Greetings, O ye fortunate fodder,
If you’ve ever had a pleasant thought directed in my vicinity, I’d kindly ask you to forgive any errors of wit, logic, or spelling that might be contained within this epistle. I’m certain that I’ve slept somewhat more than 20 minutes in the last 3 weeks, but at the moment, I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on it.
Things are going reasonably well here. Classes have started at Isik, and I’ve got scarcely a moment to myself. Of course, I’m only teaching 7 ½ hours a week, but somehow I find myself uncharacteristically busy. How’s that, you ask? Booming social life? Jet-set cocktail nights, 5-star dinners in hotel ballrooms, and a circuit of academic lectures around the intellectual capital of the old Ottoman Empire (those hats weren’t just for show, you know). Ah, no.
And, just to satisfy your curiosity, I’m also not spending my time feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, or seducing a score of women behind my girlfriend's back. However, I can, without the slightest doubt in my mind, tell you that my office walls are beige. A very light beige, as it were, which nicely matches the wooden desks and white ceiling. How can I be so sure? How can I so explicitly remember the color of my office walls?
I stare at them. All day long.
Look at my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Yes, O my good friends and bitter enemies, my day begins at 5:50 AM, minus a snooze or two, whereupon I rush madly around my apartment getting dressed, making coffee, showering, shaving (if I’m lucky), ironing, smoking, and enviously watching my girlfriend sleep. At 6:50, I emerge into the foggy Istanbul morning and have a brisk stroll down a series of streets, passages, parking lots, and underpasses, until, 20 minutes later, I arrive at the spot where my service bus collects me.
The bus ride isn’t so bad, really. Yes, it’s a hour and a half, and yes, the coffee that I MUST drink before I can leave the house prevents me from falling into anything but the most superficial sleep, but at least I can study my Turkish book, or stare out the window at the rain-soaked, fog-ridden, accident-prone highway to Sile, my little slice of the Black Sea.
Two short hours after boarding the bus, my day officially begins. Most days, I find myself in front of a class at 9:00 AM, which is (sarcasm aside), really the perfect way to begin the day. And that class fills the next 2 ½ hours of my life, until suddenly, as if no time had passed at all, it’s lunchtime, and my colleagues and I amble off down to the cafeteria to wait in line for half an hour, amidst the screaming, cursing, blubbering, oooof-ya-ing, intellectual paragons of the new generation of Turks.
The food is the highlight of my day. It’s fresh, it’s delicious, it’s plentiful, and it’s free. And I’m getting fat… But, I really need to stuff myself with calories because of the long day ahead of me. See, when I finish my lunch at 12:30, I always head straight back to my office so that I can prepare myself for the afternoon.
Which consists of staring at the wall, and not a damn thing else.
Oh, well, actually, I drink coffee and smoke cigarettes too. Sometimes I chat with my office mates, who apparently have a lot more practice dealing with being absolutely useless. See, Isik University anticipated an enrollment of 500 this year for the EFL department, and therefore created 15 new jobs, giving us over 50 teachers. In reality, there were 163 new students enrolled, meaning that about 50 people are doing the work of approximately 15. And, O O O O that Ottoman rag, it’s so myopic, so completely idiotic! Viddy this, my assuredly appalled Anglo-Saxons (et al.), no matter my actual teaching schedule, no matter the actual amount of work assigned to me, the director (whose job appears to be to study the field across the street through his panopticonic window, squeezing out little rumbling snorts of laughter and derision) would have his senses extremely offended if I were to think about actually leaving before 4:30.
Ah, but when 4:30 comes, what fun to be had! I, along with a handful of colleagues, fasten our bags, don our coats, and erupt out of the EFL building’s front door, only to face the throng of half-evolved (but they’re trying so hard!) simian students, chortling, shouting, and chain-smoking, as they wait for the ONE BUS (30 seats, give or take) that will carry them into the City, Istanbul, where they can fulfill their young, burgeoning, fleshy appetites by engaging in such carnal activities as drinking tea, and ambling about aimlessly through the dusty streets of a forgotten capital. Oh, Discordia!
