Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Enjoying Istanbul Waffles

Every city has its famous street food. Istanbul is no different. I don't know how I made it three years without ever tasting one of Istanbul's famous waffles, but somehow I had. It was time to rectify that.

My friend Barb and I had met Internations friends for an afternoon exploring Istanbul's haunted mansion and first art museum in a working office.  After we finished, it was time for a treat. We adjourned to Barb's neighborhood, Bebek, and got in line for waffles (except the girl who was fasting for Ramazan - what discipline!).
There is always a line.
Waffles are beloved in Istanbul.
I admired this Turkish Dad
out making a memory
with his kids.
 We were right behind them
in line.
A waffle maker has to be
even more patient than
a Subway sandwich artist,
because there are even more toppings!
 
First goes on the base cream.
Here are some of your choices:
Nutella, Hazelnut, Dark Chocolate,
Milk Chocolate, White Chocolate,
Caramel, Strawberry, Pistachio,
Banana, and Coconut.
 
I chose Pistachio and White Chocolate.
 Then there is all the fruit.
I chose bananas, cherries,
strawberries, and kiwi.
That was pretty tame
given all of the
candied and fresh options.
 
 
 One last sprinkling
of chopped pistachios.
What I didn't expect
was how warm it would be.
I thought it would have lost its warmth
by the time he assembled it all, but no.
 
One delicious warm, gooey bite after another.
I am not waiting three more years to have another.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

An Afternoon of Art and Beauty at the Borusan Contemporary, Part Three

After enjoying a beautiful meal in the Borusan Contemporary museum café, and going up to the 10th floor to see the beautiful view of the Bosphorus from the very top turret in Istanbul's haunted mansion, it was time to explore the art in Turkey's very first office art museum.
This was 1/4 of a Jim Dine painting
with four similar panels.
The color was fantastic.
Every office was full of the most spectacular
coffee table art books.
I could lose myself for hours
just in the books.
These binoculars were in the corner office
so I assume the office belonged to the chairman.
Below, his minimalistic desk.
Someone correct me, if I have this misidentified.

 Color of all hues
uplifted my spirit.
Do they do the same to you?
 
I thought the collection focus
of color repetition
was brilliant.
 The beautiful salon or living room
off of the corner office
had a whimsical, jazzy artwork on the ceiling.
An endearing personal touch.
How could kids resist
even the beauty of this elevator shaft?
What memories this place would create
in the minds of the staff's children.
 
One of the most fun videos in the collection
was in the stairwell.
It showed the furniture and dishes
of a home living room
sliding back and forth on the floor
as a house
was slowly rocked back and forth.
 
I could imagine a child
standing in front of it for hours
and giggling nonstop at the fun of it.
 
To access videos from the collection, click here.
"Eyeballs" inspired by George Orwell.
 Love it!
One of the few Istanbul-specific photography pieces.
The Hagia Sophia in snow.
The wishing tree
Staff and the public
left their wishes.
I didn't even notice the white "profile"
when I saw this neon art up close.
It was only when I got home and
saw this photo taken from across the room
that I saw it was more than abstract.
 "21 Books"
by a Korean artist
 The quality of building materials
was an unending delight.
I marveled at the precise heft of this door.
Love this blue.
How children must want to run their hands
continually over this piece
just to explore the symmetry, color, and sound of it.
All this art makes one feel like a child!
 We waved goodbye to the museum guides
through the "haunted" grillwork.
Perili Köşk at dusk.
"Goodbye Haunted Mansion!
You were an absolute delight."

Imagine opening up your work office to random people every weekend. I found this to be a very generous act by Borusan Holding Co.

Thank you for sharing your gorgeous art with the public. To the folks at Borusan Contemporary, I say, "your generosity is yet another example of why Turkish hospitality is the best in the world."

You might also enjoy:

An Afternoon of Art and Beauty at the Borusan Contemporary, Part One

An Afternoon of Art and Beauty at the Borusan Contemporary, Part Two

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Monday, July 22, 2013

An Afternoon of Art and Natural Beauty at Borusan Contemporary, Part Two

Isn't discovery exciting? One of my rules of life is - there must be some element of discovery in every single day. The "haunted mansion" Barb and I and our Internations friends had come to explore was actually Turkey's very first office art museum.

