Thursday, January 28/2010

Our flat faces a little back street. Opposite us a large building housing offices and the little charity shop that supports animal rescue on the ground floor. Above, there is a mixture of flats and offices. This morning a man in business suit comes out onto the balcony across from us and lines up on the railing a small cup of Cypriot coffee, the requisite glass of water to accompany same, and an ashtray.

There are many people smoking outside these days. A smoking ban for restaurants and bars came in January 1st amidst the usual grumbling - though the climate makes outdoor coffee pleasant most of the time. Thus a commentator tells of the man who always sat on the bar stool nearest the window, where he could see the television screen and blow his smoke out the window. As of January 1 he has moved his bar stool just outside the window, from which place he can still see the tv - and blow his smoke in through the window.

The Swedish chanel rebroadcasts Obama's state of the nation address, complete with subtitles. It's a good speech of course - from a speaker who's always excellent - but what fascinates me is the stagecraft, almost choreography. The applause and even standing ovations at the end of every second phrase. It's obviously the convention, and of course the Republicans aren't cheering, but the co-ordinated bursts of enthusiasm are so utterly foreign to either Canadian or British mentality that they'd be impossible to organise. Maybe in the Middle East.

Wednesday, January 27/2010

Maggi over in the evening for a drink and a game of Scrabble. Just like old times.

Tuesday, January 26/2010

Recovery of bodies continues from the Ethiopian plane that crashed shortly after take off from Beirut. Dismissing terrorism, spokespeople all point to the fact that the plane - which went down in a ball of fire, breaking up before it hit the sea - took off in a bad storm. A probable lightning hit is mentioned. This is disturbing with regard to other flights - are lightning hits frequent and should all planes be grounded during electrical storms? And if it isn't highly hazardous to fly through thunder storms, why is everyone so certain it was ligntning and not an explosion?

A young drunk comes into the student internet, first identifiable by scent. There's a free computer next to mine and he pulls up a chair, talking first to the man on the other side and then to himself. Briefly he puts his head down on his arms and appears to sleep - then stumbles out.

Monday, January 25/2010

The Finns have created a new human right - to the internet. They have guaranteed to bring high speed broadband to every household in a country with fairly low population density. Canada please note.

Sunday, January 24/2010

Rainyish day - well, January is when the little rain that cyprus gets does fall. So reading and telly. We're now reading Julian Rathbone's A Very English Agent. Spy fiction set in the early 19th century. Well researched and as interesting for the social background as the narrative.

The Doha Debates are on BBC World tv in the afternoon. Today's resolution: the present government in Afghanistan is not worth fighting for. (Resolution passes 51:49). The Doha debates are mainly impressive for the caliber of the debaaters they are able to attract - high level UN representatives, ambassadors, MPs, etc.

In the evening we watch a french film on Dubai television - a good film and, interestingly, subtitled in both Arabic and English. Film punctuated by loud singing outside as groups (of sports fans?) return home. It occurs to us that public singing is virtualy never heard in Canada any more - we pay people or electronic devices to do our singing for us.

Saturday, January 23/2010

Gloriously sunny at our market coffee spot, though the night rain still spots the table and chairs til they're wiped. Quite bus this morning as everyone seems to emerge from the past showers into the sunlight.

In the evening M&M come over for supper - fish chowder.

Friday, January 22/2010

The news of the day is that a woman has been arrested and accused of the recent killing of the head of the Sigma television station and various other media enterprises. The theory is that she hired the hitmen who actually did the deed as an act of revenge. It seems she had been a tv presenter at Sigma and had been sacked by the boss - the murder victim. It's hard to know which is the more astonishing - that an ordinary person should wish to hire contract killers (and for such a trivial reason as having been fired) or that she should have the money and the contacts to do so.

Thursday, January 21/2010

The censorship program on the student internet computers functions like an old nanny who is well-meaning but hopelessly out of touch. Thus keeping track of world currencies - or things that affect them, like the price of crude oil - is made more difficult as I am protected from (shudder) "investment" and many of the world's most reputable newspapers are banned because they contain sports news.

