The Museum of Innocence

On our last day in Turkey before we headed back to the U.S., as the last thing we did before heading to the airport, we walked from our hotel to the Museum of Innocence, a quirky museum in the Cukurcuma neighborhood of Beyoglu, Istanbul, that is based on the Orhan Pamuk book also called the Museum of Innocence. In a nutshell, the museum and novel are about a love story between a wealthy businessman named Kemal and a younger, poorer, distant relative of his, Fusun. Kemal is actually engaged to another woman of his same social class and circle, but after meeting Fusun at a shop where he went to purchase a handbag for his fiancee, he immediately becomes entranced with Fusun, and they begin a very quick and intense emotional and physical love affair. The museum documents the entire book in the form of collected pieces of jewelry, cups, glasses, and other random items; vignettes, stories, newspaper articles, and other objects from that period of the late 70s to early 80s in Istanbul. It stands somewhat as a historical piece depicting the culture of the time then in Istanbul and Turkey overall, and also as a more narrow story of Kemal and Fusun. The general themes that are quickly picked up just by visiting the museum and without reading the book are the cultural differences between East and West (they often talk about how those in Europe are “sophisticated, educated, and progressive,” and those in the East, or in Turkey specifically, are old-fashioned and regressive, stuck in a period of time that has passed. The museum also emphasizes the importance of female purity in Turkey and how virginity was of utmost importance until marriage; women who had sexual relations with men prior to wedlock, regardless of whether it was the man they ended up marrying, were seen as scarred and dirty, and ultimately “lesser than.” The museum even depicted newspaper columns that actually showed the FACES of women who purportedly had had sex before marriage, basically warning men, “Hey, these women are impure! Beware!” We spent a couple of hours at the museum, listening to the audio guide by section. I was a bit intrigued, so I decided that when we came home, I’d get the audio book to see how the book was.

I’m about a few hours into the book, and it’s definitely a very intense love affair, narrated by Kemal, who frankly comes off as obsessed, a little narcissistic, narrow-minded, and selfish, and most definitely creepy. I’m not totally sure I want to continue listening, but what the heck, I’ve already started… in total, it’s 20+ hours long! I suppose, though, that’s the general theme of major love stories that have made history, ranging from Lolita to Anna Karenina to Madame Bovary. However, the difference here is that while I’ve actually read Lolita and Madame Bovary, this book veers on the side of Anna Karenina where the guy in question just keeps droning on and on, constantly obsessing, resulting in confirming exactly how creepy, stalker-ish, and selfish he is (well, isn’t that the theme of all men of all time?). It’s kind of amazing how over history, stories of selfish, obsessive, creepy men make history so often, yet as soon as you hear of a selfish woman, all bets are off.

Kemal is truly ridiculous, though, and in many ways, a total loser in my mind. I have very little to no pity for him as a character, as he’s highly unrelatable and pathetic. Even after he breaks off his engagement with Sibel, his fiancee, and finds out Fusun is married, he continues to try to pursue her, and even goes on to INVITE himself over for dinner/coffee/tea at her home 3-4 nights a week for EIGHT YEARS, where she lives with her husband and parents. It’s truly insane and just borderline worthy of sticking this guy into a stray jacket. Honestly, I’m not sure I’d recommend the book to anyone unless they really wanted to read an obsessive man’s account of his ridiculous love for a woman, but hey, to each their own!

Baby preparation at Nordstrom

This early afternoon, I hauled Chris over to Nordstrom so that we could test out some strollers and car seats. The sales assistant was quite helpful and showed us some of the limited models on my list, and we further narrowed down the strollers that we wanted. In addition, I’m pretty set on a specific infant car seat to get, as well. We immediately eliminated the super popular and bulky Uppababy Vista and Cruz strollers. They are far too big, and the Cruz is pathetic in that it doesn’t even close up all the way. The Cruz itself would take up the bulk of a car trunk’s space, which is ridiculous when you think about it regardless of whether you own a car or not. The sales assistant was pretty blunt about the strollers: if you are the kind of person who doesn’t take a car or public transit or leave your own neighborhood, and all you want to do is push your stroller around your own neighborhood, then the Vista or Cruz is likely for you. If you actually plan to go on trains and other boroughs and travel, you will hate these Uppababy models. So that was an easy decision. Since they didn’t have all the models I wanted to see in person, I have to do another visit to a different baby store uptown to get a better sense of finalizing what we end up getting. We’re getting closer to the end of this decision making process!

