Goodbye job... Goodbye friends... Big Changes Ahead... Breasts and a 'Harajuku Moment'

I try not to write anything useful for people who are living and working abroad, and I assume that's about how this entry is going to go as well.

When I come across those blogs by people who profess to float from place to place while living some sort of exotic high life, I tend to feel a couple of things (apart from envy). One is that they're quite possibly lying. The other is that flitting around and sampling other places is a dumb lifestyle. Mind you, I'm still envious, but it's still dumb.

I left my job. It was a good job, but it needed to be left in order to feed myself and my growing family.

I miss my friends there and I still think about what I'm going to share with them next time I see them at work... but then I realize that I'm not going to see them.

We're moving to my new job in Istanbul. It's a big confusing mess of a city filled with people who act like they shouldn't be living in a city.

It's been a little bit of a strange time. My baby son was born just a few days ago and we're (my wife and I) learning how to make magic juice come out of her body in order to nourish the little guy.

One of the biggest mistakes we've made so far as parents, and we made this one just hours after becoming parents, was to force massive boobs into his face and foster a lasting fear of them. It sounds impossible, but it's not. The second mistake we made was to enable this fear by buying a box of formula for our starving, screaming child.

In breastfeeding, two things need to happen: The baby needs to be hungry, and food needs to come out of the breast.

Simple, right?

Not so much. So far, a poking, prodding parade of rather annoying Turkish women have been lecturing my wife on breastfeeding and child rearing. Frankly, I'm tired, and we're just beginning to produce results. We've finally begun reversing the damage we've done as parents.

First, we needed to help baby to face his fear of boobies by tantalizing him. Make him chase the boobie and not the other way around. Get the milk started, then give him a taste. Wait a second, and pull back. Repeat 1,000 times. It helps to sing to him. My favourite song for this is one that I made. I call it 'Eat the Boobie.'

Second, we had to deal with the problem of passivity caused by giving him bottles of formula. This is probably one of the biggest problems I've seen happening in Turkish private schools. Letting the child lay on his back, doing absolutely nothing while feeding him nutrients from a box (or good grades) is a bit like attaching lead weights to a kite... or squishing a beetle under your heel and then naming him and adopting as a pet... and hoping he'll be able to learn tricks later.

Making a boob seem friendly and nonthreatening takes very little brains or talent, as many Hollywood actresses could easily tell you. Making the child less passive, however, was a real trick. Luckily, as I was thinking of how to deal with the problem, the solution presented itself accidentally when my exhausted wife started to doze. I'd left the room to go to the kitchen and take a just take a breathe. The baby wasn't doing what he was supposed to. As a teacher, I was already aware that children aren't simply programmable robots and that they can be frustrating sometimes. For you non-teachers who are thinking of becoming parents, you need to be aware of this. Unless you are a horrible pop musician (like Pitbull, who can barely complete a song on his own), you do not have the power to simply program children.

When I came back from the kitchen, I saw something wonderful. It was absolutely inspiring. My baby was looking at the breast, which was just out of reach, and sucking madly on the fingers of one hand. He was reaching for the breast with his other.

In teaching we learned about Vygotski and his zone of proximal development, or a manageable yet challenging gap to achievement that sets the bar neither too high nor too low. For my newborn baby, the gap between his sweet little face and my sleeping wife's funbags was too long, but he was sucking madly and knew what he wanted. Nothing passive there... woke her up, moved her closer... problem solved.

Tim Ferris, the talented business and fitness writer, has a talent for naming things, and I experienced something that he called The Harajuku Moment.

With the baby's goal too far away, he was doing the next best thing. With his appetite whetted, he was furiously trying to get what he wanted. It was nice to see that he wasn't giving up. My fear of him becoming a passive blob of an adult was soothed.

When I first read the term "Harajuku Moment" I thought of a Haruki Murakami short story called, "On seeing the 100% perfect girl one April morning." (Be sure to read the entire story as it appears in Sputnik Sweetheart and not the partial version that people put online). In fact, I'm sure it was the inspiration for Tim's coining of the term, which would make it a more interesting double edged sword.

The story is highly personal for me because it actually happened to me, and it happened in Harajuku as a single young man on my way to a job interview with a recruiter for a school in Tsukuba. It was morning. It was April. I can't for the life of me remember what the girl was wearing, but I saw her there and thought she was my future... and I kept walking.

It must happen all the time in Harajuku. Seriously, the place has that feel about it.

In Tim's version of the Harajuku Moment, the motivating, life-changing 'ah-ha' moment. In mine and Murakami's version, the needling, lingering feeling of 'what-if' that can follow a missed opportunity.

