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Importing something of a bit of a value for personal use in Turkey — part 3 finale

10 months ago
by engin in

In the third installment of the series :) I have managed to get my package in my third visit to customs. This time everything took 2 hours I paid another €23 (for storage I think). OK, it boils down to this;

1. Ordered items cost: € 524.97
2. Tax paid here %18, €94,49
3. Total distance traveled to get it: ~400km which costs €100 for me here.
4. Another €23 (for storage I assume)
5. Other expenses €20 (see part 2)

Conclusion:

Ordered item: €524
Total expenses: €237 (%45 of item cost)

Anyway, I got all my stuff, including two sets of 8G RAM (one set for my vaio, one set for my macbook) and a C300 256G SSD.

I must tell you that, at first I was not impressed with the performance of SSD when I directly cloned my original hard disk to it. It was noticeably faster but not in a pants-dropping way.

Then, I’ve installed Windows 7 on it. I must say that it is quite fast, i.e. it cold starts Adobe Fireworks in 3 seconds, and hot starts in 1 second. Of course these are not scientific measurements, as I don’t care about those very much either. The perceived speed determines the user experience. So far, it is quite good. Very snappy. We can attribute some of these perforamnce increase to MS technologies such as pre-fetch and superfetch. Oh well…

Importing something of a bit of a value for personal use in Turkey — part 2

10 months ago
by engin in

Good thing, over the years life has thought me not to take her very seriously. Without a sense of humor, I couldn’t survive this day.

  1. I went to the cargo terminal, I’ve tried to fill the paper they gave me. It is complete non-sense to any untrained eye and you MUST find someone to fill it for you which they charge you €25 for it. I bargained and had it for €10 though. By the way, see the irony here ? There’s a totally off-the-record business market conceived around this government building. A government building with the sole purpose of making things on-the-record :)
  2. I’ve paid the %18 tax (which is €94).
  3. After a little bit more of paper work in the cargo terminal, they said that I could get my package from the antrepot now.
  4. I drove to the antrepot only to find out that the last paper work done by the officers were incomplete and I have to go to the cargo terminal again. Though, office hours were about to come to an end… and it turned out I need to drive all the way to the cargo terminal in next business day.
I started regretting not letting UPS did the work for me but I had one consolation so far which I was going to get my package before the weekend to play with it. Today those dreams are shattered :)
I think it is safe to say that I have spent around €200 (gas, tax, paper work) and wasted around 8 hours. Fantastic! That SSD drive better has a pants-dropping performance.
We’ll see if I can get the package in monday :)

Importing something of a bit of a value for personal use in Turkey

10 months ago
by engin in

I have ordered some nerd stuff worth of a bit more than €500 to be shipped from UK. From package tracking, I can tell that it arrived to Istanbul the very next day after the purchase but guess what. It needed clearance for customs. I’ve been told that if the package worths more than €150, it is highly likely to be stuck at the customs.

So what can I do ?

  1. Get the package myself
  2. Pay a commission to UPS to get it for me (aprox. €83)
I chose the first one to get the whole thing done in one day (boy could I be any more wrong), latter one requires a few business days. I’ve called UPS to get some information about the procedure and they’ve told me that I’d go to cargo terminal make the tax payment, come by their building and get the package. I went to cargo terminal only to find out that the procedure includes one more roundtrip. Here’s the actual procedure.
  1. Go to the place called cargo terminal (next to the airport, a government facility) to get a paper signed by the manager that tells you want to get your package as a personal package.
  2. Take that paper to UPS antrepot so the government inspector can inspect your package and writes a paragraph of text that it is OK for you to pay the tax for it and get it.
  3. You go back to cargo terminal again to pay the tax (%18).
  4. You go back to UPS antrepot again and get your package.
OK, I’ve made a mistake and as manly tears of sorrow was running down my face I knew that I had to take it like a man! I started following the procedure.
  1. I’ve drove to the cargo terminal (47km from my office). I got on the road at around 14:00 and I was there in 30 minutes.
  2. Got the paper and paid €3 for parking in the terminal. I’d guess it took something around 30 minutes too.
  3. I’ve went to the antrepot (20 km), I went to wrong address first so it was 15:40 when I was at the antrepot.
  4. I got the government inspector to inspect my package and like 10 minutes but it took her 30 minutes to write one paragraph of text for me.
  5. So, I was back at the cargo terminal (10km) at 17:00, their office hours ends in 17:30.
  6. Long story short, with the delicate design of bureaucracy at the cargo terminal, I couldn’t make it on time. Now I need to go there again.
  7. I drove back to home (65km).
Aftermath:
  1. Wasted time: 4.5h
  2. Distance: 150km of driving = 20lt of gas = €38 (yes, you’ve read it right, gas is €1.91/lt in Turkey)
  3. Parking: €6 :)
Like all these are not enough, there’s this government officers’ culture in Turkey. Given the little authority, they act like little gods of their domains. Maybe, that’s because they get ridiculous salaries, do nothing useful in general and can be replaced with a few lines of code :) only god would know.
*sigh*
Oh, and for the curious ones among you, I’m getting a Crucial C300 256G SSD drive and 8gb RAM upgrade for my Vaio-Z790 and also for my Macbook.

I just diagnosed myself, BAM!: Ulnar Nerve Entrapment

1 year ago
by engin in

If you work with computers very much, like me, I have an advice for you. Do not rest your elbows (on the desk or chair). This eventually causes some numbness in the little finger. See the perfect explanation here.

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