3-hour glucose test results: the verdict

My OB’s office contacted me early this morning to let me know that my 3-hour glucose test results came back, and all four blood draws were normal – weeee!!!! I was so relieved and super happy to hear this news. After they contacted me, I logged into my patient account to take a look at the numbers, and for each blood draw, I was either at the lower end or the middle in terms of blood sugar level. So in other words, I wasn’t even close to needing to regulate my diet or getting diagnosed with gestational diabetes, thankfully. I was really fearing the worst news here, but just feeling very thankful and relieved that I do not have to deal with another hurdle or restriction for the remainder of my pregnancy. I DO NOT HAVE GESTATIONAL DIABETES!!!!! I had to do a little happy dance while rubbing my belly.

I didn’t really think I had it, especially after I saw that of the people who fail the first 1-hour glucose test, only about 10-20 percent of them end up actually having gestational diabetes. So I would have had to be super unlucky to have been one of those people. I had an 80-90 percent chance of not having it going into this three-hour-long test.

Now, I guess I no longer have to feel guilty whenever I have white breads and buns, noodles, or sweets. And it may be time to celebrate by making those browned butter miso chocolate chip cookies I keep staring at in my web browser.

Strollers on the Upper East Side

When we visited Buy Buy Baby last month during our day trip to Jersey, the sales assistants called the Uppababy stroller, particularly their Vista model (the largest one), like the “Mercedes” of strollers. It has all the things you could possibly want in a stroller, but at the end of the day, it really is about the branding and the finishes, and you could easily get a stroller that is similar for far, far less. Priced at about $1,000, the Vista is definitely a suped up stroller. And given its weight at almost 27 pounds, it’s not necessarily travel friendly, or would it be a stroller that someone with a pre-pregnancy weight of 117 pounds would be comfortable hauling in and out of subway cars and up and down stairs.

Well, given I had so much time to kill on the Upper East Side yesterday morning, I started making a mental note of all the strollers I saw pass me — mostly moms, nannies, and grandmas pushing their strollers through the park and up and down the streets. And I could say with almost total certainty that 8/10 of the strollers were all Uppababy Vista strollers. If you throw in the Uppababy Cruz stroller (the more compact Uppababy), then that would make 9/10 strollers. And the other 1/10 consist of random other brands, some of which I could not easily identify, with a tiny sprinkling of Bugaboo (I’m considering their Ant model) and even one Versace (!!!!) stroller.

I wonder if some parents view the Uppababy Vista stroller like a status symbol in the same way that people view Mercedes and BMW vehicles as a status symbol. If they do, it seems…. quite tiring. I was exhausted just looking at all these past me and thinking of the research I still have yet to do in order to finalize this decision that seems to be weighing on me.

Glucose test #2; please don’t be positive

This morning, I skipped my usual gym session and instead walked across Central Park up to the Upper East Side for my second glucose test. I abstained from having any refined sugar in the two days leading up to this test for good luck and even subbed brown basmati rice for the usual long grain white rice I use in fried rice in my Monday cooking, as well. I figured none of this could hurt, right?

Well, the instructions I was given over the phone by the doctor’s assistant were wrong. While I thought that I’d come in at 9am, do a baseline blood draw, drink another bottle of sickly glucola, and have my blood redrawn at 10am, what ended up happening was that I had to have FOUR blood draws total: One at 9am for a baseline, then one again each at 10am, 11am, then 12am after the glucola consumption. When I expressed dismay at having to come back at 11am, the nurse was confused. “Didn’t tell they you over the phone that it would be three hours?” No one told me this!! I had meetings that I ended up having to skip, and with a crappy signal in the doctor’s office, I ended up leaving to wander around the Upper East Side and Central Park before blood draws to get fresh air and an internet signal.

