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.
Woken up by the alarm clock at 7:00am. Off to Nicosia at 08:15am. 9:10am we are in Makarious Hospital…
We found the X-Ray department pretty fast, although noone seems to speak English in that place. No queue what-so-ever. Payed 22 CYP. “Please enter”.
Continue reading Some good kidney news
Hellenic Bank has been one of the best banks on the island for some time now. The difference between all of them is very small, but in this case, that’s what makes it more noticable.
One of the reasons that I switched to Hellenic Bank was that their Internet Banking website was working in Mozilla Firefox. And not only it was working, it was almost perfect – all operations were available and there was no need for a Java plugin or anything like that.
A minor annoyence existed though. Main menu was a little bit screwed up and didn’t show completely. It was possible to see it by clicking the little menu frame and either selecting text in there, or using the scoll mouse. Not very comfortable, but at least it worked.
Last week Hellenic Bank finally fixed the issue. Now everything looks and works perfect. More reasons, therefor, to stay with them in the coming year.
If I was to pick a feature that I miss the most, it would be the SMS notification for the change of account balance. Currently I can only setup alerts which will notify me if account balance goes above or beyond a certain amount. But what I want to have is an SMS when something changes at all. Other banks have it and I don’t see any reasons why Hellenic Bank can’t have too.
Anyway, I am still pretty pleased with their service.
It looks like I am about to engage in a new hobby – HAM or Amateur radio.
I’ve been reading up about it for the last few days and the more I read the more I find it fascinating. It also appears that there are a lot of people in Cyprus who are into HAM. Surprisingly, I even know few of them pretty good. I just never new that they were into it.
I talked on the phone to one guy, here in Limassol, and he was very helpful and showing me the way. Basically, I need to ask for an application form from the Ministry of Telecommunications. (I am planning to do just that on coming Monday.) The application will cost about 10 CYP. It’ll take about a month for the Ministry to respond. Usually they say ‘yes’ to everyone.
To get the license, there is an exam. Ministry holds the exam twice a year, so it can be anywhere from 4 to 6 month until the next one. This will give me enough time to study. I was told that if it was 10 years ago, I would have to buy a few books. But these days, all the information is availble on the Web.
Another good thing is that until August of this year, there were two levels of certification. One was for the beginners and was rather limiting in frequencies and actiosn that were allowed. Another one was for advanced hobbiests and professionals and required passing the Morse code exam. In August though, the law was changed and now there is only one exam that, when passed, gives access to everything there is.
The license costs 30 CYP for the first year, and 15 CYP for all consecutive years. Beginner’s equipment costs are somewhere around 100-150 CYP. Sound affordable to me.
I remember trying to pull the bed sheet from Olga all night today. When I woke up I felt chilly and wasn’t in the mood to get out of bed. When I stepped on the floor, I realized that it was than chilly – very refreshing. I was extra fast putting my clothes on too.
When I stepped outside, I immediately felt the urge to stick my hands into pockets of my jacket. Steam was coming out of my mouth. And I had no will to go to work.
While walking towards the car I was wondering if that’s really so cold or if that’s just me dramatizing on weather. As soon as that thought came to my mind, I heard a loud bang. It was a sparrow. He probably decided that life wasn’t worth living no more with temperatures that low and crashed into the office window at full speed. He dropped dead and made me feel sad.
Morning just wasn’t working out.
I started the car and checked the outside temperature. 9 degrees Celsius! (If you think that’s not cold, try boosting the relative humidity in your area to something above 60%.) No wonder I felt cold…
On the way to the bakery to get some breakfast I saw a couple of Philippino guys. They were even cold to look at. It was like they were wearing all clothes that they had, and then some more, borrowed from a friend. One of them had two hats. Poor guy was freezing his brains out I guess.
I came to the office about 20 minutes before the start of my morning shift (The start of the shift is at 7:00am), so I had enough time to enjoy the hot and sweet cup of coffee with still warm and fresh mushroom pie from the bakery.
Morning turned for the better…
We are experiencing some of the heaviest rains today. One of them caught me on the road from the office to home. I was driving 20 km/h and couldn’t see nothing. The best I could do was to see the lights of another car about ten meters in front of me. It got a little bit easier towards the second half of my journey, but I faced another problem – loads of water on the road. At one time I stopped at the traffic light and saw this small van FLOATING from the street across mine. The guy was trying to steer, but there was no chance. He was lucky that he was floating on the green light.
With all the danger and confusion of this weather, I still like it so much that I wouldn’t change it for hot summer days. Thunders and lighnings are the greatest bonus ever.