My tip for HSBC's Expat Explorer guide:
Commit to social media/mobile technology to stay centered.
See the tip and many others from expats around the world.
I was pleased to facilitate a table of women in a discussion about using your online presence to create and sustain your personal brand. Held at Cisco's San Jose campus, the event was part of Cisco's Connected Women series of professional development gatherings for women from Cisco, Citrix, Intel and EMC.
1. a personal brand is what you want people to know about you to help connect you with the opportunities that are right for you 2. embody your brand -- show-it-not-tell-it -- on a daily basis, using your online presence at social sites 3. demonstrate your expertise, your thought leadership, the talents you bring, how you operate by sharing news and information and being helpful
My GlobalNiche team member Tanya Monsef Bunger joined me at the event, pictured here.The roundtable event aimed to provide actionable insights into specific topics while enabling attendees to meet other women who are interested in that particular topic.
There were 10 tables of 10 people, each with their own topic, so the evening was like attending a miniworkshop at a conference. Work-Life Fit. Mentoring. Thinking Big. Developing Cool Designs. Thinking Outside the Box. Career Development. You can imagine I made my table all about Twitter. Twitter is my answer for everything. I’m joking.
But many of the corporate women at my table weren’t on Twitter and had their reasons for not wanting to show themselves and their expertise much online, including in company bulletin boards and chats.
That’s a different blog post for a different time. It’s a serious issue.
Would consultants or other professionals who are constantly traveling be considered digital nomads? This is my answer to the question on Quora.
I think the main definition of digital nomads is being people who make their nomadic lives work through digital means.
Like me.
I live in a particular place, but I partake of a wider world of opportunity through digital means, and envisioning myself as independent of my surroundings.
We all have the potential to be digital nomadlike, or use digital nomad strategies to make our lives more seamless.
Happy to attend O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly's book launch event for venture capitalist Bill Janeway's Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy at the SOMA offices of Code for America, described by GOOD magazine as "the Peace Corps for geeks."
Legendary web browser engineer, entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen has described the book as "essential to anyone who wants to understand technology and how its creation will be financed for decades to come."
Code for America founder Jen Pahlka interviewed Janeway for the lunchtime networking event where I ran into Twitter acquaintance and director of Deloitte's Center for the Edge John Hagel, the author of the prescient The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion.
The white leather couches are pretty bad, too.
Was excited to join futurist David Hodgson's EdgeLab social gathering at Hub San Francisco.
He describes the event as a way "to network with people interested in systemic change around inspiring projects we see emerging here in the Bay Area. Marc O'Brien of Future Partners and Valentine Giraud are helping prototype this experience."
We heard presentations from five people (Milicent Johnson - Helping Creative Communities Thrive; Andrew Trabulsi - The Global Civics Project; Terry Mandel - BioMedLink; Kathia Laszlo - Reciprocity; Lina Constaninovici - Startup Nectar) looking for help and then were invited to swarm them afterward to brainstorm ways to engage and offer our best set of skills.
In particular, I wonder about the viability of charging the audience to hear people pitch their ideas that we're then also expected to help with. If we're paying for the space and refreshments, 45 pax x $20 = $900. $450/hr seems kind of steep for after-hours in a co-working space.
One of the speakers said she wasn't prepared and had no visuals which is unusual when people have paid to hear you speak. If a speaker is unprepared in front of a paying audience, perhaps a speaker should not speak?
Another of the speakers said he was involved with the Brookings Institution, a prominent and established think tank with a vast network of resources, including governments and corporations. The opposite of a grassroots organization. Am I paying to hear a Brookings pitch that I am then asked to brainstorm to help as if I'm part of a grassroots effort?
I asked one speaker before the event who she was and what brought her to the event -- standard networking fare, an invitation to connect on shared interests of which we probably had many -- and she replied, "I'd rather not say. I'm going to cover that in my presentation."
Here's a crazy idea: don't bother reinventing the wheel.
Natalie Sisson of The Suitcase Entrepreneur asked me to be a $100 Changemaker in her $100 Change Program. It's an ecourse designed to get you to take action on your dream idea, project or business to make it a reality in 100 days or less.
