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Published: March 19th 2009
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Aça Kapısı Cafe
With a fantastic view of the Golden Horn and Bosphorus Wow guys, it's been a while since I updated you all here, eh? Sorry about that. Things on this end are really steady rollin'--this weekend I did the first really really Istanbul-y stuff I've done in a while. On Friday I made curry soup and failed latkes for a bunch of my friends for dinner, which was good enough that it was worth all the pain of finding the stupid ingredients in Istanbul (though butternut squash and sour cream were never actually found) and then going to a concert for a really really great band called
Norrda that mixes Turkish traditional percussion with down tempo beats and some trip hop and world music and folk elements in Beşiktaş, a really cool neighborhood closer to where we live than the main nightlife hub, Taksim. Yesterday Kendra and I went to go to the post office to pick up the package that her parents sent her; the stupid guy at the post office told me it was in Sultan Ahmet but it's really way farther away in another part of the city. We made the most of it by going back to see the pretty impressive New Mosque over near the Golden Horn
Crossing the Galata Bridge.
It's what I got in the way of pictures for this post. Sorry. and climbing up the hill to this really amazing cafe tucked away where you'd never expect it that has the biggest tea selection anywhere in Istanbul (though it's still not very good tea) and an absolutely amazing view of the Bosphorus. We met up with Paul there and then walked across the Galata Bridge to take the second oldest underground station up to Taksim for a cheap, but reasonably good, dinner.
Experiences like the last couple days remind yet again of how amazing this city is. It's been a lot harder to enjoy because the weather has been so wet and discouraging and gray in a very Seattle-like way that makes me want to not to anything except lie in bed and sleep allllllll day. But thankfully it looks like the weather is starting to clear up a bit. This Thursday I am going to another show featuring the really cool instrumental band
Nordik, and the Thursday after that seeing
In Praise of Shadows at Istanbul Modern for free and beyond that hopefully spending some time singing karaoke and seeing some of Istanbul that I've not seen yet. Sweet.
So what have I been doing instead of enjoying Istanbul? Focusing on school...sort of. School this semester is just okay; two of my classes are pretty good, but the other two are prettttty lame. On the good side are Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity, which is really interesting if a bit too theoretical for me so far, and Political Anthropology of Markets and Capitalism which provides a really interesting way of studying markets for someone who has studied in both the Jackson School and Econ department back home. On the bad side are Development of Contemporary Democracies which is full of stuff I already know but which I have to take to get my theory requirement out of the way for UW's Political Science program and Agricultural Economics which is far more interesting than it sounds but which the professor does not take very seriously since it's an elective.
Beyond school I've somehow been gripped by the desire to record cruddy demos of my music on Garage Band that perhaps you will hear some time as well as writing about music and hanging out with my two sets of room mates. I've started writing about music for wirelessbollinger.com, a music magazine that's pretty well known in Australia. It's pretty interesting; I get a lot of free music and I am going to start getting into shows free and doing interviews soon. Most exciting is that Tim, the manager, might send me to cover
Primavera Sound fest in Barcelona at the end of the semester. Which would mean I would get and probably get to hang around backstage for free. Here's hoping that happens and I get to kick it with Richard D. James, Neil Young, and Thurston Moore in Barcelona...
all at once. Pretty g'damn exciting, amirite?
When I say I have two sets of room mates I mean the ones here in the apartment I live in and also my good friends Paul, Ariel, and Kendra who are all living together and who I hang around often enough where they feel like my second roomies. It's a pretty good arrangement, though it's discouraged me from making new friends this semester so far. Oops. Here's to getting on that soon, right?
Anyway, things are going well. The only issue is that I NEED A JORB OH MY GOD. It's been a lot harder finding employment than I anticipated. Oh well, it will all work itself out...
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