Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Via Google News I came across this article in Cyprus Mail, which talks about the new regulation from Limassol municipality for removing abandoned vehicles.  Interestingly, I thought about it a few times already.  There are many abandoned cars in the city, and they often add to the parking problem that is getting worse and worse by the day.

The picture above shows the abandoned car near my house.  It stays there, with garbage bins, for a couple of years now.  Previously, it was occupying space on our guest parking for at least three more years.  I know there were a few complaints by my neighbors to get rid of it, but somehow it is still standing there.  People cannot remove it by themselves, since it has valid number plates.  And authorities were a tiny bit too slow on it.  Maybe now it will get some attention.

Also, it’s nice to see that Limassol’s municipality takes action on this one, howeve, I believe that the problem is wider than just our area.  I’ve seen quite a few abandoned cars in Agia Napa, Nicosia, and Pafos.  I’m sure there are a few in Larnaca as well, but my routes there are rather limited and short.

I’ve mentioned this many times before and, I guess, I’ll need to mention this ever more – the technological progress of the recent years (the digital world, yes) has left many systems of our society behind.  Educational and legal are the most noticeable.   Here are a few words in the insightful and funny video (originally from the Ted.com – a place of many more insightful videos).  Here is a quote from a recent Boing Boing post showing the state of the legal system:

… pictures of Ford cars cannot be printed. Not just Ford logos, not just Mustang logos, the car -as a whole- is a Ford trademark and its image can’t be reproduced without permission.

I was just walking by this one, but sun came out from behind the cloud and made the whole day better…

Album location: /photos/2006/2006-02-06_POTD

Today was the second (third?) time in my life when I ran out of fuel. I am trying not to push my luck and so I usually drive around with enough petrol to take me at least across the country.

Doesn’t always work it turned out. Since my car is in the repairs, I am driving someone else’s Mazda. This car’s fuel meter is not working at all. It always points to empty. The trick is to put 10 CYP and drive less than 220 km.

Last time I was at petrol station I had 180 km done only. And today, when the car stopped, I had only 140 km since last dinner. Either all the meters are working bad, or the car changed its appetite for unleaded.

The worst thing was that I couldn’t troubleshoot the problem down to the fuel myself. The owner of the car had to come and try to start and check it. He then suggested that it might be out of petrol, despite the indicators and meters. So, we put some fuel in, and it worked.

From now on, I’ll be having full tank as often, as possible…

My car was making a whole bunch of sounds that it shouldn’t normally make. After my last service, my left rear wheel was making sounds whenever I was breaking. One of the engine shields under the car got disconnected from all holders/screws, except for one. It was touching the ground when I was driving slow and making a sound that made every pedestrian look my way. Not that I mind that a lot, but I felt that I had to fix it. And I also had a suspecion that one of my shock absorbers was getting old and cranky on bigger bumps.

I didn’t want to leave the car in this state for a long time, and considering the upcoming Christmas holidays I realized that I’ll be probably broke for a month or two. I thought now was the proper time to fix everything.

The good news – I got the car back within a day. My shock absorbers are just fine. The engine shield is easy to fix. And the sound from the left rear wheel wasn’t from the breaks, like I thought. It was because of some lower arm control handle or something like that. It got old and wasn’t holding the wheel properly. So every time I was breaking, the wheel was moving. The new part is pretty expensive – at about 180 CYP with labour. But since they rarely have this problem, I’d have to order one of this from Japan. Instead, mine was replaced with the second hand part in good condition – 40 CYP with labour.

The mechanics also took the liberty of servicing the car, although it wasn’t time yet. Usually, I do a service every 10,000 km. And I change oil every 5,000km. Since last service I had only about 4,300km and they decided it was time for service. Oh, well. I told them that they should consult me next time. On the other hand, I was glad that I won’t have to think about the car service when Christmas will be all over the place.

93 CYP altogether and I was done. The car looks and feels like brand new now. It’s clean, fast, and makes no extra sounds. I’m happy.

This post is just for historical reasons, so you might want to skip.

I have renewed my car insurance today and paid 133 CYP. That’s 23 CYP more than I paid the last year, although the car and drivers are still the same, and there were no accidents for my insurance company to pay up. The reason for the increase I was told is country-wide and has something to do with matching insurance prices with the rest of Europe. I’ve heard this from other people before, so it might be true. Although I think that it has more to do with the continues grows of traffic accidents per person in this country. Insurance companies have to get money from somewhere to pay constantly.

I was sitting at home, watching movies and minding my own business, when Martin called me and told that I should come out. I wasn’t in the mood, I was in the middle of the film, and it was too hot outside, so I said no. But he insisted. His argument was very convincing – someone hit my car.

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Here are some parenting, and health and medicine related bookmarks. These all were found in the process of studing nuclear scans and their affect on the baby’s health.

• Kidney Scan — Kidney nuclear medicine scan
  Tagged as: diagnostics health kidneys medicine nuclear tests
• Blogging Baby – www.bloggingbaby.com _ — Blog for parents
  Tagged as: blog children kids life parenting pregnancy
• Kidney nuclear medicine scan
  Tagged as: diagnostics health kidneys medicine nuclear tests
• UrologyHealth.org – Pediatric Conditions – Abnormalities – Ectopic Kidneys
  Tagged as: ectopic health kidneys medicine pediatrician pediatrics reference
• UrologyHealth.org – Pediatric Conditions – Diagnostics – Kidney (Renal) Nuclear Medicine Scan
  Tagged as: diagnostics health kidneys medicine nuclear tests

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I live on a very quiet street. We don’t have any activities going on around here on the workdays. On weekends the street looks totally dead – no people, no cars, no noises, nothing. And today looked no different.

But around 3 o’clock in the afternoon I heard the sound of a car’s horn. It started and never stopped. At first I thought that it was some stupid guy calling his friends out of the house or a nervious boyfriend letting his better half know that his majesty arrived. But the horn went on and one and soon it was going on for much longer than any human could withstend.

There was a problem with some unattended car. Probably it was related to the heat that we have these days around here.

Olga closed all the windows and it was almost bareable. I waited for some Cypriot neighbors to call the police or do something equally responsible. Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t, but the sound was going on for about 40 minutes now.

Olga suggested that I do something about it. So I called the police (199). Some guy listened to my story and transferred me to the appropriate deparment. A very polite lady listened to the repeat of my story, asked me for some personal details (name, address, phone number, country of origin, etc) and wished to know the registration number of the problematic car. She explained that she will be able to locate the owner using their database and inform him about the problem. I went out, found the car and called her back with the number. She thanked me and hang up.

I went back home and started to wait for a unit of brave horny car fighters, but they never arrived. Actually, maybe they did, but that must have happened after the problem was resolved. How was it resolved? Well, some other people got annoyed by the sound of the car. Someone tried to break into the car but failed. Than someone else tried and also wasn’t persistant enough. And than there was this middle aged guy, who was just passing by. He stopped for a second, looked at the car, than smiled, came up to it and hit it a couple of times on the hood. TA-DAA! It shut up and the problem was gone. No damage, no hard feelings, no problem.

Olga and I than had a short discussion trying to imagine how the same situation could have been resolved be we in another country. In Russia, for example, I guess the car would have been totally disassembled by the “good neighboors” into bits and pieces. In the States, police, fire fighters, ambulance, and national guards would have probably arrived even before the horn would started. They’d put the “don’t cross” police lines everywere. Maybe started evacuating people from the nearby houses. Even the S.W.A.T. team might have been called in to check for the terrorist danger or something. As you can see, we had some fun…

I got fined today. I would normally accept the guilt, but today it wasn’t fair.

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