Month: July 2003

Hazard is an uncle now

Those who experienced problems with this site recently (mostly myself), should have them no more. There were few measures taken, which improved much the accessibility and lost the packet loss. :)

Hazard officially became an uncle today! There is no way the event like this will pass uncelebrated in this town. Lev, Hazard, Olga and myself all joined up in my place to have some food and start with a beer. After the official part we moved to Hazard’s place to watch “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” DVD. Back home rather early in the morning – around 4:30am. :)

MP3s, beer, and coffee making

Kinda shopping day. First of all, I’ve renewed a bit my mp3 collection by adding albums of Deftones (Deftones-2003), Godsmack (Faceless-2003), and Taproot (Welcome-2003). Not that it has anything to do with actual shopping, but anyway. :)

Then, Olga took me on a tour of “Woolworth”, where we got a million things that we’ll never need. Beverages section pushed me to try the new beer we have around here called “5 beer” (the website does not work properly in my Mozilla). This is exactly the same beer which I saw the ads all over the city and even made a picture of one of them. The beer itself has a cheap taste and no smell what-so-ever (or maybe that’s my running nose talking). It’s low on the bubles and has a distintive somewhat sour taste. Carlsberg is still on the top. :)

While browsing the rows of the shop shelves, I’ve decided that I am a grown man now and I need to learn how to make coffee. Following the reason, I’ve got myself a “Traditional Greek Coffee set”, which included a small, long-handle pot, a can of coffee and two small cups for drinking the masterpiece. Now, me cooking anything is a scary thought, but recent Hazard’s mussles inspired an enthusiasmic push. Let’s be real, it’s just a stove top coffee maker, it should be easy. Of course, an automatic espresso machine would be even easier but I’m not at that coffee level just yet.

Actually, making coffee is not all that difficult. Good people from Charalambous, who packed the coffee cooking set were nice enough to provide instructions on how to achieve the satisfaction. It turns out that all one need to do to enjoy the famous taste is two put a full spoon of coffee from the can into the pot, then put 70ml of water (which is exactly one cup of water, and cups are included), then some sugar (I put one spoon), and put the whole thing on fire. :) Now, the focus is on not boiling the whole thing. It should, they say, slowly start to rise, and you need to take it off the fire for few moments and then put it back couple of times. BUT NEVER BOIL IT. That’s what they said. Well, the instructions seemed crystal clear, so I followed straight away. And guess what – it worked! :) The only thing that disturbed me was if there were too many coffe e particles which affected the taste, but I suddenly remembered the advice of Lev’s mother, which I overheard few days ago – pour few drops of water into the cup, so that all these nasty particles get down to the bottom of the cup. So I did, and here I am – enjoying my first cup of coffee ever made! :) I will practice some more on myself and (poor) Olga for the next few days…

Random bits

Slow day. Got up late, since I had to have some sleep before my today’s NOC night shift. Olga seems to stop fighting the cold and slowly falling sick. I cannot do much – it’ll be one week before she will get back.

Trip to “Malenkaya Rus'” restaraunt for a quick and tasty food to cheer up Olga a bit.

On the way back from restaraunt, we’ve seen a spectacular traffic accident. I was driving on the seaside and stopped on the yellow sign of “Four Seasons” traffic light. Meanwhile, a car going opposite direction to mine did stop and went to pass on yellow. Old granny from the small perpendicular street decided that her yellow sign was good enough to start travelling, so she accelerated. Two cars hit each other and turned a bit to the right keeping each other in a drag, until they closed my way and stopped. Luckily, noone got hurt, but both cars were totally wasted. There was some white steam coming from under the hood of the granny’s car, which perfectly suited the white color of both cars. Shouting, nerves, and all other accident staff started. I made sure that noone got hurt and drove away.

Now, since Hazard decided not to upload all the pictures unless he will assemble his new computer (which is a pathetic excuse), I decided to go mean on him. I called up Lev, who apparently felt asleep yesterday and had to miss all the excellent staff with mussles, and told him everything in details. I described how yummy and juicy were the mussles and that I’ve seen that Hazard had some of them left in the fridge. Lev, of course, lost the interest in whatever was that he was doing and started calling Hazard. So, probably I’ll see the pictures uploaded sometime later today. :)

Trip to Akamas Peninsula

Up early to meet with Hazard and Kangin for a trip to Akamas. Two cars were filled with me, Olga, Hazard, Vladimir Kangin, his wife Oxana aka LoL, his mother, and another guys named Alexander Sklyarov who came from Moscow for a few days. Highway to Paphos, then a tour through Kato Paphos, and then to the beaties of Akamas Peninsuola. It was like visiting another country – the sea and the mountains were totally different – not even anything close to what I’ve seen in Limassol, Paphos, Larnaca and Agia Napa.

