Istanbul: Distant Voices and Feeling Irie
Istanbul: Distant Voices and Feeling Irie
No I am not turning into the Rastafarian of Istanbul singing or miming pleasant melodic verbs, I am feeling good, and I am feeling happy and feeling Irie. Relaxing and listening to the rhythms of reggae, whilst reflecting over the previous week’s highs and lows. A week blessed with good weather not the normal November season I am used to but beyond that some frustrating unexpected problems occurred.
I call the HSBC in England ,the usual procedure of entering your details via the DTMF keypad tones the automated robotic voice responds ,another minute goes by and another voice answers ,only this time they are real human tones. But not my native UK accent and a far distant Asian voice answers my requests in a text book styled response .I am neither racists or chauvinistic but the hearing of a distant unrecognized accent determines if the request will be answered.
Having exchanged the polite greetings, I know this is going to be a pointless conversation and not achieving anything, sometimes I want to vet my frustration at these voices but I know they are going to give me an orchestrated answer and the overlooking governing body will not let them advance beyond the scripted answers. So right now I am resolving personal financial issues with a robot and a distant voice.
Some 40 minutes having gone through the motions of not getting anywhere I give up politely, I turn to the online system and a get a message sorry there is a system fault please try later! So I come to conclusion I could be in England, I could be Istanbul, I could be anywhere in the world but the solution is “if you’re not part of the solution you may be a part of the problem”. So do I need to get a job at HSBC to resolve my problem!
Thursday now having spent some 60 lira in calls back to England or was it somewhere Asia I decided enough is enough and turned to the view of the Bosphorus . Why that makes a difference I don’t know but it is kind of therapeutic, on beautiful sunny days the bay of Tarabya along the Bosphorus strait is my place of relaxing. I often sit there listening to music through the iPhone, with a Cay and tost (toast) watching the enormous freight ships passing along the shipping lanes. The small fishing boats wavering alongside, in my time here I have seen many means of water transportation from Submarines to those large sea liners built like a city afloat. The rare infrequent view of Dolphins comes only to the trained eye has they bob and weave in out the water but not in large numbers but I do catch glimpses of pairs.
Has usual a man approaches selling some socks whilst I sit in the Mado Cafe at Tarabya ,a guy I see every time I come here and for the last 18 months he never fails to appear even when I was only visiting Istanbul back in 2008 I remember him. Some minutes later another familiar face appears the man pushing a food barrow selling hot sweet corn. These sole individuals frequent the many food outlets selling their goods something I never had seen back in the UK ,I just can’t imagine or seeing someone trade on another persons or a company’s patch so to speak ,it would inevitably be a recipe for a confrontation. I guess the bottom line is if you don’t sell it someone will. In my time sitting at Mado I can recall being offered t-shirts, lottery tickets, phone chargers and the list goes on and I just love many of the individual’s ability to approach you without fear. I guess if you don’t ask you don’t get!
Having pondered over the summerlike week just gone by I decided it was time to get my head stuck into my current book a biography of Ataturk by Andrew Mango.Any English speaking person contemplating an insight into this gentleman would benefit from this English written book, reading about his military life deserves to be a book on its own, I am no expert in this field or claim to be and neither wish to debate anything. I have always had a curiosity of this man since I first visited Istanbul, then I often had seen this man’s face everywhere in cafe’s, cay houses ,restaurants, statues and so on .Now having pursued my curiosity I now have a basic understanding and respect.
Following Monday the phone rings I see the +44 from the UK I pick up the phone I hear a distant voice with a Scottish accent not Asia this time and no robotic questions just the formality. HSBC get through to me here in Istanbul at last and they are full of good news and offer to reimburse the cost of all my calls and guess what I gave them the solution and it worked .Sometimes however small gestures are they are can mean so much, suddenly I don’t feel so remote anymore. Now I don’t have to visit the HSBC branch in Tarabya and explain what I need from HSBC that may have been a funny story itself has my Turkish is not that fluent to negotiate with bank clerks. I could picture myself waving my arms, pulling expressions and drawing blank expressions in the response and probably having the security guard shove a pistol in my side. So now I just feel Irie has the sounds of reggae mellow around the apartment and I‘m thinking Evet! Tesekkurler HSBC….
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