Year: 2006

Olga’s older sister came to visit us with her husband and two daughters. They will be staying in Limassol, in hotel apartments just across the road from the beach, and not far from our place too.

I saw something really strange today. It was bad. Very bad. And strange.

I was on my way for a little walk after a minor beer session in Ship Inn. It was around 2:30am. I was walking by Kanika complex, listening to some blues podcast. Nice music, nice weather, nice mood…

Suddenly I see this crowd of kids. There are about 20 or 30 of them. They all are about 13, 14, 15 years old. They run around like crazy, but in a group, shouting something in Greek. There’s plenty of excitement, although it was easy to say that something stupid is happening.

Then I see this young woman, she’s probably 25 or so, running around, chasing kids. Oh, well. Having fun, aren’t ya? Nothing special, so I am passing by, listening to my blues podcast.

As I go by, I look at the faces of some kids, and something tells me that something wrong is going on. These guys, they are smiling, but in a bad kind of way. Uh-oh. I stop, I turn around, I look.

The young woman is obviously drunk. She’s a tourist. She’s barefoot, she has a leather belt in her hand and she is chasing these kids trying to hit them. Hmm…

Now I see there is this other dude. He is about 25 or 27 years old. His a big guy, and he is obviously pissed off. I watched him for about three seconds – he was doing two things at the same time. He was chasing the kids, also trying to hit them, and he was trying to catch and calm down that young woman. Or so it seemed.

The dude grabbed the woman and put her down on the grass, jumping at the crowd around… It didn’t look good. Or right.

So I go through the crowd, straight to the dude and ask him if he needs any help. The guy is all tired, sweaty, and seriously pissed off. He says “Yeah! I need some help, man! Those motherfuckers, they attacked my wife…”. At this point I am thinking “What the fuck?!”.

The young woman jumps up, and shouting all the dirty words I’ve ever known starts chasing the kids again, with the belt in her hand. Kids are again amused and entertained. That was really stupid. With that belt, it was easy to make some serious damage…

Anyway, I ask the guy if the girl is drunk or on drugs or anything. He says she’s drunk. And that she wasn’t doing anything wrong, they just came to the beach for a sweem, but they were just talking, when these kids came around and started shouting offensive words, and grabbing his woman, and touching her, and doing all sorts of things they shouldn’t have been doing…

I looked around to assess the situation. Basically, there was nothing much to assess. From my very limited street experience, I’ve learned one small thing – there is no way to fight a crowd. You can fight one on one, two on two, or whatever. But when there is a crowd, and noone in particular – that won’t lead anywhere, except to a worse situation.

I look at the dude, he is pissed off, and he is not thinking straight. I asked him where are they staying. He said that they are tourists and that they are staying Kanika Pantheon Hotel. Good. It’s just around the corner.

I suggest the plan of action. First, we get to the hotel. Second, we call the police. He agreed. Now, at this moment, we had to hurry a bit, because everything was rushing out of our control (that is from as little control as we had over the situation). The young woman, we, and those kids – all are running across the seaside street, back and forward, and back again. That’s not the best idea of time spending, especially considering the from Friday to Saturday night, with most drivers speeding, and many drunk. Plus some small stones started flying around… Kids are having fun.

The progress towards the hotel is very slow. It’s either the dude is getting pissed and starts chasing the kids. Or the young woman gets off with the same goal, or we lose the shoe, or the belt, or something else. But overall we are moving forward.

Suddenly we see this police car driving by. It is traffic police, but what do we care. So we shout, whistle, and make lots of noises. The police comes back. We tell them what happenned. They don’t seem to be very interested though. They asked us if the woman needs an ambulance. We declined. They said: “We are going to drive around the block, to check things out”. What??? To check what out? But they didn’t even bothered to listen or explain – they just left. And we never saw them again.

Finally, we made it to the hotel. The kids were all still around. They kept the distance, but they were still aggressive.

These whole situation got me so pissed off. I mean, c’mon. What is this? Cyprus was always one of the safest places on Earth. Everyone was safe, especially the tourists. OK, there were some minor accidents or fights, but those usually happen near pubs or discos and all parties are as drunk as it can get.

But here? In Kanika, which is like the center of the city. And the kids were sober. And they were kids. And there was the whole crowd of them. And they attacked a woman. Who was with the guy. What the fuck is going on?

I can understand when bad things happen on a football match, where the time and place is pre-arranged for bad things to happen. But here? Is it like the whole generation is screwed so badly? I don’t understand…

While we were making our way towards the hotel, the young woman was repeating one phrase over and over and over again: “I hate Cyprus”. “I hate Cyprus”. “I hate Cyprus”. And it was the first and only time in my life, when I didn’t feel like discussing…

Please forgive another pan in the title, I’ll explain myself.

I rarely post about my fight with extra weight. That’s because the dynamics are a bit down now. Things happen slowly, but they still happen.

I’ve been fighting with the 103 kg mark. I got it pretty easy, but then everything just stopped. I would go up a kilo, then come back, then again. And so on, and so forth. But that’s OK. Many things happen in waves for me, so that was a period of between waves.

Yesterday I got a confirmation that I am winning over my fat. I left the gym weighting 102.9 kg. Not a big difference, but it was the first time I saw 102 on the scales display. (that 2 is where I got the idea for the title – word play for compliment and 2’s compliment)

Also, I have to say that measuring just kilograms won’t always provide you with a good picture of what’s happening in reality. Muscles are heavier than fat. You can be loosin gone, getting another, and your weight will remain the same, but your sizes will change.

That’s exactly what was happening to me. I was seeing the changes. My belt needed one less hole. T-shirts were getting bigger. And stuff like that.

Today, as a proof of concept, I wearing my old new green pants. I bought them back in 2000. I wore them just a few times, before I got too fat. They were hidden in the closet ever since. They are quite comfortable now.

Once again, a big ‘thank you’ is due to everyone who provide me with support and encouragement. That helps a lot.

Have you seen any of these images? Have you seen anything very similar?

Do you think cliches are bad and unoriginal? Well, sometimes I wish that more people used cliche images from stock photography collections. Because, many times when they don’t, they decide to make photographs themselves. Really.

Need a quality image for your corporate website? Why hire a photographer or buy image collections? We can do it ourselves. Hold on a second, let me grab my mobile phone – it had a camera somewhere in there. Oh, here it is… Click, click, click. Man, I guess that’s too dark. Light a match or two – we need some light for the mobile phone to see our office building. Yeah, that’s better. Click, click, click. Here, Mr.Designer, take this. You can use this image. And if it won’t work, I’ll call a friend of mine. He has a proper camera. He bought it for a hundred dollars.

Nah… they better use cliche images from those CD-ROMs that are two centuries old and have been reused all over the web…