Gone for good

What a few weeks we have just had.

İ know we have been slack with the photos but İ promıse we will upload a heap soon.

We wish you a Merry Christmas.

The flight back was uneventful except for a burning desire (satisfied) to by Megs a new laptop in Dubai. We were picked up at the airport by Annie and taken straight to The Basin, for our date with Bacon, lots of Bacon. Breakfast over, we went our separate ways for a week.

I can’t explain how strange it was to be away from Meaghan, my best mate, for a week, after having spent every day, every night for nearly a year, away from home together. I missed her before we had even left the front driveway. Whenever we are apart even for a day İ am constantly reminded why she is my best mate. İ feel like İ should be explaining some huge secret or some overwhelming sense of connection but it is actually something very plain. Her constant companionship and consideration is what İ miss when she is not around.

It was so good to be back home though, we realised that it is actually easy to be away. The novelty doesn’t really wear off, on the road you are always meeting new people, in new places with new beer. Sure we had missed home but we had also been very busy. It wasn’t until we were home, doing nothing, just hanging out at home, that we realised just how much we miss it.

First date on the social calendar was a wedding of two of our best friends, Kate and Ossie. In 50 words or less this wedding went like this: Pole dancing on the Hens, Ferry sinks on the Bucks, A lovely ceremony (Adam starred as the Usher), beautiful reception (Megs starred as MC) and kicked out of the bridal suite at 330 am by Matron of Honour. A great night was had by all.

Then we spent a really relaxing few days in Tasmania with Megs parents which was really nice. Then Christmas week at home. For me it was the first home Christmas for years and it was great.

Then, all too soon, we were on the plane back to Istanbul, and our new jobs (uncomfirmed), new apartment (unconfirmed) and new suburb (unconfirmed).

Well, the last few weeks of our time in Istanbul (Before Christmas) were somewhat exciting. Because we lived through it, we are stronger for it. But a few of the events we would both prefer not to have experienced. Let’s start at the beginning.

The last of the blog updates had us leaving Berlitz and, following the ritual shaving off of the Mo’ (with Jen and Steve) looking younger, smarter and faster. We were completing our last few lessons with the classes that we had for Berlitz, when one night, it all seemed to come crashing down.

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

We got home from work to find our flatmates (now referred to as Hat and Melon – to protect the innocent) in a flat spin and all excited about a gun related incident. After a few questions and a lot of “Hat! Calm down and explain what happened”, we discovered that the gun related incident was infact very serious and a little too close to home.

Some of the Berlitz teachers (and good friends of ours) had returned home to their apartment to be followed inside by a guy with a handgun. Claiming to be searching for a large quantity of elicit substances he held these good friends of ours hostage for 3 hours. Terrifying to say the least.

Eventually they were released and immediately reported to the police and began the arduous tasks of providing witness statements etc for the investigation. That night they came back to ours and our other friends places to try to relax and get some sense of normality back. What an ordeal. For one night, and one night only, differences were set aside for those in the Adam, Meaghan, Hat and Melon household, while we all set about trying to provide a sense of community for the girls.

This effort continued the next day when a few of us had a little chat to the owner of the Berlitz franchise in Istanbul. It seemed a little strange to us that he would interrogate the girls himself and subject them to accusations that they had brought this on themselves, so we let him know what we thought. Some things were said that were pretty imflamatory and under any other circumstances (ie if we were dealing with rational people) we would have burned every bridge concerning working with Berlitz ever again. Not so here though – they are already chasing us for work.

The girls ended up leaving town a few days later. Sad to see them go, we then set about getting our stuff organised for our big Australian holiday.

Not before the fateful events of the last night in the Hat and Melon house though. I’ve lived with a lot of different people in a lot of different places but these two are by far the weirdest, most inconsiderate, socially deficient flatmates I have ever had the pleasure of cleaning up after. I don’t feel in the least bad about writing that here because they gave us an opportunity to state our case and tell it like we saw it on our last night in the flat.

It went something like this.

As we left the flat and started down the stairs Hat came running out of the flat, screaming at us all red in the face and turned, ran inside and slammed the door. Unexpected… you could say that, he had not said a word to either of us in 6 weeks. So we went back in to investigate.

The door opens and Hat jumps up from his chair (A chair surrounded by filth collected over a month or two of utter laziness that extended to personal hygiene) and comes running at us again yelling indecipherable abuse, waving his arms around and looking very much like he was going to hit us. Unexpected… you bet.

