Failure as a means to succeed

As my time searching for a job extends into its sixth month, I find myself looking for more ways to remain optimistic about eventual success. I found a nice reminder of the benefits of failure this month in the Economist's article, "Fail often, fail well" . In it, I am reminded of the nature of success, and that is that without failure, we would not have any stick by which to measure success.

As most people do, I tend to take failure hard, and personally. Indeed, it is sometimes about some personal short-coming from the eyes of those who would measure me. However, it is most often about learning how to be successful. The article discusses the fact that Thomas Edison performed 9,000 experiments before finally inventing the light bulb. 9,000! Because there was no such thing as an electric light at that time, he could not have known that it was even possible. Yet, he continued to have confidence that he could create an entirely new product.

That definitely puts my job search into perspective. While I may feel as though I have sent out 9,000 applications or resumes, the reality of the matter is that the number is closer to 500 (still impressive that I could even find that many jobs to apply to). And while I still do not have a job, I have not failed entirely. With each iteration of my resume, I have improved upon it over the past 6 months by getting feedback from trusted peers and honing it down to highlight the best of my experiences. I have, in this way, succeeded in part, as I have had more interviews and calls from recruiters as my resume improved.

It also helps that the economy is improving and I've done quite a bit of work on my own professional development to make myself a stronger candidate. I'm proud of the way I have persevered despite the fact that I've been living on an extremely reduced budget, have struggled with depression and had a lifetime's worth of rejection. I have learned how to deal with living with limited funds, and found some very creative ways to make ends meet. I've continued to get up every morning, and pound the electronic pavement on the job boards nearly every single day, despite my desire to give up on several occasions. I've also learned how to deal with rejection and not take it personally. It might sting for a day or so, but I keep getting back on the horse.

I have gotten pretty good at failure, but I am using what I've learned to work towards success.

Bulgaria for lunch

I went to Bulgaria for lunch last Saturday, and was back in Istanbul for dinner. I left Istanbul around 8am to meet a fellow couchsurfer, and we headed off to the Istanbul bus station. The bus station itself is a labyrinthine structure, made up of dark passageways that these huge Coach buses somehow make their way through, winding up to the top deck, past garages to fix broken down buses, dry cleaning shops, magazine stands, tiny restaurants and tea houses. It's like a regular city, settled in the bowels of a giant structure, complete with its own mosque and homeless population. Finally, we made it to the top of the building, found the correct bus and were on our way to Bulgaria. Marry, the girl I was traveling with, and I both needed to cross the border to renew our Turkish visas. She's from France and we both are allowed to stay in Turkey for three months before having to renew our visas. For both of us, time was almost up, and after a little research, found that the closest border was the Turkey/Bulgaria border, just north of Istanbul.
It took a little over two hours to reach the border town, then we had to take a taxi the last 15 km to the actual border. We must have been a strange sight, exiting the taxi with just our hand bags, and walking past the cars waiting in line to cross the border. We literally walked from Turkey to Bulgaria, collecting the necessary stamps along the way from the border police. Luckily, between the two of us, we knew enough Turkish to ask what the procedure was, and the process was relatively easy. Once we got our Bulgarian stamps, we promptly turned around and reversed the process, literally staying in Bulgaria for the three minutes it took to walk over the border again.
I was really happy to see a duty free shop on the Turkish side, and was excited to get to buy a couple of bottles of good wine without having to sell a spare body part to afford it (as seems the case in the rest of Turkey). Really, it's about $30 US for a decent bottle of wine in a store (absolutely ridiculous considering that it's equal to more than one day's pay for most people), and you can forget about buying wine in a restaurant. I don't have enough money in my checking account to cover the cost! There's plenty of relatively inexpensive Turkish wine, but I'd rather drink a liter of gasoline than go that route. So, I rarely get to drink anything decent. Needless to say, I was psyched at the thought of getting to bring back 2 bottles of great looking Chilean wine for a mere 6 Euros/bottle. Until Merry had to open her big French mouth at the check out. She just HAD to go and use some of her limited Turkish to explain that we were only over the border for a minute, then were back in Turkey! ARGH!!!! Why!?!?!? In my view, there is never a reason to talk to anyone near the border, especially anyone in any kind of official capacity, lest the figure out that we're straddling the line of legal/illegal by doing a "border run." It turns out that to shop in the duty free shop, one must be out of the country for at least 3 days. Well, I'm sure they were not going to look through all of the stamps in each of our passports to try to figure out when we left and came back, so we would have been in the clear. However, the store clerk called over the manager and he informed us that we couldn't buy anything. I was really angry, but it wouldn't have helped to get mad at her. She's French. She can't help it. I did, however, tell her to keep her big, fat, French mouth shut before we got our final stamps from the Turkish police upon reentering the country. (Not in so many words, mind you. I was a tiny bit nicer in the way I put it). I could deal without the wine, but to have to stay in Bulgaria for any length of time (and potentially miss work because of her) was NOT going to fly well with me. Luckily, we crossed without a problem, took a taxi back to the border town and caught a shuttle to the bus station in time to get an earlier bus than we had planned. We made it back to Istanbul in time for dinner, and I'm happy that I have another 3 months here without having to worry about violating my visa limitations. Just next time, I'll be going ALONE and getting that damn wine!

