Tribute to the blues in Pafos

Ladies and gentlemen, mark you calendars.  Here is the content of the SMS from one of the musicians who will be participating in the event:

Cold Shot are playing a tribute to the blues on the 30th of July at the Velvet Hall.  Doors open at 19:30 and the support band is Zacsuss.  Tickets are 10 EUR and are available at Music Gallery, Elvicom, and Olivers deli. Hope to see you there.

For those of you who haven’t reached your calendar yet, that will be next Friday.  Hints and tips on how to find the Velvet Hall and how to buy tickets are welcome via comments.  I am definitely planning to go, as I’ve heard some of the these guy play before and they are really good.

Update: Thanks to Chris Ergatides, we know have a map with both the event location and tickets shop (click the image for larger view).

What’s wrong with airlines today?

I think there is something wrong with airlines, their policies, and their price making.  Here is one example.  I was looking for the cheapest way to get from Larnaca, Cyprus to Athens, Greece on Saturday, September 25th, 2010.  One of the lowest prices was offered by Aegean Airlines – 42 EUR for a one-way ticket.  That sounds awesome, doesn’t it?  Well, apparently that’s not the final price.  The final price with all the taxes and such came up to 156.16 EUR.

What’s the point of listing the price, on top of which you’ll have to pay the “tax” and “fee”, and which will be almost doubled by those extras?

Cyprus on the way to renewable energy

Working in the office on Omonia Avenue in Limassol, I couldn’t have not noticed the wind turbines.  They were transported in pieces by huge trucks from the new port to somewhere.  Some people went adventurous and actually located the wind farm near Pafos.

But until today I haven’t heard any news coverage of the wind farm.  Today, however, Cyprus Mail runs the story.

The first of the planned 41 turbines at Orites wind farm was turned on for about an hour on Wednesday and produced the first independent renewable energy for Cyprus using the wind. The electricity was then fed onto the main power grid.

These are excellent news!

The 41 wind turbines of the farm – the first of its kind in Cyprus and the largest in the region – will soon be providing the island with 83MW of renewable energy. Orites is regarded as a big project for the wider Eastern Mediterranean region, as in Greece and Spain 20 to 30 MW production is regarded as a huge amount. At its peak, the total power consumed island-wide is between 1,000 and 1,200MW.

And of course there was no way that these excellent news wouldn’t be shadowed by something and someone.   It turns out, none of the officials have much interest in what is going on with the energy on the island.

Wednesday’s event was not attended by any officials despite invitations being sent out. “Despite sending out numerous invitations none of the Ministers, MPs or officials came. I can’t believe they weren’t even curious to see what was happening,”

This is sad.  Obviously it is an important moment and many people worked really hard to make it happen.  It would be nice if some interest was shown from the government.  Hopefully the president will attend the official opening of the farm in September or October.

Biometric passports coming to Cyprus

Cyprus Mail reports that biometric passports will be implemented in Cyprus later this year:

Parliament also gave the green light to the introduction and implementation of biometric passports as of this autumn.

The new passport will bear the owner’s fingerprints, installed by microchip, eliminating the risk of theft and identity fraud. All passports must be replaced once the system starts operating in October.

The new law contains a clause ensuring that fingerprints will not be used for any other purpose and that this data shall be stored for a period of just 48 hours and then deleted.

Diplomats will be the first to obtain their biometric passports, in early September, followed by the rest of the population in mid-October.

The new passports will cost €70.

Morning news and Cyprus technology

While having my morning cup of coffee and going through the Cyprus Mail articles, I caught myself pausing and thinking a few times.  That doesn’t happen that often (thinking, not pausing), so I thought I’d share the bits that halted me.

The first articles was titled “TEPAK goes Wi-Fi“.  WTF is TEPAK?  Not everyone knows, especially in the morning, with the full cup of coffee.  TEPAK is of course Cyprus Unviersity of Technology.  Once again, with proper use of capitals: cyprus University of TECHNOLOGY.  So, they have some Wi-Fi there now.  Good.  Welcome to the 21st century!  No, seriously.  Let’s read a bit of the article.

LIMASSOL’S technology university, TEPAK, yesterday went wireless. The Wi-Fi connection was inaugurated by Limassol mayor Andreas Christou, the president of TEPAK’s administrative committee Elipida Keravnou and the Vice President of the Electricity Authority (EAC) Loizos Papacharalambous.

Wow!  That sounds a bit odd.  Why do they need a whole mayor to inaugurate the launch of a commonplace technology?

On behalf of the EAC Papacharalambous said the network had 40 points of access and covered areas of historic importance in Limassol including Heroes Square, Anexartisisas Street and part of the beach front.

Here it gets a bit funny.  I understand that the university is located in the old part of town and things are tight in there.  But when I think of the students who scattered between the beach front, the Heroes Square, which is famous for all the cabarets and prostitution that goes on there, and Anexartisisas Street, which is a shopping center of sorts.  Anyway, that’s not important.  The important comes later and it actually puts the whole article in to perspective, so it makes sense.

Papacharalambous said all Cytanet users would also have free access through the Cytanet Wireless Zone service by using their own access codes while other users would be able to use the service by using access codes acquired through pre-paid cards, credit cards or by sending an SMS message.

So, all of that is just a publicity stunt for Cytanet – one of the island’s Internet Service Providers.  Now it all makes sense.  It wasn’t about the Cyprus Unviersity of Technology at all.  It was about Cytanet covering part of the old town with a Wi-Fi network. Which they will charge you for.

By now I obviously lost all interest in the article, even if it was almost over.  But the next one I came around puzzled me too.  It was about “Two officers injured directing traffic“.  In particular this bit:

One of the officers, who was hit while on his motorbike, escaped serious injuries after the airbag in his uniform deployed and broke his fall.

Say what?  An airbag in the uniform?  That’s the first time I hear about something like this.  Google search for “police uniform airbag” returned 53,000 results only and nothing looked interesting, not even the pictures.  Anyone can shed some light on this?  Cause I am all out of coffee by now.