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.

You are not welcome to Cyprus

Just a few days after I’ve posted “Welcome to Cyprus“, Cyprus News reports about the clash between the anti-racism festival goers and nationalist groups.

THE effects of last Friday’s fracas between nationalist groups and festival goers at the antiracist Rainbow Festival were still being felt across Cyprus.

With one Turkish Cypriot singer stabbed and at least 12 others – foreigners and locals alike – injured, it was commonly agreed that even this violent outcome was nowhere as bad as it could have been.

THE effects of last Friday’s fracas between nationalist groups and festival goers at the antiracist Rainbow Festival were still being felt across Cyprus.With one Turkish Cypriot singer stabbed and at least 12 others – foreigners and locals alike – injured, it was commonly agreed that even this violent outcome was nowhere as bad as it could have been.

The video, perhaps, can illustrate what happened a bit better (if you just want the action, skip to 5:35).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlXk4ogvrY4]

While I’ve seen nationalist and xenophobic Cypriots before, this is the first time I see so many of them at the same place, so organized, and so dangerous. Actually, while I was watching this video, I had a strong feeling of deja vu. I’ve seen this somewhere before. Have you? A crowd of young, aggressive guys, well organized, with drums and loudspeakers, with sticks and other weapons, throwing chairs and what not, and having no respect for police at all – sounds familiar? There is only one other group of people that I know in Cyprus that fits the description – football hooligans.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrPjJmiShUc]

Is there really a connection between football hooligans and nationalist groups? I don’t know. But they do look quite similar to the outsider. And what else worries me is the police. It seems that at the state the police is in right now, it can’t really stand against either football hooligans or violent fascist raids.

FxPro Cyprus Rally 2010

This year FxPro Cyprus Rally is not the part of the World Rally Championship (WRC). Instead, it’s a stage of some Intercontinental Rally Championship (IRC). Not only that, but also it’s the last stage of IRC, by which both the winning driver and the winning manufacturer have already been decided. Needless to say, there wasn’t much to see, so I decided to skip the even altogether this year. And I almost did.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS17SePRFoM]

Yesterday though I went to spend some time with son at Yermasogia dam, which became somewhat traditional for us, before going to Pehnidotopos kids entertainment center. While driving to the dam we were passed by a few rally cars, which gave me a suspicion that the rally stage was somewhere up the road. That was surprising, because I thought the event finished on Saturday.

It turned out the suspicion was right. There was some stage of the rally up the road and it had its finish line exactly on the dam itself. Left with no choice, Maxim and I went to watch. We were late, of course, but still managed to catch a few cars on the asphalt road.

Most Cyprus Rally stages are on gravel and I was wondering how much fun is it to watch the cars driving on asphalt. Surfaces with less traction – gravel, snow and ice – provide a full range of spectator entertainment. Asphalt, of course, is faster, but is it as much fun? The answer is no. While the cars still drift and skid, the pass you by much faster, and there is no aftermath, such as dust and flying stones. Boring. Even though the scenery is beautiful.

Having no camera with me, I shot a few short videos using my mobile phone. You can see them at my YouTube channel.

Welcome to Cyprus

I’ve said it a few times that one of the good things about Cyprus is that there are so many people from so many different cultures living in peace here. But I rarely actually researched how many foreigners are here and from which parts of the world they come. I just judged by my own experiences. Cyprus Mail runs the article which is interesting in this regard.

ALMOST ONE third of Cyprus’ population is made up of foreigners, including other EU citizens, nationals of third countries and illegals, according to statistics for 2009.

Doing business in Cyprus

The Doing Business project provides a rating across 183 countries on how easy it is to do business in each one of them. Cyprus occupies a respectable position #40 in that list. Here are the metrics used in ranking calculations, as well as some of the neighbors for Cyprus:

Easy of Doing Business Rank: 40 (after Columbia, Azerbaijan, Qatar and before Kyrgyz Republic, Slovac Republic, Armenia)
Starting a Business: 25
Dealing with Construction Permits: 77
Employing Workers: 93
Registering Property: 64
Getting Credit: 71
Protecting Investors: 93
Paying Taxes: 37
Trading Across Borders: 15
Enforcing Contracts: 107
Closing a Business: 21

And while there are obviously plenty of pros and cons to each country in the list, it’s nice to see a summarizing effort.

Free Software Conference 2010 in Limassol, Cyprus

Here is an announcement from my friends at UbuntuCy.org forum, who are organizing yet another event to promote Free and Open Source Software.

The Ubuntu Linux Cyprus Local Community in cooperation with the Information Systems and Technology Service of Cyprus University of Technology and the New Technologies Club of CUT, invite you to the Free Software Conference which will be held at the Andreas Themistokleous Building (Old Cadastre) of CUT on the 6th of October. The agenda follows:

Presentations (Pefkios Georgiades Amphitheater) :
6:00 – 6:30 pm: Introduction to Free Software (in Greek)
6:30 – 7:00 pm: Linux Clusters (in Greek)
7:00 – 7:30 pm: Free software: past, present, and the future (in English)
7:30 – 7:45 pm: Projection of the Creative Commons epic short film “Sintel”

Workshops (KXE1 Computer Lab):
8:00 – 8:30 pm: Presentation of the Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop
8:30 – 9:00 pm: Academic Applications for Math, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering.

An installation workshop will be running in parallel with the above, where can practice on how to install Ubuntu and its applications.

There will be free Ubuntu CDs with Free Software for everyone! You can also bring you laptop to test them.

Just so that you don’t get confused – this is tomorrow, October 6th, 2010. It’s going to be in Limassol, on campus of Cyprus University of Technology. And in case you’ll be running late, make sure you get there before 7 o’clock. Yes, I’m going to deliver a speech in English on the subject of past, present, and future of the Free and Open Source Software. Maybe we can talk more and catch a beer afterwards. Don’t miss it! Here is a leaflet for you if you need something printed.