Other changemakers include Chris Guillebeau, Danielle LaPorte, Janet Hanson, Chris Brogan, Michael Stelzner, Cameron Herold, Steve Kamb, Laura Roeder, Jonathan Fields, Clay Collins, Pamela Slim, Amy Porterfield, Corbett Barr, Lewis Howes, Pat Flynn, Nathalie Lussier, Dane Maxwell, Christine Kloser, Adam Baker, Johnny B Truant, Pam Brossman, Derek Halpern, and Alexis Neely.
Here are my answers to the $100 Change interview.
If you had $100 to start a creative project how would you spend it? Get Internet access. If I had that already, then invest in more access (like wi-fi, or a mobile device to facilitate using the web for more things, in more places).
What is your daily ritual for setting yourself up for success? You may not be ready but you'll be so much further along (and figuring it out!) if you simply get started right NOW.
You'll also be in community with your peers, and your clients will be lining up when you launch.
What I'm doing now with my startup GlobalNiche I've actually been doing for years but didn't make it available to as wide an audience as I could have way back then.
Get started, go wide. Share the process. Don't wait til it's perfect, or when you know everything you need to know. That day will never come.
What is worth paying for? I'd pay for nitty gritty details and big picture advice from professionals who specialize in certain areas.
Legal advice, accounting guidance.
A consult with a brand messaging expert.
These kinds of things can unfreeze you, set you on the right path, and help you avoid lots of pain in the future.
What's a saying of yours we can put on a poster? A nugget I can offer from GlobalNiche's combo of microbrand building, creative entrepreneurship, global community development: polish your ideas in public.
That's how you're going to build a borderless community you love, and tap into a deeper sense of yourself.
What key methods do you use to stay focused on your priorities? Committing to making sense of what I do.
I'm finding the last mile of taking my ideas to market has been about GOING BACKWARD to meet my larger community.
For so long I've been pushing forward and existing on my own leading edge -- which is necessary to evolve in your field -- but now I need to make sense of how I got here and why any one else might want to join this journey.
I think of it as leaving a trail of bread crumbs they can follow.
In committing to simplifying my message, and charting a path others can follow, I am both getting to the heart of my thinking, and reaching far more people.
How do you stop fear from allowing you to do your best work? Do your thing in public, and invest in yourself.
Volunteer to get access to opportunities no one is offering you otherwise (for instance, if you want to go to a conference but can't afford it and Twitter-attending won't suffice, ask to work there. You'll make contacts and open new doors.)
Keep them flowing, more will come and they'll be even better developed.
Learn the basics of pitching your ideas to people more established than you are. If you nail that etiquette (know their work, which part of your idea is right for them, and you're able to be brief), you're going to find success.
I heard from Yasmine Ibrahim, a fellow on the museum’s next online exhibition which launches in 2013 and will explore Muslim Women’s Art & Voices.
I took the original photograph in 2004 when my coeditor and I toured the harem before embarking on our creation of the Expat Harem book. Then I manipulated the image in Photoshop.
I entered it into a gallery exhibition of Istanbul photographs by members of the International Women of Istanbul and American Women of Istanbul photo club in 2005 and it was the first image of the show to sell.
Even though I'm not a Muslim woman so technically may not fit the specs for this exhibit, Ibrahim writes, "Your image was selected because it is related to Islamic art. Personally it is my favorite image because it is abstracted and joyful. As a Muslim, I felt that it symbolizes many aspects of Islamic culture."
The image seems a cousin to a photo of a 19th century mansion I took in Penang, Malaysia in 1997 and also manipulated in Photoshop.
Have you tried mapping the complexity and richness of your life (and career) with an overlapping Venn diagram?
Here's what turned up when I did one for GlobalNiche -- you can see all the relationships of our personal and professional influences and communities as we operate at the intersection of content, culture, and identity.
There's power in your diversity, how you combine your worlds, and the hybrid result!
If you've attempted a Venn of some part of your life, you're invited to share it on the GlobalNiche Facebook page here.
