The reason I am not posting to this blog more often is very prosaic and annoying. I am not awol as exo is claiming. Simply I am cut off the world. My phone line is not working for a week now, and ADSL connection is appearing and disappearing randomly – just as electricity. To have both of these luxurious things in the same time is cause for celebration.

But firstly I have some explanation to do.

My wife and me changed our coordinates and we are not living in Istanbul any more. We moved to the very south-western tip of the country known as a “fancy” holiday area of Bodrum.*

Moving is a separate story of which I don’t want to be reminded. Just let me put it like this: moving inside the same city is trouble; moving 800 & something kilometres together with 11 pets is logistical nightmare, and moving 800 & something kilometres with 11 pets using “services” of the transport company [let’s call it] “Ulu--y” [Turks will recognise it, anyway] is a hell**. But enough on moving, it was ages ago – in late spring.

Summer, sea and being close to the beutiful nature diminished the facts that rented [village] house is far bellow urban standards. When my wife rented it she had two objections [she could have thousands, but we are not that spoiled]. First problem were a primitive half rotten iron windows, and the second was toilet in the main bathroom – one of those for squatting, here known as “a la Turka”. Landlord promised to fix both. And he did.

Still I can’t get over the fact that memory on my digital photo camera broke, so I don’t have a document about that toilet. Our landlord is DIY man, and what he did was that he attached new toilet bowl to the existing “a la Turka” toilet. It was kind of artwork.

I had to travel to Serbia few days after we moved. There, I told the toilet story to my cousin who is construction engineer. “That is not going to work.”, he told me. “Because there is two “S” pipes now, it will, sooner or later, start to send shits back.” It was sooner. Next day my wife called me to tell me that toilet was clogged. It took almost a week to landlord to bring the repairman and to take out “a la Turka” from that assemblage.

And windows? Oh, yes he replaced them with “modern” metal/PVC windows. Just the gaps between windows and walls are on some places half of inch, and that makes mosquito nets [part of the windows] just decoration.

During the summer electricity was disappearing sometimes, but for short time. Speaking of it voltage is so unstable that my UPS is going mad. During summer nights electricity cuts were even pleasant, because it would kill light pollution from the street light overlooking our terrace [there’s street light although there’s no street].*** But the fact is that electricity cuts were not that often and they were short.

Real problems started in mid October with somewhat colder nights. Electricity cuts became regular after the sunset and lasted much longer [sometimes till dawn]. Of course, my wife was regularly calling electro-distribution company to complain [at that time we had working telephone line]. Once she got the “explanation” that shortcuts are happening due to “humidity of the air”. To no avail she tried to explain to the guy that there’s electricity without interruption in countries where there’s rain non-stop and also in the countries with a lot of snow. “Well, ‘abla’ [Turkish for sister], that’s it. Humidity, and we can’t do much about it.” That was before rain season, which started two-three weeks ago.

To our big surprise we acquired telephone line and ADSL connection in less than two weeks, after moving here. Line had to be brought physically and its route is very interesting. It comes from neighbour’s house [some 30m] to the chimney of the fireplace on our terrace [everybody here has one fireplace on terrace]; from there it goes to the flat roof of the house [it is tight to remnant of iron armature], cross it and through the window enters the room where my computer is.

My connection to the world. It was miracle that it was working...

It was working perfectly till few weeks ago. Wonder of Internet and Skype made possible to renew some friendships, and I was regularly speaking with London, Moscow, Budapest, Belgrade, Novi Sad etc. It was really amazing to do it from this middle of the nowhere.

First telephone died, it is more than a week ago now. ADSL connection was alive but struggling, erratically appearing and disappearing. One day my wife went to neighbours to ask if their telephone is working. “No.”, she got the answer. “Did you report it?” she asked. “No, telephone is NEVER working when there’s wind.” Unbelievable, but true! And I have to add ADSL connection is not working when it is windy. At least this was not “official” explanation, as it was in the case of electricity.

Of course we reported broken line immediately [unlike neighbours, for them it is natural state of affairs]. We were promised that repairman would be sent next day [latest]. That anchored us to home for two days [for any case]. Do I have to say he never showed up?

All of above wouldn’t [I repeat wouldn’t] be so annoying if there would be a hope for [a little bit faster] improvement. But there’s none. “Burasi Turkiye” [this is Turkey] is a blanket excuse, justification and explanation for whatever is wrong or not functioning in this country. You are faced with that “argument” everywhere and in any circumstances. What is even worse – people are buying it, and parroting it with some inexplicable pride.

It takes tremendous amount of passivity and sheepishness to accept that “luxuries” like electricity and/or telephone line are depending on elements. And that attitude is nourished by whoever works for those services [needless to say services in monopolistic position] in order to hide own incapability and laziness. That goes from top to the bottom, and ordinary people are usually seeing just those on the bottom of that chain, who use that “burasi Turkiye” argument not to move their ass.

It will take some [I guess loooong] time for people here to realize that above mentioned [and many other] services are not Almighty’s mercy [or for that matter anybody’s mercy], but their right, to which they are entitled by paying for them. It will take similar amount of time for those working in those services to realize that they are there not by Almighty’s right but to serve the people who are paying them. And I repeat from top to bottom.

That are, shortly, reasons why posts on this blog are not regular. This post I wrote [offline] on Monday, November 28, at 13:00, when I’ll be able to post it I don’t know. Almighty does. It depends on the weather. Burasi Turkiye.

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* I was contemplating changing the name of the blog, but gave up since it really doesn’t matter where physically I am. View from here is [more or less] the same as from Istanbul.

** It’s enough to say that the movers [should I add “and shakers”] didn’t have courage to unpack our piano. Since we are currently in an “in-between” stage i.e. searching for the property to buy, and living in the rented house [half of our stuff is still in boxes], we let them go, actually we hardly waited to forget them altogether, although broken furniture will remind us of those humanoid apes for a long time. So, our piano is [still] like some Christo’s work.

One digression on Ulu--y. We asked two companies for quotation for moving to Bodrum. One unknown and Ulu--y, which is old “respected” company. Unknown gave us exactly double price of Ulu--y, so, normally we opted for Ulu--y. When I told about quotations to my Turkish friend he asked me: “Are you sure they understood that they have to move you to Bodrum and not to basement? They are Laz you know.” Namely, bodrum in Turkish means basement, and Laz are the people of Black sea, subjects of jokes like Poles in America.

*** My guess is that house owner bribed somebody to put it there so he can save on electricity bill.

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Note on the margin

Beside Yugoslavia, country I was born in, I lived in Switzerland, France and Hungary. I traveled a lot [in those days when YU passport was welcomed all around the world] and never in any country I heard anything similar to the argument “burasi Turkiye”.

This is not written from bad intentions. I would like everything to work perfectly and I wish that this country reminded me less to my country of origin, or Hungary before transition [which I had a privilege to witness]. In those two countries explanations for more or less similar things were that it was/is bad influence of decades of socialism/communism. And here? Just "burasi Turkiye".