"Dude! You're getting a Dell!"

(Whatever happened to that guy?)

Poor schroomie #1, her CD drive has not been working so well on her Dell laptop, and well, we can't have that, now can we? Lucky for her, Dell has an international "service center" "in" Istanbul. Those words are in quotes because they need to be used very loosely...remember this IS Asia.

Schroomie called several times to make sure they could take care of her situation, and to get directions. They gave us driving directions, despite our insistence that we don't have a car. We looked at a map, saw that a train went near the area where the center is located, so we called again today before we left. They insisted that for us, it would be easier to take a taxi. Big sigh.

We ride a boat over to the Asian side, show a taxi driver the address slip, to which he responds, "Okay!" We climbed into the taxi, not knowing what belie us.

Have you ever gone to the doctor, only to have a very young nurse talk herself through the steps of giving you a shot or take your blood? It's beyond unnerving...you think you might die, or at least experience a great deal of pain. This was the thought that passed through my mind as we rode in the brand new taxi with a pretty young driver.

So brand new there was still store plastic covering the sun visors, turn signals, and stick shift. The driver was young enough that he kept the seat pushed back as far as it would go, and leaning back low enough for him to be almost lying down.

When he hit 140 kilometers per hour, I turned to schroomie and asked if there were seatbelts in this death mobile. There were not. He continued to weave in and out of traffic at an extremely ungodly speed, causing me to turn several shades of green (having just gotten off a boat). We thought about pointing to the two "non-smoking" stickers on his windows to see if he would put out his cigarette, but we didn't want to anger him into driving faster. He started speeding through a little neighborhood, yelling out the window to people WAY down the street to see if they knew where the Dell service center was. He finally released us from the death mobile, and I was never so glad to exit a taxi.

At the Dell service center (located next to Mail Boxes Etc...where AM I?!), a man who "spoke" English came out to help schroomie with her poor ill computer. There was dust on the screen (to which she said she'd be able to see to wipe clean if our apartment were better lit...), and he said, "Turkey is a dirty country. But you should clean your computer, maybe this is what is wrong with the CD drive." Yes, because Turkey is SO dirty that dust seeps inside the computer... They informed her it would take 4 weeks for the new part to arrive from Europe (don't they know that Europe is just a boat ride away?), so ten minutes later we were back in a different taxi, who also didn't know which way to go. As he went to get on the highway, we saw a sign that said, "Istanbul" with an arrow... Hence the looseness of the fact that Dell has a service center in Istanbul. Glad that they have one in Turkey. And I was also very glad that the driver went 80 kph on the highway to take us home.

But hey! We can say we've been to the Asian office for Dell.