Anyway, those of you that know Meaghan even half as well as I do, know that my beautiful wife has more nerve than most and is almost impossible to beat in a fight head on, so she takes it back to Hat full steam. I sit down, hands in pocket and talk to Melon about these strange events unfolding.

It all comes out that Hat and Melon were terrified that we were going to leave the country without paying for the time in the flat. Now this wasn’t too unexpected because they had been hiding bills from us for a couple of weeks. Strange but true. So after a few home truths about our financial situation and our ability to pay the bills etc both Hat and Melon were left a little embarrassed by their tantrums.

So we explained the plan and that we were in fact coming back to Istanbul to work. This seemed to reassure Melon and by this time Meaghan had all but beat the living daylights out of Hat (Verbally anyway). Hats screaming abating, we packed the remainder of our stuff and left that night.

Amazed. In my previous life counselling in Western Australia I have met a range of people with some pretty serious social and personality disorders. Hat and Melon take the cake though.

On the flipside, we did end up staying a night with our good friends The Canadians – Josh and Jess, soon to be our flatmates.

So, bridges burned, guns away and nowhere to be seen, Hat and Melon wondering what they had done to deserve living with us, we were ready to come home for Christmas.

Recently I've been referring in jest to the new addition to our family - Dennis the Moustache. Dennis is a bit of fun for the month but is representative of my efforts to support the Movember charity.

Movember started in my homeland, Australia, but is now a world wide phenomenon. Movember supports raising awareness of Prostate Cancer and male Depression in Australia.

Last year in Australia 18,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 2,900 died of prostate cancer - equivalent to the number of women who die from breast cancer annually.

That's a lot of us blokes getting pretty sick.

Men are far less healthy than women. The average life expectancy of males is 5 years less than females.

So join in, Grow that Mo Bro and fight the fight for awareness. If you are a 30 something Bloke - talk to the doc, get a checkup. Donate or talk about it, either way help a bro out this month. Girls can join in too. Mo sisters are involved as well.

All donations are made directly to charities which will use the money to fund high quality research into the causes, treatment and impact of prostate cancer and to provide support and information to men and their families.

I am registered with the UK charities, but should you prefer you can also donate at Australian sites at the link below.

If you are interested in finding out more about Prostate Cancer or Depression, or Movember let me know. If you want to follow my Mo' let me know and I'll send you a daily update.

Should you wish to join the team, let me know and I'll get you registered.

For info about Movember at the Australian Site

http://www.movember.com/au/

If you want to donate or sponsor my Mo, click on the link below enter my registration number which is 102677 and your credit card details.

Sponsor my team at the UK site

http://www.movember.com/uk/donate/

So think about it, consider the effort involved for Meaghan and I enduring a month of me sporting the Mo - here in Turkey. I teach, attend meetings, shop and generally get about with Dennis on my upper lip. That's quite a challenge - and Meaghan supports me all the way - imagine the effort to stand next to me and Dennis, in line at the supermarket, at the Turkish Bath etc.

I've put another pic here for you to see the progress.

14 November

21 November

One the night of the 30th, we had a fundraising party in Istanbul to support the cause, Jen and Steve were here so we had a ritual shaving to raise some much needed last minute funds. The night also doubled as Steves birthday bash.

Last weekend we took the plunge and visited our first Turkish Bath. We had convinced The Canadians to come with us and the four of us ventured into Sultanahmet and the famous Cagaloglu Hamam.

This particular Turkish Bath House has been regularly frequented by the rich and famous and appears in everything from local soap operas, video clips, advertisements and even an Indiana Jones Film.

So on a cold and wintery wet day the four of us ventured in. To set the scene try to imagine a vast cavern of marble, dripping water falling from the domed ceiling, the room full of steam, a huge marble plinth in the centre of the room, a hot room set off to the side, steam spewing out into the main hall.

Before you reach the internal areas of the Hamam though you check in through an opulent lobby area. You pay your tourist prices and are shown through (men to one side - women to the other) to the changerooms, individual cubicles - unchanged in 100 years. Disrobed, you then try to cover what you can with your insufficient tea-towel-of-modesty, and make your way through to the main arena.

Meaghan tells me that her experience was one similar to a harem of naked women, lounging around washing, moisturising and generally lazing around awaiting their turn to be pampered, washed, exfoliated, massaged and rinsed - gently. Well I can tell you that the men's side is a little more... Masculine.

On arriving at the main hall, Joshua and I were immediately confronted by 3 things - the heat, the nudity and the constant and somewhat concerning sounds of violence. Being new to the experience we were ushered through to the hot room, where we sweated it out with a few local guys. We commented on how loud it was, the sounds of slaps, moans and at times shouts of pain. We didn't have to wait too long though until our assistants came in and lead us off to the main arena.

