I was featured!!

A little while back I was interviewed for the Gen X-Pat feature which runs each week in the Sunday Magazine lift-out that comes with the Sunday Herald Sun newspaper. I was thrilled to finally get my hands on a copy from the interviewer this week - and here it is!  You will need to click on the article for full view.

Swine of the times

I'm all swine flued out. Yup. Apparently, I got swine flu. Thank goodness the fever, cramps, headaches and endless trips to the bathroom (say no more) are all but over. I have a lingering cough which is nasty, but at least I am up and about.

Only the week before last, I was saying to my friends how over-hyped swine flu is and that it's just like any old flu and I couldn't work out what all the panic was about. Unfortunately, as one doctor explained to me, the media has a way of creating panic amongst people over such illnesses which only causes stress amongst people and puts strain on hospitals and health workers. I couldn't agree more. The doctor also explained that the course of treatment for a suspected case of swine flu doesn't vary whether you have a "normal" flu or the "swine" flu; hence taking the test for the swine flu makes no difference upon your treatment and only adds to the statistics being counted by the health ministry.

I don't ever recall having the normal flu before, so for me, this was the mother of all flu's. The exhaustion and coughing was, for me, the worst part of it. Last week I could just shuffle from my bed to the couch and back again with my hand placed endlessly over my mouth. On Satruday when we realised I wasn't making the miraculous recovery we hoped for, my husband insisted he take me to the hospital. With a furrowed brow he told me how worried he was at my lack of energy and general lethargy. After a few hours in the hospital and a couple of litres of fluid in me, we headed home. The doctor insisted I try and get some food in me and to keep up my fluids and to get lots of vitamin c in. After leaving the hospital, husband dropped me at home,  and then headed to the supermarket and stocked up on a kilo of oranges, a kilo of grapefruit (or greyfruit as it's known here), random cruciferous vegetables, and an electric juicer and squeezed me up a litre of vitamin c goodness along with lentil and rice soup and a plate of steamed vegies to boot. I was most impressed by the perfectly steamed veg, not to soft, not too hard, all layed out nicely on a plate. Bless.   


At least the worst is over, but even today as I type this I can feel my wrists and fingers slow down and my brain work in fourth gear as opposed to revving in first. My concerntration is shot and I can't stare at the screen as I usually can. I'm tired and it's way past my afternoon nap.
 
So, I'm going to call it an early day today and head home for the comforts of fresh sheets & pj's and a cup of linden tea in front of the telly.

Just another day....

It's cold and gloomy and winter has arrived with a massive delivery of rain. I was forced to drag the massive bag of clothes from the cupboard into the second room and pull out the contents of my closet and replace it with the contents of the bag last night. The bag contained coats, jackets, 6 scarves, 2 pair of gloves and loads of handmade socks from my mother in law, as well as the few my mum had sent me made out of New Zealand possum fur. I then packed the bag with all my lightweight cotton skirts, sandals, flip flops, t-shirts and singlets and said goodbye to them for another eight months. That is how long it will take for me to be wearing them again. How depressing.

So this morning, while trying to feel upbeat about my somewhat "new" wardrobe, I put on my coat and scarf and felt all warm and wintering. I had thick opaque tights on with my ballet flats. I walked out to the car where I found the car park at the front of our apartment block under water and wondered how I was going to get into the car. My new found joy for winter was washed out with the şerefiz (prick) driver who drove by and sprayed a huge puddle of water up my leg even though I was holding out one finger (not the middle one, although I wish now it was!) giving him the "one minute" signal. It's days like that I just want to go back inside and stay there and tell my boss "it's all too hard, I can't come today".  

It really beats my brain senseless about the lack of visible drainage in Istanbul. Like, where is water supposed to go when it rains when there is no drain in the ground to take it away? I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that it will flood if water doesn't have a place to run off. I am tired of jumping over puddles, being sprayed by cars and having water end up in my shoes. And it's not just out the front of my place. It's everywhere in Istanbul. No town planning or infrastructure. Which is what lead to the horrible floods not long ago where lots of people lost their lives and homes. Sometimes I really wonder who is doing that job.

Over the weekend I was with the girls shopping up a storm at Kapalıçarşı (Grand Bazaar). You couldn't escape the rain or associated problems there either. The rain caused an electrical fault and the power went off for about half an hour. Of course, it happened while a friend and I were checking out the latest designer bags in a shop below ground which meant that there was not even any natural light and we were the only two females in the store. The first ten minutes were a tad scary while we continued to rummage around looking at bags using the faint light source of our mobile phones. Gosh, how desperate were we??  

After the electricity returned and we finalised our purchases, we headed back into the main part of the Bazaar were we saw some small shops that had flooded and everywhere you looked you saw shop owners sweeping away water from their doorway or laying down newspaper to soak it up. 

Although it was raining and wet everywhere, the heart of the Bazaar was well and truly beating with tourists and locals bustling about, shop keepers wheeling and dealing their wares and restaurant workers and simit sellers filling hungry shopper's stomach's. It's all part of life at the Bazaar. Even though I live here, going there is an experience each and everytime, and it makes me feel alive and like I am really living Istanbul life.  

