July 2008 Archives

At Zattoo, where I work, I arranged an international meeting last week in our calendaring/scheduling tool. I got one automatic email from one of my coworkers in Switzerland, which said something like Zugesagt: meeting.

I speak very little German, and I don't know this word - does it mean accepted or rejected? - so I used Google's translator tool. Here's what it said:

I was stupid enough to say yes

I LOL'ed, but I doubted our scheduling client nor my counterpart were trying to insult me. After investigating, it looks like the translation is for a phrase that contains the word, but Google did not have an adequate translation for the word, so it served the phrase. Machine translation is hard.

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I'm going to keep this entry short. I'm pretty tired and I want to hit the sack; Heather asked me if I wanted to go to the Washtenaw Fitness Center this morning. Ich habe dummerweise zugesagt.

Last week I wrote about Hagia Sophia, and its weeping column. I just scrounged up a video of the weeping column that illustrates exactly what's done.

This entry might gross some people out, but it deserves to be written.

While I was in Europe, in the bathrooms I saw many urinal flies. Not real ones, mind you, but decals of flies affixed to the inside of urinals. I did a quick Google search and found urinalfly.com, one of the companies that manufactures them. They claim: "Keeps Bathrooms up to 85% cleaner." The idea is that the fly is placed in a specific spot on the urinal surface so as to reduce "spillage" - which, in my experience, is more difficult than it sounds, because there are many varieties of urinal shapes, each with its own fluid acoustic signature. The urinalfly.com urinal fly even comes with instructions about how to position the fly for "maximum effectiveness."

I don't know what's so compelling about pissing on a fly - it seems a little cruel and, well, unpleasant if it were a real fly, and the urine-soaked real fly flew down your pant leg - but at least it's something to do. It is a bit of a shock seeing a bunch of flies in all the urinals as you walk in the restroom, but it soon gives way to laughter. I had seen these maybe once or twice before in America, but I saw them several places in Europe. In fact, I saw them in all three countries that we visited: Swizterland, Turkey, and Holland.

I wonder if there's a market for a urinal bee?

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Speaking of urinals, I had a weird dream about one the other night. I had to go to the bathroom, but when I entered the restroom I discovered that there was something inside the urinal. Not a fly this time, but an electrical socket. Complete with faceplate and everything, embedded right there in the urinal. Two vacant faces, mocking me.

So I had to go pretty bad, but I was faced with the dilemma, should I go ahead and do it and risk a rather painful and probably fatal electrocution? I woke up soon after.

Weird dream.

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Speaking of dreams, my buddy Rob has recently started a cool dream blog, in which he has cataloged and shared many of his dreams. Rob has some seriously weird dreams. I'm also very pleased and honored to have guest starred in one of them.

Below are a couple of pictures from Istanbul's Grand Bazaar.

It's a crazy place packed with people, and something like 3,000 shops. It's common to hear "Hey, friend, where are you from?" at you from across the corridor. I would stupidly say, "I'm American," and would see the dollar signs flash in his eyes. Or Turkish Lira signs, perhaps. YTL.

Had I been smart, I would have said something like, "Icelandic" or something. Anyway.

It was a pretty weird place. At one point, the first time I visited (of three times - and this time I was alone), a man and a little boy approached me in the clothing area of the bazaar (I was shopping for shirts since my bags had not arrived yet). The man said to me, "hey, sir, do you want to buy a boy?" Was he joking? The boy's face was sweet and smiling, but the man's face looked serious. If it wasn't a joke, then I don't know exactly what was for sale. Unsettling experience.

Here's a video that Heather took of the bazaar. Just to give you a sense of the activity inside.

There was a restaurant near our hotel that sold Doner Kebab. Here I am on the second floor. I'm not that tall of a guy, so this is pretty amusing. I guess they were really pressed for space?

This is one of only two bridges that cross the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul. These bridges connect the European part of Istanbul with the Asian part. Not too many for a city with a population of 11,000,000.

Here's a more dramatic view, from a cruise we took on the strait:

At the end of the cruise, we got out and did some hiking around this ancient keep. It looks out on the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. Here I am in front of the Black Sea. As you can see, I chubbed up a little bit on our honeymoon. ;)

On the way down, somebody had brought a sailboat way up on the hill and made a little garden out of it. I thought that that was pretty cool.