Sometimes, I get lucky, and I can “accidentally” step on a few toes, creating a big enough wedge to actually enter the gelatinous mass, and building up enough momentum to carry me into the bus, whereupon the second part of my trial begins. Over the last few weeks, their frontal lobes have clearly developed enough that they now carry their friend’s bags onto the bus with them, throw them onto the seat next to them, and stare at the ground, as we teachers scour the bus for an empty seat; however, if I fail at the much more difficult task of wresting a knapsack out of a reasonably inviting seat, as I often do, I must leave the bus, and patiently wait another 45 minutes, until the personnel buses come, upon which I’m almost guaranteed a seat.
The aforementioned personnel bus should drop me off only a convenient 20 minute walk away from my house at approximately 6:30. But, assuming that the sun has risen that morning, and that hell is still a HOT fairy tale, traffic will be gridlocked by the time I make it back to Istanbul. Usually, however, the traffic only adds about an extra half an hour to my commute time, for which I suppose I should be thankful.
Thus, at about 7:20, I put my key in the door, trudge up three flights of stairs, emerge into my apartment, and flop into my bed or onto the floor, depending how far I get. With a heroic effort, I often manage to stay awake for a few hours, battling the headache from all the coffee, the hours in a bus, and the gasoline fumes from waiting in traffic, although I’m pretty much useless to do anything besides ordering food off the internet and staring blankly at my roomates while they amuse themselves. By approximately 11:00, I am sprawled across my bed, rumpled sheets haphazardly draped across my fully clothed body, occasionally throwing open one eye and muttering nonsensical phrases like, “have you got any more sauce? I’d like to see the garden hose…”
Yes, yes, yes, I know, I only work 4 days a week, so it can’t be too bad, right? My evenings are (useless) free, and I can do whatever I want all weekend long (sit at home and giggle naughtily). Still… You spend 20 hours a week in a bus, and then let’s talk about job satisfaction.
Respectfully, though exasperatedly yours,
Aaron Bey
If you’ve ever had a pleasant thought directed in my vicinity, I’d kindly ask you to forgive any errors of wit, logic, or spelling that might be contained within this epistle. I’m certain that I’ve slept somewhat more than 20 minutes in the last 3 weeks, but at the moment, I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on it.
Things are going reasonably well here. Classes have started at Isik, and I’ve got scarcely a moment to myself. Of course, I’m only teaching 7 ½ hours a week, but somehow I find myself uncharacteristically busy. How’s that, you ask? Booming social life? Jet-set cocktail nights, 5-star dinners in hotel ballrooms, and a circuit of academic lectures around the intellectual capital of the old Ottoman Empire (those hats weren’t just for show, you know). Ah, no.
And, just to satisfy your curiosity, I’m also not spending my time feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, or seducing a score of women behind my girlfriend's back. However, I can, without the slightest doubt in my mind, tell you that my office walls are beige. A very light beige, as it were, which nicely matches the wooden desks and white ceiling. How can I be so sure? How can I so explicitly remember the color of my office walls?
I stare at them. All day long.
Look at my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Yes, O my good friends and bitter enemies, my day begins at 5:50 AM, minus a snooze or two, whereupon I rush madly around my apartment getting dressed, making coffee, showering, shaving (if I’m lucky), ironing, smoking, and enviously watching my girlfriend sleep. At 6:50, I emerge into the foggy Istanbul morning and have a brisk stroll down a series of streets, passages, parking lots, and underpasses, until, 20 minutes later, I arrive at the spot where my service bus collects me.
The bus ride isn’t so bad, really. Yes, it’s a hour and a half, and yes, the coffee that I MUST drink before I can leave the house prevents me from falling into anything but the most superficial sleep, but at least I can study my Turkish book, or stare out the window at the rain-soaked, fog-ridden, accident-prone highway to Sile, my little slice of the Black Sea.
Two short hours after boarding the bus, my day officially begins. Most days, I find myself in front of a class at 9:00 AM, which is (sarcasm aside), really the perfect way to begin the day. And that class fills the next 2 ½ hours of my life, until suddenly, as if no time had passed at all, it’s lunchtime, and my colleagues and I amble off down to the cafeteria to wait in line for half an hour, amidst the screaming, cursing, blubbering, oooof-ya-ing, intellectual paragons of the new generation of Turks.
The food is the highlight of my day. It’s fresh, it’s delicious, it’s plentiful, and it’s free. And I’m getting fat… But, I really need to stuff myself with calories because of the long day ahead of me. See, when I finish my lunch at 12:30, I always head straight back to my office so that I can prepare myself for the afternoon.
Which consists of staring at the wall, and not a damn thing else.
Oh, well, actually, I drink coffee and smoke cigarettes too. Sometimes I chat with my office mates, who apparently have a lot more practice dealing with being absolutely useless. See, Isik University anticipated an enrollment of 500 this year for the EFL department, and therefore created 15 new jobs, giving us over 50 teachers. In reality, there were 163 new students enrolled, meaning that about 50 people are doing the work of approximately 15. And, O O O O that Ottoman rag, it’s so myopic, so completely idiotic! Viddy this, my assuredly appalled Anglo-Saxons (et al.), no matter my actual teaching schedule, no matter the actual amount of work assigned to me, the director (whose job appears to be to study the field across the street through his panopticonic window, squeezing out little rumbling snorts of laughter and derision) would have his senses extremely offended if I were to think about actually leaving before 4:30.
Ah, but when 4:30 comes, what fun to be had! I, along with a handful of colleagues, fasten our bags, don our coats, and erupt out of the EFL building’s front door, only to face the throng of half-evolved (but they’re trying so hard!) simian students, chortling, shouting, and chain-smoking, as they wait for the ONE BUS (30 seats, give or take) that will carry them into the City, Istanbul, where they can fulfill their young, burgeoning, fleshy appetites by engaging in such carnal activities as drinking tea, and ambling about aimlessly through the dusty streets of a forgotten capital. Oh, Discordia!
Sometimes, I get lucky, and I can “accidentally” step on a few toes, creating a big enough wedge to actually enter the gelatinous mass, and building up enough momentum to carry me into the bus, whereupon the second part of my trial begins. Over the last few weeks, their frontal lobes have clearly developed enough that they now carry their friend’s bags onto the bus with them, throw them onto the seat next to them, and stare at the ground, as we teachers scour the bus for an empty seat; however, if I fail at the much more difficult task of wresting a knapsack out of a reasonably inviting seat, as I often do, I must leave the bus, and patiently wait another 45 minutes, until the personnel buses come, upon which I’m almost guaranteed a seat.
The aforementioned personnel bus should drop me off only a convenient 20 minute walk away from my house at approximately 6:30. But, assuming that the sun has risen that morning, and that hell is still a HOT fairy tale, traffic will be gridlocked by the time I make it back to Istanbul. Usually, however, the traffic only adds about an extra half an hour to my commute time, for which I suppose I should be thankful.
Thus, at about 7:20, I put my key in the door, trudge up three flights of stairs, emerge into my apartment, and flop into my bed or onto the floor, depending how far I get. With a heroic effort, I often manage to stay awake for a few hours, battling the headache from all the coffee, the hours in a bus, and the gasoline fumes from waiting in traffic, although I’m pretty much useless to do anything besides ordering food off the internet and staring blankly at my roomates while they amuse themselves. By approximately 11:00, I am sprawled across my bed, rumpled sheets haphazardly draped across my fully clothed body, occasionally throwing open one eye and muttering nonsensical phrases like, “have you got any more sauce? I’d like to see the garden hose…”
Yes, yes, yes, I know, I only work 4 days a week, so it can’t be too bad, right? My evenings are (useless) free, and I can do whatever I want all weekend long (sit at home and giggle naughtily). Still… You spend 20 hours a week in a bus, and then let’s talk about job satisfaction.
Respectfully, though exasperatedly yours,
Aaron Bey
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