Sweater Vests and Risk

Alhamdulillah, the weekend is hear. However, I have still not made up my mind about what to do this weekend. I have narrowed it down to Edirne, Troy, or staying in Istanbul. I am leaning towards Edirne. However, I had wanted to bundle Edirne with a border crossing to Greece, and I don't feel like dealing with that this weekend. Either Edirne or Troy would just be day trips, so the free day I could work on Berkeley essays in sha Allah. We'll see what happens. As for Konya, Cappadocia, and Izmir, in sha Allah, I will work on them over the next few weeks. I think Konya and Cappadocia I will try to visit in one trip over Bayram, since they are the furthest.

After dinner today, I had gone to try and buy some winter gear. In particular, I went shopping for some sweater vests. I have always like sweater vests (despite the recent emergence of Jim Tressel), and it seems that they are also rather fashionable in Istanbul. From what I can tell, about 10-15% of the men I see walking around are either wearing sweater vests or sweaters patterned to look like vests. Consequently, there are quite a variety of sweater vests for sale, mostly in the YTL 15-25 range. Mostly, I have seen either plain colored ones (ranging from traditional colors like navy blue and gray to more exotic colors like green, purple, and pink) or sweater vests with some kind of diamond pattern - I cannot recall seeing any other kind. Some of these vests look kind of wierd. I was quite close to buying a couple of solid colored ones, but decided to shop around a bit more. Maybe I'll have a chance this weekend in sha Allah.

Also today, I noticed a commercial for Risk on TV. Now, I have never seen a commercial for Risk before, and I don't remember seeing commercials for conventional board games in America for many years. That being said, I have not come across any place selling board games here in Turkey; I would presume the primary entertainment is video games these days, same as America. Perhaps Risk is a new entrant and board games have yet to make a splash. That would be wierd, considering that Risk was for sale in Syria when I first went there almost fifteen years ago. Maybe it was banned in Turkey so the people would feel bad thinking about how they once controlled most of three continents - I really can't think of any other reason Risk would be entering now, so late. Perhaps I should have brought Settlers with me to speed up the evolution.