Thanksgiving & more

Thanks to Dave Goldsman at GA Tech I met Ole, a Danish man that lives in a small fishing village near me, on Thursday. We had planned to hike to the nearby fortress, but it was raining so I invited him for lunch. I really wanted to get his take on Turkish society and culture.

He's an artist. He fell in love with Turkey because he was teaching Turkish people in Denmark and then decided he needed to know more about his pupils, so he traveled to their villages in eastern Turkey. His take is that the Kemalists, adherents of Atatürk who were in power for 80 years, are corrupt and the current party is actually doing some good. (The situation is a little similar to Labor and Likud in Israel.) He says the government has vocational programs to get the unskilled working and they are helping the poor, something the previous government never did. As he was criticizing Atatürk, he actually said we needed to be careful because it is against the law to criticize the him. I invited Ole to the Thanksgiving dinner because he knows a lot of Koç folks.

The English Language Center organized the dinner in the Founders Hall. Turkey was provided and everyone brought the fixings. It was pleasant to see Turks and Anglos. Seems like English teachers who travel around are a special breed- everyone has a story. I chatted with the Turkish boyfriend of a teacher. Ole enjoyed telling this man his take on his society! This Turkish professional said that the ruling families (Koç, Sabançi and a few others) did have to clean up their act and improve their products when the government relaxed trade barriers.

Some of the teachers are going to Bulgaria during the Bayrum holiday to get cheap wine and ham.

Friday I attended "Innovations in Marketing," sponsored by the student marketing club. They said it was in English, but when the woman who I thought was just introducing the speaker started with powerpoint slides- I went to get headphones for similtaneous translation. It actually worked quite well. Rajesh Chandy was the keynote. He superbly entertained and enlightened us about the topic of innovation which is applicable to us all- not soley in the marketing arena. His theme was taking concepts across contexts. He gave the example of Goldcorp, a mining company in Canada that was going bankrupt. Normally mines keep all their maps confidential. Goldcorp posted their maps on the internet and offered money for advice on where they should dig. An Australian using a 3D computer mapping program won the prize and Goldcorp became profitable.

We had a break "cocktail" break at noon- no liquor- just small finger food- guess the students just liked the name.