This morning I have a few extra minutes and decide to look up one of my ancestors - Hannah Odell, born 1798 - to see if I can spot any new information. One site looks possible but turns out to be forbidden. Grounds cited: match making.

The English news is not on the cypriot government television station when I check. The television station has a nightly English language news broadcast lasting less than ten minutes. Tonight it is displaced by a tennis match from Australia featuring cyprus's beloved Marcos Baghdatis - obviously a replay as it's the middle of the night in Australia. Baghdatis is pretty likeable, and a good player, heavily supported by fans who, J points out, are carrying far more Greek flags than cypriot. Eventually replay ends and news follows. cypriots with video recorders suffer much more than we do from the frequent unannounced program changes - shows occasionally starting earlier than scheduled as well as later.

Wednesday, January 20/2010

Malcolm's eagerly awaited 12th birthday - eight time zones away.

Buying toothpaste at Elomas, we check out the various teas - including a herbal one called cinnamon and gloves. Outside Elomas there is a small free English language magazine - mostly advertising - called Larnaca News. Not much content, but a small news item mentions the fact there was, on the morning of December 22, an earthquake measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale. And we remember waking early in the morning and being aware that the building was trembling - slightly but unmistakeable, and more than momentarily.

Tuesday, January 19/2010

There's nearly 3 inches of water in the red bucket when we get up in the morning. The ceiling in our top floor flat leaks in the same spot as last year and began doing so last night in the downpour. Far from being distressed, we had positively welcomed the leak, remembering that last year we acquired a shiny new red plastic bucket to catch the drips - and that it made an excellent washtub later for handwashes, bigger and more convenient than the kitchen sink. This bucket, though, is a grubby mop pail, fit for catching drips but not for clean clothes. But the rain has stopped so it should soon be gone. Maggi quips "life's tough at the top."

Finish reading Good and Faithful Servant - unauthorised biography of Maggi Thatcher's press secretary. Quite an interesting study of how a neutral civil service job became an instrument for pushing Thatcher's personal views - and sometimes even the press secretary's own views , even when they were not shared by cabinet. Also an early but notable step in the vesting of authority in unelected advisors rather than cabinet - now of course standard practice whether in tory Canada or New Labour UK.

Maggi's text re the sheep's head she ate at lunch in Nicosia: the eyeball was surprisingly tasty. J shudders and says he's glad he heard after he had finished eating.

Monday, January 18/2010

Umbrella day. The worst of rain in Cyprus - or Larnaca at least - is that there is nowhere for the rain to go except in sheets down the pavements and deep puddles at the corners. The country is chronically short of water but a shocking amount of the rainfall is simply taken down to the sea in the storm sewers. The problem is coompounded by Cypriot drivers, many of whom are pedestrian blind and feel compelled to race up to the intersection spraying widely before waiting for a light to change. So a ten block walk is a minor obstacle course, dodging gutter hoses jetting onto the sidewalks, jumping metre wide puddles and aiming for the least flooded paving stone in a passage. A fair workout.

Sunday, January 17/2010

Warm, but windy and sunless. With the weather report the explanation emerges - the sky is full of dust blown north from the Sahara Desert, so the sun is mostly invisible - occasionaly seen in faint outline - and those with breathing difficulties are told to stay inside.

Saturday, January 16/2010

Meet M&M at the market for coffee. It rained a little in the night, so the chairs need a wipe down, but it's sun and warmth now. And all the colour of market stalls. We only need eggs - seldom bought more than 6 at a time here, as they should be fresh. We wait our turn for the eggs, watching as the green olives in a bucket are mixed with slivers of garlic, oil and lemon juice. J manages to get one to taste before the lot are scooped into a plastic bag for the enthusiastic purchaser. It's hard to walk past the fresh fruit and vegetables and herbs without discovering things that we need - so broccoli spears and carrots by the time we leave - though we're passing everything from shiny blue-black aubergines to an enormous round of halvah.