During the week, people who worked there were making decisions about a portfolio of companies collected into Borusan Holding Company. On weekends, from 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. the whole building gets opened up to the public to explore and enjoy.
The entrance to the haunted mansion
did not feature cobwebs.
Instead, it hinted at the art collection focus:
many contemporary,
and especially,
video installations.
This particular piece of art
created by a German artist
used solar energy to power propellers
and
musical instruments
that emitted pleasing tones
This temporary exhibit was entitled Datascapes.
On the surface,
these may look like black and white photographs
of extraordinary mountain vistas.
 
What you see, is not what you get.
Each photo had been manipulated to represent
a set of financial data.
 
I'll let you guess,
which vista goes with which financial data set:
Nasdaq '80-'09 ,
and HangSeng '80-'09,
and Lehman Brothers '92-'08.
 
What great fun!
And what a clever way for an investor
to internalize the pattern.
 
This data visualization fascinated me
as it was the first time I had seen it used
for an art museum application.
 
A blue dot represented a certain collector.
A black dot represented a certain artist;
and a green dot represented a prediction
for an artist or a collector.
 
I found it to be a very cool
marketing, pricing, and strategy tool.
 Wow!
The breathtaking conference room
near the very top of the building.
Our museum guide shared that it illustrated
one of the focuses of the collection:
color repetition.
 
It made me wonder if there were any works of art
by Turkish artist Setenay Özbek
in the collection.
Her work would fit right in.
A view to the right
featured the ancient Rumeli Hisari fortress
on the Bosphorus
and closer in,
a minaret complete with an
emblematic crescent
at the top.
From the center end of the conference room,
I think it would be impossible to be bored
waiting for a meeting to start, don't you?
Instead of looking right or center,
 let's now look left,
 where there are doors
leading out to the terrace.
 
Don't you want to see the view
of the Bosphorus
from out there?
I do.
Wow! Wow! Wow!
Who doesn't love container ships?
And that glorious mansion or palace!
I wonder what it is.
That's the Black Sea beyond the ship.
The view closer in of the neighborhood.
A constant thought I had
during my visit is how
every aspect of the building
would delight any child
who comes to visit.
 
Yes, this is seating,
but how would a five-year-old use this?

It doesn't roll.
I checked.
 
So what's at the very top
of the haunted mansion?
In the very top turret?
Let's go look.
A perfect little spot for
two to four people
to close a deal.
Notice the color repetition
of coffee.
Magnificent.
 
 
Come back tomorrow to explore the offices of Borusan Contemporary in my third post on Istanbul's haunted mansion or Perili Köşk. Now you have discovery in your day too!
 
 
In case you missed it, here's my first post
on Turkey's first office art museum,
Borusan Contemporary:
 
 
 
Some additional posts about art you might enjoy:
 
"CuriousSouls" Gather in Istanbul for Discussion


What's there to do in Wichita, Kansas? Why not see breathtaking art?


Welcome to Capitalism!


Celebrating 90 Years of Artist Zenděk Sýkora

 
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Sunday, July 21, 2013

An Afternoon of Art and Natural Beauty at Borusan Contemporary, Part One

Our quest:
to explore this "haunted mansion"
My friend Barbara proposed an afternoon outing yesterday. I was deep into a good book so I took much convincing.

"It's too beautiful to stay indoors!" she said. It was beautiful too. This summer temperatures in Istanbul this year have been wonderfully temperate. "O-k-a-y," I said reluctantly. Sometimes you just have to trust your friend and go with her.

This was our quest: to explore this magnificent old building from 1910. It's called the Perili Köşk, or Haunted Mansion. For years, it had an outer shell only. The entire building had never been fully finished as war had interrupted construction. While it sat in that state, the building would make noises that spooked the neighborhood as materials shifted around. Hence, its reputation as haunted.
 We walked from Barbara's place
in the Bebek neighborhood
along the captivating Bosphorus corniche
to Perili Köşk Istanbul,
about a 15-minute walk.
The renovation of the building
 by architect Hakan Kıran
had been done perfectly;
all the new materials enhanced
the magnificence of the 10-story building.
 
Our lunchtime view:
an Istanbul ferry under the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge
The Haunted Mansion had been renovated and updated with spectacular attention to detail. The inside was light, airy, and modern - not in a way that fought with the historic nature of the house, but in a way that uplifted the spirit and sharpened the senses.
 
The historic building has been leased to Borusan Contemporary Holding Company on a long-term lease. During the week, over 70 people worked there managing a portfolio of companies. On weekends, the building is opened up to the public to explore and enjoy. Not only is it a workplace, but an office art museum.
 
