Sinanation

Thanks to a great talk I had with a veteran restaurant manager, I can reflect on some of the points he made to have a successful restaurant business in the U.S. I was amazed by this person’s knowledge and enthusiasm in the industry. He was clearly into food and he knew how to deal with the financials behind it to make it taste better both for the customers and the owners of a restaurant. According to him:

• The fixed-costs (food, labor, etc.) of a restaurant should not be above 65% of sales
• The rent of the location should be below 6% of sales
• It has to have great food because that is the only reason that makes patrons come back
• It needs at least USD 900K in annual sales to stay afloat

It all starts with a sympathetic nickname. It is a simple word that grabs attention and leads the other side to reply with a smiley face. It is the start of a conversation between two people thousands of miles away from each other.

How tempted we are to greet whenever he/she comes online. How driven we are to read that simple “ahahaha” on our screens. Chatting online is a tricky monster and we love it.

Assuming Skype is not around; there is no face to face or the comfort of a voice. The smiley face, the winking eye, the tongue and the red angry head can only give us a glimpse of how he/she really feels. The same goes for us. Are we falling down the chair with laughter when we type “HAHAHAHAHAHA”? Does he/she really want to hit us after typing “grrrrrr”? We love to exaggerate online. We are more daring and adventurous than we usually are. We are born with multiple senses to efficiently communicate. Yet when we are chatting online, we desperately try to get the same results by using a single sense.

We are in different settings, but together. One side can be in the bathroom doing nature’s duty while the other side can be sipping champagne at a black tie event. Who knows? One can even be hooking up with an ex-partner while flirting with someone else online. There are always a lot of variables in online chatting, but somehow both parties find a common ground to get into some of the most satisfactory conversations.

All is on record. Whatever we type and enter is saved inside the ultra intelligent computer or mobile phone. It remembers everything even if we don’t. And one can always get a full record of the cyber relationship. It is a risk we all take. We try to think a minute more before we type in anything. We think of the future implications of our answers. We are more planned than we would ever be if were to meet face to face.

Timely response is not customary. Sometimes he/she will reply within seconds and other times there won’t be a response. There will be times when the other side will text and we will not be able to get back on time. One shouldn’t wonder why. It is in the nature of chatting online to overpower one side. Sometimes a proper “goodnight” is customary and other times one party will just sign off without giving a proper warning.

It usually ends without a warning. It could be a careless “byeee” or a long farewell. It is the end of a conversation between two people thousands of miles away from each other.

Thanks to the rough winter days, I realized that I had to write about the ugliest, but still, the most successful fashion invention of our time. From a girl’s perspective these chubby boots might be the most comfortable walking gear, but from a guy’s they are a disaster. They take away the delicate silhouette of a woman’s feet and legs and turn them into chunky astronaut gears. I know they are just too comfortable to go out of fashion, but I had to put this thought out there. And to think they are worn during the hot summer days! What has this world come to?

I think the above image says it all. Part of the new season’s inspiration comes from a movie of huge and ugly monsters.

I had to share this quote as it grabs onto my inner feelings about the city “that never sleeps”, the city that has been my home for more than 3 years. It is a short paragraph with much longer meanings written by my dear friend, Nichol Alexander, for his descriptive piece on Johnny’s Bar (90 Greenwich Ave., between Jane and W. 12th St.), his favorite place in Manhattan.

I was born in NY. And I love it. But I also know enough to know, it’s a fucking horrible city, drowning in a pestilence of unsustainable capitalist angst. Velvet ropes holding back the 20 year old sluts in short dresses trying to fuck the next partner at Goldman, meatheads and uberhipsters chasing a pair of legs or a purer line of powder in the bathroom. The streets are crowded by ceaseless illusions. Strippers on stages. Restless competition. A neverending stream of unforgivable trespasses. Infinite objectification, specialization, untraceable trends; it is a city designed to destroy love and make simplicity complicated and everything commercial.

You can find the whole article at The Bar I Drink At.