For the next 20 minutes I was rubbed, slapped, hit, pulled, bent, kneaded, elbowed and squeezed until I was supple enough for the wash. Massage over I was dragged up to the wash area and sat down next to a vat of boiling water.

The next 10 minutes made the first 20 minutes seem like a walk in the park, I was drowned in boiling hot water, soaped up and bashed around - modesty was not even the slightest consideration as I was pushed, pulled, sat on, speadeagled, exfoliated, stood up, sat down and generally beaten up, in front of my newest friends - all enduring their own special brand of torture.

Then as quickly as it had started, it ended and I was left feeling somewhat vulnerable. My incredible (possibly violent) physical massage ended with another drowning with boiling water and I was left alone for 10 minutes to gather my thoughts. Just in time to see my comrade in arms - Joshua commence his ritual flogging at the hands of a guy that looked a lot like Magnum PI.

We steamed ourselves for another 10 minutes or so and left. On arrival back at the arrival hall, we were stripped of our tea-towel-of-modesty and wrapped up like a donor kebab in fresh towels to dry off.

Returning to gather our belongings we made our way to the café and awaited the girls. A beer to too later, we were feeling pretty good about the experience and even before the girls arrived half an hour later, we were talking about the next time, and looking forward to it.

Ok we promise we wıll put some more pictures on as soon as we get a chnace. Here is an update for now... pictures will follow soon...

Turkey has been in the news a lot lately due to the problems on the border with Iraq. There have been big protests in the centre of Istanbul and people are hanging Turkish flags off their balconies and from buildings. From our window I can see at least 50 or 60 flags, some of which cover the whole side of buildings. Due to lack of freedom of the press there is no real information in the newspapers but we are keeping up to date. We are also keeping a close eye on the DFAT travel advice website in case anything changes.

We will need to make a trip to the Australian Consulate next week to vote so maybe we will get the inside story! Speaking of voting, the election campaign appears to be in full swing and we are almost sorry we are missing out on all the mud slinging!! I hope the Australian Consulate puts on a sausage sizzle when we go to vote. Have your say and have a BBQ all at the same time . . . brilliant. . . . Australian democracy at its best!

We have also been doing a little tourism here in Istanbul. We actually scored some last minute tickets to the soccer a couple of weeks ago. We saw Besiktas play against a local Istanbul side. Besiktas fans had high expectations because the team had previously just beaten Liverpool in the Champions league.

A draw was a disappointing result. The crowd didn't seem to mind too much though. Let me tell you the Turkish football fans probably deserve their reputation for being passionate. The stadium literally moves to the beat as the fan fluffers get the entire crowd singing and moving to well rehearsed call and respond chants across the pitch. In fact, for the uninitiated, the spectacle of the crowd is more overwhelming and interesting than the game, especially at a lack lustre Nil All Draw.

Things are not always friendly though, a quick search of the net will show some rather disturbing news articles of tragic events surrounding wins or losses in Turkey. We went to the game with our flat mate Helen, and Josh and Jess (The Canadians) well aware that our personal security may well depend on the outcome of the game.

We have also spent a bit of time recently strolling around the market and old town areas of Istanbul. A favourite is the old Egyptian market, or Spice Markets.

We are slowly getting to know this city and we're really excited about having visitors - Jen and Steve are the first off the racks so we'll try out our limited local knowledge on them.

Fıshıng on the Bosphorous

As we are spending so much time on our room lately (due to our inability to forge long lasting, considerate adult relationships with our flatmates) we have spent some time, and money, making it our home.

The piece de resistance of our efforts has to be the A3 sized photos of our trip we blew up and put on the walls. We are so excited - Meaghan really has taken some great photos and it is so nice to see them in poster size prints.

Speaking of Meaghan, it was her birthday last weekend, and we had a lovely day over on the European side of town walking around Hagia Sophia and the Spice Markets. We had planned on staying over there in a flash hotel but a local legal requirement put an end to that.
(Apparently it is law that you carry photo identity at all times - we do now).

We did had a nice dinner in the Editors Pick (Lonely Planet) restaurant overlooking the mouth of the Bosphoros River and the Galata Bridge. What a view!

Of course the other news is that we have a new addition to the Adam and Meaghan family. His name is Dennis, and although he will only be with us for this month, we have both come to like him quite a lot and will be sorry when he goes. I've put a picture here for you.

We can't wait to come home at Christmas!!!!!!!! We are counting the days and they are flying by.