Public Transit

Istanbul's public transit includes busses, a metro, a trolley, ferries, and a funicular. All transit services can be paid for with an Akbil (akıllı means intelligent, and bilet means ticket), which looks like a hearing aid battery mounted on a piece of plastic the size of a key. You can pay for a number of units on the Akbil, then use these units as you travel. It is very satisfying to place the Akbil on the little Akbil socket, and it makes a fun noise as it takes your money.

In some places, the metro runs over regular roads, so traffic gets backed up at metro stops. Funiculars are half subway, half metro. Funiclars use counterweights to pull train cars up and down steep slopes. They only have two stops, one at the bottom of a hill, and the other at the top. One of the funiculars was formerly powered by horses; this funicular runs from a metro stop to the start of the trolley line. The trolley runs on Istikal Caddesi. I took the trolley once. It doesn't save a lot of time, because Istikal is a busy pedestrian street with a lot of neat shops and stands, so people are always in the way of the trolley. Istikal Caddesi ends at Taksim Square, the heart of modern Istanbul, where Paul and I went to ring in the New Year. Matthew and I saw a demonstration at Taksim when we got to Istanbul; demonstrations in Taksim are illegal.

Ferries connect the European and Asian sides of Istanbul. For 50 kuruş (about 30 cents) you can get a cup of tea in a real glass on a real saucer. The ride is about 20 minutes, which is just long enough to have a cup of tea. I think that if I were to live in a city with a ferry, and I wanted to write a book, I would sit on a ferry and drink tea all day as I write.

There are also ferries in Izmir, but they are smaller. Drinks and snacks are also served on them. For me, riding ferries was a big adventure; it was very relaxing to be able to look at the city at night from the water while drinking sahlep. I think it would be interesting to live in Izmir or Istanbul and commute by ferry every day.

Sahlep is a warm beverage, sort of like egg nog, but flavored with wild orchid. It is illegal to export authentic sahlep from Turkey, for fear of destroying the wild orchid population. It has a great flavor, but it's so sweet my teeth hurt.

In Izmir, public transit can be paid for with cash or with cards with RFID chips in them. The cool Izmiri don't even take the cards out of their wallets, they just bang their wallets on the receiver. (I learned to do this very quickly so that I would appear to be a native.) The cards are disposable, and you can buy cards holding either three or five units. This doesn't make sense to me because I normally use public transit to make round trips, so the cards should come with an even number of units.

On Ankara's public transit system, you can buy cards with a certain number of units on them; I seem to recall that they came with six or ten units. If you want to pay for several people traveling with one ticket, you punch the card into the card swipe machine, then press a button corresponding to the number of people traveling with you. The buttons are arranged vertically, and each button is on a colored stripe; I think this is so that a bus driver only needs to use his peripheral vision to see which color's button you pushed, to know how many travelers you've payed for.

The most terrifying things in Turkey are Dolmuşes, which are like minibusses; the evil turquoise thing in the picture is a Dolmuş. As I understand it, Dolmuşes are run by private companies, but their prices are set by the city government. They run set routes, often going to places that busses don't go, or on more direct routes. Dolmuş is Turkish for full; Dolmuşes are so called because they have seats for ten riders, but about twenty might crammed into one. However scary it is to cross the street in Turkey, it is more harrowing if you see a Dolmuş coming. Dolmuş rides have to be paid for in cash. Passengers enter Dolmuşes through the side, so each Dolmuş ride starts with half a dozen riders, at least, holding out handfuls of coins to the driver and telling him how many people they're paying for. The driver takes the money and makes change, while driving.

I think that Dolmuş drivers are supposed to have a helper who takes the money, instead, but what I've always seen is that the helper is buddies with the driver, and they talk together the whole time, and the driver winds up driving and taking the money. This doesn't make much of a difference, safety-wise, because even when not taking money, Dolmuş drivers do not obey any traffic laws.

Disorientation

On the way to Istanbul, Matthew and I had a seven-hour layover in London, so we left the airport and took the tube to Westminster. The train robot said at each stop, "mind the gap," this phrase is, evidently, a cultural icon in London. English humor is such that I don't know if we're so frequently told to "mind the gap" ironically or seriously.
Also, I don't know why there is a gap--the floors of the train cars are often half a foot above the platform.

So, we got off the Tube at Westminster. There were security cameras everywhere. As we walked out of the station, I asked Matthew, "Where's Westminster Abbey?" "You're looking at it," said Matthew of the old building right in front of us. I felt a little silly, until we rounded the corner to enter, only to discover that the building is actually the Parliament building--the Abbey was next door. We went to enter it, but it's £9 to get in for students, and I didn't feel like paying that much to see a church, even such an important one.
Driving to church on Christmas Eve, I mentioned to my family the forthcoming long London layover. Eddie asked me if I could get something for him while I'm there. What? A necklace. The entire family laughed at him, poor chap. Secilee asked for a picture of Big Ben.

I saw a clock tower, but it was pretty small. I said, "Let me take a picture of this; I'll tell Secilee it's Big Ben." Matthew said, "Um, yeah, that is Big Ben."
(Later, on the phone, Secilee told me that she thought Big Ben was a double-decker bus.)

We went to the British museum, but it was closed. Instead, we got pasties and postcards, then popped in at the Museum Tavern, which is a couple of hundred years old. We each had a pint of Old Peculiar, which I would recommend.