We all know about the cliche interview questions. My favorite is “Tell me about your weakness.” I mean who the hell would want to tell the person who could be his/her employer in the near future about his/her weakness. In a desperate attempt to avoid looking like a total loser we all try to bend and manipulate our answer to this very sensitive, unwelcoming, but extremely necessary question. So the test here becomes not the answer itself, but how well one turns around an extremely negative angle and presents it as something that can be fixed in no time.

Despite the fact that it doesn’t apply to any interview, my ideal answer to the weakness question would be “understanding and intelligently using family tie terms in Turkish.” It might look like an easy job from an English speaker’s point of view. We can all handle aunt, uncle, husband’s sister and wife’s sister pretty easily. Yet, things get a little more complicated in Turkish. Each term gets a separate name for the two sides of the family: mother/wife vs. father/husband.

Mother/Wife Side:
Aunt = Teyze
Uncle =Dayi
Wife’s Sister = Baldiz
Wife’s Brother = Kayin
Wife’s Sister’s Husband = Bacanak
Wife’s Mother = Kaynana

Father/Husband Side:
Aunt = Hala
Uncle = Amca
Husband’s Sister = Gorumce
Husband’s Mother = Kaynana

These are the few terms that I am aware of. I confess that it has been a nightmare to use them correctly and understand their meaning (especially when listening to someone who has already devoured all the terms and  casually sprinkles each on sentences while talking about weddings and family).

I wasn’t around when they were using smoke or training pigeons to deliver messages. Telegraph lost its popularity by 1960s. Telephones and e-mail were already ruling the communication world by the time I made it out of my mother’s womb. As my friend, Musa Yesil revealed recently, nowadays we can not imagine waiting for a message’s delivery beyond a few minutes.

As part of the new bright generation, we all become avid users of the Internet and cell phones. They are our most advanced and common tools of communication. When we are kids, we receive fake computers and pillows shaped in phones as gifts. A real cell phone is glued to our  hands when we are old enough to go out without our parents. We are so content with their functionality that most of us do not even have landlines installed inside the apartments. We are all a few clicks and dial tones away from each other, no matter where we are. Although with the advancements in technology, we no longer have to wait more than a few seconds to deliver a message, we are still constrained by the incentives of the side receiving the message to get a reply. We willingly lower the speed of the technology because we are too slow, lazy, ignorant or busy to catch up with it or are too proud to obey its non-mistaken strict work ethic. We take our time and delay the reply for an acceptable duration based on the person and the device that delivered the message. Although it is hard to predict some variables of the equation, it is easy to calculate the appropriate delay for replying to a message based on its technology source. Here are the accepted delays for today’s most common tools of communication:

E-mail: 3-4 days. Replying too fast means you are either too interested or too desperate.
Call: 1-2 days. It is acceptable to call back in a day or so as being on a call usually requires both parties’ full attention. Picking up and saying you’ll call back whenever you are free is always the most appropriate option (although most of us avoid it almost always).
Text message: A few minutes to a few hours. Beyond a few hours means you are just annoyed and not interested (given that you do not have a reasonable excuse).
BBM: First of all thanks to the (D) for delivered and (R) for read, you are not left much room to play around. To delay the reply you will have to avoid clicking on the message. That way it will appear as (D) until you feel like you want to reply and continue the conversation. There is no excuse if you read and decide not to reply within a few minutes. The message you are sending is pretty obvious when that happens.

Yet again the Valentine ’s Day is here. Singles and couples, we will all drown in reds, pinks, hearts, candies, balloons, teddy bears, lingerie, over-sized gift cards, massage oils and kinky sex toys. Restaurants will have those romantic courses which are always paired with red wine. Deserts will be flaming hot with melted chocolate and strawberries. Hotels will be promoting their erotic night getaways. Same plain rooms will be decorated with a few rose petals and a bottle of champagne to be sold at a higher rate. Clubs and bars, the hunting grounds of the singles will do everything in their power to avoid the romantic and try to make a little profit from the lonely ones who will be looking to escape the so called fairy tale.