Meet Berndt and Britta on the way back. They're now happily ensconced in the remodelled - and repriced - Eleonora. Britta speaks no English, but her fingers quickly simulate bugs crawling as Berndt remembers that he last saw us as we were looking for an alternative after our disastrous introduction to the Frangiorgio. We say we like the Kition, but then everyone sighs as we think of it's being torn down.

Friday, January 15/2010

Stop at MTN, the mobile phone place to buy a €10 top up card. Referred by person A to person B and then back again. Much shuffling about, rifling through desk drawers, etc. Small red metal box containing cards opened with key, then abandoned for search of back room. return to re-examine contents of red box. Finally I receive a card - which turns out to be a €20 top up. I point out the error. Don't worry about it, he says.

Maggi texts at noon to say they're driving up to Pyla, the mixed Greek and Turkish village just south of the border to have an Efes (Turkish beer) - would we like to come? So out along the dhekelia Road and north, then inland, to Pyla. On a whim, Maggi suggests we leave the car at the border and walk over to the Turkish village on the other side. There we stop on the main street and share two Efes, as men help us find chairs at the little plastic outdoor table. The sun makes a weak appearance, so it's just warm enough. Maggi buys six Efes to take back and J has a brief chat with a man selling sacks of potatoes by a huge fragrant rose bush. Does he think things will be better now with the Greeks? He does, but doesn't have the vocabulary to elaborate. At the border M compliments the young Turkish officer on his aftershave, to his embarrassment, and we tease her about having discovered a technique for bringing things through customs.

Thursday, January 14/2010

The day starts with rain and before my eyes are open I can hear that the cars on the streets are driving through puddles. It continues intermittently through the day, though it's not cold. M&M stop fo tea on their way out for groceries.

Wednesday, January 13/2010

Wake to news of Haiti's earthquake - and like the tsunami of five years ago, the news only gets more horrific as the day goes on.

Pick up the price sheet on mobile phone charges. The cost of sending a text is 2 cents EU (or 3 cents Canadian) - more or less nothing, on the basic pay as you go card. And nothing at all, of course, to receive texts. Canadians overpay so badly.

Notice on the dubai chanel advising watchers that it is time for Dhur Prayer - one of the five prayers of the Moslem day, regulated by the sun. There is, however, no prayerful break in regular programming, which continues as usual, diverting the faithful. J says this is a shift from their earlier practice of providing Moslem prayer interludes.

Tuesday, January 12/2010

Walk down to Smart, Elomas and Carrefour, starting off past the huge Nicolaides City building that was under construction all last winter. It's finished now, but not very full. J peeks in and says that the ground floor offices don't seem very populated. Certainly there is no sign at all of occupation on most of the higher storeys - 12 plus a penthouse above the ground floor. Is it a symbol of a breaking construction bubble?

Elomas has had less and less of interest as it has moved increasingly to frozen food, but we see a new acquisition - bottles of Spanish wine at €1.19 ($1.80 CAD, £1.10 GBP). Later proves to be young and undistinguished, but perfectly drinkable.

Monday, January 11/2010

J observes the body language as the traffic police pull overlocal motorists in presumably random road checks - smiles, handshakes, pats on the arm, chit chat. It's no wonder that tickets go disproportionately to the tourists.



The weather forecast for tomorrow shows some clouding over with possible showers in parts of the island, which could probably use the rainfall as water reserves are a perennial problem here. BBC's international weather map shows the same predicted high for Winnipeg and Atlanta tomorrow - three degrees.



Pride and Prejudice finished. Our copy made rather difficult reading as it had been previously owned by a student of diligent habits but no especial insight. Thus each page features much underlining as well as extensive highlighting in a variety of garish colours, some of them remarkably difficult to read through. All this accoompanied by the most obvious of commentary in a childishly rounded hand. Not, unfortunately, a book in good enough shape to donate to the charity shop.

