The GF had a day off – he, unlike me, gets public holidays – and in the afternoon, after I had finished some work, we took the tram over to the Sultanahmet area, planning to take advantage of thinned crowds on a Monday to visit a few sites. It turned out to be very crowded […]
Saving the arches
Before the weekend we had received a message from the architect that the marble guy could not put marble on the arches in the bathroom, so she suggested straightening them out. This was not acceptable as I really like those arches, so today we went for a council of war at which it was concluded […]
Sunday on the peninsula
This afternoon we went for the reverse of a couple of walks we had done before: first to Balat, along the water on a walkway that has only recently opened up and that had nice views over to the Pera/ Kasimpasha shore of the Golden Horn. We had coffee at the usual place, sitting on […]
Lights, lights, lights
Today we went and ordered most (though not all) of the lights for the flat. The place the GF had discovered seemed to have good quality and was certainly a slick operation, very helpful folks. So we have ordered single and double spots for the side lights, rod-shaped hallway lights, pendants for the kitchen, and […]
Bad order
I placed a poor order from the supermarket today. The only good thing in it was the yoghurt and a few sticks of lemongrass which I hope to grow. Other than that, there was a handful of unpromising raspberries, a funny knobbly fruit that cost 20 lira, a half-rotten bok choi, laundry detergent and a […]
Saturday brunch
We continued our exploration of nice Istanbul neighbourhoods, this time taking the ferry over to Kadikoy (and establishing along the way that the smaller pier has the better and more direct ferries) and walking through to Yeldeğirmeni, which I had just skirted a few weeks ago when I went to get my computer fixed and […]
Again, unexpected
To my surprise, my negotiation was successful and I received an offer very close to what I asked for – in addition to an increased number of working days. So, hurrah! In the evening the GF and I went to a part of Besiktas we had not yet visited, a quiet, trendy bit with a […]
Unexpected
This afternoon I had a call with a potential client to discuss the work and found, to my surprise, it was actually a job interview complete with questions beginning ‘Could you describe a time when…’. Maybe I am more confident than I used to be, or I don’t need the work as much as I […]
Clients return
A client call this morning, for a promising new project. Fingers crossed it works out better than Skype. Emails are starting to come in from clients, particularly the academic ones as they are clearly using the summer to finish up papers left hanging in end of term duties. In the afternoon we went to see […]
In the flow
This week’s tai chi lesson opened up today and managed to revive my interest in it after a slow start. This is the fourth week and for the first time we had a sequence of moves, in a flow. A pleasant change from week 1 (standing), week 2 (swinging arms) and week 3 (standing). At […]