First thing we do there is a stop for food. Kangin promised an excellent lamb, but I am a pork fan, so I’ve just tried it a bit. Nice place – separated from everything, not even in a village…Up the hill, with an excellent view of montains and sea. It was also nice because it was very cool up there, considering that it was exceptionally hot that day. Tables are made of huge pieces of stone, floor is stoned too. Grapes are makeing some walls and roof. Very spectacular.

After some pork, lamb and chicken, with boiled potatos and traditional salad mixed with red home wine, we are terribly slowed down. :) Short trip down the hill to meet the sea. Apparently, there are plenty of turtle nests on the beach, which are clearly marked and surrounded by signs of the “Do not disturb the turtle nests” content. Driving on the beach is prohibited due to the very same reason, so you have to walk for like 5 meters. :)

The sea was special too. Actually, this was the first time I like the sea in Cyprus. First of all, you can hear it. You can here it from far away. But the sound changes when you walk closer to it. From within the 20 meters or so you can here the sound of stones rolling on the bottom of it with every wave coming and leaving the shore. Wow! :) Now, there was also some real sand. Well, it was the closes thing to sand that I’ve seen in this country. And, yes, I’ve been in Agia Napa. :) The sand with large particles, which falls of your legs when they get dry. Not the kind that sticks like durt, or better, dust, until the end of ages. And the waves – waves are SOMETHING! Until now, the biggest waves around I’ve seen on Kurium beach, but those are for kids – now I know it. :) Huge, high, but calm waves which make you lose control of your standing position. :) They can throw you on to the shore and won’t be able to do anything about it. That’s nice! Another nice thing about that beach was that it was not crowded. I could barely see any other people except us. It is considerably far, but the trip is worth it.

After we’ve done a bunch of sweeming and wave riding and all the other stupid fun staff, we realized it was a perfect time for beer. So, less then one hourly later we are back in Limassol (yes, I was speeding, but that’s Paphos highway I am talking about) to visit the brewery. Poor guys still don’t have any beer apart from ale, since my multiple previous visits. Yet, we discovered that they surve two kinds of ale: buster and red. If you don’t specify, by default they bring you buster ale. And that’s good. Because I didn’t much like the red one. Niether did anybody except for Vladimir Kangin. It has more breaded taste and is less beerish, if I may say so. :)

After a couple of pints we all went to back to our homes. Kangin had to go for the night shift in three hours, so his day program was mostly over. Olga, me, and Hazard on the other hand did continue. After a show and a 10 minutes nap we are went to Hazard’s place to watch once again “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” DVD and, more importantly, try the first dish Hazard ever cooked for someone – Mussles ‘La Hazard. :)

Mussles deserve a special paragraph here. I’ve tried lots of mussle – natural mussles cooked on the camping fire, mussle with cheese, mussles with garlic, mussles on the ice, fresh mussles… There is one thing about mussles – there are fifty billion ways to cook them, but the simpliest way always wins. So, Hazard goes for it with freshly squashed lime juice, olive oil and a bit of coriander. I’ll tell you, that was one magnificant dish! You could eat it with fork or could rip them off the shelves with you bare teeth – dilicious! :) Juicy, fast and simple, and ubeleivably tasty. ;)

After such a long day, lots of fun, plenty of wine and beer and yummy food there was no suprise that I was falling asleep while watching the movie. :) After Frodo and Sam separated from the rest of the guys, Olga woke me up and we went home to have some rest.

Very long and exciting day and I wish I could have more days like this. :) Of course, I made a whole lot of pictures (I think something close to a hundred) and now I waiting for Hazard to put them up. I guess it’s about time I get myself a camera! :)

Daily report

I think that most of the noisy job in our office has been done and I will be able to return to the actual working activities from Monday. Oh, I mean Sunday…night…my night shift. ;)

Trip to Chesters in the evening with Lev and Olga to meet one of my few clanmates – prog. :) Lots of beer, bufallo wings, potato skins, and other excellent staff.