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.

Biggest-ever road safety campaign in Cyprus

Cyprus Mail reports:

CYPRUS yesterday launched what was described as the biggest road safety campaign in the eastern Mediterranean involving the printing of over a million leaflets aimed at locals and tourists.The leaflets in several languages explaining the island’s traffic codes, will be placed in planes, ships, rental cars, hotels and tourist resortsThere will also be televised spots on planes and ships, offering tourists some useful information on Cyprus’ traffic network – such as, the allowable alcohol limits, speed limits and legal obligation to wear seatbelts; for front seat as well as backseat passengers. The campaign is called Grand Road Safety Project 001.

While I applaud the effort and the breadth of this campaign, I think there is a single issue that, if addressed, will significantly increase the road safety on this island – driving license exam.  Reading through a twenty-something pages of “How to pass a driving license exam” and spending as little as 12 hours on the public roads with instructor should not be enough to get the driving license.  There are so many everyday situations that aren’t even mentioned in the book – no surprise people have no clue how drive when it comes to it.

Cyprus under mosquito attack

Cyprus Updates reports that the island is under mosquito attack:

The recent flood of mosquitoes in Cyprus has alerted the local authorities. The sudden increase in temperature and atmospheric humidity has favoured the reproduction of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes apart from being a nuisance can also be carriers of dangerous diseases therefore the Health Services have already started spraying affected public areas. They are also recommending that people take measures to prevent mosquito bites and stop their rapid reproduction. These include repair of water reservoirs and drainage inlet covers, cleaning of waste bins, and introduction of net on windows.

On one hand, it’s nice to that authorities are on top of the situation and are actually doing something about it.  On the other, in the minds of local people, things like “they are also recommending that people take measures…” often sounds like “they are also recommending that people other than myself take measures…”.

Cyprus Hack Day

I got a message today via an almost non-existing mailing list of Cyprus LUG (Linux User Group) about the following event (please forgive my reformatting, translation, and interpretation):

Event: Cyprus Hack Day
Date: Wednesday, June 1st, 2011
Time: 16:30
Location: University of Nicosia (used to be known as Nicosia campus of Intercollege)
Price: Free
Registration: Online, via Cyprus Computer Society website.
Agenda:

  • Presentation “Chaos in the cloud” by Dr Mike Chung, KPMG Netherlands
  • Presentation “The emperor has no clothes: Remote Access Trojans (RAT) – A Unique Danger” by Andreas Constantinides and Angelos Printezis, Odyssey Consultants Ltd.
  • Demonstration “Hack-Jutsu 101” by Demetris Papapetrou, Information security researcher.

Organizers:

Grand Opening of Dark Angels Club, Pafos

Yesterday I went to Pafos with a few friends to attend the Grand Opening of the Dark Angels motor club.

Even though it started a bit earlier than usual – about 3pm – it was still quite a party.  Live hard rock music, plenty of beer, friends, and awesome motorcycles and more.  In fact, there was so much fun that I went into my head banging mode and today almost every muscle of my body hurts – that was quite a workout with System of a down, Rammstein, Pantera, Deep Purple, and others.

My brother took a gadzillion of pictures which are now on Flickr.