FInally, here's some unknown mosque (by us, at least) down by the pier.

This video was taken 180 degrees from that picture. Lots of people were fishing from the bridge overhead, as you can see:

OK, I'll spare you any more pictures and videos for the time being.

I'm getting a little tired blogging about our honeymoon, so I'm going to take a break. Instead, I'm going to turn to the esoteric topic of Japanese urination simulators. Introducing Super Pii Pii Brothers. From the ThinkGeek Article:

The play mechanics are simple. Prepare yourself by strapping on the included belt harness and jacking in your Wiimote. A series of toilets are presented on screen and the challenge is to tilt your body to control a never-ending stream of pee. Get as much pee in the toilets as you can while spilling as little on the floor as possible. Sounds easy eh? Well the toilets open and close whack-a-mole style and occasionally the stray cat or other cute critter pops up. Spray a cat for extra points. Get too much pee on the ground and your game is over. With realistic fluid dynamics for the pee and over 100 different bathrooms from bars and palaces to automatic Japanese style toilets you'll be entertained for hours. And wait until your friends see the multi-player mode with dueling pee streams... Super Pii Pii Bros

According to the Japanese text on the box "Super Pii Pii Brothers promotes good bathroom skills and allows women to experience for the first time the pleasure of urinating while standing." What we say is that virtual peeing is damn fun!

Here's a movie:

It's a Japanese game, but you can get a boot disk for your region-1 Wii (heh heh) from ThinkGeek.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Heather and I were going to take a Turkish cooking class at the Sarnic Hotel in Istanbul. Well, the day before, the Sarnic Hotel called us and canceled - they were short just one student before they could do the class. Which was a big bummer for us. At least now I can get out of my "cooking Heather food once a week" deal. Phew!

Instead, I think that that was the day when we went to Hagia Sophia. From Wikipedia:

Hagia Sophia (Turkish: Ayasofya, Greek: Αγία Σοφία; "Holy Wisdom", Latin: Sancta Sophia or Sancta Sapientia) is a former patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, now a museum, in Istanbul, Turkey. Famous in particular for its massive dome, it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture. It was the largest cathedral ever built in the world for nearly a thousand years, until the completion of the Medieval Seville Cathedral in 1520.

The current building was originally constructed as a church between 532 and 537 AD on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and was in fact the third Church of the Holy Wisdom to occupy the site (the previous two had both been destroyed by riots). It was designed by two architects, Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles. The Church contained a large collection of holy relics and featured, among other things, a 50 foot (15 m) silver iconostasis. It was the patriarchal church of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the religious focal point of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly 1000 years.

This is the exit (or the entrance, if you follow the Rick Steves tour). Because of the Muslim injunction against icons, most of the mosaics were destroyed when the church became a mosque. This one survived though

I was fascinated to learn that banning icons was actually a very controversial measure at the time, and there were actually violent religious riots from the opposition - the populist faithful - about it.

Anyway, that's the Virgin Mary with Jesus in the center. To the left is Emperor Justinian, who is presenting a completed Hagia Sophia to Mary and Jesus. To the right is Constantine, who is presenting the city itself.

Here's the massive hall right after the entrance way:

This next photo is in the main hall. This is sort of like a pulpit. The imam did not climb up to the top, as you might think. Instead, he occupied the middle. The top was symbolically reserved only for Muhammad.

It's hard to illustrate the size of Hagia Sophia. This next picture doesn't even show the main dome - just a partial dome on the side. The main dome is large enough to house the entire Cathedral at Notre Dame - or even the Statue of Liberty, minus the torch.

Those black circles say things like Muhammad, Allah, and other major figures in Islam. There are four main ones. Two date from the sixth century, and two from something like the sixteenth - they had to be restored. Anyway, the names were displayed because images could not be. Beautiful, aren't they?

This next one takes some explanation. Legend has it that if you stick your thumb in this hole and make a 360 degree rotation with it, in this "weeping pillar" at Hagia Sophia, and if you feel a feeling of dampness, then your wish will come true. Here's Heather wishing her wish:

The metal has been worn away by literally millions of people sticking their thumbs into this hole. Luckily I had the Germ-X for my hands after I made my wish. Hope that that doesn't invalidate the wish.

