I have been dying to write about my night out with the Turkish delegation to the WTO here in Hong Kong the other night, I finally have some time to do it today so here I go.
I coincidentally found the Head Delegate, who happens to be a very nice and cool men in the corridors, who kindly gave me his phone numbers in order for me to reach him and interview him for Acik Radyo (our version of NPR). So at the end of the day I gave him a call and he invited me to his hotel where he said he could brief me on what will be Turkey´s position in these negotiations (for those who think I only write about silly stuff, such as my superficial thoughts about people, my lovelife and international party scenes, here is my oportunity to show you that I am also an intellectual who does serious work--jk). Basically Turkey, a textile exporting country depends on the changes that the G33 countries are pushing at the WTO talks this week, especially on the issue of export subsidies (Turkey imports cotton from Greece because they have a cheaper/EU subsidized price than our own productors) and if WTO decides to stop the EU policy our internal economy, especially agriculture can benefit from it immensely, of course from a social standpoint.
Anyways, I interviewed the Turkish Head Delegate at his hotel, and there met with the other members of the group, mostly businessmen involved in textile industry in Turkey. Suddenly we heard that the Turkish Minister on external trade was on his way there and I was invited to eat with the rest of the delegation, and the minister said he was impressed with such a ¨young and talented¨ turkish girl´s presence in Hong Kong!--I admit I was really proud of myself and airheaded a bit.
We took like 5 cabs following the minister to Grand Hyatt hotel´s famous One Harbour Road to taste their famous Cantonese delicacies.
The night was uneventful mostly people talking about very turkish things, colloquial and hard to translate. But there was one sentence that made the night unfortgetable, when the ¨reporter¨ for Ihlas TV (a channel with religous tendencies funded by the fundamentalists) asked for ¨Black wine¨--I still could not figure out why he thought it was called black, it is not even direct translation from turkish, we call it Red wine as well as the rest of the world!
Tuesday and wednesday was crazy, worked likea maniac, two live reports to the radio, many articles for Uruguay.
Last night we went, with a group of folks from Latin America, friends really, to SOHO and had a great Thai dinner there. the place looked like Asmalimescit street in Istanbul more than SOHO. The food was great and the chinese Elvis was definetely worth listening.
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