[Living in Antalya] Keeping in touch

Texting

In the early days, the quickest and cheapest method was to send a text message. This only costs three phone units (about half a lira). I could text my children (albeit grown up) any time I wanted. During their teen years, mobile phones had proved the best method of keeping track of their whereabouts. So to continue this from 2,000 miles away seemed a logical extension. Whether they would reply depended partly on their budget extending to buying credit for their mobile phones, but mostly on their inclination. This method continues to provide a regular form of contact. When they choose to communicate with me in this way, a frequent message from them reads like this “ Hi. U OK?” (Nicety over). “Can u ring me 2nite. X.” This usually indicates help needed to solve a financial crisis, but occasionally it’s because they have some burning news to share -- a good grade in a recent exam, a pay rise or a change in career plan. The messages may be brief but over the years I have learned to decode the hidden agenda behind their abbreviations.

E-mails

I lived first in a flat with no phone line and therefore no Internet. Getting the phone line installed proved remarkably easy. It just required filling in a form and one trip to the main Antalya Türk Telekom office. So phone calls were possible but, of course, expensive. E-mails were the easiest way to stay in touch with friends. To begin with, I didn’t have a computer and so would bravely enter one of the many Antalyan Internet cafes, of which there are many to be found in the areas around schools and dershanes, catering primarily to Turkish teenagers. I would squeeze myself on to a vacant computer, between these giggling school kids playing their shoot-em-up games. Fortunately they were mostly too engrossed in their cyber world to notice me. The first time I tried to type in my hotmail account I was at a loss to understand why it wouldn’t work. Summoning over the “12 year old” who ran the shop, he pointed out that the Turkish keyboard is different -- I had been typing in an un-dotted “I.” My typing skills were acquired many years ago on a typewriter, and it isn’t easy to learn new tricks at my age. The e-mails I sent from these cafes continued to be punctuated with spelling mistakes mostly caused by the different letters (for instance, an i generally came out as a y). Now I have ADSL in my home and can send and receive e-mails from the safety of my living room using an English keyboard with the letters in the familiar places. E-mails work well with friends but replies from my children to my e-mails tend to be sporadic at best. I am reluctant to ring, text or e-mail my children as often as I would ideally like as they see this as an invasion of their privacy. (A recent affectionate message from my son referred to me as “a nosey old bag”).

Facebook

So to keep abreast of their goings on and also that of my friends, I joined Facebook. This has proved to be a fail-proof method of checking up on the state of their current social lives. For instance, a recently posted statement from daughter number two read, “birthday ice skating. this saturday. meet in zero degrees at 1:30, head to the rink around 2:30. all come!” I was able to time my birthday phone call to her accordingly. Similarly, on daughter number one’s Facebook, a posting read “My face isn’t where it used to be.” This sent alarm bells ringing. On investigation, it turned out she had fallen off her bike on the way back from the pub. “Anyone for lindy hoppin tonight?” is a curious one. I’m guessing this is a new craze, but have not yet found out what it entails, and anyway, I doubt if it is available in Antalya yet. Flicking through their Facebook photos helps me put faces to the names of their friends. I can leave brief messages on Facebook and will generally receive a reply. If I am lucky enough to catch them when online, I send a message saying “Hi. How are you.” It’s obvious if they don’t want to talk to me as they rapidly go “offline.”

Skype

More recently I have signed up for Skype, and this is a fantastic way of chatting with friends and family without running up enormous phone bills. And if I could just work out how to fix up the camera, then I would also be able to see them. My son traveled around India last year, and I probably spent more hours talking to him through Skype than during the whole of his teenage grunting years at home.

Visits

Antalya has proven a very popular destination for friends and family partly because there are many direct flights but also because of the many attractions Antalya has on offer. These visits help keep me in touch with important happenings in the UK -- the latest must-see series on TV, which pubs are now the place to hang out, the price of a cafe latte and the latest juicy gossip about various friends. “Did you hear about my old maths teacher Miss Clarke’s affair?” or “A new Tesco express has opened on the market place.” This is hardly earth-shattering news to anyone else but surprisingly important to me and I get an extra thrill if they remember to bring copies of the local paper with them, which like that famous radio four series, the Archers, doesn’t seem to make any difference if you have missed a year or two.

When possible I make visits back to the UK but these are limited to two or three weeks a year and tend to fly by in a whirlwind of staying in several different houses and indulging in considerable overeating and drinking. I am always thrilled to see everyone, and it is great to see people on their own territory. In the early days of living here, I would find it hard to return from these trips. It still felt like home. Now the balance has shifted, and I find myself increasingly looking forward to my return back to my own home in Antalya.