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 vs. Somalia : children vs. adults

Comparison between Cyprus and Somalia, children and adults is nothing more but a coincidence in my news stream.  Consider the two articles that appeared not next to each other, but near enough for me to group them here.

First, in incident in Cyprus, as reported by the Cyprus Mail.

AN ANNUAL festival in Anogyra village held to celebrate the honey and sesame sweet, pastelli, ended on a sour note on Saturday after three people were slightly injured in a fight over balloons.

Chairs and bottles were thrown in the fight between two families that resulted in four arrests and three people getting slightly injured.

Second, a little competition in Somalia, as reported by the Guardian.

An Islamist-backed radio station in Somalia has awarded assault rifles and hand grenades to the winners of a children’s Qur’an recital competition.

Andalus radio, which is run by al-Shabaab militia, said on Monday that the first prize was an AK-47 and £450. The runner-up received an AK-47 and £320, while the child who came third received two F1 hand grenades and £250. The three children also received religious books.

There goes my hope for the World Peace.

Septemberfest 2011

Cyprus Mail reports that a (hopefully) annual event is being organized first time this year in Nicosia.  Inspired by the famous Octoberfest beer festival in Munich, Germany and, possibly, by Limassol Wine Festival, it should boost the Nicosia tourism a bit.

Six beer importing and producing companies will headline the festival, while customers will have the opportunity to choose from up to 49 different brands. Cyprus will be represented by its three local producing companies: KEO, Carlsberg and Leon, while 20 kiosks will be set up, with local pubs also participating.

Drinks, food, music, and a traditional in such cases funfair promise a lot of fun.  Septemberfest starts today, Wednesday, September 21st and will continue until the end of the week, Sunday, September 25th.  Entrance tickets are 5 EUR for adults, including free drink.  Children can go in for free, but my guess is that they won’t be served any alcohol.

Hopefully by the next year the organizers will build up a website of some sort.  Until then, there is a Facebook page that you can use to share photos and updates.

Hellenic Bank updates interface, adds mobile banking

A couple of weeks ago Hellenic Bank clients received a notification through their bank mail that the web interface is about to be updated.  The update was schedule for September 3rd, but I guess it didn’t go as smooth as expected.  For the last two weeks the web banking was slow, unstable, and unavailable at times.  Today I finally managed to login and experience the new interface.  Here are the before and after screenshots for you to compare.

The new interface is far from perfect, but it is a vast improvement over the old one.   I’ve also noticed a banner advertising the mobile banking.  That sounded totally like a dream.  It’s hard to believe that Hellenic Bank even knows what a mobile banking is, let alone is capable of implementing one. I immediately decided to check it out – after all it was as simple as navigating to a mobile version of the website.  I tried to log into it, but was constantly thrown into a blank white page.  Not very surprising, but I am willing to give them time.  Given that there web site is still shaky, I doubt they have time to look at the mobile version of it as well.