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 Tax, Facts & Figures 2016

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) published their annual Cyprus tax, facts and figures brochure for the year 2016. It is a handy document to send to friends abroad who are interested in moving to Cyprus or starting a business here.

One thing that I found ironic in this document was the example they used for personal taxation (page 7-8 in the English PDF). The example is for someone with a monthly salary of 5,885 EUR and additional income from rent, etc – a total income of 75,620 EUR per annum. Looking at the average salary in European Union, Cyprus shows 1,833 EUR per month in 2014 and 1,574 EUR per month in 2015.

I hope PwC predicts a huge spike in average salaries in 2016. That would be nice …

Netflix now available worldwide, Cyprus too

These are super exciting news – Netflix now available worldwide, Cyprus too! For those who don’t know this service, Netflix is basically the Google of the TV series and movies. Until recently it was only available in US, UK, and very few other locations, but now they’ve expanded to 130 countries more.

For 8 EUR a month you get an unlimited access to all their movies and TV shows. You can stream content to your TV, laptop, tablet, or phone, and for a couple of extra euros you can even watch stuff on more than one screen simultaneously!

The Insider Guide to Cyprus’ Leading Microbreweries

The Insider Guide to Cyprus’ Leading Microbreweries tells the story of the local microbreweries (those that don’t include monster factories like Keo and Carlsberg). To my surprise there are more of them than I knew. I was only familiar with Prime Microbrewery and Aphrodite’s Rock. There’s also Hula Hops Brewing and Pivo Microbrewery.

There’s also Draught Microbrewery, which is not in the article, but worth a visit.

Conference : Freedom and Technology

There is going to be a Free Software / Open Source conference “Freedom and Technology” this Saturday, October 3rd (18:00-21:00) in Cyprus University of Technology, in Limassol, Cyprus. Organizers are the same people you know from the Ubuntu CY community. I’m going to do a talk titled “The practical guide to Open Source participation”. Slides will be linked here after the talk.

See you there.

Dust to “choke” Cyprus over the week

Sigma Live, among others, warns people to stay inside until … the dust settles. I’d add an extra warning for those who’s driving on the highway – the visibility is really bad in some areas. Slow down, switch your lights on and avoid unnecessary trips. Your lungs and your car will thank you later.