This is my home. This is where I lived, worked, and enjoyed life for more than ten years now. This is where most of my friends and family are.
Sabaton is coming to Cyprus at the end of the month. They will be performing in TePee rock bar, Limassol on August 28th. I’ve scheduled a reminder post for early that week. Here is a video for now.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsjGnBPjYDs]
The latest theme for Flickr blog is called “my office window“. There are some nice photos, as always, but what’s more interesting is that it is quite an engaging subject. Pretty much everyone who ever worked somewhere can participate, share photos, and discuss.
For me personally, the last few years weren’t very lucky in terms of a good office window view. I currently work in the premises which are on a busy Omonia avenue, which runs between the new port of Limassol and the highway. Not too much to see. My previous office was even worse – it had no windows at all. The office before that had some windows, but the view wasn’t any good. And so and so forth. But I don’t feel bad about that. Because for six years or so I had the best office window ever. It was during my time in PrimeTel, where I had a sea view window. I especially enjoyed it when I was working night shifts. I had to see a sun rise several times a week! And also PrimeTel’s office being next to the new port of Limassol, there were always ships to provide some focus and highlight to the view, not just sun and water, which I guess would have become boring pretty soon. Here is one of the many pictures I took during those mornings.
What about you guys? What’s you office window like? Do you have one? What’s the view like? What was the best (or worst) office window you ever head? Got any pictures to see?
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.
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.
A recent arrest in Cyprus proves that gambling is an old problem, as Cyprus Mail reports:
FORTY TWO women aged between 75 and 85, including a 95-year-old from Limassol, were shocked on Sunday when police raided their card game and confiscated their €100 in betting money.
Also, I have to disagree with a woman quoted in the same article:
The only thing police achieve by doing such raids is to ridicule women of a certain age
Not at all, no. I think police only ridicule themselves, not the women of a certain age.