Our first stop was the second floor, where we were having lunch with Internations friends in the museum café.

This young Turkish woman
 had been fasting for Ramadan
since sunrise.
She sat with us at lunch,
 and as you can see,
she still had her humor.
This Polish woman
was such a firecracker.
She had come from practicing dressage
all morning
for a competition in Bulgaria
next month.
Serdar, the organizer for our outing,
had just been to Ecuador
for a homeopathy convention
where he was the lone Turk in attendance.
He had enjoyed serving as the
"flagbearer for his country."
Every spot in the café had an amazing view
of the Bosphorus
and the bridge and shipping traffic.
 
It was time to go in and explore the rest of the building. Our museum guide had arrived to show us around. I had no idea what to expect because I had not even heard of the building before that day. Come back for my next post on the Borusan Contemporary to see what we discovered:

An Afternoon of Art and Natural Beauty at Borusan Contemporary, Part Two

An Afternoon of Art and Natural Beaty at Borusan Contemporary, Part Three
 
 
You might enjoy a few other posts about architecture:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Friday, July 19, 2013

After the Trayvon Martin Verdict: Here are Ten People Who Helped Me Expand "My Circle of Compassion"

Trayvon Martin

Sometimes events at home are so dismaying I can hardly bear them. Such as it was with the Trayvon Martin verdict. This blog post is dedicated to him, my fellow American, 17-year-old, unarmed Trayvon Martin, who was killed while walking home by a white, armed, male adult.
President Barack Obama said: 
"... we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities.  We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis.  We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this.  As citizens, that’s a job for all of us.  That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.  
One of the things President Obama asked Americans to do to deal with their pain after the Trayvon Martin verdict was to continually work to expand their circle of compassion. By listening to voices different than our own, we may come to understand what it is to walk in another person's shoes.

One of the great things about Twitter is it allows us to listen to voices different than our own in a really non-threatening way. If you're a white American who wants to do as your President humbly requested and imagine other people's realities, here are ten black American voices I would like to recommend for you to follow on Twitter. These people have helped me grow and imagine life in someone else's shoes in the four years I've been on Twitter at @emptynestexpat.

I think we should listen not only as a spiritual thing to do, but as a strategic thing to do. As our nation becomes more multicultural, the better we are able to navigate and understand our differences, the less friction there is on forward motion in the future.

Here they are:

1) Charles Consult tweets at @Charles_Consult. He's a Wisconsin native, attorney, martial arts expert and enthusiast, now living as an expat entrepreneur in the Netherlands.

2) Dr. Blair LM Kelly, an American historian and professor teaching in North Carolina. She's the author of the book "Right to Ride" about streetcar segregation. She tweets at @profblmkelley.

3) Every teenage student should be lucky enough to have a teacher as cool as Brandon David Wilson. Brandon, tweeting as @Geniusbastard, is a not only a role model in the LA Public Schools as a teacher, but he's also a cinephile, activist, and thoughtful commentator on pop culture.

4) Courtney Young is a writer, a Spellman grad, and a board member of an organization I admire called Hollaback (documenting street harassment). She's an enthusiastic book reader (I love talking books with her), and founder of Think Young Media. She tweets at @Cocacy and at @thinkyoungmedia.

5) I can count the number of inspiring American math teachers I know on one hand (in Turkey, it would take both hands and my feet...but that's another post). How about you? Do you know a lot of inspiring US math teachers? Here's one who teaches in the New York Public Schools. He is, as his bio says, "the teacher Gotham deserves." Jose Vilson, tweeting at @JLV is a math teacher, writer, and activist. He hates that it in American culture it is ok to admit math phobia; he works tirelessly to get kids excited about math. Just for that, he deserves a follow!

6) Robin Terrell is a San Francisco diversity expert who has something big in the works called "The Global Mobility Project" that is supposed to debut this summer. I'm very curious what it is, but I enjoy her tweets right here and now at @robinlterrell.
Michael Twitty
preserving and promoting
African-American foodways
7) Somebody I just started following is @koshersoul. Michael Twitty came to a whole lot of people's attention with his open letter to Paula Deen. He's a black, Jewish Southerner and culinary historian who shares food photos that can make a happy expat like me, currently enjoying Turkish kitchen, wish to be right at a Southern table drinking sweet tea, eating barbecue and making room for blueberry cobbler. Michael also tweets at @antebellumchef. Here's what he says is the "best of his blog" for new followers.