Sunday, January 10/2010

Katy's birthday. The only downside to winter travel is how far away we are from family - but the grandchildren live in three different directions and the nearest of them 600 miles away, so visits would never be winter anyway.

Sunday treats of brunch with the Cypriot smoked tenderloin best done by J's favourite butcher - no doubt all the health hazards of any cured meat, but a little of this carries a lot of flavour. And the Sunday Cyprus Mail, complete with radio and telly guide and puzzles - though J grumbles that the actual content is pretty thin.

Saturday, January 9/2010

Market day and unseasonably warm - but we meet a bit early for beer. there is a treat in store though, as Maggi invites us back for lunch - beautiful oven-cooked lamb which she collects from her favourite take-away spot. Leisurely lunch and then walk along the beach as far as the barrier where the airport land begins. The beach is much sandier here than the main beach in town - a proper holiday beach, but nearly deserted as it's off-season. In the distance we can see the little dragon-shaped fishing boats. Above, planes take offf from the airport and we try to identify the airlines. Then walk home along the seafront.

Friday, January 8/2010

Second day of the traffic police making themselves important on the main thoroughfare outside with much whistling and waving. Not entirely clear what the objective is as motorists are pulled over - checking papers? What they're not doing is worrying about illegal mufflers or excessive noise, so when we watch films whole snatches of dialogue disappear, victims of the motorcycle cowboys, leaving us sorry we're no good at reading the Greek subtitles.

Maggi and Magne stop ini the late afternoon with Ellen, the travel rep that was with us in Israel two years ago. She's been giving a talk on a forthcoming trip to Jordan. Some talk of ex-president Papadopoulos's still missing body. Ellen's teory is that the objective was ransome, and she cites a Balkan precedent involving a lawyer with some ties to P.

Thursday, January 7/2010

End of the holidays and back to ordinary time. Another warm and sunny day, as we awake to news of closures and cancellations due to snow all over Europe.

J sautés the nicest salmon fillet I've ever tasted for dinner. We have it with mushrooms, bulgur pilaf and a salad, juggling the timing around Lost in Austen, the four part serial based on interaction between the characters of Pride and Prejudice and a girl from present day London. In honour of which we are reading Pride and Prejudice aloud - though the television serial is progressing faster than our reading.

Wednesday, January 6/2010

Epiphany. The holiday begins gloriously sunny. When we wake up it's 13 in the shade but by mid-morning when we go down to the beach for the festivities it's hot - we check the little travel thermometer from our spot in the full sun by the petunias opposite the end of the pier. Forty-two in the sun - over 107 Fahrenheit!

The focal point is the parade. The red-coated band is nice, and the gold-crowned archbishop impressive enough, but the militarism, from dozens of cadets to soldiers with fixed bayonets, seems distressingly incongruous. The parade moves, carryiing a sacred icon, from St. Lazarus Church, traditionally considered to be the second burial place of the Biblical Lazarus, down to the pier, where the waters are blessed in commemoration of the baptism of Christ, and a cross is thrown in the water for the young men to dive and retrieve. It's prudently attached to a string lest they miss it in the sand. Maggi laughs and says "Oh ye of little faith."

We meet up with M&M and Maggi and I gather some of the aromatic eucalyptus-like leaves that have been strewn on the pier to take them home. Then we wander along the front, enjoying the crowd - children with ice cream or candy floss and animal-shaped balloons, stalls selling sweets or jewellery and toys, tourists and local families in carnival mode.

Back to our place for lunch. We're ready for cold beer and have some meze style snacks. Our holiday meal.

Tuesday, January 5/2010

Maggi texts in the morning to see if we want to go to Livadia (Larnaca suburb) as they're on a grocery trip, so we go along for the ride. From the car we spot a forklift hoisting new mattresses to the first floor of the Frangiorgio hotel Apts, where they are being taken in from a balcony. A nice replacement at the scene of last year's beetle infestation.

