Very dreary rainy weather the past 3 days
There seem to be lost Syrians wandering all over the city. So far I've been asked directions on 3 different occasions by a total of 5 young men speaking Arabic and not a word of Turkish, English, or French. Only my interaction with the most recent pair was long enough to glean that they were in fact Syrian.
SKIP, TOO BORING:
I'm reduced to punching my text messages in using the number pad on the flip phone my landlady lent me. I had figured it would be no problem using the unlocked GSM smartphone I brought but apparently the Turkish government didn't like people buying cell phones cheap abroad to avoid the high value added tax on electronic here and so makes you register any foreign phones or else it shuts them down after 3 weeks of use with a Turkish SIM card. For that registration you have to visit a police station, another govt office to get a personal tax number, and the cell phone company office and pay about $80, which is approximately what my beat up but useful smartphone is worth in the first place (I got one with a cracked screen and slapped on some duct tape to hold it together, figuring that in Afghanistan the crappier it looked the better to avoid unwanted attention). I could have used my phone for another few weeks but it also had the strange problem of not receiving texts from some numbers--perhaps by design to encourage me to register my phone sooner rather than later. In retrospect I should have just stuck with my iphone using local Vodafone service at an exorbitant rate. The SIM card itself was after all expensive: about $20 compared to about $3 in Afghanistan (down from $100+ in the mid-2000s, the Afghan cell phone guy told me).
There seem to be lost Syrians wandering all over the city. So far I've been asked directions on 3 different occasions by a total of 5 young men speaking Arabic and not a word of Turkish, English, or French. Only my interaction with the most recent pair was long enough to glean that they were in fact Syrian.
SKIP, TOO BORING:
I'm reduced to punching my text messages in using the number pad on the flip phone my landlady lent me. I had figured it would be no problem using the unlocked GSM smartphone I brought but apparently the Turkish government didn't like people buying cell phones cheap abroad to avoid the high value added tax on electronic here and so makes you register any foreign phones or else it shuts them down after 3 weeks of use with a Turkish SIM card. For that registration you have to visit a police station, another govt office to get a personal tax number, and the cell phone company office and pay about $80, which is approximately what my beat up but useful smartphone is worth in the first place (I got one with a cracked screen and slapped on some duct tape to hold it together, figuring that in Afghanistan the crappier it looked the better to avoid unwanted attention). I could have used my phone for another few weeks but it also had the strange problem of not receiving texts from some numbers--perhaps by design to encourage me to register my phone sooner rather than later. In retrospect I should have just stuck with my iphone using local Vodafone service at an exorbitant rate. The SIM card itself was after all expensive: about $20 compared to about $3 in Afghanistan (down from $100+ in the mid-2000s, the Afghan cell phone guy told me).
Seems worth the $80. Besides, visiting government offices is so fun!
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