Like this "social media is the new women's movement" at the New York Times, last week's "entrepreneurship is the new women's movement" at Forbes.com, and the power of networked reality at The Atlantic last month.
As Tara Agacayak says, "What I'm seeing is the trend toward more customized, flexible, personally fulfilling work with the technology to facilitate it."
There's this "Why work-life balance is a crock" at CBSNews.com: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500395_162-57342505/why-work-life-balance-is-a-crock/
Women leaving mismatched corporate culture for work on their own terms:http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/06/08/entrepreneurship-is-the-new-womens-movement/
Seth Godin calls platform building "a longterm shortcut": http://archive.feedblitz.com/720389/~4194314
Microsoft buys Yammer for $1.2B for the same reason GlobalNiche urges us to enter the conversation on our topics:
"You cannot underestimate the power of "working out loud" with social tools. So many conversations get trapped in the one on one world of email and instant messaging. With open sharing, new ideas emerge, experts are found, and teams are formed from the groundswell. Serendipity happens when conversations become public and others are encouraged to listen and contribute their ideas, all within the safety of the company walls."
http://socialmediatoday.com/jimworth/559907/why-yammer-worth-12b-microsoft
people "who reluctantly socialize via online methods due to skill or cost or personal disposition may well find themselves *left out* of conversation." http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/social-medias-small-positive-role-in-human-relationships/256346/
Plug in better (includes "unplug from disconnection"):http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/plug-in-better-a-manifesto/252873/
(altho the below link is hardly mainstream, it's exactly what GlobalNiche is all about): "disadvantaged groups have tools to reach out and organize across geographic boundaries" http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/04/23/sherry-turkles-chronic-digital-dualism-problem/
And thanks to global women's health doctor Nassim Assefi for noting that the forward-looking approach to life and "the American Dream" mentioned in this article is what I show people how to do in my GlobalNiche program and in general! We are way on the cutting-edge. http://www.more.com/women-new-american-dream
Great Google Hangout session today with Santa Cruz-based Camille Smith from WORK IN PROGRESS COACHING and the GlobalNiche team.
Camille's our September 2012 guest in the GlobalNiche video chatroom, and will be offering a special performance, possibilities & authentic relationships program for our community.
Talking about GlobalNiche with someone considering producing a Future-of-Work-themed TEDx in the Bay Area...this is what I told her.
Basically, positioning the life hacks of internationals and other operatives who have found themselves at cultural disadvantage as an approach that many many people can benefit from -- from those who've never left their hometown but have dreams they think are impossible there, those who've been retired prematurely or otherwise lost their jobs, to those who just graduated and face a bleak job market, to WAHMs and others in nontraditional work settings.
Sweet surprise today: Amy Alipio, one of my National Geographic Traveler editors, recommending Expat Harem for #TripLit, a Thursday travel reading event on Twitter. 
Location independence begins at home! ...some informal notes from a discussion I had with a TEDx future-of-work organizer, Joan Blades, the founder of moveon.org
At global niche, we're currently working on putting years of theory and practice into a marketable solution. Basically, positioning the life hacks of internationals and other operatives who have found themselves at cultural disadvantage as an approach that many many people can benefit from -- from those who've never left their hometown but have dreams they think are impossible there, those who've been retired prematurely or otherwise lost their jobs, to those who just graduated and face a bleak job market, to WAHMs and others in nontraditional work settings.
There is also the dislocation of favorite identities, ppl close the book on them when they no longer are convenient or the prevailing culture. The lost aspect then gets buried as if it can no longer be alive, like ppl who enjoyed salsa dancing in college, or reading poetry all summer -- and no longer do. But with a global niche they can keep a toe in/reenter that conversation, follow the latest news and advances, meet up with ppl who are more active in these areas than they are (on travels, or in their current location).
When we speak of all the different worlds we belong to, for non-expat types this could be gap between work and life balance...you are not in the worlds and cultures you feel you belong. But you can be, regardless of where you are.