Interesting linguistic point above. I note I have said the mattresses were hoisted to the first floor. In Europe (UK included here) the floor you enter from the street is the ground floor and the one above it the first. An occasional disappointment to North Americans who think they have only 3 storeys to trudge up and find they have four. As with many other usages, though, it seems we adjust without thinking about it. Or not, on occasion. There was the time that J, looking at a Cypriot street, said that the pavement was new and I, looking down at the sidewalk (British English read pavement) said I didn't think so - there were weeds growing in the cracks.

The end of the Christmas season, as tomorrow is Epiphany, a major holiday here. So our homemade decorations will be coming down, along with the public decorations and those in shop windows, some of which are very nice. And interesting, from a North American viewpoint. There is some use of red and green, but much more of gold or ivory and gold - much classier. And St. Nicholas/Father Christmas/Santa Claus is often clad in gold, occasionally in other colours like blue, and is not necessarily rotund. Leading to the somewhat annoying realisation that the common western stereotypical Santa image owes its origin to Coca Cola advertisements and not to any more historical tradition.

And as I walk home with the eggs, crossing the parking lot behind the market place, I see a Santa Claus in a wheelchair. He's nearly life-sized and red-suited, being wheeled across the lot in a red satin covered armchair on four small wheels. Off-stage now for the season.

Monday, January 4/2010

The Dubai chanel much taken up with the grand opening of the new Burj - tallest building in the world by far at 828 m (the exact height having been kept a secret until the final moment). The tone of the commentary is incredibly self-congratulatory and utterly untempered by any suggestion that the sands on which it is built mayhave shifted with the financial winds. Worse than the threat of fiscal bankruptcy is the moral bankruptcy that underlies the whole state. Much of Dubai's construction has been achieved at the expense of virtual slave labour provided by men from countries like Pakistan who leave their families, pay to acquire jobs, and live in work camps, often going without the pay they were promised and unable to afford the fare home without it. All this to provide an obscenely luxurious tax free haven in the midst of a region that includes the very poor. It's hard to look at the new tower as anything other than a monument to vanity - tempting the fates of fire and disaster. A tower of Babel?

Sunday, January 3/2010

Warm enough that we're pleased to take the shady side of the street coming home from Mass. Not everywhere, though. BBC World's weather map (never its best offering) shows 2 weather spots in Canada, one of which is Winnipeg, with -25 forecast for Tuesday. And then we see clips of Beijing where snow has filled the streets and halted flights - very haard to imagine for anyone who remembers sweltering in China.

Saturday, January 2/2010

An odd sort of day - middle of a four day weekend for some purposes and ordinary Saturday for others. The shop where we intend to buy eggs is closed - so one each tomorrow - but J's favourite butcher shop is open, the doorways heavily hung with sausages and the air heavy with their lovely smoky aroma. As I walk in, my hair brushes against some cured meat hanging in the entry - and how many others have done the same? We buy a smoked pork fillet - much nicer (though more expensive) than the supermarket ones.

Only one market stall is open, and reasonably busy, so we get bananas, mushrooms and courgettes. Text from Maggi asking where we are. At themarket - does she want coffee: So we meet at our regular cafe - but it's sunny and quite warm, so we opt to split a large (66 cl) abeer 3 ways instead of coffee.

Midafternoon M texts again to say that she hasn't seen Magne for hours, actually since morning, and has checked his usual haunts as well as the promenade - twice. she waits until four and then, with darkness coming on, goes to the police station, kitty-corner to us. Somewhat to our surprise, the police are quite good about it, checking the hospitals for accident victims and having the regular patrols keep an eye out. And it pays off when, a couple of hours later, the policee return him home, apparently after his discovery in a cafe near St. Lazarus. Maggi says the police were "kind and efficient." Interestingly, their weakness as a force is also their strength. Because they are relational rather than official, they are reluctant to deal with driving infractions when they may end up prosecuting friends of friends, and thus we all suffer from cowboy drivers with illegal mufflers and there is a shocking rate of road death. On the other hand, they seem able to take quite a familial approach to an elderly man gone astray, and all ends well.