In life there are many things we want to do. Recently I saw a travel program about Vietnam. What I saw had me excited for days afterwards, so I sought out opportunities in Vietnam. I scored big and got a fantastic offer. It was much more than I had hoped for and I was ready to go. My baby was going to grow up with three languages. My son was going to eat cobra hearts and study martial arts. We would explore asian jungles together. Then the familial push and pull of discussion started to affect my ability to make decisions. The realities of the pregnancy and child rearing began to appear heavier and problems more insurmountable. Even now, the word "Vietnam" is associated with irritating feelings of lethargy, grasping and whining.

It's what no parent wants for their child. It's what no one wants for themselves. It's the difference between getting the milk and just sitting and sucking on your fingers, looking at a boob.

So, this morning I solved two major parenting problems (that I had helped cause) and been struck with a very inspiring ah ha moment. What am I going to do with it? Miss the opportunity like I did with the girl in Harajuku or a new life in Vietnam, or will I grab the bull by the boob?

Some Photos

This is a Tofaş Şahin, a typical Turkish car. These things are everywhere. They're relatively cheap, so it's the kind of car kids might trick out with rims, neon lights, and Cadillac emblems, then drive around playing obnoxious club music. Despite this and the fact that I'm going to get tired of seeing them around, and that driving in Turkey is a dangerous pain in the ass, and that if I owned a car, it would get banged up in no time at all, I want one of these things in the worst way.





This is the view from our roof... by all accounts, it's a pretty busted up part of town, but I love it. It's charming. It's starting to feel like home.

Nine Days in Turkey

I've only been here nine days? During that time, I've probably learned four whole words. Learning a new language is not easy, and not many people here speak English.
Soon, my wife isn't going to be around to translate for me, so it's definitely time to step up and start actively learning to speak Turkish. In Japan, it's possible for a foreigner to function without having to learn the language, but in Turkey the bureaucracy is too thick, the city too hectic. There is a feeling that you have to be "on" at all times when you're out and moving around.

In other news, Bilgi University throws a nice party. Armağan's graduation ceremony was followed by a cocktail party that was held in a very beautiful space that used to house an old factory. Whether the campus was beautiful or ugly was something that we didn't agree on (I liked the old factory buildings), but the view of the city rising up around it gave it a feeling of being at the heart of things, of serving a necessary function. I was immediately envious and wished I had gone to University there.

Today's mission: learn to use the tramway.

Sounds

At night, the relative silence of the city is broken by the sound of dueling ezan – the prayer announcements from the loudspeakers of the local mosques. I like them. The speakers give a little crackle and the muezzin gives their most beautiful call, trying to stand out from the others. I tried to look at a mosque during prayer yesterday, but the doorman gave me stinkeye because I looked like such a tourist.

The first sound of the morning is hammering. Downstairs there is a recycler who breaks up old appliances with a hammer to get the metal. He does his work out on the sidewalk. We’re away from the main street, so our street doesn’t see too many cars. There are a lot of voices and kids playing outside. The number of people goes up until at night, streets are filled with men, women, and children wandering around. Anytime you need something from the store, just call to one of them and throw some money down and they will get it for you. Little convenience stores are everywhere, along with bread shops and internet cafes, and an assortment of other types of businesses, including restaurants and “secret” shops that sell pirated DVDs.

The money isn’t as much of a problem as it was eight years ago, the last time I was here. The old Turkish currency was counted in millions and tens of millions for purchasing small items. That was just too much for anyone to get their head around, which was probably good for rip-off artists. Now the money is easy; 1.60 TL is equal to about a dollar. For convenience’s sake, I think of 1TL as a dollar.

Today, starting in the morning until late at night, their was rhythmic hammering, like steel on concrete. I don't know what they were doing for 8 - 10 hours, but it sounded like they pounded down every last wall.

Packed and Ready

There's not a lot left to do - just a couple of fussy details to take care of so there won't be any problems with checking in at the airport or getting through security.

Once I arrive in Turkey there'll be a couple of bureaucratic hoops to jump through before I can start working, and we need to figure out once and for all what Nilu is going to do about her school.

Thoughts?

None right now. Dogs know instinctively when they're about to go to the vet, but most of my head is too thick to process the fact that I'm going somewhere for a long time. The ticket, the passport, these bags, and people hugging me to say goodbye should be enough to help me realize that I've already spent my last night here in Michigan, but it still feels very unreal. Twelve hours from now, I'll be in the air. In less than 36 hours I'll be in the heart of one of the world's biggest cities, jetlagged and disoriented.