Istanbul Day 3

Friday, unfortunately, was my last day in the outskirts of Istanbul, away from the city center. As you may recall from the last bit of yesterday's entry, I did my 11:30 research presentation on 2 1/2 hours of sleep. It went well, so that was good. I then had lunch at the university with three faculty members, did a bit of work, and resumed the day.

Koc University -  Koc is a private university that was founded in 1993 by the Koc family. Koc Holdings is the only Turkish company in the Fortune Global 500. The family is not poor, nor is the university. The campus is located on a hilltop in a forested area in the far northeast corner of the European side of Turkey, bordered by the Black Sea and the north end of the Bosphorous. The third bridge across the Bosphorous is being built a few miles from campus, although I certainly can't understand why. There is pretty much nothing on the Asian side that far north so it looks to be some sort of stupid political thing or something. The following four pictures feature a representative shot of campus (including the tower), a view north to the Black Sea from the tower, faculty housing (no, I am not kidding), and the in-process Most Useless Bridge on the Planet (picture taken from the outskirts of a fishing village a few miles south of campus). I still think that I prefer Bosphorous University, but I certainly would not mind working either place.

The Remains of the Day

The remainder of Friday was pretty low-key but not one bit less enjoyable than Thursday's action-fest. After a tour of campus, we left Koc at around 5 p.m. and drove through a couple of fishing villages on the way back toward Istanbul (or Bebek / Arnavutkoy, more accurately). I completely choked and didn't take any pictures as we were driving through these places, but they were very interesting -- totally stereotypic forested hillside / super-narrow winding, steep roads through "town" / old women in scarves / kids kicking rocks, chasing each other, messing around with stray dogs. Y'know, people live their lives wherever they are. Ultimately we got back to civilization and parked at Bosphorous University in the usual place-you-would-get-towed-in-5-minutes-if-you-were-at-an-American-university-but-it-is-fine-to-leave-the-car-there-for-10-hours-because-you're-in-Turkey. Dinner was at another rooftop place, this time on the Bosphorous rather than atop OMG street. As usual, both the food and the view (picture below) were amazing.

At Starbucks a few hours later, the girl behind the counter asked to use my name for our coffee order, and she spelled it M-A-Y-K. I told Lale that the girl had intentionally christened me with my very own Turkish name. Lale said that was stupid, that nobody is named Mayk. I told her not to rain on my parade, which gave me yet another opportunity to explain English metaphors. While we were sitting there, an early 20s college student-looking Turkish guy sitting nearby overheard us and asked what we were talking about. I showed him the cup and his response was "it could've been worse." Solid. He then told me that he needed me to help him come up with a name for his new tech startup company. No joke. We talked for a few minutes about what they're doing (apparently it is a bit like Periscope) and I asked him if they had any ideas for the name. He said they were thinking about "Loris," which is a small primate that I'd never heard of . He showed pictures (see them here). I told him that I thought it looked a little like a lemur and he said, "yeah ... a little like a lemur, but cuter." So I told him he should use that as the tagline -- "Loris Technologies - Like a Lemur. But Cuter." He seemed to like that idea, but then again Turkish people are nice ...

After leaving Starbucks (and neglecting to get a promise about royalties on my tagline) we walked back to Bosphorous University to pick up the car. Finals are still going on so the campus, like any college campus, was still hopping at 1 a.m. To further extend my reputation as a native, I drove the 7-8 miles back to the hotel. There wasn't very much traffic and I didn't even get to cut anybody off or use my horn, but I think I should at least get points for participation.

Tomorrow (which is actually yesterday because wi-fi was out at my new hotel last night) I'll be in the Old City and will continue updates from there. I'm anticipating that my last couple of days here will be pretty lame compared to what I've experienced so far, despite the fact that if you were to ask most tourists, I haven't "seen anything" yet. I guess it's all a matter of perspective ...

Cheers,
Mike