Heat of Spring

It's been some time since my last post and I apologize for that. I'm now in Istanbul, living with two Turkish people (a brother and sister, Ilkay and Deniz respectively) and a Polish girl, Natalia. I met them on my first visit, through another friend, and I "surfed" their couch for a week or so, becoming friends with all three of them along the way. When I arrived back here, I stayed with the sister of my Turkish roommates, Kezban, then was asked to move in here, with them. So, I've gotten to know their whole family quite well, even their mom, who doesn't speak a lick of English.

It's been difficult in some ways to move to a new country with no job and no job prospects to speak of. However, knowing them has made it much easier than it could have been and I'm grateful to have such good friends in such a short time living here. They've been helpful with my foray into learning Turkish, but unfortunately their English is so good, that English is the language mostly spoken at home. Along with the three of them, we also live with a cat, who Deniz rescued as an abandoned kitten. She's about 7 months old now and currently teaching us about the cycle of life, cat style. She's entered her first heat and for the last 36 hours has been almost constantly mewing. Loudly. She has never been the cuddly type with me, but for the last 36 hours, she has decided that I'm her best bet at mating. Apparently she doesn't know that I don't swing that way...I'm not "into" cats. But, she's got her little heart set on mating with me and has been underfoot and scratching at my door nearly incessantly since this all began. Funny at first, it's now a little disconcerting that she's aimed her entire attack at me. I must have some kind of hormones spewing from my body, unbeknown to me, that attract mating female cats. I'll just have to add this to my list of attributes. I wonder if I can put that on my CV? Under the "Skills" section, I can list something like, "Drives female cats wild while in heat". At this point of my job search, I don't see how it can hurt me!

As for the job hunt, I've given into the cliche American thing to do, and have begun interviewing at English Language teaching centers. I was the "guest teacher" at the Istanbul Bar Association's English language class one week and it was actually pretty fun. I have a friend who is a lawyer here, and learning English. She asked if I could come in to talk to the class, so they could practice their English on a native speaker, since their teacher is Turkish. Little did I know I would be teaching the ENTIRE lesson. So, I whipped something up in the 5 minutes I had to prepare and I think it went okay, considering. At least, it went well enough for their teacher to recommend me to a colleague to teach his wife and daughter English. I'm going to meet with them tomorrow to see if I can help at all. Other than that, there are not many opportunities here for a foreigner like myself who does not speak Turkish. So, I'm studying Turkish in my copious free time and actually getting better, little by little. Wish me luck with the cat situation and pray that my roommates decide to get the little thing fixed!

I Love George Bush!

Holy mother! Did I just hear what I think I heard? Someone from the Middle East said, "I love George Bush." Ok, so Turkey is not officially the Middle East, but the place this guy is from might as well be Afghanistan. And he declared his undying love and support for George W. Bush?!?! His English is not so great, so perhaps I heard him incorrectly. Asking him to repeat himself, he said it again! I asked him if he knew what the word "love" meant and he assured me that he did and that he thought George was great. Huh? What? What kind of bizzaro universe was I in? Then he went on to clarify that because George Bush killed Arabs and he hates Arabs, he loves George Bush. In fact, he continued, he wished he could join the American Army so he could kill Arabs too. Yeah. He said that. Outloud. That pretty much sums up the "Kurdish situation" here in Turkey. Don't believe anyone when the say it's getting better, or the government is fixing relations between the Kurds and the Turkish government. Bullshit. When there are people walking around the streets of Istanbul who feel this strongly about killing people in cold blood for no reason other than their heritage, something is rotten in Denmark. Or, in this case, Turkey.
The Kurds and Turks have been killing each other for years and will continue to do so as long as people feel this way. The man I was speaking to told me that his cousin was killed by the Turkish Army and that his own village was burned down by the Army because someone living there was suspected of helping members of the PKK (a terrorist organization in the east and southeast of Turkey who fight for Kurds to have their own land, and barring that, the ability to speak their own language and practice their culture). Of course, when I pointed out to him that his cousin was a member of the PKK and had most likely murdered some Turkish soldiers, he got quiet and agreed. But, he assured me, he still loved George Bush and hated the Arabs.
I was pretty quick to assure him that George Bush was not going to return his feelings and would not hesitate to kill him too if there was some vague notion of rich oil fields to be found under Kurdish tribal lands. It all fell on deaf ears though. The man had formed a one way admiration society for GW and that was that!
Now if only American propaganda had been that good in favor of Bush. Scary thought!!!