Lastly, here's an interesting Christian mosaic upstairs:

I took this because of Christ's hand gesture. His thumb is touching the tip of his ring finger. Heather reckons that this signifies the trinity. It struck me as reminiscent of Buddhist and Hindu hand gestures, though, and I wondered if there had been some cross-fertilization of cultures and religions. It would be very likely in this part of the world, I thought.

Anyway, cool place!

A little while ago I blogged about the Euro 2008 statues in Zurich. I had taken some video of it, but I never uploaded it. I think it's worth watching the video just to get a sense of the scope of these things.

Well, here it is:

My friend asked this of me today.

If I told you that your face kind of looked like a clown, would you take it as a compliment, or would your feelings be hurt?

Ouch!

And we're back in Ann Arbor.  It's 5:33 AM as I write this, and I've got work in three and a half hours.  Don't worry, I'm pretty excited to go actually.

I kind of trailed off on my blogging there the second half of the trip. The reason was that my Internet connectivity was spotty, and my laptop was acting up. I have a lot of good stories that I can't wait to write about, though, so stay tuned.

-J

Today Heather and I are going to a famous palace in Istanbul.  But I forgot the name.

Tomorrow, though, we're going to be taking a cooking class at the Sarnic Hotel (which should be nearby our hotel) in Sultanahmet.  We're going to be learning five traditional Turkish/Ottoman dishes.  That should be good fun.

It's a little steep at 50 Euros per head, but I think that it will be worth it.

Somehow, however, Heather has got it in her head that I'm going to be cooking her a Turkish dinner once per week after we take the course.  I'll try to do my best, but I think once a month is more reasonable...

Earlier this week I observed that there were so many cats in Istanbul. I also wondered aloud, online, on ask.metafilter.com. I got some really interesting and insightful answers, and would like to share some with you.

Here is a passage from Dee Xtrovert's answer:

I'm from Sarajevo, we had loads of stray cats there, too.

Cats have a special place in Islam. Mohammed was a big cat lover, as were several other important Muslim religious figures. So teachings about cats are plentiful in Islam, and they're nearly always about the goodness of cats. One story is how Mohammed so loved his cat that, when the cat fell asleep on his sleeve, Mohammed cut off the sleeve rather than to bother his little friend. A cat supposedly saved Mohammed at some point, too. But I don't remember that story. There are stories of people who died and went to hell specifically because of their poor treatment of cats. And it's especially good luck if you spot a cat sleeping on the grave of a loved one. One of the first things I remember being lovingly taught was that it was a big, big, big sin to hit a cat.

...

In Sarajevo, during the war, many people had to let their cats go free as there was no food for any of us. At least outdoors, the cats had a chance to find a mice or bird or something. And when there was a little scrap of something, we'd feed the strays. This was seen as a very good deed. So they (or their offspring) are all still around today. But even before the war, there were lots of cats, just like in Istanbul. Basically, no one would harm a cat, so they're just allowed to run free. Spaying and neutering doesn't really happen - especially to strays. So while many of these cats must have short life spans, they only die by accident, not by deliberate misdeed. They keep the streets free of rats and mice and are admired for that. This, combined with their special place in society, means you see a lot of them on the street.

k8t wrote:

Here in Armenia, we have a lot of stray cats and dogs too. Maybe it was a Muslim neighborhood thing, but also expanded because during the war people had to let their pets go. The cops shoot the stray dogs regularly, which is a good thing to decrease competition and therefore make the survivors less likely to bite you.

All strays here are way smarter than American dogs and cats I know. Perhaps this is because they are survivors and the descendants of survivors.

People feel stray kitties bits of food, but I don't see them feeding stray dogs. Like Dee said, it is considered lucky and will bring about some smiles.

Andy remarked in the comments of my previous post that stray dogs were everywhere in India, and that he played a rousing (and dangerous???) game of "pet the dog."

