Istanbul, Day 2..

Had a small breakfast in hotel. Picked up some street food. Hazelnuts and kismis. Quite good (btw the guy I met in the morning is also the GM of a large hazelnut exporter, ferror rocher, cadbury and all his clients..)

Ok.. so.. me and my cabbie shared the packet, quite yummy, infact I like hazelnuts.. Which actually reminds me they didn't give me hazelnut packet on Turkish airlines (cost cutting maybe), and I was looking forward to it. You don't get good hazelnuts in Dubai (atleest I haven't had any).. Ha these were very good ones..

For my afternoon meeting, had to travel all the way to Asia. I mean I am staying in Europe, my meeting was in Asia, went by road ofcourse. Ok, to explain better, Istanbul is part in Europe, and part in Asia. I am staying in Europe side, and had 2 meetings in Asia side today..

Ok now you gotta hear this, the guard who was helping me get a taxi, did not know about 'India'. He says "Indonesia?" I say "no India", he looks confused.. He asks again "not Indonesia?", I tried my best to convince him that there actually exists another country on the very same planet, which has a very similar name to country he knows, and yes it does exist.. Though he did not seem 100% convionced though.. He must be thinking I just made the name (the name India) up..

Hmm.. Some brand building needed here, I guess.. And turkey would be a good place to advertise India, as it is a tourist destination, and the same guys can then visit India as well.. go where your target customers are.. he he..

You know, how we keep our houses cold in Dubai.. Even when the outside temp is ok, we will switch on the AC, and then sleep with quilts.. I think people here like to keep it hot/warm.. The taxi drivers heat up thier cars, and they feel cold when I leave the windows open.. whereas I quite enjoy it..
Which reminds me 11 pm night walk on the roads in a 8 degree city without a headcap is a bad idea... Shonu.. next time please woh monkey cap (jisme mei actually bahut stupid dikhta hu), please pack kar dena..

I was stuck in a traffic jam returning from Asia, the bridge is in itself a tourist attraction.. And you know what.. People were selling in the traffic.. Like in india at traffic signals.. A guy was selling water, another mobile chargers, another flowers (flower dekh ke mere shonu ki yaad aais) another one selling bread.. (very interesting looking bread, like a donut with 6 inch dia, but only 1 inch thickness and he was carrying a huge pile on a stick.. Wanted to buy it, but we went past him.. Being a Muslim country, I can pickup eatables w/o too much of a worry.. I Picked up something from another vendor, had no idea what it was when I bought it.. It was called wafer halva, quite good, infact pata hota accha hoga toh do leta, one for home..

Another good street food I had during my post dinner walk was freshly roasted chestnut, this was kept on a hot plate on the street.. 10,000 better than the so called 'roasted chestnut' we get in packets in Dubai in most of corn carts.. what was very interesting here is that this guys bakda was on the street outside a MacDonalds.. and he was sitting inside MacDonalds reading newspaper.. uska dhyan tha baahar, so if you went near his wares, he would come out proactively, but also interesting was that MacDonalds not only allows him to sell wares on the street right outside their door, but also give him shelter in the cold weather.. maybe extreme harmony or maybe he pays them, like it happens in India.. but we people always think "it happens only in India".. but guess the people, and thus situations and reactions to the situations is probably quote similar across geographies..

Arrey one more interesting thing.. Most keyboards here are ofcourse dual language keyboards (like we have in UAE also).. So the keyboard here did not have i,instead it had in place of i, i without a superscript dot.. and didnt notiuce it first, and my mail login attempts kept failing.. then found the actual i was sitting somewhere else.. interesting..