Over the last few weeks I have been working in Turkey, long hours, often from 8:30am until 7pm with little breaks. It has placed a big strain on my relationships, but work is work.
The temperature here in Istanbul has not helped. It has been very hot and humid, perhaps not as hot as it is in my home town of Bukit Mertajam near Penang in Malaysia, (click to see personal web page), but there it is expected and the infrastructure is set-up to handle it, with air conditioners a must.
I have been staying in hotels, three so far on this trip, as I say, it seems I never sleep in the same bed more than ten days. Two of the hotels were non tourist or non foreigner hotels, the latest is the Seminal Hotel very near Taxim Square, a typical tourist hotel, full of holiday makers, attendees to conferences, all out to enjoy themselves, staying up until all hours of the morning, and banging doors and shouting to each other before sleeping.
The hotels will have TV’s in their rooms, but obviously the non tourist hotels will not cater to non Turkish speakers, so why provide English speaking TV programs. The Seminal does have CNN news channel, but once you have seen the news, the second or third time the same news is broadcast each hour, makes me want to tear my hair out. The BBC World News channel is unwatchable.
I still watch, especially to see the weather forecast. Why do we do it. Mee Len, my wife, will sit and watch the weather for the next day and will not remember it half an hour later. I am the same, but I want to know what will happen.
This morning, CNN said that Istanbul would be very sunny and hot, no clouds anywhere. I opened the curtains, to see no sun but clouds, and at 2pm in the afternoon, still no sun.
Apart from no sun, we have had rain, and lots of it.
