After emerging, with some difficulty, from nearly a year of extreme overwork, I find myself in nearly the same place as a year ago. Nearly agreed to a work assignment that will eat up the winter (but comes with travel), nearly agreed to joining a committee that nearly killed me last year, and have rejoined […]
Mall aesthetic
Today we decided to go and explore the Camlica mosque, the immense structure built on a hill on the Asian side, dominating that view. It required a ferry to Uskudar and then a metro and then a climb up a hill past a place where we had lunch (kuru fasulye) and up through a large […]
Market day
This morning, or rather early afternoon, the GF and I went off to the Ferikoy organic market, though first to the small restaurant nearby which only serves one meal, breakfast, consisting of freshly baked naan, eggs, honey, cheese, butter and salad, all sourced from their village in Erzincan. It’s a nice breakfast, but it was […]
Climb down jump off
Having bashed through an obscene amount of work the last few days, and missed more deadlines than I probably have in years, today was, finally, a quieter day. Well, I say quieter as I did finish an article and then go off with the GF to run a series of errands, most of which had […]
Post office lunch
Strolled down to the post office today, which has been converted into a sort of community space with a low key zero-waste restaurant. Pleasingly, the food was good and it wasn’t too expensive, so I think I will be going back there. Work remains overwhelming, though I’m slowly making my way through it. A few […]
Dipping a toe
I started dipping a toe back in Istanbul life yesterday by going down to the best local coffee followed by a stop at the best local cake/antiques shop which sadly doesn’t have the best coffee otherwise I would be there all the time. For dinner we went to the neighbourhood manti shop in Cihangir, which […]
Back
I flew from London to Istanbul yesterday. It was a very long day for a flight that was less than four hours long. I left in the morning at 9 London time and didn’t reach the flat until 10 Istanbul time. In between I travelled to Gatwick, remembered what a terrible airport it is to […]
Wet dog morning
This was the first morning that I went out onto the heath for my exercising and it was pouring with rain. I didn’t have even a yoga mat so resigned myself to pushups etc in the wet grass and optimistically pictured myself like a grunting marine in a training montage. The reality was less inspiring […]
Family matters
Went to a family gathering today, a not altogether successful one, which was a shame as its design was proposed by me. Elderly relative 1 wanted to meet elderly relative 2; 2 didn’t want to hop on the train to visit 1, while 1 is not able to climb the stairs to 2. Moreover, Sunday […]
Shared experiences
I have just returned from the second play that I have left during the interval. The last one was Macbeth in Malaysia, uncut and performed in full, very poorly, with some nods to Chinese opera. It was dire and, at the interval, the GF and I realised that we were only two hours in and […]