Cyprus goes Communist

Well, the results are in and it seems that the Communist candidate, Demetris Christofias, is the new president.

Although the final result was close run there had been speculation this would happen. This morning the Guardian ran a piece entitled “Cyprus gets ready for a communist ‘takeover’“.

Here as the result becomes widely known the noise level is increasing; fireworks are being set off, car horns are blaring and it seems all the under 25 males in the village have taken to their motorbikes and scooters and are circling the village. Whether this is in celebration or commiseration isn’t clear!

So, will this change the island? Some of the headlines in previous days have sounded nervous at the idea of of the island becoming the first EU country to be led by a Communist president. However, some senior government figures have suggested that they will be happy to continue serving, which ever candidate won.

Another Cyprus blogger, Sue of This is Cyprus, summed the situation up rather well saying …

“Will life change if Cyprus gains either a Communist or a right-wing President? I doubt it. Most people here seem to be keen on Communism as a principle, capitalism as a practice, and Greek Orthodoxy as a tradition. Oddly enough, these three rather different ideologies seem to live reasonably comfortably alongside each other. But then, this IS Cyprus!”

Of course, only time will tell!

The builders are back …

In case we hadn’t realised they made enough noise when they arrived at 7am to wake the entire street.

Mainly these are builders who have full-time jobs elsewhere and do work on other houses on the weekend to bring in a little extra money. As a result we see them for a couple of days and then they disappear for a week or a month before coming back to do a little more work. The house opposite has been part-built since we arrived in August 2006. It looks like it might finally be finished this summer.

Today it looks like they are sanding the rough finish of the external walls in preparation for them being painted. On a previous visit they arranged for a JCB to come along and remove the excess reinforced steel bars (known locally as re-bar).

Even here we’re not convinced that this is an accepted technique!

Honesty, and the Law

Adherence to the law is an odd thing here.

Sometimes the law is followed, sometimes the law is ignored. When it’s being ignored though it’s often not because people have bad intentions, more that the law doesn’t entirely make sense at the time and, since no one is going to be inconvenienced, why not just turn a blind eye and make life easier all round?

For example, cars drive on the left as in the UK. Also as in the UK when traffic is stopped at a red light it is not legal to make a left turn if the road is clear. Despite the road being clear the law says you must wait until the lights change. Well, that’s what the law says but folks here are pragmatic. If there’s no traffic coming then what harm would it do? Surely, it even helps other drivers because if you sneak round the corner while the lights are at red then that’s one less car in the mix when the lights do change.

So, a pragmatic view of the law then.

Yesterday a friend was recounting a tale of paying her annual council/municipality rates.

These are meant to cover all local services such as getting the rubbish taken away to providing street lighting. We paid about 100€ (£74, $145) for the entire of 2007 – as opposed to £1,750 (2,350€, $3,425) a year we paid in London in 2006! When you consider that the UK is moving to rubbish (garbage) collections once every two weeks and we have three collections a week those numbers make even less sense!

Anyway, while she was paying her (absurdly small) rates bill she asked about the hosepipe ban.

For as long as we’ve been here there has been a ban on the use of hosepipes as part of the general programme to get people to conserve water. Local housewives hate the ban as anyone woman who doesn’t hose down her patios at least once a week is considered rather slovenly.

Our friend had seen so many Cypriot women hosing down their patios, in spite of the ban, that she wondered if she had misunderstood. So she asked for clarification.

“Was it ok to use a hosepipe to wash her patios and perhaps her car?”

The answer, from a council official, was not really what she expected to hear.

“Well, if there’s no one around then yes, you can use a hosepipe. But, if anyone is watching then you must use a bucket instead!”

Overheard today

Two acquaintances were overheard today bemoaning technology and how it doesn’t do “What It Should”.

Bemoaner1 was telling Bemoaner2 that she could no longer open documents sent to her by a third party. There was some muttering, but little clarity, about .docx files being the problem.

Technical note: Anyone who has moved to Office2007 now creates .docx files by default when they save a Word document. Those files can not be opened by anyone using a earlier version of Office/Word. There’s a very simple solution, save the documents as a regular .doc file rather than the .docx file, but not everyone knows that.

Anyhooo, Bemoaner2 sympathised but went on to explain that they understood what had caused the problem. “It’s because she now has Windows7, and we don’t!”

Windows7 anyone?!?

The old joke about a WordPerfect customer support call comes to mind. For those who don’t remember pre-Windows days WordPerfect was (still is?) what Word is today and being pre-Windows users had to use Dos from time to time.

_____________________________________________________________

Alleged dialogue of a former WordPerfect Customer Support employee with a caller:

Customer Support: “Ridge Hall computer assistant; may I help you?”

Caller: “Yes, well, I’m having trouble with WordPerfect.”

CS: “What sort of trouble?”

C: “Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away.”

CS: “Went away?”

C: “They disappeared.”

CS: “Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?”

C: “Nothing.”

CS: “Nothing?”

C: “It’s blank; it won’t accept anything when I type.”

CS: “Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?”

C: “How do I tell?”

CS: “Can you see the C: prompt on the screen?”

C: “What’s a sea-prompt?”

CS: “Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?”

C: “There isn’t any cursor, I told you, it won’t accept anything I type.”

CS: “Does your monitor have a power indicator?”

C: “What’s a monitor?”

