So what have I been up to…? Because my blog has also suffered due to the hectic schedule.
Generally I’ve been up and down the country and beyond telling people about Perceptive Media. The later part of that schedule is coming to a close but I went to Oreilly’s Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt and Nemsummit in Istanbul. Istanbul wasn’t what I was expecting in anyway. Although it marks the furthest I have been east in the world, before that it was Sweden.
Istanbul
Along with being chased by a big wild dog, hating the food, avoid nuts/fish and not really feeling very comfortable with the conference, I just didn’t get a sense of wow I’m out of Europe and in the middle east. Which was a shame and I’m sure if I went back it would be different. To be honest I didn’t get out of the tourist part and check out the old town part of Istanbul.
What shocked me was the food. I was expecting lots of lovely meats with lots of seasoning and the like. What I experienced was a diced chicken which was boiled and had never seen any kind of seasoning, at one part of my trip. This won’t have been so bad if I wasn’t so bloody hungry after suffering the nut filled flight from Zurich to Istanbul for 2hours.
I was expecting something like you get in Turkish restaurants but got something boring and plain everytime. Someone did say I was in wrong part of Turkey for good meats and the like. Instead this part was best known for sea food (which I can’t eat either). Breakfast was also very tricky because a massive part of the food had nuts involved in someway, so I kept to breads, cheeses and plastic looking meats.
Even at the conference there was lunches with cheeses and the like but with nuts thrown over the top. Nightmare!
Although I’m grateful to go to Istanbul for work, I just wasn’t feeling it at all. It might be down to the conference rather than the country. NemSummit was nothing like Tools of Change or anything that level. It makes you realise what a hard job it is getting the small things right…
I think to be honest if I’m going east again, I’d rather skip over the middle east and head to Asia. Japan, Korea and even China…