Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

One of the good things I carried out of living in Cyprus is Christmas celebration. I came to realize that it’s not a religios holiday of any sort. It’s just a date for a major celebrations. Some people prefer to have family dinners, others go to pubs, yet others ignore it all together. But the scale of the holiday is so huge that the spirit is in the air, and neither you, neither me, nor anyone else can do anything about it.

To all of you who appreciate the holiday - Merry Christmas!

To all those of you who don’t - you lose!

Happy holidays either way.

Today is the 45th anniversary of Cyprus independence. It was back in 1960 that it got out of British colonial rule. If you’d like more information on the subject, check the Wikipedia page for Cyprus and the rest of the web.

I’m sure there will be plenty of celebrations across the island with parades and fireworks. Normally I would attend and make lots of pictures, but this year I have a different agenda planned. I am not sure that it will work out yet though because of the holiday, but stay tuned. If it will, you’ll be able to enjoy a lot of pictures anyway. Just of a different kind.

One of the things that was new to me when I came to Cyprus was the vacations in August that the whole island takes. Starting around the middle of August until the end of the month most shops are closed. Everyone is on vacations and no one is working except for tourist attractions - restaurants, bars, pubs, beach caffes, and the like.

I really like the unity of the population on the issue of vacations. The majority of people have three long vacations during the year - Christmas holidays, Easter week, and the end of August thing. Those who have to work during these days aren’t much of a use anyway. Nothing can stop people from resting and spending time with family. Lovely.

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-08-15_POTD

Once again, today is the last Friday of July, which means that today is Sysadmin’s Day! Congratulations to all system, network, database, etc administrators out there. Today is your day. I wish you all receive some appreciation from your users and management. Don’t stay in the office for too long. Go out and celebrate!