Murphy's Law-Turkish Bureaucracy

The beginning of last week can be summed up by the title of this blog. During that period of time I was dealing with the wretched bureaucracy of both Bogaziçi University and the Turkish Police Department.

The weekend before, I was having internet problems. Whenever my computer was plugged in with an ethernet cord, I would get a busy loading status, but the internet would fail to upload. I bypassed it though by getting a wireless router. However on Monday, they found out about it, had a network crash in my room and they shut down the entire network in my area because of it. That is when they axed my internet from me. They told me they sent an email to notify me, and I just looked at them as if that was the dumbest thing I have ever heard (how in the hell could I check my email when they take my internet away to begin with!). So for the past couple of days, I have been using the wireless at the Library and asking other peeps if I could borrow their computer. But what happened before that was just horrifying.

Monday morning I skipped my Matrix Thoery class in order to get all of my stuff printed out and to make the trip into the old city to the police station to get my Residence Permit. However I should have listened to the signs. The gods didn't want me to get the permit that day, especially Armis, godess of discord. The 43R Bus that I took to Kabatas hit a car and caused about a 20 minute delay since he hit the car well. Thank god everyone was alright (except the nice Mercedez Benz). But that is what happens when you drive and talk on the bloddy cell phone! Then the rain came, and came down hard. It was horrible waiting for the tram to get to the Police station. On average though the trip to the station takes about an 90 minutes. I tried to get work done, but there was this creepy older guy who was looking over my shoulder to see me scribble down notes for my Residence Permit and my Matrix Theory class. When I finally got off the Tram, I followed the directions that Em gave me and after 10 minutes I realized that her directions were just flat out wrong. I had a feeling that they were wrong but I was hoping that they would take me toward the general direction. I then decided to check the map and then I realized I went in pretty much the opposite direction! For now on I am going to trust my sense of direction over hers. When I got to the police station though and started waiting in line, Em called me telling me that they reached their quota for today and that they were not taking any more residence permit applications. I was almost in and they stopped!!! I walked back with Danhui who was in a similar situation. We stopped to get ice cream before we made our way back to the superdorm. That was the best part of the day. The next day was by far the worst day.

Because I had a lot of school work to do the night before, I got about 4 hours of sleep the night before. I woke up at around 5:00 to catch a bus a 6:00am. I was planning on skipping my Game Theory course and the first half of my Turkish class in order to get this residence permit done. I again took the bus and then the tram for 90 minutes to get to the police station and that day we were met by a mob of Bulgarians who all trying to demand the same thing we were after. Fourtunately we went got to go ahead by flashing our non Bulgarian passport to the police. However the police were totally decked out with body armor, bullet proof vests, and H&K MP5 submachine guns. Needless to say that they were intimidating. I had to wait for about another 90 minutes before they started to let anyone in the actual station. Then I had to wait a total of three hours for them to call my number. It felt like 6 hours though. Also in the police department I had to go to the bathroom. It was literally the most disgusting place I have ever had the displeasure of smelling. A toilet was clogged and leaking and therefore crap was litterally everywhere surrounding in the general area of the stalls. Worst yet, they had no toiled paper and I needed to get to the stalls. It was like being at Golgatha. When they finally called my number they checked over my things and then came accross to the letter from the rector and kept saying in "no good." They then proceeded to write down instructions in Turkish as to what I needed to do, but I triple checked everything before I went it baffled me. But they sent me back, and I gave the police (who were woman) a very sarcastic smile. They then giggled at each other. I would have blown up right then and there at the thought of having to wake up early the next day to do it again, but the man with the MP5 submachine gun discouraged the "Jerry Oswald" behavior. I then proceded to check over what went wrong with what Jackie brought. And then low and behold I saw it and I felt like an metereorite hit my chest. My rectorate letter was incomplete. Not only did it not have a stamp of approval but it also lacked the list with my name on it. The International Office screwed me over. I wanted to cry. I tried quickly going back to them to tell them what is missing and pleaded with them to make an exception. They just kept shrugging their shoulders and told me in Turkish that they couldn't do anything about it. I then made the two and a half hour long bus-tram trip back to the superdorm. I was listening to some angry fight music from DMX, Third Eye Blind, Thrice, Trapt, and Korn the whole way back. While I was waiting in Kabatas for the bus back to Eitler, I was standing in the rain by the waterfront with the incomplete letter at hand. Out of anger, I chucked the

When I got back I went directly to class which was useless because I missed the first hour. Between my Politics class and my turkish class I went back to the International Office and had them get me complete form. They were deeply sorry though so I just decided not to blow up at them and go get a pizza at the cafeteria. It was a time of need for me. When I finally got back to the superdorm, there were two notes on my door for me. The first one said that I was not going to have my phone in the dorm for some time due to some technical problems, and that they confiscated my wireless router. They stole the only thing that provided me with internet in my dorm. And now my only way to communicate was with my prepaid cell phone, which is expensive to bloody operate! That day was horrible. Then when I finally got to check my email at the library, my Game Theory professor contacted me stating that I missed a pop quiz. F***** Great. Not only that, I had to miss my Matrix Theory class again that day in order to finish getting the bloody residence permit. I was emo, pissed, and becoming slightly unstable...

The next day I repeated my morning from the day before...waited and did nothing for about 8 hours. I went with Ernesto, Olivia, and Elie. It would have been quicker but the power in the building went out at least twice, causing all activities in the station to cease. When I finally to the desk to hand in all of my forms they said okay and gave me my residence permit as I coughed up 90 lira. We all got finished at about the same time, and right when we exited the building the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Later that night I ate a chili dinner with Em, Lessa, Kristianna, the Katies, and Grace and then proceded to plan for the weekend. We were fortunate to have Grace's roomate make a couple of calls for us allowing us to book our bus tickets, along with notifying our hostels of the times we were expected to get in. Once it was all figured we watched Troy to prepare our selves for the actual Troy. The week went alright after that, but that was by far one of the most stressful weeks in my entire life!