CS: “It’s the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when it’s on?”

C: “I don’t know.”

CS: “Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?”

C: “Yes, I think so.”

CS: “Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it’s plugged into the wall.”

C: “…….Yes, it is.”

CS: “When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?”

C: “No.”

CS: “Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable.”

C: “…….Okay, here it is.”

CS: “Follow it for me, and tell me if it’s plugged securely into the back of your computer.”

“I can’t reach.”

CS: “Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?”

C: “No.”

CS: “Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?”

C: “Oh, it’s not because I don’t have the right angle – it’s because it’s dark.”

CS: “Dark?”

C: “Yes – the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window.”

CS: “Well, turn on the office light then.”

C: “I can’t.”

CS: “No? Why not?”

C: “Because there’s a power outage.”

CS: “A power… A power outage? Ah, Okay, we’ve got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?”

C: “Well, yes, I keep them in the closet.”

CS: “Good. Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from.”

C: “Really? Is it that bad?”

CS: “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

C: “Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?”

CS: “Tell them you’re too stupid to own a computer.”

We may disappear!

If One is an accident, and Two is unfortunate, then Three would be a co-incidence which would make Four a conspiracy.

Late in January an undersea cable off the coast of Egypt, which forms part of the backbone of internet infrastructure, was severed. These cables carry the bulk, around 90%, of internet traffic. They are expensive to lay, are well protected against damage, but still occasionally things happen to them. Anchors from boats are often the culprits, despite them being well marked on charts.

On its own the loss of this one cable would be no big deal. There is excess capacity in the network so traffic can be re-routed. About 100 cables each year are severed with 25 repair ships working full-time to fix problems as they occur.

But then a second cable in the same area was severed. Two cables out of action means more disruption, particularly for people in the Middle East and India. The BBC have a nice schematic showing the area involved.

Depending who you believe the damage was probably caused by ships dropping anchors during inclement weather or can’t have been caused by ships because there were none in the area.

See, with only two cables damaged the confusion is already beginning to grow.

And then cables three and four (and possibly five depending on which news reports you read) were damaged and taken out of action. These latest incidents relate to cables in the Persian Gulf.

So, at last count the following countries are impacted; Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and India. Iran may or may not be entirely offline, again depending who you believe.

So far we’ve escaped with just a variable connection. If we disappear entirely you know why!

If you want to read more, below are a series of links. Some are straight forward factual pieces, some are conspiracy pieces, some are mocking the conspiracy theorists.

The Register: Cable cutter nutters chase underwater conspriacies

The Times: Conspiracy theorists ponder ongoing web outage

International Herald Tribune: Ruptures call safety of Internet cables into question

Khaleej Times: Cable damage hits 1.7m Internet users in UAE

The Business Shrink: World Economies hang by an Internet thread

Electioneering

This can be a strange place at times.

Right now the country is in the grip of presidential election fever. Every five years the country goes to the polls to decide on a new president. All citizens over the age of 18 are entitled to vote but voting can only take place in Cyprus. That struck us as rather strange.

Many (most?) countries have facilities for citizens living, working or travelling overseas to cast their vote, either in an embassy or via postal votes. Apparently for that to be possible in Cyprus there would need to be an act of parliament and that has never taken place … so, if people want to vote they have to be here at some point between 17 and 24 February when voting takes places.

The race is said to be too close to call right now and as a result all parties are doing their best to make sure they don’t miss any possible votes.

Which brings us back to those folks living overseas. If you were a political party and you had a few million Euro to spare and needed some votes would you hire a fleet of jumbos to fly potential voters back to the island? Well, that’s the plan here. Depending who you believe the three parties are planning on funding the cost of returns flights to Cyprus for people who want to come back and vote, no matter where they are in the world.

According to the Cyprus Mail …

“Thousands of Cypriots will be flown into the island this month by the three main candidates vying for top spot in the presidential elections. But exactly how many are coming over, who they will vote for and whether they even own voting books is anyone’s guess.

If the polls are anything to go by, the elections will be a tight race and every vote will count which is why the three main contenders have invested millions into bringing ‘supporters’ back to the island.Fokaides estimated that the whole system of flying voters back cost around seven to eight million euro in total. As to numbers, Fokaides refused to be drawn in, saying only they had received an unprecedented number of requests for tickets from all over Europe and America, mostly from students. He rejected reports suggesting that DISY were bringing around 6,000 voters over, a little less than the 7,500 reported for AKEL. The DISY official said the number of travelling voters was about equal with AKEL’s, while claiming the Papadopoulos camp only had 60 per cent of that figure.

DISY and AKEL have offered to pay two thirds of ticket costs for their voters while the Papadopoulos campaign office are flying their voters over for free. According to one Papadopoulos campaigner, 29 charter flights have been booked for Tassos voters, including five jumbo jets with 400-plus capacity. He estimated the total figure to be around 7,500 people.”

Of course it is a private ballot so will people vote for the party that flew them back, or will they fly back with the opposition to increase their costs rather than those of the party they want to win? That aside, there is much speculation that people will make use of these flights to come back and visit family and may not get around to voting at all ;-)

Meanwhile, until all of this is over the proposed water rationing has been postponed. Apparently the incumbent political party called a halt to the restrictions as they were concerned it would cost them too many votes.

Seems it doesn’t matter where in the world you go, politicians are the same everywhere!