How to survive in Turkey: Telecom issues
I have not made entries for over three weeks. I have given you a taste
of Turkish (Telecom) culture.
I have not in fact had Internet access at home since Friday, 9th
March. This was due to an unpaid phone bill, which I was trying to
settle first. So apparently a guy from T�rk Telekom came on Friday 9th
March and decided to cut the phone cable leading to our apartment.
I went and paid the unpaid bill during the same day. I was told it
might take up to three days for the phone line to open again. I
waited. A week. Nothing happened. I called and I was told to wait
more. Nothing still happened.
I contacted my landlord. They called and were told to wait. Nothing
still happened. A friend of mine called T�rk Telekom but it was
useless - he was just forwarded from one person to another.
I went to the main office of T�rk Telekom in Gayrettepe to find out
what the problem is. They were able to confirm that the line had been
disconnected. However, they refused to reconnect the phone line unless
the person who had originally ordered it would contact them. This is
Cagan, my ex-flatmates Nikolia's ex-flatmate.
I contacted my landlord who contacted Cagan and who called T�rk
Telekom. They did not even ask for her name. Instead they wanted to
know the phone number, which she did not remember anymore as she had
not lived in the appartment for half a year. She called again the
following day to schedule a time to have someone reinstall the phone
line. They said someone would come on Tuesday morning.
I waited all morning on Tuesday. Nobody came. My landlord contacted
T�rk Telekom again. Nobody wanted to take responsability, instead he
was forwarded from one person to another. The last information I have
is that Cagan had the plan of making an angry phone call yesterday to
try to speed up things but so far I have not heard whether it was
succesful or not.
In the meanwhile, TTNet, an affiliate of T�rk Telekom sent us a 37,5
Turkish lira invoice for Internet, which we have not had for three
weeks in March. When we inquired about this, we were told we still
have to pay bill because although T�rk Telekom and TTNet are
affiliates, they are still separate entities. The Internet requires
the phone line to work and if T�rk Telekom had not disconnected the
phone line TTNet's Internet would have worked, so they claimed not to
be liable for refunding the price of the Internet.
Our landlord has helped a lot trying to solve the problem. "Welcome to
Turkey", they tried to console us.
Posted by Aleksi at 16:21 1 comments
Monday, March 5, 2007
Survival in Istanbul: Dining and tea
If you appear to be a yabanci, a foreigner, people will always think
you are one. Even if you somehow speak the language.
I went yesterday for dinner to a buffet place in Taksim. We walked in
with my new flatmate Aleksiina. I had some beef stew kind of thing and
Aleksiina had some chicken. The food was good and there was plenty of
it.
"�ay i�er misiniz?' The waiter comes once we are finished. I ask for a
tea. It is free anyway, I figure.
The guy brings the tea and asks for 1,50 liras for the tea. I get
pissed off. I tell the guy off in Turkish and tell him I'm not a
tourist. Generally, the tea is free if you eat dinner in the place.
The manager comes when he hears the noise. I tell him what happened.
He says the guy just started working here. He takes him around the
corner and tells him off.
A minute later the manager himself brings both of us a cup of tea and
apologizes once more. The waiter is carrying heavy stuff and walking
front and back.
If you speak Turkish, usually the people think you only learned a few
separate phrases but cannot really understand the language.
Posted by Aleksi at 04:59 1 comments
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Pizza delivery guy refused to work
I was surprised a few days ago. It was around 11pm and I tried to
order a pizza through yemeksepeti.com, a wonderful food delivery
system on the Internet. I chose all the fillings, sat down and waited
for the delivery.
The phone rang. "Domino's at Gayrettepe has refused to complete the
order due to security problems in your neighbourhood at this late
time."
I was surprised. I live in G�lbag, which is by no standards a rich
neighbourhood. I cannot see it as an exceptionally dangerous
neighborhood. More sort of a normal surrounding where the lower-middle
class and working class people live.
Especially the roads around where I live are well lit. The place is
also only three minutes away from the big shopping mall Profilo. The
mainstreet of G�lbag has shops and restaurants open around the clock.
I personally feel myself watching more over my shoulder around the
streets of Cihangir or Galata than over here. These are located right
next to Taksim, the new downtown and tend to gather some obscure crowd
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