So after the fourth and final blood draw, the nurse let me know that I could finally eat (you have to fast during this!), but “nothing sugary,” and that my results would be available tomorrow. Little did she know that I had already stopped by Tal Bagel for a toasted everything bagel with vegetable cream cheese, and I was very much looking forward to diving into it after I left the office. While a bagel is not quite on the gestational diabetic’s list of friendly foods to eat, I did not care; I had not eaten anything since 5:30pm the previous night, and I was so famished that I could feel myself getting light headed walking back from Tal to the doctor’s office for my final noon blood draw.

Now, I just have to hope and pray: please do not have gestational diabetes. Please do not have gestational diabetes. Please, please, please.

Working late on your first day back from vacation

You know how I said yesterday that there is a special place in hell for customers who don’t respect their partners’ time off and give them work to do even before they return from vacation? Well, there’s also a special place in hell when your sales partner decides to put an 8pm local time meeting on your calendar for the day you get back — a meeting that you have to lead, put together a deck for, and do the majority of the talking at. Granted, this customer is APAC based, so it’s not like any time is going to be ideal since we are on the east coast of the U.S., but this really, really sucked and was NOT good. Couldn’t I have at least gotten one day to settle back in after six days out, or is that too much to ask your colleagues?

In the end, this group I was working with was very fun and pleasant, so it was a good meeting at the end of the day (literally), but I still wasn’t pleased to take a call so late on my first day back. It’s no wonder people in other countries take longer periods off… it’s because they want to avoid work as much as possible for as long as possible in a single go.

Out of office auto-reply and when it gets ignored

During pretty much every vacation since my first Europe trip in the summer of 2011, I always check email while I am out of the office, even if it’s just for one day. I learned my lesson that trip: I was out 2.5 weeks, and I was inundated with emails and inane requests when I returned. I didn’t feel fully settled back into work until two months later, which was the worst feeling ever. I respond to things that I think are easy or urgent, but for the most part, I let my backup respond for me. Or, in some cases, when customers are being jerks, they don’t contact my backup and just wait for me to respond when I get back. And I really, really hate this.

I’m not sure why customers do this. When I let them know I will be out, and I tell them who my backup is, some of them just really do not get it and think, oh, it’s okay! Yvonne will respond when she returns, so she can still help us! What this ends up creating is a huge back log of requests (that came from ONE specific customer, mind you) that ended up taking several hours on this Labor Day holiday for me to take care of. I knew if I didn’t work on these requests today that I’d have to work late to catch up tomorrow, and I hate working late. I’m beyond that point in my career that I have zero motivation to work beyond 5 or 6pm on a regular workday unless I’ve actually chosen to procrastinate on something.

It’s been said that there is a special place in hell for women who do not support other women. Well, there is also a special place in hell for customers who do not respect their partners’ time off and give them work to do even BEFORE they return to the office.

Cultural differences in the US vs. Turkey

Whenever we’re traveling, whether it’s out of state or out of the country, I always think about the differences in how people behave and treat each other. One of the biggest differences you notice right away when you go to Turkey when you’re American (or at least, an American from a city like San Francisco or New York) is that when people go to a cafe, it’s actually to enjoy the cafe: they will get a drink, perhaps something big or small to eat, and they will catch up with a loved one, people watch, or just sit there and enjoy their drink and the general ambiance of the place. They actually a culture of people want to live in and enjoy the moment. In most cafes and coffee shops in San Francisco and New York, you will be guaranteed to see a sea of laptops, tablets, and people on their phones squatting at tables and seats at cafes. These people are all obsessed with work, productivity, and getting shit done… or at least, appearing to be obsessed with one or all of the above. A small minority of these tables/seats will be occupied by people actually conversing. And that is SUPER frustrating for people like me, who try to go to cafes to catch up with another person, whether that’s been my mentee, a friend/colleague, or a college interview candidate.

