The fog rolling in

A little more spring!

So tiny!

The view at my desk in the office

If I were staying longer, I might need a bigger cork board...

Another 14,000 steps!

Today has been one of the best spring days yet! My friend Blake and I got out and about to enjoy it (while poor Alex stayed home to rest because of a cold.)

This is the doorbell for Istanbul University's Botanical Garden. A guard did answer the bell, but the garden is closed on the weekend. Another time...

 

Photo: Blake Shedd

Photo: Blake Shedd 
And, yes, I brought some baklava home for Alex, too!

 The cats sunning themselves back at the apartment complex.

Spring Sunset

After a grey, rainy day!

It's good you exist!

It's good you exist, my Nur!

 

This gentle graffiti showed up on the fence across from the bus stop recently. I think it's sweet. A Turkish woman who saw me taking the photo called it nonsense, and said that, really, it should be 

İyi ki, not İyiki. Everybody's a critic, I guess...

What do you get when you ask for vegetarian curry at an Indonesian restaurant in Istanbul?

Reader, I ate it all...

 and it was delicious.

A Sign of Spring?

It could be!

Who's on First? (TurkCell Edition)

In late August, as soon as I returned from the states, I registered my new cell phone in Turkey. Every cell phone that is imported into Turkey has to be registered or the government blocks service after two months. Apparently this is to control resale of cheaper electronics from abroad.

It wasn't easy. But, it worked... or so I thought!

Last weekend, I got a text message (in Turkish) from TurkCell warning me that my phone was not registered and that the service would be blocked on April 22. I start looking for a receipt or some other paperwork to show that I did register it, and *surprise* I have none! I look online at my bank statements for a record of a transaction with TurkCell--nope! (Later, I did find the bank record, it just didn't have TurkCell in the name.)
My eternally patient Turkish friend calls TurkCell to find out how to deal with this situation. We're told that my phone has probably been cloned (?) and we should take care of this at the branch were it was registered. So we returned to the TurkCell office last Monday. First, the "customer service" rep swears they have never registered phones at that office. We insist it happened. Then she wants to know who helped us. We described the man who registered my phone, and she says, "He was fired." Seriously. Plus, it's nothing out of the ordinary for phones to be cloned, and there's nothing they can do for me at this office. She tells us to go to another, bigger branch of TurkCell.
This Monday we take the 45 minute trip to the bigger office where the customer service rep says, "The other branch didn't send the paperwork to the government. You should go back to that office and tell them to send the paperwork. There's nothing we can do for you at this office. Or, you could try to re-register your phone on the passport of someone who has arrived in Turkey within the last two months." Sounds legit. No, I am not going to pay nearly 200 more lira to register my already-registered phone on someone else's passport.
She does give us the phone number for the government office responsible for registering phones. We leave the office, get some coffee, and my friend calls the government office. There's some double-checking of the IMEI number for my phone, and this person says, "There's no problem. The phone is already registered. Sometimes these messages are sent by mistake."
Too good to be true? I don't know. Ask me again on April 23.