Category: Cyprus

I live in Cyprus for many years now. It is a beautiful little island in Mediterranean Sea. It features warm weather for most of the year, sea, very kind and hospital people, plenty of jobs in IT industry, good food and plenty of alcohol, stable currency, and more. It’s really a nice place to live if you can handle small towns and villages. It’s also a great place to raise the kids.

Not much happens here. It is a quiet and simple place. Yet, when something happens or when I write about it, I post it to Cyprus category.

Cyprus, what’s going on?

Reading the news these days is interesting.  Have a look at the following snippets, for example.

One:

THE CABINET has decided to fire the chairman of Cyprus’ natural gas company, DEFA, because of serious misconduct, government spokesman Christos Stylianides said yesterday.

Two:

THE HOUSE Ethics Committee will look into whether parliament was misled by the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) governor over the terms of reference of an investigation he launched into the island’s banking debacle.

Three:

ON SUNDAY a Greek newspaper carried a report that Attorney-general Petros Clerides had suspended prosecution for driving offences against his son.

Clerides, declined to comment until Monday night on a television current affairs show where although he was not specific about the reported offences – drink driving and not having an MOT – he did confirm that an offence had taken place and that he had suspended prosecution.

Everybody who spent even a few month in Cyprus knows how corrupt is the government.  But lately there is a flood of reports on all sorts of government officials.  What’s going on?  Did people have enough finally?

Because they know better …

Cyprus Mail reports:

THE MINISTRY of education has been forced to take action after videos of high school students doing the Harlem Shake have been uploaded onto the internet showing obscene behaviour, the ministry said yesterday.

“The videos show obscene behaviour. Some show students pulling down their trousers and pants,” sources at the ministry of education said.

“We are trying to protect these students because anything that is uploaded onto the internet can stay there forever. The students are children and are not grown-up enough to understand how this can affect their lives in the future. Some students may become doctors or lawyers and these video clips may harm their professional lives in the future,” they added.

This sickens me.  It’s one of those things that the government shouldn’t be anywhere near.  But not only they are watching it close, they are interfering.  Like they know better…

This whole Internet thing is such a huge change for the society, that even people who are leading up the change don’t really know how things are changing and affecting us, and where it is all going.  Yet, the ministry of education in Cyprus seem to have quite a good idea.  And not only that.  They seem to completely ignore parental role in this whole thing.

Oh, and the censorship worked so well with the rest of the Internet stuff …

Celebrity status : one person

My celebrity status was raised today to the level of “one person”.  Here is a quote from the Cyprus Mail article covering TEDxNicosia:

Perhaps the most apt response to that performance was from one person on social networking site Twitter who said, “Holly molly! Check the voice on that kid! Jaw dropped at #TedxNicosia”. Hashtags are used on Twitter to enable people, including strangers, to discuss a set topic.

If you missed the original, here it is: