Bridges

The Artist with his art
Originally uploaded by AliChen.

What.
Is.
That?

I'm looking at a this contraption sitting on top of a water jug. As Emel starts pumping a light bulb shows up above my head.

In the U.S. we take the Sparkletts or Arrowhead, or "insert appropriate brand name here" water jugs, flip them over and put them into a water cooler/dispenser.

In Turkey, they don't bother with the harder part of flipping the jug. Just toss a pump on the jug while the mouth is pointed up. Sometimes I wonder why we make things harder than they have to be.

In walking through a bazaar after a boat trip I met a man who travels to the coast for the summer to sell his art. He takes a drill and etches platters, and hair clips and all different things with beautiful patterns and designs.

Both my sister and I bought one and asked him to sign the back. He offered us tea while he took his drill and signed his name.

In the winter he goes back to Iszmir (hope I spelled that right) to try to make his living there doing something else. Creating complex designs with a drill is more than enough of a skill for me, but the man's gotta eat right?

One last ingenious invention. The car shower.

All along the road sides in the rural areas where cars get extremely hot, you'll see a pole that looks like a lamp post. But instead of a lamp at the top, it's a shower head pouring out water. And you drive right under and cool your car off. It's a lot of fun and it works really well.

I'll leave you with this final story. We took a car ferry back over to Istanbul late at night. Car ferrys are nothing new but these are HUGE boats and there are some differences between them in Turkey and the U.S.

My sister, being from Seattle, climbed up to the top level of the ferry because she knew from experience that it was the best view from the boat. In searching for her a few minutes later, I traipsed right up to the top level too and found her talking with the captain while the rest of the upper level was empty.

I found it odd but there were chairs there so it was meant for people to sit right?

Wrong. The top level is for captain and crew only. We were only allowed to stay because we were visitors from a different country (and, I think, because were were Asian women.)

Emel came up a half hour later after looking all over the boat for us and not finding us at all.

She hadn't thought to look on the top level since everyone knew it was forbidden.

Everyone except the ignorant Americans of course.

There were no signs, no chains, no barricades so it was open to us.

In typing this, I actually realize that that's symbolic of the American people. It can be both good and bad. But if it leads to tea with the captain and a tour of the bridge...I'll call it a good trait for now.