Mobile progressives come at social media from the side of really needing it to live our lives with possibility. not as a plaything. Our globalized selves easily use/adopt tech to continue to be global. But learning to be global is what people who come from the other side are struggling with.
i see the need in my friend about to be laid off but completely absent from the web and personal and prof development communities. i see the need in another friend who altho prolific and talented, he's technophobic and barely making ends meet. he mentioned a dream of designing/owning a specialty bar -- i got him started on interest posting his encyclopedic collection of those kind of specialty cultural images which may help to get him there. (it's a place to point ppl to show he's capable of doing that work, and discoverable too)
Exciting slash horrifying!
Coco Brown, the COO at Taos Management and Angel investor with Golden Seeds will be discussing funding strategies for mid-career entrepreneurs.
Pitch Practice is a time for pre-selected women to present their startup and get some thoughtful insight from the seasoned women in the audience. This is a supportive, insightful process in helping each other be successful entrepreneurs.
If you're in the Bay Area, consider coming, it's free! RSVP at link.
+++
June 8, 2012: Notes and photos from WOMEN LAUNCH. We heard from Allyn Taylor, a director at Golden Seeds.
"Turkey is a very young society, I told reporter Ken Kaplan in an interview for Intel Free Press for his article "Turkey Bets on Tech, Youth to Grow Economy". "One early adopter can get a group or whole family into a new thing almost overnight," which drives quick adoption of computers, smartphones and Facebook.
At my GlobalNiche LinkedIn group, I've been talking with Jane Stephenson, a soft skills trainer and interpersonal communication coach at Knowboundaries Coaching and Training...
Stephenson writes, "In building the resources and opportunities its important to use all our skills and talents built up over the years, tasks which we carried out excellently in the past may be redundant now - but the skills are transferable, and its well worth recalling those skills and acknowledging them."
My response:
How do we best demonstrate that for the greatest impact in our career and life satisfaction opportunities?
The work I do with GlobalNiche stresses that identifying our valuable content is just one part of the puzzle. We need to be active in our fields and interests regardless of whether or not we are employed by someone else to operate in those fields. In general, the concept of building a global niche is about creating a platform for yourself to cultivate your opportunities.
If I were looking for a job in this tough market, I'd be doing exactly what I am already doing with my own global niche -- sharing and participating and being visible with who I am and what I am interested in and what I've done in the past and what I am doing now and what I am aiming to do in the future.
I'd be my own ideal candidate.
After two years, Tara and I are closing our Creative Entrepreneurs Facebook page.
Members of this group are scattered all over the globe. We are working in a variety of areas and are hybrids of some sort. We identify with being suspended between multiple worlds and find ourselves challenged by culture, geography, language and time zone. But we believe that limbo state is our secret weapon.
We are looking forward to more discussions about how you turn disadvantages into springboards, and how you flourish in the niche you create for yourself.
What we've been doing here and at our LinkedIn group we've been taking to the next level at our GlobalNiche page for more than six months. Come join us there and keep evolving your creative enterprise...
Our mission at this page and at LinkedIn since 2009 is to aid creative entrepreneurs poised to maximize the benefits of social networks by actively connecting with each other and pooling resources and inspiration.
This appeared in The Displaced Nation, March 19, 2012.
Continuing our feature, “Cleopatra for a Day,” we turn to Anastasia Ashman, an American whose love of the exotic led her to Southeast Asia (Malaysia) and Istanbul, Turkey to live (she also found a Turkish husband en route!). Having just moved back home to California, Ashman opens her little black book and spills the fashion and beauty secrets she has collected over three decades of pursuing a nomadic life.
Like Cleopatra, I’m into medicinal unguents and aromatic oils. My staples are lavender and tea tree oil for the tropical face rot you can get in hot, humid places — and for all other kinds of skin complaints, stress, headaches, jet lag, you name it — and Argan oil for skin dryness. I take them everywhere. I also spray lavender and sandalwood on my sheets.
When living in Southeast Asia I liked nutmeg oil to ward off mosquitoes. (I know that’s not beauty per se but bug-bitten is not an attractive look, and it’s just so heavenly smelling too, I suppose you can slather it on your legs and arms for no reason at all.)