Single or not, I feel like we are all on the same page. Singles try to erase the day from the calendar not because of the people who are celebrating it, but because of the scenery. Couples on the other hand are faced with a bigger dilemma. They are desperately looking for ways to be original in their celebration of the Valentine’s and after a few trials, are out of ideas. They just can’t go to the same restaurant they have been eating at for the past few months. It is just awkward to see the same surroundings and faces painted in red, covered in candle lights. Teddy bears and candies should have already been left alone after high school. Why the hotel when you can go back to the bed you have been sleeping happily for so long? Why the sexy lingerie when they could be worn any day, any time? Single or not, I feel like we all on the same page. We would rather be romantic when we are not told to be…when we don’t have everything around us yelling it so loud that we can’t even hear our own voice.

With that in mind, I wish everyone (especially Hallmark) a happy Valentine’s Day.

I remember the days when I used to go nuts seeing it snow outside. I would run from one side of the house to the other to see how well it was covering the surface. Happiness and excitement would flow out of my eyes. I would be a Formula 1 driver with my socks, gliding like a maniac on the wooden floors. My only wish would be to hear the governor close the schools the next day. Only then the real fun would begin. With the company of a few friends we would take on the white powder with multi layers of ski outfits. Our cheeks pumped with blood and our hands and feet soaking wet, we would become the Eskimos of the urban life. On the way back home, we would jump up and down to get rid of the snow stuck on us and take the leap into our beds after hours of snowman projects, snowball fights and trekking.

Along the years snow stayed the same, but I, unwillingly, have changed. I still think of the aftermath whenever I see snow outside the window, but from a completely different point of view. I now think of the mess that is going to be on the pavements the next day. The harmless beautiful white snow will turn into harsh ice and then melt into an annoying grey slush. Shoes will be ruined. Socks and pants will be soaking wet. Within all the crazy pavement traffic in Manhattan, we will once again be challenged with successfully solving an extra equation while walking. We will be forced to calculate the best routes to avoid falling down and/or getting wet on the corner of each block.

I am still a big fan of the snow, but I now have to be in parks or on ski slopes to let the kid in me take control.

It is  a great source of happiness and pride to see Sinanation’s ever-expanding global reach. Thanks to Google Analytics, I now have the opportunity to see the origins of my readers. Here are the places Sinanation has been so far:

• U.S.
• Turkey
• U.K.
• Canada
• Italy
• France
• Germany
• Norway
• Brazil
• Argentina
• Ireland
• Australia
• China
• India
• Thailand
• Saudi Arabia
• South Korea
• Senegal

Thanks to all the readers!

Set out for a weekend of skiing, we drove down to Pennsylvania, to the mighty Pocono Mountains. There is actually nothing mighty about it. Set just a few kilometers off the I-80, Poconos reminds one nothing more than a hilltop creamed with a mix of natural and man-made snow. Still, with only a 1.5 hour drive from Manhattan, this place seems to be the most convenient “Alpine skiing” for a New Yorker.

Blame it on the low altitude and our persistence to disregard the weather reports, Poconos greeted us with heavy rain. Thus, we weren’t left with any other option but to try out the Sunset Hill shooting range, located 15 minutes away from the ski resort. Excluding one friend who has been there once before, we were too clueless to have any expectations on this vicious activity. Scarface, Lord of War, the Last Action Hero and numerous other action movies were there to misguide us to what we were going to witness in real life.

The shooting range on the horizon, we were perplexed with the sound coming from the other side of the wooden fence. It was smashing through the windows and rocketing into our ears without any welcome. Without a glimpse of this heart-pounding sound’s source, we galloped into the cabin where we would sign in to observe and test. Huge ear muffs blocking the sound and large plastic glasses protecting the eyes, we moved into a lethal weapon heaven. Above a carpet of used bullets, children to grandfathers, everyone was there to bring out the Agent 47 inside them. They were all eyes and ears, carefully observing every move of their instructors. From AK-47s to sniper guns, the sexiest lethal weapons of our time were proudly displayed  in their sections. Cold, crisp, determined and too light for the purpose they serve, each gun was ready to be fired. Overwhelmed with power, confused by accessibility and surprised by the difficulty of hitting the targets, we tried to understand a world we observed only through the media and the movies. We were so far away, but yet so close. The gun scenes on the white screen became a joke. The reality of wars became heavier than ever.