For the last little while the GF and I have been banging our heads against various forms of bureaucracy, most recently the bank – our ATM cards are blocked, can only be unblocked by telephone, to use the telephone service we need a telephone pin, the pin is sent to our registered phone number, we’ve put in the registered phone number but it is not showing up on their systems. Today I went to the bank to get it sorted out and learned that our registered phone number was allocated to our account but not to our individual profiles, so I had that put in. Then came back to get the telephone pin, was asked the usual sort of very insecure identifying information (name of pet duck in primary school, that sort of thing) and discovered that it must have been entered incorrectly in the system, because the answer I gave did not match their records. Argh. So it’s back to the bank tomorrow.
Also went to the post office, a far more successful endeavour (I think). A bit of waiting around outside, as coronavirus restrictions mean that you can only enter if you are called in. I handed over the letter and my 6.50 lira, and that was that. Hopefully they put a stamp on it and put it in a postbox, but I was slightly disappointed not to actually get a stamp and put it in the postbox myself. A rare treat that days. Anyway the letter is gone, hopefully, off to Pakistan to my nephew who wrote me a letter which I haven’t yet received, but he was growing impatient at the ridiculous delays inherent in physical correspondence, so my sister sent me a photo of the letter on WhatsApp and asked me to reply before the original is received.
The city is definitely emptier than before the weekend. In the evenings, of course, there is the coronavirus curfew after 8 and the restrictions on dining in, but I think there were fewer people along busy Istiklal avenue and Taksim Square (where my bank is) than I have seen before. Rumour has it there are over 70,000 cases a day in Turkey these days, with Istanbul having the greater share. It feels very far away from Taipei.