I didn’t even have to go to Africa to become dependent on shea butter for lips and hands, and I like a big block of cocoa butter from the Egyptian Bazaar in Istanbul for après sun and gym smoothing — less greasy than shea butter, which I usually use at night.
I’m not really into branded products. When you move around it’s hard to keep stocking your favorite products and I find companies are always discontinuing the things I like so I’ve become mostly brand agnostic.
I just moved from Istanbul to San Francisco, and I got rid of almost everything I owned so I’m seeing what basics I can live with. Because to me, basics that do a wonderful, multifaceted job are the definition of luxury. You’ve got to figure out what those basics are for you.
Oh, and when I am in Paris, I buy perfume. Loved this tiny place in Le Marais that created scents from the plants on the island of Sardinia. And wouldn’t you know it, the second time I went they’d gone out of business. Crushing.
My favorite perfume maker in Paris at the moment — very intriguing perspective, lots of peppery notes and almost nicotiney pungencies — is L’Artisan Parfumeur. I’ve got my eye on their Fou d’Absinthe.
In another life, past or present, I know I was involved with perfume…
Believe Cleopatra would drink them dissolved in vinegar? In Malaysia I used to get capsules of crushed pearls from a Chinese herbalist down the street from my house — apparently they’re good for a creamy-textured skin.
I’ll take a facial in any country. I like Balinese aromatic oil massages when I can get them, too, and will take a bath filled with flowers if I’ve got a view of the jungle. Haven’t yet had my chance to do a buttermilk bath. I also do mud baths and hot springs where ever they’re offered, in volcanic areas of the world.
Another indispensable: the Turkish hamam. It’s really great for detoxification, relaxation and exfoliation. When living in Istanbul, I’d go at least once a season, and more often in the summer. It’s great to do with a clutch of friends. You draw out the poaching experience by socializing in the steamy room on heated marble benches, and take turns having your kese (scrub down) with a rough goat-hair mitt. You hire a woman who specializes in these scrubs, and then she massages you with a soapy air-filled cotton bag, and rinses you off like a mother cat washes her kitten.
Soap gets in the eyes, yes.
I own all the implements now, including hand-crocheted washcloths made with silverized cotton, knitted mitts, oil and laurel oil soaps, copper hamam bowls (for rinsing), linen pestemal (wraps or towels), and round pumice stones. (For haman supplies, try Dervis.com.)
I’ve had dental work done in Malaysia and Turkey and was very satisfied with the level of care and the quality and modernity of the equipment and techniques. I got used to state-of-the-science under-the-gum-line laser cleanings in Malaysia (where my Taiwanese dentist was also an acupuncturist) and worry now that I am back to regular old ineffective cleanings. I’ve had horrific experiences in New York, by the way, so don’t see the USA as a place with better oral care standards.
In general, I like overkill when it comes to my teeth. I’ll see oral surgeons rather than dentists, and have my cleanings from dentists rather than oral hygienists.
Turkey apparently has a lot of plastic surgery, as well as Lasik eye surgery. One thing to consider about cosmetic procedures is the local aesthetic and if it’s right for you. I didn’t appreciate the robot-like style of eyebrow shaping in Istanbul (with a squared-off center edge) — so I’d be extra wary of anything permanent!
I’ve dyed my hair many colors — from black cherry in Asia to red to blonde in Turkey — and had it styled into ringlets and piled up like a princess and blown straight like an Afghan hound. That last one doesn’t work with my fine hair, and doing this style before an event on the Bosphorus would make it spring into a cotton candy-like formation before I’d had my first hors d’oeuvre.
I’ve had my hair cut by people who don’t know at all how to handle curly hair. That’s pretty daring.
I looked like a fluff ball for most of my time in Asia, because I tried to solve the heat and humidity problem with short hair and got tired of loading it up with products meant for thick straight Asian hair.
Now that I’ve relocated to San Francisco (which, even though it’s close to my hometown of Berkeley where I haven’t lived in 30 years, I still consider “a foreign country”), I’m having my hair cut by a gardener, who trims it dry, like a hedge. Having my hair cut by an untrained person with whatever scissors he can find is also pretty daring!
