Surprised with the clinic

Yesterday, Olga and I went for the regular check to the caretaker. After than we went (finally!) to see the clinic where Olga will be taken care of when the time for labour and delivery will come. And we were so surprised! It was unbelievable.

Limassol clinic is a small two or three floor building not too far from our house. It looks like any other building in the area. But it is inside that shocked us. There are not to many 4-star hotels in Limassol which feel that good. Clean and tidy, cozy, with paintings and plants were all over the place. Excellent furniture and a touch of style to everything. All rooms have a single bed, shower, couch and a couple of armchairs, TV, fridge and anything you could with for. Newly born babies can stay either in the rooms with their mothers or in a separate place. There is also a VIP lounge. It is a huge two-room space with more furniture and comforty items.

And there was no this hospital smell anywhere. I was really shocked.

When I saw all of this beauty and excellence I started to prepare myself for a bloated bill with at least 4 digits in it. It turned out that the whole thing costs almost twice as cheap as I was imagining it before seeing the hospital. 650 CYP includes labour and delivery, with 3 days stay in the clinic. This is a very reasonable price. If it is not, at least I am satisfied with it.

Anyway, now we are looking forward for when the time is right. The baby is doing fine. It is about 1.7 kilograms now. All the tests look OK, ultrasound doesn’t show any problems and the heartbeat sounds clean and good. We will be monitoring the progress even more often with the caretaker now – once every two weeks instead of once a month.

Rainy day

Rainy day

Today is a rainy day. I was watching rain from the office window. There were all sorts of rains today: minor with just a few drops; average with lots of water but in small drops, thunderstorm rain with huge drops but lasted only a few minutes. Overall, skies remained uninterestingly gray, and ground – uninterestingly wet gray.

Album location: /photos/2004/2004-12-11_POTD

Fooling traffic cameras

With Cyprus police promising to install traffic cameras in the near future, few people I know started to worry that antiradars won’t be working anymore and that speeding will have to become a part of history. I always knew that there will be someone smart who will find a solution to the traffic camera problem. At the end of the day, this is just another problem, and there are way too many people interested in that solution.

Well, today I stumbled upon this website (via this post at Engadget). It advertises a product called Photo-Blocker, which is nothing more than a spray. You buy a can, spray some on your number plates, and they will be indistinguishable on the photograph.

I haven’t tried it myself and I have no way of checking if this one is true. But the idea sounds interesting…

Visit to Rosy’O’Gradys

Olga and I pasted by Rosy’O’Gradys today. We came around 22:00 and guys were playing already. My brother said that they actually started few minutes prior to our arrival. Somehow I knew it would be like that.

Anyway, guys played excellently although we stayed briefly. We’ve heard music from “Pulp Fiction” and “From Dusk Till Dawn”, nicely sensored version of “WTF is Alice?”, Venus and some other retro disco stuff and a couple of Russian songs. Nicely, nicely done, indeed.

Rosy’O’Gradys turned out to be a pretty expensive place. Although this time around there was a special ticket price of 1CYP, drinks were at their usual prices. Half pint bottle of Carlsberg is 3CYP and a glass of grapefruit juice is 2.50CYP. This is way too much. I mean, I am used to doubled and trippled prices in clubs, bars, and discos, but this place sounds like 10 times the real life price. Out of my league.

If you still want to go listen to some really good music and dance, fill free to go to Rosy’O’Gradys on Saturdays between 21:00 and midnight. Hopefully, they will play there for some time now.

Cloud shades over Limassol

Cloud shades over Limassol

I was watching the sky for the last few days. I find it interesting that sky in Cyprus is mostly boring. In summery it is plain blue, and in winter it is plain gray. Spectacular cloud formations are very rare and usually come either with night time or heavy raining which kind of excludes the photography for me.

I have noticed though that there is some other aspect to watch for – shades. When clouds are few and the sun is shining, clouds drop shadows on to the ground. If shooting from a high spot with nice panorama, there are some opportunities in there.

Just to remind myself about this later on, I’ve uploaded this photograph.

Album location: /photos/2004/2004-12-01_POTD