Changes

Everything seems to be changing. The weather, the season, and also the time. The change in time kinda skipped me by, and as I reached for my mobile phone on Sunday night to check the time, I thought to myself that it was time I got my good self off to bed. It was 10:30pm. My stock standard bedtime.

As I set my alarm on my mobile phone it didn't once occur to me that maybe my mobile phone didn't update itself. The alarm is set for the same time each weekday;07:45. So I just pushed "ok" and turned out the light. Then at so called 07:45 on Monday morning I woke up and it was dark; darker than I expected and darker than what I thought was normal. After glancing at my Digiturk box, I realised it was in fact only 06:45. Argghhh.

The end of daylight saving also marks a huge time difference between me and Melbourne. It is now a total of 9 hours difference which makes calling and catching family at a decent hour much harder than normal.

Today as I write this post, it is dark out and cloudy. It feels like night could fall at any second. We have started turning on the heat at home to cut the chill that is in the air when we arrive around 7pm. The weather forecast for this weekend is a low of 8 degrees, apparently. What a shock to the system that will be. I need to pull out my bag of autumn/winter clothes and start changing them over from the thin cotton skirts and lightweight tops I have, to the long sleeve shirts and lined winter pants and skirts.

I remember last year that winter felt like it went for about 6 months. I hope this one passes a lot faster than that. It will be nice to experience a summer for a brief time in December when I get back to Melbourne. Hopefully that will make my winter here seem shorter and easier to get through.

Anticipation...

The countdown to anything; whether it be the end of the work day, end of the work week, special event, or to a holiday always brings about a level of anticipation that is hard to match, well, for me anyway. I love the countdown to exciting things such as weekends, holidays, catch ups with close friends and sometimes even bed time when I'm really exhausted!

I am now on the countdown to my trip home and although with every passing day it gets me closer to that day, I still feel like it's just not going fast enough. Patience is not something I have much of. I know I should be more patient, and everyone tells me the days will fly by and I'll be there before I know it.

Anticipation. It's a great thing. I'm glad it exists. Since moving here, anticipation has become my good friend. Anticipation keeps me hopeful and it makes me feel like there is a big reward at the end of 12 months of hard work. It's like the ultimate gift. Nothing beats it.

picture from etsy
anticipation-orange by kikkiandpolly

Autumn sun

Today we took a drive to Şile to breathe fresh air, sip tea, buy fresh fish and feel the autumn sun on our backs. Perfection.

Parking Istanbul style

Weird weather

It feels really strange to read that in the north part of Turkey, Trabzon, snow has fallen and the temperature has dropped to -2 while in the south, people are swimming in the warm waters of Antalya and enjoying temperatures up around 36 degrees. What is going on???

Pictures from Today Zaman online

Yummy courgette carbonara

As you know, I just love Jamie Oliver and his recipes. The other night on his show he made a delicious and easy to prepare courgette carbonara. Given I had a large courgette from my mother in laws organic garden, I decided tonight was the night to give it a whirl. I was a bit worried about carbonara as I always fear ending up with a plate of scrambled egg pasta, but I surprised myself!

I have written the original recipe below, but you can also find it here . I halved the recipe as I was cooking for myself, with a bit left over, and replaced bacon with pastirma as I don't like bacon but wanted to have that smokey meat flavour. For those of you who don't know, pastirma is a highly seasoned, air cured dried beef. So it's not exactly the same as bacon but it had the desired effect for this meal.

Ingredients

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

6 medium green and yellow courgettes

500g penne

4 large free-range or organic egg yolks

100ml double cream

2 good handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

olive oil

12 thick slices of pancetta or smoked streaky bacon, cut into chunks

small bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked and chopped

Method

Put onto boil a large pan of salted water. Halve and quarter any large courgettes length ways. Cut out and discard any fluffy middle bits and slice the courgettes at an angle into pieces roughly the same size and shape as the penne. The water should now be boiling so add the penne to the water and cook in accordance with the instructions.

To make your creamy carbonara, put the egg yolks into a bowl, add the cream and half the Parmesan and mix together with a fork. Season with s&p and set aside.

Heat a large frying pan and add a good splash of olive oil and fry the pancetta or bacon or pastirma until dark and crisp. Add the courgette slices and a few cracks of pepper. Throw in the thyme leaves and stir everything together so the courgettes become coated in all the flavours and fry until lightly golden and have softened.

The next bit is the challenge. You need to work fast. When the pasta is cooked, drain it, reserving a little of the cooking water. Immediately toss the pasta in the pan with the courgettes, bacon and tasty flavours, then remove from the heat and add a ladleful of the reserved cooking water and your creamy sauce. Stir together quickly and do not return to the heat or you will scramble your eggs!

You should serve immediately. Sprinkle the remainder of your Parmesan over your pasta and and add a little more cooking water if needed in order for the sauce to have a silky consistency over the pasta.

Eat and enjoy!!

