Getting ahead

It's seldom easy to succeed in business, because there's usually a lot of competition. Businesses try to attract attention to themselves in various ways. Advertising is one obvious method. The owner of this carpet shop in Istanbul has another method. He keeps his lovely cat outside the shop. People passing by are bound to be attracted by it, and stop to play with it (as I did). Then the owner comes out and talks to you (soon the topic turns to carpets). I found out that this type of cat is unique to Turkey. They are always white, with different colored eyes. I don't like to buy bulky items when I travel, so I didn't get a carpet. It was fun meeting the cat though.

A great city I've visited

Have you heard of Dubrovnik? Maybe not. It's on the coast of Croatia, which used to be part of Yugoslavia before the war in the early 1990s. A few centuries ago, it was controlled by Venice (when Venice was an independent city-state, before Italy was formed). Many of the better buildings in the old town were designed by the Venetians. You can still walk around the outside of the old town on top of the city walls. Down below are charming stone houses built close together, some of them on a steep slope. My wife and I rented an apartment here for a few days. The people are friendly, the weather is usually good and the seafood is always fresh. This is a photo I took of the old town after swimming at the beach below.

My last place

Before my wife and I moved to our current house, we lived in a "mansion" in Juso. I use quotation marks ("...") because mansion actually means a huge, super expensive house. We lived in an apartment, on the 6th floor of a 10 storey building overlooking Juso Park. It faced west, so in the evenings I could often enjoy beautiful sunsets. I remember watching planes climbing in the sky from Itami airport. After a while, I came to recognize their flight paths. I had many potted plants on the balcony. Once a year, we could watch the Yodogawa fireworks festival from the balcony. On those nights, we invited friends and had a party. It was a bit cramped for more than two people, so we decided to move to a house when we were ready to have children.