Friday, January 1/2010

Stunningly lovely day - the thermometer reads 18 in the shade but it's clearly much warmer in the sun, and there's plenty of sun and mild breeze. We walk out to M&M's along the promenade and past the old fort and the restaurants. Militzi'as crowded as one would expect and doing a brisk business, the outside tables crowded with families out for New Year's lunch.

We're out for lunch ourselves, and Maggi's made a lovely one, starting with Parma ham and melon and moving through Stroganoff to creme brulee. Beautiful way to start 2010 with friends. Check out the view from their roof, which is amazing, out over the bay. And we remember living at the Athene watching the shifting colours of the sea and listening to the waves at night.

Thursday, December 31/2009

New Year's Eve. A day in which regular activities don't so much finish early as drift into celebration. There's a market on, but a rather smaller version of the regular Saturday market, with some of the larger stalls missing. We meet M&M at our usual coffee spot, actually rather behind the cafe and a bit littered, but deliciously warm in the sun.

By the time we go home, about noon, some businesses have begun their traditional New Year's Eve barbecues, once upon a time events that were open to customers and passers by alike. We pass a long cypriot style barbecue - rectangular trough with a dozen spits durning a row of browning birds, surrounded by employees on the street corner.

The main New Year's Eve celebrations are at the north end of the beach, the stage on Europa Square only a block away from us. We wait until about half past eleen and head over to joiin the crowd. There are singers on stage and a sound system designed to cause hearing impairment. We thread through the crowd lookiing for the booths belonging to the breweries and wine companies, which dispense beer and wine in plastic cups, ignoring the tables with pretty picked over plates ofnuts. As always, the beer and wine are free - though the wine is a prett young domestic - and there's absolutely no sign of drunkenness. In fact large numbers of people, the majority probably, are not drinking at all, and some are drinking soft drinks.

It's a very mixed crowd - predominantly young adults but also old people, children, and quite a lot of babies, some of them fast asleep. There are a surprisiingly hign number of Moslems - many families with young mothers in hijabs, babies in pushchairs and small children in tow. some revellers have clearly come directly from indoor parties and we're passed by a sparkler of young women, one a girl in a short black off the shoulder sequinned dress - fetching, but probably freezing. We ourselves have bundled up warmly for temperatures probably in te low teens. We sit on a bench on the promenade watching the throng - some tourists, some local, probably disproportionately resident foreigners.

The birds are uneasy about disturbed roosting, and as they flit past we hear the first of the New Year in the deep tones of the horn of the ship anchored in the bay. Then the sky is alive with fireworks and we watch, standing on the beach. As they finish, J points to the sky where first one and then a second small fire-lifted hot air balloon drifts through the dark sky and out to sea - Thai style balloons like the ones we ourselves sent off last year in Chiang Mai, little skyward signs of human hope. As we leave the beach we pass a stack of empty sparkling wine bottles, neatly stacked for disposal by peaceful celebrators. Avoid stepping on a small white dog out on his lead and a bit overwhelmed by the festivities. Ahead of us are two seventyish couples, the women doing a few jive steps together as they leave. They turn out to be Scandinavian residents of our hotel, and we wait while the tiny lift takes them up first. Then home for us. It's 2010.

Wednesday, December 30/2009

Last day of regular business before the New Year's shut down and frenzied activity at the supermarkets. Last day at student internet too before 4 day holiday. Steady stream there of genuine students, free of classes now, mostly engaged in highly unacedemic pursuits. Games are forbidden on these computers but the tell-tale sound effects are unjistakeable. There is a censorship system installed which works rather unpredictably. Maggi reports that it denies access to OANDA's foreign currency exchange site, and I struggle to remember whether one can use the site for speculation as well as information. More annoyingly, the Globe and Mail's website is verboten. The reason given is that it is, or may be, a sports site. Of course it does, like any newspaper, have a sports section, but that's scarcely a defining feature of what is, arguably, Canada's most serious newspaper. But no point in arguing with a computer - or in this case with computer centre staff.