(no subject)

So, I have a new shiny android phone....

sans market app.

I cannot even install custom applications without resorting to sdk, let alone access the market.

I plan to yell at motorola for deceptiveness since the whole packaging does not mention anything about a key part of the android missing actually the whole manual in Turkish explains how to use the app, which is like: uh what? Not sure it will make a change granted. Honestly through, I am not sure I would have bought another phone since this one allows me to google map, browse internet and check emails. Lack of tweet app is irritating too but the point is... wtf?

Yeah I know jail breaking is an option, but do you know how annoyingly painful it is to actually manually install marketplace? not that rooting will be exactly cakewalk. Well if I decide to go with it, there is that service online that jailbreaks phones for you and puts it under their own guarantee. A bit sketchy but why not?

Mostly, I feel like an idiot.

In between transcript woes, my laptop fan prematurely dying a  slow death and this, January so far is like a series of unfortunate events.

but really. wtf?

--------

oh and there is the whole thing about my bank of america account that was closed not being closed. I want to be able to spend a day off phone.

Update

It seems to me lately that all I do in this account is long bouts of silence punctuated with moments of rage.

Part of it is living in Turkey (and in a strange way I love it: I think it is Stockholm syndrome). :P. Part of it is the sheer chaos of having scratched a whole life plan and life to do something new.

It IS new, it is exciting. However sometimes I feel like I am constantly extinguishing bushfires in what is a weird mix subtle culture shock of coming back to another country and trying to start up a career in a field where I have no prior knowledge of. Art is a foreign space. There are days I strongly feel like fish out of water. (but it is slowly getting better).

I am finding I have hard time writing emails in Turkish, and biting my nails before calling someone.getting extremely nervous before calling someone. I have no accent obviously and my vocabulary is mostly in place. I occasionally discover that some words has phonetically warped in my mind but it is becoming less and less as I use the language. My grammar is impeccable. I am no longer wondering if I needed to split "de" off or not the way I did when I first came. I have been told I write and speak pretty well. The problem is it is not easy. I cannot tell the nuances between two ways of phrasing a request. It is less not knowing the language, more the fact that I had never used this language as an adult, so I try to insert English way of forming paragraphs and wording which results on funny first drafts of emails. Usually throughout college and work we acquire that gradually and we get some leeway for being young. So I can tell it apart in English but in Turkish I can't. The bad thing is, I am too old to be given leeway, and I speak Turkish too well for people to  be clued in I have language issues. It is okay, and it is getting better. It is just a bit like walking with eyes closed. You can do it, but you have to be careful, feeling your way around, and you cannot go too fast (and you are screwed if there is a danger ahead).

and there is the culture shock. The thing about Turkey is that people in my little social hole here, are modern, more modern in some ways than what I see in USA and Europe. However the rest of the Turkey is not in a way that is not visible in surface. People wear beautiful clothes, all common technology is available, we have all manners of world cuisines (even sushi apparently, a bit expensive but tasty enough). However then you run into these weird things caused by government (youtube ban that was just lifted, my recent rage over android phone that had no way to buy apps for, movies having scenes cut-off from them), just plain disorganization (like you cannot get recommendations in electronically to, most universities) or bureaucracy that is not better or worse but different than I am used to (like you need to make sure stamps on your passport are done in a legible way because they are official information you might need to copy). It is really not surprising, considering the way this country was only a decade and half ago (and also not surprising considering the current government severely slowed any progress that could have been made, if not pushed it backwards completely). I know some of the same stuff exists out there too (as wikileaks showed us all, freedom of speech is made of smoke) but it is more out there here, more affecting daily life. One major part of living in Turkey is just learning to reroute through obstacles because there is no way you can avoid them. I used to live in this place, I KNOW how it works. However I have never been an adult in this place and have to learn to deal with it myself: which means I am spending a lot of time running and a lot of time sitting on a seat exhausted.

I should have expected this. I DID expect this. However I don't think I knew how it would have felt. It is intensely frustrating. 

and I am not regretting one moment of it. :) I have the snark and the humor to match, bring it on (within reason).