Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Finally I’ve found some time to publish a whole bunch of latest photos. All our beach adventures apart from yesterday’s trip to Akamas Peninsula are now resized, annotated and linked in the Photo’s section. Enjoy! :)

It’s Saturday again! :) This time we tried to revisit Akamas Peninsula and it’s spectacular nature, beaches, and the taverna.

After a nice meal of pork and some red house wine we decided to explore the area a bit more and got ourselves as far as Lara Bay. There we found the best beach I’ve ever seen. :) Sandy beach, calm, warm water, which felt like oil or something, silence. Excellent place. I just wish it was a bit closer to Limassol then one and a half hour drive. :)

Back to Limassol and another stay at Hazard’s place to finish The Best of Monty Python’s DVD and also watching for “The Pianist“. It was rather good and very well balanced, but somewhat long. Best thing about it was that we watched it after we had eaten a huge order from Pizza Mia. ;)

On the way from work we parked Hazard’s car, picked up Lev, picked up Olga and went to the German restaraunt for some meat and beer. Nice time, lots of fun.

Then, short trip to Hazard’s place to watch “The Third Wheel” with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. It was moderately good with some nice humor. Rather predictable though. Then we stayed a bit longer to watch few episodes of “The Best of Monty Python’s”, which Hazard just received from Amazon.
Lots of fun. Especially the last one we watched, about the lethal joke which kept killing everyone who read it, and which was used my the military, but had to be translated into German so that friendly troops couldn’t understand it. :)

Brought Lev to my place to watch the “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” with him and Olga this time. So we did and had some laughs. :)

But before we did so, we had an interesting discussion. It was started by me telling about the Roomba Robot Vacuum cleaners. We started speculating about all the kinds of different models, especially the ones which come back to the charger and dispose collected trash out of them, etc. The need to improve the situation pushed our imagination. We went all the way through the mechanical robots (mostly done by Lev), to organic lequids which will expand to cover all the floor and then get back to one piece (mostly done by me), to bacteria eating trash (mostly done by Lev), to special genetically engineered animals with the fur to collect and clean all trash (mostly done by me). Great fun that was. :) Luckily none of us has any means of bringing any of these plans to life. :)

Today’s day at work had some action in it. Management decided that it’s time we test our responses to natural disasters and staff like fire alarms. So, at approximately 11:15 in the morning all fire alarms went off and people moved in slow, highly organized manner downstairs, using fire exits , out of the building, where they all met up in the field under the frying sun. :) It was speculated that everything went good. :)

In the evening we decided that missing Mars to Earth shortest distance in the last 60,000 years was a bad thing. So we gathered at Kanguin’s place to watch Mars with the telescope that he bought for children long time ago. Needless to say, that Mars was not the main theme during the evening. Tequilla and Kanguin’s cooking skills were. :) Anyway, next time Mars is coming in about 200 years, so I’ll reserve some space in my schedule around that time. :)

Movie day. We started out with Olga by watching “Rabbit-Proof Fence“. Although it was a good movie, it didn’d fill me enough. Lots of nice scenery of Australia, but the plot is simple and action is mostly absent. So, I call up Hazard and we go to his place to watch something more disturbing – “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life“. Hilareous was it. Very brave movie even for our time. Lots of church humor and Douglas Adams atmosphere.

I came home and felt almost filled with movies, but my appetite for some cheap action with lots of fighting and blood was still high. I went through the pile of CDs with DivX which my brother gave me recently, and came across “Evil Cult“. It’s one of the early Jet Li movies. Chineese martial arts movie, so to speak. So I watched it. I didn’t like it much, although I am a fan of cheap chinese butt-kicking dancing. The fact that the movie was all in Chinese didn’t have to deal with my disliking it though. :) Martial arts were good as they were, but my position on fighting in movies like this is that it should be one guy fighting another one guy fighting a bunch of others. I don’t like a bunch of guys fighting another bunch of guys. It’s way off the style. :)

In other news, it’s my grandmother’s birthday today – Happy Birthday, Grandma! :) Though I doubt that she will ever read it – she’s from pre-Internetic generation. :)

Lots and lots of reading about photography. Photo.net guys are doing a good job for beginners like me. David Barnes did a nice 6-part article. Digital Photography review has a Learn section. And of course there is a bunch of other tutorials and links.

All these photography reading urges me to make a choice and plan for the purchase of the digital camera. I am still fixed on Canon Powershot G5. :)

Slow day in preparation for the night shift in NOC. Small discussion with Hazard over phone about the wishlist and the staff to order from Amazon.co.uk. Finally I’ve decided to get both some books and some DVDs. :)

Hazard also sent me a useful link to the page on Cyprus government’s site about the procedure of getting the citizenship via naturalization :) . Check it out here.

Hunger as always at the middle of the day, so Olga and I decide to check out this new place called “Shrimpy” which is supposed to be good with shrimps and other sea creatures. We, of course, picked up Hazard on the way, since he is the always-hungry type of a guy. :) And he had a map. And he is a nice guy…anyway :)

Shrimpy turned out to be ugly and depressing. They never change their oil, so the food smells bad and has the black staff all over it. Even on the french fries. Portions are small and rather expensive. Carlsberg, as usual, saved the day. And they serve draught too! First time is our last time here, I guess.

Depressing sea food pushed us for some compensation so we go to Kanika to enjoy some Sophie’s ice cream. Deliceous, as usual. :)

Since I have a lot of time until the NOC shift starts, we go back to Hazard’s place again and watch “Donnie Darko“. Nice movie, but a big long and slow at times.

Beach and traveling day. For some reason we couldn’t wake up Lev, so only three of us went to the trip. This time we headed for Pissouri Bay Beach. Nice place, excellent views, warm water, green grassy fields around Columbia hotel. Wooden sun umblrellas on the beach. Watersports with yachts and all the other staff. Sandy beach. Mostly. Lots of stones though on the beach and on the bottom of the sea. But still rather enjoyable. :)

Some Russian food thereafter. Lev finally woke up too, so we picked him up. Olga felt dizzy (or couldn’t stand us anymore.:) ) and stayed home. But we continued with “Lost Highway” at Hazard’s place. Then we went for some hotdogs on the beach and long discussions about everything and anything. Then Hazard dropped home and we had the final pint with Lev.

After all of that I am getting firm on the idea of getting Cyprus citizenship. Russian one doesn’t give me much, so I have nothing to lose anyway. :)

Trip to Larnaca in the evening to visit Svetlana and Yannis. Apparently, they cooked the best sea food meze (collection of dishes) that I’ve ever tried. Everything was there: fish, shrimps, octopus, squid… Very nice!