*picture care of Jamie website / David Loftus

Hospitals; a pain in the back

The hospital system in Turkey is different to Australia. In fact, in Australia I would not visit a hospital for an illness other than in the case of an emergency. Here, most people attend at a hospital in the first instance.

When you talk about public and private hospitals in Turkey, people tend to be fairly negative and do not speak highly of the public system. They say they are unclean, crowded, and I have heard stories of people having to care for their own family members by bringing meals and changing sheets. I have visited one once to see a relative of my husband's and I was shocked to see a drainage bag draining blood was wrapped up in a white plastic shopping bag sitting on the bed.

When people talk of private hospitals though, I some of them are referred to as "commercial hospitals", money big making for doctors who order unnecessary tests and operations knowing for patients knowing they can bill the private health insurer and be paid for it without question. I have also heard people question what doctors tell them and my friends always advise in obtaining a second and third opinion for any diagnosis given as people tend to be skeptical about what doctors tell them. Other people have told me to "see someone you know" in order not to get ripped off and to also get a proper diagnosis. At first, I didn't really buy into this that much as I would hear people say that the hospitals are on par with those in other major European cities and that most of the doctors have trained abroad and are very well educated.

This week however, I have had my own taste of the private hospital system which has made me question the system just a little. I spent the last 10 days laid up at home trying to deal with the pain from two degenerative discs I have in my lower back. I have spent much of that time in a drug induced stupor which has caused insomnia, loss of appetite, night sweats, lack of concentration as well as general mind numbing boredom, among other things. I have had trips back and forward to the hospital to administer various pain injections, and to undertake scans and x-rays and doctor appointments. Dealing with a hospital system is never easy, particularly one in a foreign country where you never really know how it works. I am thankful, however, that my private health insurance was in place to help cover the cost of the various scans and doctors visits as well as drugs and injections, otherwise we would have seen the cost go into the thousands.

When I moaning in pain last week I decided that I really did need to get the hospital. When we reached the consulting rooms my husband had the following conversation with the receptionist:

Receptionist: Welcome. How can I help you?

Husband: My wife has hurt her back and needs to see a doctor

Receptionist: Do you have insurance?

Husband: Yes.

Receptionist: Which kind (which fund?): Husband gave the name.

Receptionist: At 10:20am Dr. X is available for TL 175 or in 5 minutes at 9:30 Dr. Y is available for TL 375. Which one would you like to see?

Husband: (turning to me to ask what I want to do)

Me: Not sure I can wait an hour, so lets see the one in 5 minutes.

I wondered to myself it it was normal to have a conversation about money so early on in the piece? I guess it was. So, we waited and after a couple of minutes an orthopedic doctor (professor) greets us and shows us to his rooms. I tell him that the night before I had a sudden acute pain in my lower back which almost caused me to lose feeling in my legs and as a result I nearly fell to the floor. He proceeded to ask me three questions; my age, do I smoke and has this happened before. Once I answered these questions he advised I should have an MRI and x-ray. So off I went. While I was having the MRI, the doctor spoke with my husband and reported what he saw on the screen. He told my husband he had to leave to conduct a surgery but would be in touch with us.

He wrote me up for some pain killers, advised that I not run or power walk on the treadmill anymore, take up swimming and consult a neurologist if the same things happens again with the view to having surgery as this is the only thing that can fix the problem. And that was it.

The suggestion of surgery was a little bit frightening and was enough to prompt me to call the doctors office to chat about this and ask some other questions. However, after leaving a couple of messages for the good doctor, it became clear that he was not going to respond. Not only was I annoyed, I was disappointed at the level of follow up given he so loosely talked about surgery and consulting a neurologist.

A couple of days later, I returned and saw another doctor who suggested I visit the physio for a minimum of 15 sessions. He advised that the only fix for my back was surgery (surprise, surprise!)but I could try physio. But why didn't the last doctor advise physio, I wondered?

Today, by co-incidence as I read through the Hurriyet online, I came across this article about a job advertisement for a cardiology expert that featured in last weeks paper. The article talks about the advert as well as the private hospital system and makes claims of corruption amongst some private hospitals. The article "slammed doctors in private hospitals for performing unnecessary procedures for extra cash, calling into question the reliability of the country's health sector".

The article goes on and quotes the head cardiologist at the German Hospital as saying "All private hospitals are not like this,” Soylu said. “Some patients who consulted our hospitals after they were told at another hospital that they needed to have an operation turned out to be wrongly diagnosed. In some cases, they actually did not need any operation, and we tell them the truth. These people can sue those hospitals.”

Well, well, I though to myself. Interesting.

I guess statements such as these support the truth behind the fact that private health insurance is the country's fastest developing form of insurance and because of that, people are offered the false sense of security in the fact that if they have insurance, they are therefore offered only the best service, treatments and advice money can buy, even if the doctors are earning an extra few husband or thousand lira from ordering lots of tests and writing you up for a handful of drugs you don't really need.

So I guess I should follow my friends advice - it always pays to get that second and third opinion to avoid any potential unwanted surgery or procedures.

May we all have good health!