Heather and I ventured a little bit into the interior yesterday. Okay, maybe not the "interior," but far from the center of the city - Yoros Castle, at the northern point of the Bosphorus strait.
View Larger Map

Anyway, there were loads of stray dogs there - and I didn't see one cat. Interesting.

I had a dream about my wedding. Often, after stressful times in my life, I have had dreams about not getting critical stuff done. For example, for several years after graduating from university, I had dreams that I had not fulfilled some of my high school requirements, and so I had to go back and take a class there, before my undergrad degree came into effect. And the class I had to take there turned out to be harder than any undergrad class. Really weird stuff.

Anyway, the wedding dream. It was the day of, and I was 45 minutes late and panicking. It was the reception time (I don't know what happened with the ceremony - had it gone on without me? The dream was irritatingly non-forthcoming on this point), and I was struggling to get my tux on.

The main problem: I couldn't figure out how to get my bow tie on. Instead of putting it around my neck, like a sane person, I was trying to tie it around my head and affix it to my upper lip. It seemed at least somewhat reasonable, though, as there was some human hair glued to the bow tie, and so it looked like I had a funky mustache on top of a bow tie. And I had tied it right underneath my nose. It was really strange, looking in the mirror - but I couldn't figure out why. I asked some of the wedding personal, "does this look straight to you? Something feels not quite right..." But they assured me that it looked fine. Jackasses.

Then I discovered that I didn't have any black socks. I had to drive all the way home and steal some out of my Dad's dresser drawer. Why didn't I just go to a nearby store? Or gone without?

When I got back, I knew I was really late, and so I thought it would be a good idea to slide down the carpeted stairs to get down faster, like I did as a little boy (and sometimes as a teenager) at my parents' house. Unfortunately, doing this produced a series of holes in the crotch of my tux. And I thought, "Jesus, John, what the hell are you doing?"

Meanwhile, I've been listening to bridesmaids and other people praise and tell stories about Heather, who was already in the hall, in my absence - but it was going on for too long. They were running out of material, and struggling with making stuff up on the fly, and you could tell that they were getting really impatient. It was really uncomfortable.

And, the weirdest bit of all was that there was musical accompaniment. There was a piano player who was playing along with the the people as they told their stories, but he had clearly run out of songs in his repertoire. I never saw the piano player but I imagined, in my minds eye, that he wanted to kill me after this all was done. The last thing I remember being played was "Chopsticks."

One of the cultural differences that I noticed in Switzerland, in contrast to the US, is the number of people who have tattoos.  Tattoos were everywhere, it seemed, on our trip to Zürich. Heather reckoned that many of the people were not actually Swiss, but from other countries - a valid point especially in light of the Euro 2008 taking place half the time in Switzerland. On top of this, more than 20% of Switzerland's population are foreigners - so maybe the sample is still a little skew.

Turkey, on the other hand, has many fewer people with tattoos. There are a lot of foreign nationals in Istanbul, it is quite apparent. But still, probably many of these foreigners are, on average, from more conservative Muslim countries. It's still a remarkable contrast to me how few people have tattoos here.

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There seems to be a pretty pronounced culture of apprenticeship here, in Istanbul. It seems that nearly wherever we go, there is a younger man who rarely - if ever - speaks in front of the customer, and does a lot of the grunt work of the boss. Lots of pronounced, imposing deference. I mean, sure, parts of this dynamic are present even in America, but in Turkey, it just seems to be a lot more pronounced. It's like there's a (vicious? virtuous?) circle of, "hey, if I put my time in now and put up with the boss's crap, one day I'll be the big boss and can dish out my own crap!" My observations are admittedly very surface, but those are my initial conclusions.

Since I didn't have my bag this morning - and I was getting a little shaggy on my face - I decided that I needed to go to a barber to get my face shaven.

This was an experience.  The first thing the guy did was to lather up my face really thoroughly.  Like for ten minutes.  Then it was a shave, which was pretty standard.  A few nicks, but nothing too bad.  Then the weird stuff started happening.

The barber's apprentice, who I guess was probably all of ten years old, brought over a pot of boiling water.  It really was boiling, too.  The boy poured the steaming water on the towel, and then the barber took it and kind of whipped my face with it repeatedly.  It hurt a little bit, but wasn't too unpleasant.  Probably the biggest unpleasantness there was the initial dread... "what is he going to do with that?"