On the fashion front, I have an addiction to pashmina-like shawls from Koza Han, the silk market in Bursa, the old capital of the Ottoman empire and a Silk Road stop. I can keep wearing them for years.
I also have a small collection of custom-made silk kebayas from Malaysia, the long, fitted jacket over a long sarong skirt on brightly hand-drawn and printed batik, which I pull out when I have to go to a State dinner and the dress code is formal/national dress. (It’s only happened once, at Malacañan Palace, in Manila!)
I have one very tightly fitting kebaya jacket that is laser-cut velvet in a midnight blue which I do not wear enough. Thanks for reminding me. I may have to take out the too-stiff shoulder pads.
I like state-of-the-art stuff that does more than one thing at once and find most places sell very backward underthings that are more about how they look than how they fit, feel, or perform. Nonsense padded bras, bumpy lace, and stuff that is low on performance and high on things I don’t care about.
I got an exercise racerback bra at a Turkish shop and had to throw it away it was so scratchy and poorly performing. No wicking of sweat, no staying put, no motion control. But it had silver glittery thread — and (unnecessary) padding!
I like most of the jewelry I’ve acquired abroad and am grateful to receive it as gifts, too. All of my pieces have some kind of story — and some attitude, too.
From Turkey: Evil-eye nazar boncuğu pieces in glass and porcelain; silk-stuffed caftan pendants from the Istanbul designer Shibu; Ottoman-style enameled pieces; and an opalized Hand of Fatima on an impossibly fine gold chain. This last piece is what all the stylish women in Istanbul are wearing at the moment.
From China: White pearls from Beijing, pink from Shanghai and purple from Shenyang.
From Malaysia: I got an tiny tin ingot in the shape of a turtle in Malacca, which I was told once served as currency in the Chinese community. I had it mounted in a gold setting and wear it from a thick satin choker.
From Holland: A recent acquisition from Amsterdam are gold and silver leather Lapland bracelets with hand-twinned pewter and silver thread and reindeer horn closures. They’re exquisite and rugged at the same time.
Today’s a rainy day of errands so I’m wearing a fluffy, black cowl-necked sweater with exaggerated sleeves, brown heathered slacks, and black ankle boots. They’re all from New York, which is where I’ve done the most shopping in recent years.
My earrings are diamond and platinum pendants from Chicago in the 1940s, a gift from my grandmother.
I’ve also got on my platinum wedding and engagement rings. They’re from Mimi So in New York.
I liked FashionTV in Turkey, which was owned by Demet Sabanci Cetindogan, the businesswoman who sponsored my Expat Harem book tour across America in 2006.
The segment of Turkish society interested in fashion is very fashion forward. I enjoyed being able to watch the runway shows and catch interviews with the designers.
If I could draw and sew I’d make all my own clothes but I am weak in these areas. In another life, when I get a thicker skin for the fashion world’s unpleasantries, I’ll devote myself to learning these things and have a career in fashion design.
In Istanbul, Nişantaşi is somewhere you’d see some real fashion victims limping along in their heels on the cobblestones and Istiklal Caddesi, the pedestrian boulevard in Beyoğlu, would be a place to see a million different looks from grungy college kids to young men on the prowl, with their too-long, pointy-toed shoes.
In fact, I’m still assimilating everything — and everywhere — I’ve experienced in terms of fashion and beauty, but here are a few thoughts:
1) Layering: I learned from Turkish women to layer your jewelry and wear a ton of things at the same time. Coco Chanel would have a heart attack! But the idea is not to wear earrings, necklace, bracelet and rings all at once, but lots of necklaces or lots of bracelets or lots of rings at the same time.
2) Jewelry as beach accessory: During the summer Turkish wear lots of ropy beaded things on their wrists during a day at the beach — nothing too valuable (it’s the beach!) but attractive nonetheless. Jewelry stands feeding this seasonal obsession crop up at all the fashionable beach spots. Dangly charms and evil eyes and little golden figures on leather and paper ropes.
