Turkish Delight

I arrived in Istanbul Ataturk International Airport to work with Microsoft MEA (Middle East and Africa) as an AIESEC Trainee on the 28th of November 2004 for atleast a 10 month stint. Today is the 6th of December and I am putting down my first impressions of my week here.

The Dorm

I am staying at the Bilgi University Dorm, it is one of the well known private universities here. I share my room with 5 other people from Poland, Venezuela, Turkey, Ukraine and the USA. Its quite a nice place with all amenities i could ask for, a washing machine, a kitchen, a TV room, internet connection in the rooms and lots of nice people, mainly undergraduate students from Turkey and abroad. All AIESEC trainees are given free accomodation here. It doesnt always allow a lot of privacy but provides great company in some crazy, funny and nice people from all around the world. There are a total of 17 trainees right now from all continents.

Istanbul

Istanbul is very beautiful, much more than I had imagined. Its a fusion between a medivial asian city and a fast paced European city. One half of it is in asia and the other in europe. The European side is the commercial capital of Istanbul and the Asian side has a lot of palaces, mueseums and historical places. On my arrival I was lucky to get a city tour with all the other trainees that the AIESECers had organized. There are over 3500 mosques in this city and one right behind the dorm that gives you a morning alarm at 5 in the morning and wakes you up from your beauty sleep. I live about 10 mins away from one of the most posh streets of Istanbul, its similar to the Champ-s-eleyse in Paris that has all the top brands and the night clubs as well as street side restaurants. I am surprised that the McDonalds and Pizza Huts of the world havent really taken over this place. Turkish people fancy their kebabs to the McDonald burgers and KFC chicken. An ideal evening here would be to go to an open air Tea place that overlooks the sea and serves Nargile (Hookahs), sip tea and Nargile, have a Tavuc shish (chiken tikka roll) at one of the kebab places and then go to madrid a popular pub here. All in all the place affords a lot of diversity in the kind of life you would like to lead.

Attitudes
The people here are quite scared to challenge the status quo, historically they had been living under a dictator for a long time and that is still evident from their way of life right now. The newspaper has very mild views about politicians and will not question anything that the government is upto. Its more of a joke book than anything else, it talks more about entertainment, advertisements and other tamashas in the city, quite like the Times of India nowadays.

Work place

I am based at the Head Quarters of Microsofts Middle East Asia and Africa office. The work place is quite casual, I am told people come in shorts during summers. I can surely make out that I am working in an IT company, most people have 2 computers on their desks trying to work on both of them at the same time. As you can imagine its a high security zone, sometimes it gets to you, for eg. you have a code to even enter the loo, imagine if you want to so badly go to the loo and you are trying to remember the code. My boss is quite a passionate and energetic middle aged egyptian lady. Slowly getting to know more about the work and what it will involve, largely will be to do with making a business plan for Microsofts partner NGOs in the Middle East Asia and Africa region, and making a csr plan for Microsoft in the MEA region. Looks promising but lets see how it goes.

AIESEC

The AIESECers in this city are quite passionate and ambitious set of people, quite similar to the kind you would find in India. They are much more in number though, you would find atleast 50 active AIESECers here at any point of time. I too have a trainee buddy feels a little wierd after being one for numerous trainees back in Ahmedabad. But as a good friend put it, what goes around comes around :)

The Food

Getting used to the food, they largely consume a lot of beef which I am not too fond of. But the kebabs are nice and you have Turkish dhabbas that serve nice shorbas and rice dishes. And ofcourse there are a lot of people from all parts of the world that cook at the dorm so I get to taste food from all corners of the world. If you have the right people along with you turkish food can be quite appetizing. One good thing that I have found here is good old chaas. They call it Ayran and its more like salted lassi but I don’t complain, something is better than nothing !

All in all I am living in a vibrant and exciting place and of what I have seen so far makes me look ahead with more excitement and the roller coaster ride that awaits me, the world is definetly not enough J
More as and when it happens!