The Sound of Ryan Air Landing

Last night when I was talking with some Australian girls, the subject of Ryan Air came up (see previous post for how in love I am with them) and we compared notes about our experiences flying them. In particular, we all wondered why everyone on all flights we've been on have broken out into applause upon landing. And to be fair, it's not just Ryan Air. It's every inter-European flight I've ever been on. And really, this is strange to me. I've not encountered any European flights that were particularly turbulent, or would cause me enough alarm to be grateful to be back on the ground. I think I was caught by surprise the first two, maybe three times I witnessed the whole plane break into a round of applause. However, when flights four, five and six and so on, also ended with the passengers all spontaneously clapping in tandem as if scripted, the pattern was painfully (and annoyingly) obvious. However, what the hell was going on? Was the entire plane so excited to arrive in each destination that they could not contain themselves and their joy for landing in Milan, or Marrakesh or Madrid? I mean, yeah, I was glad to be there too, but I never thought of applause as an appropriate way to show I was excited about a new leg in my journey. Just what was going on with these spontaneous clappers?

It seems like I'm not the only one who has questioned just what the hell this is all about. I googled it and it turns out there are a few websites written about this phenomenon. Are Europeans just so amazed by flying machines that they are in awe of actually landing? Really? They're so happy that the pilot did his job and got them where they needed to go safely? In that case, I think all passengers in my car should clap for me from now on when I get them where they need to go. Actually, now that I think about it, as my mom would agree, everyone who has ridden with me should be grateful!

Krakow

So, I'm currently back in Krakow, after spending a week here about three weeks ago. I don't know what it is about Poland, but I really like both cities I've been to (Gdansk and Krakow). I actually came back here for two reasons, neither of which really have anything to do with Krakow, but now that I'm here, I remember how much I loved the feeling of the city and this hostel I'm in in particular. I actually left a sweater (the only really warm piece of clothing I brought with me and therefore, very necessary as the nights begin to grow cooler) here at the hostel, so I came back to get it and to meet up with a woman I met at my hostel in Berlin. She and I went out for drinks last night as well as dinner tonight and it turns out that we're both going to be in Budapest at the same time as well. It's truly odd how these things work out. Maybe there are several obvious routes to take when touring Europe?

It IS a small world after all

Sorry I haven't written about Krakow or Berlin, two cities I really loved and just didn't find the time to write about. I'm in Gdansk, Poland now and found a great internet cafe, thanks to Dan Gant, a former Echo Bridge colleague, who sent advice about Gdansk.

I've been really lucky to meet some great people in my travels thus far and have only had rare moments of being actually lonely. Since Carolyn and I split up in Barcelona, I was nervous about meeting people, but it's been quite good so far and I hope I will continue to be able to meet fellow travelers even as the summer ends and there are fewer people staying in hostels. Who knows, perhaps that will be even better?

I met an Australian chick, Sheena, in Milan who I got along with well and we talked about meeting in Berlin. I decided to go there before she and her boyfriend had a chance to make it there and met another Australian woman, Lara, who was staying in my hostel room. Lara and I hit it off immediately and I plan to meet her tomorrow in Krakow for dinner. I just went to add Lara as my facebook friend and it turns out that we have a mutual friend in common...Sheena! How crazy is that, that I met two friends in two different cities who know each other?

But, that's not all. One of the people I became friends with last year is Morocco is now teaching English in Brest, France. We recently had a chance to meet up in Prague to catch up. It was already strange enough to me that we were in Prague at the same time, but when I met another of his friends randomly a few weeks later, I really started to wonder about this whole six degrees of separation thing. There was a girl from New Zealand staying in my hostel room in Berlin and she and I hung out one day. When she told me that she too was teaching English in Brest, I asked if she knew Xac. It turns out that he's one of her best friends. Crazy, huh? I just wonder how many other travelers I've met who are also separated by one degree to someone I know. It really makes the world seem like such a small place when these things happen.