After landing in Istanbul, late that night, we tried to find a pay phone in the airport. Everyone here is very friendly--one person told us to look outside. After going outside, and seeing no pay phone, we tried to get back in, but a police officer blew his whistle at us. We crossed the street to the parking garage and back again. We asked for directions from another police officer, and he told us to enter the airport through another door. We did, but we would have had to have our luggage x-rayed to proceed. We tried to go back, but the door was one-way. We slipped around the next slew of people entering and we escaped. We found the stairs leading down to the metro station; we figured a pay phone might be there.

We did, indeed, find a pay phone, but it only took credit cards or calling cards. I picked up the phone, Matthew handed me his card, and I slid it into the slot, and dialed our host, Elizabeth. I could only type two digits before the machine reset. I tried again.
The payphone didn't look like the payphones in the US. Those, you just drop coins through a slot and dial the number. The phones here in Turkey have a little LCD screen with two buttons on either side of it. We tried pushing buttons that we recognized, or, rather, avoided buttons that we knew wouldn't be helpful, like the one of the police or the one for pre-paid phonecards. Matthew suggested that we ask for help, but I told him that we'd probably have an easier time getting the machine to work than we would finding someone who spoke enough English well enough to help us. Repeatedly, I would push a different button, slide the card, and start dialing. Each time, I could only type two digits before the phone reset. There were other buttons, off to the left, one that I didn't recognize, one with a picture of a telephone, one with the letter L and one with the letter R. I tried those, too.

A half an hour later, I tapped the L button, but this time, the text on the screen turned to English. I swiped the card. The screen said that the card should be swiped with the magnetic stripe up.

Cootieology

When I was in first grade, my class divided into three clubs during recess. The most elite of these clubs was the Cool Club, which, as near as I can tell, was dedicated to swaggering and avoiding anyone not cool enough to be in the Cool Club. Then, there was the Cootie Club, which was dedicated to avoiding anyone with cooties. The least prestigious organization was the Bat Club, which was dedicated to hanging upside down on the jungle gym.

I was in the Bat Club, until I got kicked out when it was discovered that I had cooties.

For the rest of the school year, I would wander around the schoolyard alone, gathering crabapples. That is, I was alone until Sarah joined our class--she, also, evidently, was infected. We sat under a tree and talked about how baleen is made out of keratin.

Last fall, I went to the reception for new Ph.D. candidates, of whom I was one. We were each given a mini-diploma, proving our candidacy. Provost Arthur T. Johnston made us promise to go to a quiet place and think about our accomplishments. We all said, "I promise." Some guy near me asked, "Can my quiet place be a bar?"

As I was packing to travel to the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics conference, I wasn't sure whether I could take my Silly Putty on the plane. I realized that, since it deforms continually under shear stress, it is a fluid, so I put it in the one quart zip-loc bag with my toothpaste and mouthwash. Then I realized that fluid dynamicists could be quite cruel to TSA workers by attempting to transport aerogels, shear-thickening fluids, viscoelastic polymers, and Jell-o. 

So far, this trip, I have seen two children on monkey leashes.

Only certain fruits can be eaten defiantly. For example, if a banana were to be eaten defiantly, it would result in choking. There are free green apples given out in the lobby of the La Quinta Inn where I'm staying. A man with a beard just grabbed an apple off of the tray in front of me and took a very defiant bite out of it.

As soon as I got to the conference center, I knew that I was in the company of real scientists because of how everyone is dressed. I can't quite explain it, but everyone looks just a little off. It's not as if there is anyone dressed like they're going to a sock hop, or wearing a jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Dad's theory is that most scientists only own one suit, and the old ones are still wearing the suits they got when they were grad students.

I have defined The Szatmary Interval to be the amount of time it takes for me to decide that a given talk is less comprehensible than French absurdism, and resume reading Voltaire.

I'm not sure why we need nametags. The people here aren't friendly enough to have a real conversation with a stranger. Not only that, but it's clear to everyone else in San Antonio that we're participating in a scientific conference, and not only because of how we're dressed.

I've been to Otakon, an anime convention. (I have since repented.) The people there talked about anime less than the people here talk about science.

Included in our swag bags were laser pointers. I immediately pulled mine out and flashed it around; I blinded a security camera. Then, I noticed that I was the only person in the lobby playing with a laser pointer.

Is it okay to email the people who don't show up to give their presentations, and let them know that I was offended that they didn't let anyone know they couldn't make it?

Yesterday, I saw something amazing. During the question time of one guy's talk, he was asked a question that he, evidently, didn't want to answer. He made eye contact with the one asking the question, waited a beat, and then looked away. Another person raised his hand, and asked another question, which the speaker answered. 

This was notable because only I and another person noticed that the speaker had just refused to answer a question. Everyone else was hypnotized.

Who would buy an APS t-shirt? I have only counted two people here wearing t-shirts, besides myself.

In the bathroom this morning, I saw the man at the sink next to me rinse his hands but not use soap. Fluid dynamicists, of all people, ought to know the effects of surfactants on surface tension!

I have started grading the presentations that I watch, docking points for staring at the screen, mumbling, using six colors on a single slide, having complete sentences on slides, and reading them aloud. Also, please, never end a presentation with a slide just saying "Questions?" or "Thank you."

I know that no one is going to go home and do their work any differently after having seen my presentation; I've not seen any presentation on something related enough to my work for it to affect what I do, either. All that we can do is convey a rough sense of the sort of problems we're looking at.

In the hotel, there are three elevators. If there are others waiting for an elevator with me, I ask people to guess which elevator will come first. Whoever picks the right elevator wins!