3) A little bling never hurts: I’ve also been influenced by the flashiness of Turkish culture, and actually own a BCBG track suit with sequined logos on it. This is the kind of thing my Turkish family and I would all wear on a plane or road trip. Comfortable and sporty, but not entirely unaware of being in public (and not at the gym). Coming from dressed-down Northern California, it was difficult to get used to being surrounded by glitzy branded tennis shoes and people wearing watches as jewelry, but I hope I’ve been able to take some of the better innovations away with me. I know I’m more likely to wear a glittery eye shadow now that I’ve lived in the Near East.
4) The need for sun protection: It was a shock to go from bronzed Los Angeles to can’t-get-any-paler Asia and then to the bronzed Mediterranean. In Asia I arrived with sun damage and then had lots of people helping me to fix it — I even used a parasol there. Then in Turkey everyone thought I was inexplicably pale and I let my sun protection regimen slip a bit. I’m back on the daily sunblock.
5) What colors to wear: I also used to get whiplash from trips back and forth between California and Southeast Asia in terms of color in clothing. In Malaysia the colors were vivid jewel tones — for the Malays and the Tamils especially. The louder the print, the better. Around the same time I was living in that part of the world, I witnessed a scuffle between shoppers at C.P. Shades in my hometown Berkeley, fighting over velvet granny skirts in moss, and mildew and wet cement colors. That kind of disconnect wreaks havoc on your wardrobe, and your sense of what looks good. Right now I’m trying to incorporate bright colors into my neutral urges. I’m still working it out.
This Singapore-based magazine with a worldwide distribution approached me for an interview about being an expat in Turkey for the February 2012 issue. Here are my answers:
Where are you from? What's your job? Could you tell me a bit about your background?
I’m from the San Francisco Bay Area in California, and have lived abroad for almost 15 years.
I drew on those realizations a lot during my time in Istanbul, and they inform much of the work I now do as the founder of GlobalNiche.net, a work-life initiative for cultural creatives, mobile progressives and other global souls.
When did you move to Turkey? What brought you to Turkey?
I moved with my Turkish-born husband in 2003 (and we relocated to San Francisco at the end of 2011.) But even before that, we chose an Ottoman palace in Istanbul as the site of our 2001 wedding. So maybe a stint living there was fated?
Could you speak a bit Turkish after living there for almost 10 years?
Yes. I took a month-long course at a language school when I first arrived, and then employed a private tutor a couple of years later to consolidate what I’d held on to and work on advancing my conversational skills.
I get along just fine with transport and shopping but since my work is English-language based and I’m not a linguist (I’ve studied 8 languages and am proficient in none!) my Turkish has never allowed me to express complex thoughts. I no longer agree to Turkish-only business meetings, and swore off Turkish language television appearances after it became clear that they didn’t work well for me.
It’s an agglutinative language -- meaning you keep adding endings and some words have 20 letters in them -- and the word order in a sentence is backwards to what I’m used to with English. You have to back into a sentence -- sometimes you never make it to the end. The funny thing is, people either say “Turkish is really easy, isn’t it?” or “Turkish is really hard, right?” and both groups are correct. Most Turks love to hear you try. There are conventional things to say which you can use a lot on a visit. Pick those up.
Which part of Turkey do you think remain pretty much untouched by mass tourism?
Anywhere off the beaten path.
You can even find this in Istanbul, where massive cruise ships dock and zillions of people get off and go to one or two spots.
I suggest you go down a back street, don’t stay in a tourist neighborhood if you can help it, don’t eat at restaurants with menus in English or other non-Turkish languages (or menus at all -- Turks don’t order from the menu, they ask what’s fresh, in season, special).
Try Beyoglu, or the Asian side of town. Try some walking tours to explore areas you might not find otherwise.
How would you spend your weekend in Turkey?
Walking along the Bosphorus Strait, eating and drinking with friends at all the cafes and restaurants and bars and clubs along Istiklal, the pedestrian street in the European quarter of Beyoglu. Museums, film festivals, nargile establishments, tea houses. For glitzier occasions, events at a multitude of ancient and antique locations that are now nightclubs and restaurants, concert venues and other hangouts.
