THE BORAN GYM (NOTES ON TURKISH BUREAUCRACY OBITER DICTA)

I'd read this article about my Muay Thai gym before, but for some reason hadn't noticed the byline. I didn't know you wrote that, Jennifer! I recommend Jennifer's blog, which is a particularly handsome example of the expat-in-Turkey species. I don't think her brother would tell her that her blog looked low-class.

Anyway, Jennifer, you should have asked me about the e-rendevu system at the Yabanci Şubesi.The Yabanci Şubesi, foreign readers, is the place you go here every year to renew your residency permit. As Christy explains, "You look forward to it the same way you look forward to a visit to the gynecologist, only it's more invasive and there are a lot more Central Asians in the waiting room."

As I explained to Christy a while back, Jennifer, and as you noticed, they now have a fancy-schmantzy Internet appointment system to replace the old system of endless lines. Except the only way you'd know about this new system is by reading expatriate blogs. Last time, the news not yet having made the rounds, I showed up sans appointment. They turned me away, of course. Fair enough. I came back the next day having made an appointment for 3:15. All went well until we got to the part where I paid. That's when I found out that appointment or no, the cashier closes at 3:00, sharp. Why do they book people for 3:15 if the cashier closes at 3:00, I asked? Big shrug.

Oh, and I brought a pink manilla folder, like they told me to, but it was the wrong kind of pink manilla folder. You need a very specific pink manilla folder, you see.

Claudia recently recounted to me a residency-permit experience so strange I dare not even reproduce it here, for fear the illogic will prompt a catastrophic perturbation in the very fabric of the universe.

All of this is parenthetical, of course. I meant only to draw your attention to that nice article about my gym.