Another difference we noticed when we decided to rent a car in Antalya is best practices around driving. In the U.S., if there are two lanes on a highway, and you think someone in the fast lane is driving too slowly, you will typically just switch to the slow lane, speed up to get ahead of them, and then re-enter the fast lane ahead of them. In Antalya, we noticed that when people thought we were slow, instead of changing lanes, they’d actually start tailgating us, which to me, felt very aggressive. So in other words, that was their way to tell us, “Hey, you’re slow. Get out of the fast lane into the slow lane.” And if you don’t heed their advice, they can get very aggressive. Several of them pulled into the slip lanes alongside us to try to cut us off. Some of them literally got BETWEEN two lanes (and well, two cars — thank God we were all driving tiny compact cars!!) to cut us off. One driver even got out of the car and tried to talk to us at a stop light, which was really unnecessary. But that’s all from my perspective. Maybe from THEIR perspective, we were actually the ones being the jerks and not doing what could be standard in Turkish driving culture.

A last thing that is always noticeable to me when I’m traveling in Europe is how much people smoke, both indoors and out. This is clearly my very American side, but I really cannot stand cigarette smoke. In the U.S., you never really have to worry about this because smoking is pretty much outlawed in any indoor dining establishment, and even with restaurants that have outdoor seating, smoking either isn’t allowed or is done very sparingly. And now being pregnant, I especially want to avoid second hand smoke at all costs. Almost every place we sat at, cafe or restaurant, had people smoking, whether it was indoors or out. I could rarely sit and enjoy a smoke-free experience anywhere we sat, and if I did, that smoke-free period would soon come to an end. But that’s just normal in Europe. Sure, we all know it’s bad for our health, and I’m sure they do, too, but they don’t care because they enjoy it and want to live in the moment. Once in Istanbul, we changed tables because of the smoking from a couple sitting next to us. The server didn’t quite understand why we wanted to switch, and Chris emphasized to him that I was pregnant (he pointed at my belly and motioned his own belly to show a curve shape), and the server finally got it.

But all in all, the cultural differences are what make traveling fun. In retrospect, it makes me sad that we won’t be able to do much international travel for the foreseeable future given the pandemic plus my advancing pregnancy, but now, my main focus is making sure my baby and I are healthy and will have as smooth as a labor and delivery as possible. And then hopefully, assuming all goes well, months will pass, and baby can travel with us and be a little globe trotter.

The Asian side of Istanbul

Today, we ventured out of the European side of Istanbul and took a boat to the Asian side of this multicultural city. Istanbul is one of just a handful of cities in the world that is actually bi-continental: part of it is technically in Europe, while part of it is in Asia. I already loved everything about this city, but knowing this makes me love it even more.

Since I last came ten years ago, a lot has changed. For one thing, the Camlica Camii (mosque) had not been built. It’s now the largest and most modern mosque in all of Turkey, designed by two female architects and recently completed in 2019. This mosque is massive, sitting atop a hill with a stunning panoramic view of all of Istanbul. It has the most extensive public bathroom I have ever seen, complete with an entire massive room just for feet washing (you have to take your shoes off in most mosques), a multi-level underground car park, and architectural touches that were inspired by the Ottoman Empire period. The building and inaugration of this mosque was considered a mega project with the goal to strengthen the Turkish economy, so in some ways, it could be seen as a bit of a tourist push or even a method of propaganda, but hey, I’m all for enjoying these things if I can. In addition to this huge and sparkling mosque, the Kucuk Camlica TV Radio Tower was also inaugurated just a few months ago on the Asian side of Istanbul. When we first arrived and walked across the Galata Bridge, I definitely did not recognize this radio tower, and then immediately learned why.

The last time I came to Istanbul, I really didn’t do much research ahead of time, so when I got whisked off on a boat to the “Asian” side of Istanbul, it felt like a seaside town in the form of a tourist trap, with many annoying souvenir shops filled with junk I’d never consider buying and fresh seafood restaurants. It was a decent afternoon outing, but it wasn’t at all representative of everyday Istanbul life. This time around, we took a regular commuter boat and went to the Kadikoy area, which is a part of the Asian side where real, everyday people actually live. I could immediately feel the difference walking through the streets of Kadikoy, as it felt a lot more local with all of its many restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and markets. I knew this area had to be more local because a lot of the shops had workers and owners who didn’t speak a lick of English. That was totally fine by me since deliciousness speaks for itself, as I found out from a tiny local corner bakery along one of our strolls, where we picked up a beautiful and super scrumptious olive pasted filled bread round. The man who worked there knew zero English, and I don’t know any Turkish outside of hello, thank you, and good morning, so body language and hand motions went a long way!