Then the really weird stuff happened.  The barber got a large cotton ball out and wound it around a pair of scissor tongs.  I was thinking, "Oh shit, is he going to stick that in my ear?"  But he didn't - instead he soaked it in rubbing alcohol and then lit it on fire.  He then brought it quickly to my ear and then away, there and away, several times in very quick succession - so as to singe away my ear hair problem.  I mean the hair growing on the outside of my ear, not my inner ear, by the way.  Now you know more about me than you really wanted.

The burning away of the hair wasn't a problem, really.  It didn't hurt at all, but the smell of burning hair made me a little nauseous.  Far worse was the young assistant cleaning up what the flaming tongs had missed.  He yanked about ten or twenty remaining hairs our of each ear.  Yow!  That was painful.

It was an interesting experience, but I'm glad that my bag arrived so that I can shave my own face for the rest of the trip.

In Zürich, one of the most impressive things Heather and I saw (and thanks to Jen for making us aware of this) was the huge Euro 2008 player sculpture at the Zürich Hauptbahnhof. For the uninitiated, the Euro 2008 is a soccer tournament that took place this summer. It takes place every four years - interspersed between the world cup tournaments. Anyway, on to the pictures. Take a look at it from afar:

Heather called these "the butts," because, well, from the outside, all that's visible are the players' butts.  If you can't tell, they're huddled with their arms around each other.  Here they are from a perspective within the circle:

Each player is from a different country.  Jen made the interesting observation that the Swiss dude is the only player with his mouth open.  He must be urging his peers to play a good, fair game.

Just to give you a size of these things, this is me and Heather in front of I guess the Dutch player's shoe:

Nothing but a hunk of metal scaffolding, I'm afraid.  A lost opportunity on the part of the Swiss.  I'm joking, of course.

There are lots of cats wandering in Istanbul - or at least in Sultanahmet, which is a (the?) main tourist spot in the city.  The cats seem relatively nice and tame.  Not that I would ever touch one; even if I weren't allergic, I don't think I'd hazard to touch an Istanbul cat.

This is a picture of two kittens that were playing just outside the ancient city walls.

Heather and I were theorizing about why there might be so many cats.  We noticed that a pronounced absence of rats or mice, compared to many similarly-sized cities.  There are loads of rats in Ho Chi Minh city, for example, and they'll just crawl over your foot to grab a morsel of food.  Perhaps, we thought, the Istanbul government consciously introduced cats in order to control the rodent population.  But who knows, for sure?

We're interested enough that we've posted our question on ask.metafilter.com.

Well, we got here this morning about 3:00 AM.  Unfortunately, one of our bags was lost - either Alitalia misplaced it somehow, or it was stolen because we lingered a bit too long around the passport control before the baggage claim.  Luckily, it was my bag and not Heather's that was stolen.  If it had been Heather's, it would have been worse because she would have been worried about not having enough clothes to wear, her toiletries, etc.  Me, I'm comfortable smelling bad and feeling grimy.

I think this is maybe my third day in a row wearing the same underwear, so I figured that it might be a good idea to buy some clothes.  I asked the guy at the front desk where to go to buy shirts and undies, and he recommended the Grand Bazaar.  Heather was pretty tired this afternoon, and is still recovering from a persistent air-pressure ear from the flights - and from our ascent and descent of Mount Titlis in Swizerland - so I went alone.

I was able to buy several pairs of Armani underwear at something like three bucks a pop.  I don't know if they're genuine, but if they do the job, that's enough for me.  I also was able to buy a nice short-sleeve black Armani t-shirt - or, again, a knockoff.  It fits pretty well.  Another shirt that I bought was less successful.  What appealed it to me was its super thinness.  But when I wore it, my nipple hair was clearly visible - Heather told me that I looked like some kind of Russian bodybuilder (and not in a good way) - so I think I'm going to nix that shirt.

I'm looking forward to dinner tonight.  Not sure where we're going, but it will be good.  Lots of good restaurants here.  And then after that, perhaps we'll do the Turkish bath.  After that, maybe I'll get some information from the airline about where my damn suitcase is.