Saying Goodbye II

I board a plane headed home -- by way of Amsterdam and Nashville -- in ten hours. My co-workers have asked me no fewer than twenty times in the last week if I'm "ready" to go. I still don't have a good answer.

This summer has been good for me in many ways. I had time to be on my own, to remember that I'm ok by myself. At the same time, I found incredible friends in the people I worked with. Perhaps most important, I was able to relax. It has been years since I experienced so little stress. Not much was expected of me at work, I came home without papers to write, I had no appointments to keep. My afternoons and evenings were spent swimming, reading fiction, cooking and drinking beer on my porch. I needed this time, especially considering what awaits me when I return home.

And yet the things that await me in Austin are the very forces that make me ready to go home. There are the people of course -- Mark, my parents, my sister, friend. But there's also a new chapter to start. Law school begins 25 August and this summer has steeled my for the challenge. It also taught me that I am not ready for an eight to five, Monday through Friday job, no matter how interesting the work. Hopefully I'll become more comfortable with this whole "job thing" as time goes on. For my sake. And Mark's!

So farewell loyal readers. It's been another great summer in Constantinople. I mean Istanbul.

Saying goodbye

It's my last week in Istanbul. My last four days to be specific: I board a plane early Saturday morning and who knows when I'll be back.

I'm horrible at goodbye's. Any kind of semi-permanent -- or worse, permanent -- farewell turns me into an socially awkward dweeb with more acute personal space issues than usual. But how do you say goodbye to a place? Can you soak it all in, breath a little deeper, linger a little longer? I feel like someone who has waited until the last minute to write a term-paper. I am frantically -- breathlessly -- trying to gather up enough parts of the citizen to embody its sum in my remaining days.

I should have started weeks ago.

And then I did some sit-ups

I have a weakness for Turkish desserts. Honey-soaked baklava, creamy custard, crumbly buttery cookies... last night I chased ice cream with hazelnut-chocolate pudding.

To be honest, I'm slightly embarrassed to profess my little problem to the wide world. Generally, I eat healthily. My diet is guided by a strict good-bad dichotomy, supplemented with a Draconian list of forbidden foods (including, but not limited to, doughnuts, funnel cake, non-diet soda, etc.) I would put money on the claim that I consume more fiber than you average American in the 18-24 demographic. This summer, my roughage has come with a heaping hot side order of sugar and fat.

Last Saturday, I wandered down to Besiktas, a bustling district full of clothing retailers and bus stops on the water. The walk was never intended to be a pilgrimage to the State Waffle House, a modest family owned place on the main square. The "waffle" is a patently Turkish invention: cover a thin warm waffle with a thin layer of chocolate and hazelnut pudding and then wrap it around fruit, sprinkles, nuts. It's an ice cream sundae, hold the ice cream.

And it's wonderful.

Turns out the waffle house owned the roof of the building that soared six stories overhead. Tea and waffle in hand I slipped into the rickety elevator. Up, up, up and then -- 180 degree view of the Bosporus. When the call to prayer started, it rolled out, joining the other mosques along the water in a haunting chorus that you can only appreciate from up high.

Unpaid Internships

Originally at Stuff White People Like

In most of the world when a person works long hours without pay, it is referred to as “slavery” or “forced labor.” For white people this process is referred to as an internship and is considered an essential stage in white development.

The concept of working for little or no money underneath a superior has been around for centuries in the form of apprenticeship programs. Young people eager to learn a trade would spend time working under a master craftsman to learn a skill that would eventually lead to an increase in material wealth.

Using this logic you would assume that the most sought after internships would be in areas that lead to the greatest financial reward. Young White people, however, prefer internships that put them on the path for careers that will generally result in a DECREASE of the material wealth accumulated by their parents.

For example, if you were to present a white 19 year old with the choice of spending the summer earning $15 an hour as a plumber’s apprentice or making $0 answering phones at Production Company, they will always choose the latter. In fact, the only way to get the white person to choose the plumbing option would be to convince them that it was leading towards an end-of-summer pipe art installation.

White people view the internship as their foot into the door to such high-profile low-paying career fields as journalism, film, politics, art, non-profits, and anything associated with a museum. Any white person who takes an internship outside of these industries is either the wrong type of white person or a law student. There are no exceptions.

If all goes according to plan, an internship will end with an offer of a job that pays $24,000 per year and will consist entirely of the same tasks they were recently doing for free. In fact, the transition to full time status results in the addition of only one new responsibility: feeling superior to the new interns.

When all is said and done, the internship process serves the white community in many ways. First, it helps to train the next generation of freelance writers, museum curators, and director’s assistants. But more importantly, internships teach white children how to complain about being poor.

So when a white person tells you about their unpaid internship at the New Yorker, it’s not a good idea to point out how the cost of rent and food will essentially mean that they are PAYING their employer for the right to make photocopies. Instead it’s best to say: “you earned it.” They will not get the joke.

Gungoren

Today's front pages were filled with funerals -- 17 people died in Sunday's double-bombing. More than 150 are injured, many of them seriously. So far no group has claimed responsibility for the bombings. Many suspect that the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group who has concealed explosives in trash containers in the past, is behind things.

And yet life goes on as usual in Istanbul. At the risk of making Istanbul sound like some dangerous urban jungle, it important to note that the city sees around a dozen-or so attacks like this every year. The notion of placing an explosive in a garbage can or dumpster is so commonplace that the busiest city streets have neither.

The site of Sunday's attack was a crowded residential neighborhood called Gungoren, a middle to lower middle class place virtually indistinguishable from the residential areas around it. It's far away, both in terms of distance and socio-economics, from the very chic, very Western neighborhood where I live. A trip to the airport would take a tourist in that general direction; otherwise, nothing -- nothing -- would draw foreigners to Gungoren. Sunday's bombs were intended to kill Turks, a fact that doesn't make me feel any better about the situation -- the pictures in today's papers were tragic.

Thanks to those of you who contacted me -- I'm obviously alive and safe, although slightly more prepared to return home in two and a half weeks.

Rough Summer

As you may have already heard, there was a bombing in an Istanbul neighborhood tonight. Fifteen people were killed. I didn't think I would be posting another "I'm safe" update this summer, but so it goes.
I'll keep you posted as the story develops.

No one cares what I had for lunch...

... but the grilled Levrek I ate had been pulled from the Black Sea only hours earlier. Mark tells me this means the fish was contaminated with whatever pollutants make up Black Sea goo. I say, never mind his naysaying (even if he has a point) -- it was delicious.

Before lunch, I hiked around the rocky shore of this particular inlet, about a 45 minute drive from the city. That's not accurate though -- this little beach town is actually a part of Istanbul, even if the acres of trees along the shore make it feel worlds away. I've written at length about how dirty and crowded this city is, but drive twenty minutes north on a traffic free day and the cramped apartments and city side walks are replaced by verdant forests.

Hello friends!

It was windy and hot at the sea today. Like before, the horizon was filled with ships waiting to pass through the Bosporus. We ate by the water, the clean, salty sea air ruffling the umbrellas overhead and the table clothes underplate. A lunch worthy of description, if there ever was one.