everyone. Many of the company’s employees – male and female alike – spend their breaks playing stupid little [...]

Yesterday marked the first day of Ramadan. I won’t go into extreme detail about what it is, so if you are interested you can read Wikipedia’s Ramadan Page.   Simply put, Ramadan is an Islamic religious observance. It takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar (it’s a lunar calendar, so it [...]