How about your food experience? Apart from the traditional dishes like kebab, baklava, what is your favourite and where to try it?
Neither of those are favorites of mine -- in fact, there’s so much more depth in traditional Turkish cuisine than kebab and baklava.
Turkish food is the cuisine of a vast empire, after all. Lots of taste and ingredient influences, and many dishes perfected for the sultan. Try the stewed homestyle dishes made with olive oil (called “zeytinyagli”), the roasted lamb on a bed of eggplant pureed with cheese (“hunkar beyendi”), or a tangy okra stew.
With four different seacoastlines (Black Sea, Sea of Marmara, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean), Turks do great fish and seafood dishes. A spicy shrimp sauteed in butter and red pepper flakes...grilled octopus. Dreamy! If you visit during the turbot season in winter it’s worth going to a place that specializes in this huge, flat and spiky Black Sea fish.
Desserts:
Try the different milky puddings at Saray or other traditional restaurants, one even has chicken breast in it.
Basically I could talk about Turkish food all day and not mention kebab or baklava.
If you’re staying in the old town, go to Beyoglu to eat. Greasy bland tourist food is an awful waste of your palate. If you’re after a spicy kebab though, ask for the ground lamb Adana kebab from the Southeast of the country.
What are your favourite nooks and crannies or hidden retreats in Turkey?
I like the private waterside setting of Assk Cafe in Kurucesme, the wild surf around red-roofed Amasra, the archaeology museum in the grounds of the Topkapi Palace and the overlooked mosaic museum under the Arasta Bazaar -- which is where you can see the decor of Emperor Constantine’s palace. He’s the Roman who founded the Eastern Roman empire, and why the city became known as Constantinople.
Hidden retreats are everywhere but most recently I enjoyed a hotel at the top of Assos on the Aegean. If you stay there you can visit the Temple of Athena at sunset, when it’s deserted and the Doric columns are bathed in an orange light. Great for portrait photography.
Do you know anything about the working culture in Turkey?
Yes. I worked fulltime as a cultural writer and producer which means I worked solo but in collaboration with many individuals and organizations. I pitched, sold, edited and published two books with a major Turkish publisher. That’s the anthology Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey, and its Turkish translation, both in 2005.
I also wrote for Cornucopia, a magazine for international connoisseurs of Turkish culture published in Istanbul, as well as web consulting for Turkish companies. The work culture differs from my own personal work culture -- closely tracking along cultural differences, as you can imagine.
I suggest you learn as much as you can about Turkish culture if you’re interested in working in Turkey or with a Turkish company. It affects what people expect around deadlines and goals and standards and other basics like that.
Is there any particular myths you heard most about Turkey? How much of it you found to be true?
All the cliches.
Wolfish rug dealers. Men in mustaches and tweed suit jackets. Coffee shops with no women present.
That’s all there, but that’s not all there is.
In fact, the reason those things are cliche is because the details in between the lines are missing. Who those people are, why they behave that way, where the women really are.
There’s a huge spectrum of Turkish society from the most rural and conservative to the most urban and secular, and a very young, forward-looking population. There are also deep traditions, an interdependent culture, and a multiethnic population. It’s an ancient place and a modern republic, its contradictions and tensions spring from the ground itself.
Overall, what do you think about Turkey in terms of a place for expats to work and live?
I think there are opportunities -- the Turkish economy is strong and has been only minorly affected by the worldwide economic crisis -- and the lifestyle can be really good.
However, like any foreign country it’s best if you do your homework. Come visit a few times before you try living here.
Make some contacts in both the expat and Turkish communities, and preferably in communities that contain both expats and Turks.
You’ll also want to know what kind of work you want to do, and where in the country you want to live. Even what neighborhood. The more you know before you commit the better off you’re going to be. Try poking around at an active online forum like TurkeyTravelPlanner.com.
That’s where you’ll pick up some useful lessons of cultural awareness like how to walk through the Grand Bazaar area without being harrassed (hint: it’s things like body language, and appropriate dress).
I have also written a lot about life in Turkey which you can find at my neoculture discussion site expat+HAREM (www.expatharem.com).