8) Tinu who tweets at @blackgirlinprague rarely tweets. I wish she did because she always has something sassy to say. She's the one person on this list I know in person. But maybe if she had more followers, she'd be inspired. She's a tech professional, raised in America, now fluent in Czech, making the Golden City of Prague her home.

9) Someone researching black male performance in American education is Antonio M. Daniels. More power to him. Our education system is failing black males and I'm glad someone is trying to figure out how to fix this. The last American education system I worked in had a 17% high school graduation rate for black males. You can follow Antonio at @paideiarebel.

10) Jennifer Williams instantly telegraphs she is looking out for the next generation of young women who follow hers with her twitter handle @4coloredgirls. That sensitivity, and her desire to shield them from hurt, is something I learn from. She is a writer, professor, feminist and cultural critic in Houston, Texas.

Of course, there are many famous names, frequently in the media, whose bio I won't detail as they're all so easily findable. I learn from @oprah (she's really the founder of this category, isn't she?), @MHarrisPerry, @baratunde, @MsTerryMcMillian, @elonjames, @rebeccawalker, @ashong, @DonnaBrazile, @neiltyson, @ProfHolloway @cornelwest, @tavissmily, @marclamonthill, @MichaelEDyson, @NewBlackMan, @BobHerbert, @VanJones88, @hillharper and @chrisrock.

Truly,what choice do we have but to listen to each other better? Who wants to go through life in a world where we barely tolerate our fellow citizens that differ from us ethnically? Surely we can think bigger as citizens. Our advantage as Americans is that we have the world's ethnicities and cultures living right amongst us. If we choose to only honor people just like us, we're missing the whole point of America.

Dear friends in America, what's one action you can take to help heal America after the Trayvon Martin heartbreak? I invite you to also listen...and learn. Thanks to all the people named above for sharing their thoughts in ways that make me grow as an individual.

You might also like:

Listening to Dissidents

A near spiritual experience at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas

Why the Obama Presidential Library Should be Built in Springfield, Illinois

What's there to do in Wichita, Kansas? Why not see breathtaking art?

Topkapi Palace , Part Two: Harem Culture Shock

Enjoying Neil Degrasse Tyson at the UW Senior Sendoff

Yes, Empty Nest Expat is on Facebook. You can follow me there.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

"My Little Library in Anatolia" by Kaya Genç

Kaya Genç
I found this first-person narrative by Kaya Genç of his memories when he did his Turkish military service as a librarian to be absolutely delightful. I can't resist sharing it. Thanks to @carpetblogger for passing it along. You can read it here.


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Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Three years of conversations in a Muslim country distilled down to 13 minutes and 49 seconds

Moving to a Muslim country is a chance for an expat to confront one's own Islamophobia directly. It works too. I love living without fear. Instead of learning through American media what Muslim people are like, I'm learning from them directly and listening to them share with me how they see things.

If you want to know what it feels like to be an expat, this man's talk has distilled the kind of conversations I've had with my Muslim friends over the last three years down to 13 minutes and 49 seconds. I ask you to listen to Mehdi Hasan, speaking at the Oxford Union, with an open mind and heart, as otherwise there really isn't any point in listening. You would miss the whole experience of what it actually is like to be an expat.

To all my Muslim friends as you begin your celebration of Ramazan during what will be a very hot month, I say: "Ramazan Mubarak!"

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Turkey's Ethnic Diversity

Turk, Kurd, Bosnian
Circassian, Nomad, Immigrant
Laz, Albanian, Georgian
Alevi, Sunni, Şafii (what is that?)
One of the things I love about Turkey is something it has in common with America: ethnic diversity! I always say Turkey is as diverse a vegetable stew as America - it just has different vegetables. And all of those vegetables are new to me. I met a Turk or two before I came here, Bosnians too (often new immigrants to America), but I am sure I never met a Kurd, or an Alevi (hadn't even heard of them before I cam here). I only knew the word Circassian from reading Mark Twain, they are now a diaspora people for the most part. I met a Laz woman once during spontaneous outdoor dancing in Turkey, but to see their culture I would need to go up to the Northern Black Sea coast. Albanians, Georgians, Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks help make up the Levantine culture that is so wonderfully fun to experience because it is so different than what I am used to at home.

Once you've experienced diversity, do you find going back to a homogeneous society kind of boring? I do. It's all the differences that make life interesting.
 
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