In addition to stopping by this amazing little bakery by chance, we also spent some time hanging out and enjoying coffee and tea drinks at a local open-air cafe, visiting the Camlica Camii, unexpectedly riding on a mini bus (where someone actually got out of their seat to offer it to me – so sweet!), eating at a fresh seafood restaurant, tasting a local French-Turkish treat called a Kup Griye (essentially a decadent mix of caramel and vanilla ice cream, topped with a nutty crunchy croquant, whipped cream, nuts, caramel sauce, and a tiny little buttery biscuit), and ending our evening at Ciya Sofrasi, a restaurant Chris learned about that was from the Netflix show Chef’s Table. Boy, was this meal memorable. Given we had eaten all these other things during the day, we shared one main and two desserts, along with a plum juice. We had a kebab, which I believe was beef-based, but super tender and meaty with the most luxurious stewed tomatoes and eggplant pieces. We also ordered our first (and last) kunefe, which was not as sweet or immersed in sugar syrup as we were used to. In addition, the cheese layer was extremely thin. I’m so used to kunefe back in the U.S. having a super thick layer of cheese, whether it’s been at Turkish restaurants in Brooklyn or in the Middle Eastern areas of Detroit. But the real star and takeaway for me from this meal was the baklava. In the US and even with other baklava we’d had at the hotels during this trip, I’m used to baklava being extremely sweet, almost too cloyingly sweet, rendering me only able to eat one or two pieces before I have to stop. With this baklava, not only was the sweetness was light, the layers of phyllo themselves were even thinner than paper and far more delicate than what they normally are. In addition, the sweetness was not the first thing that hit me; instead, the first things that hit me were 1) the butteriness of the pastry layers and 2) the savory richness of the generous chopped pistachio filling. The pistachio filling actually seemed more buttery and savory than it was sweet, which was so, so different than what I was used to. I never realized that baklava could be this light and “not too sweet,” but it was truly a revelation!

If we had more time, I would have loved to spend more time exploring the different neighborhoods and cafes and restaurants of the Asian side of Istanbul, or even just spending more time in Kadikoy itself. It seemed a bit more relaxed than the European side, though during the evenings, the area really did come to life with all the restaurant and bar activity. It almost felt as though there really was zero global pandemic.

The endless world of kebap in Turkey

Although it was sad to leave the beauty and seaside of Antalya, we still have the last part of our trip in store to further explore Istanbul. Late this morning, after one last festive and colorful Turkish breakfast overlooking the ocean, we boarded our flight to return back to Istanbul for three last days of food, culture, and sight-seeing.

After we arrived at our boutique hotel and got acquainted with our room, we went to a restaurant that was a short walking distance away from our hotel called Sehzade Cag Kebap. It was originally on my food list and was highly recommended as a long-standing popular restaurant with both tourists and locals alike. Cag kebabi is like the ancestor of doner. The meat, always lamb, is sliced a bit thicker than doner kebap, and it’s cooked horizontally on a big spit over hot charcoal. It is then cut and served on small skewers called cag. As I was watching the food preparation in their open kitchen, I noticed that after slicing off the spit and adding the meat to the cag skewers, another cook actually *further* grilled the meats over more charcoal, likely for a crisper finish. The meat was super juicy and succulent, packed with meaty, gamey flavor; it’s served with super thin lavash bread, raw sliced onions, ezme (spicy tomato and herb salad), along with thick and luscious buffalo yogurt. All these accompaniments were perfect with the meat; I would have been sad and felt as though something were missing if we hadn’t ordered one of these things (the bread and onions come with the kebap, but the salad and yogurt are a little extra).

The cag kebap originated in Erzurum, a city in eastern Turkey, and it’s been said it’s one of the original preparations for meat on a spit in Turkey. I was pretty obsessed. We were tempted to order more, but the amount of food we got was just right.

I also loved the service here. The cooks were all super friendly when I recorded them, and who I assume is the manager/owner was very friendly when he greeted us and got us seated, and when I asked to use the restroom. I love the hospitality here in Turkey.