Will you do it for me?

Day one: intense, breathtaking, but somewhat gruff. Day two: chilled and bloody hilarious. Durıng our sleep, we had apparently resolved our concerns about how we were going to meet people without being molested, and proceeded to make very good use of our rather useless phrasebook.

There is a gene in Turkish waiters that makes them turn to the page of the dictionary which contains the somewhat inexplicable phrase “will you do it for me”. The first waiter to stumble across this gem was at one of our favourite places, the Dervish cafe. This was straight after telling us, sesame street count style, that a girl had disappointed him ‘one year ago, two year ago, three year ago’ and that ‘I have lost her’. I’m not sure he fully appreciated why we were pissing ourselves laughing. I’ll leave it to Jules to tell you about the second one!

The third time we went back to the Dervish, the waiters stopped just giving us backgammon tips as they walked past. After I’d finished one go, he just picked up the dice and started playing for Jules, standing up through the entire game as though he was waiting, impatiently, for us to order. I had one of those moments where you realise that although you think you’ve been doing something ok, you realise that you’ve been playing in baby league. He beat the pants off me. We did, however, pick up a few tips and our games have been a lot more fun since (read lots more risks taken, a lot of slapping each other off the board with great vehemence.) Jules is still apologising when she hits me - I’m wondering how long that will last …

Posted by Lara on Thursday, August 24, 2006 at 6.21 pm AEST