Dixit

We were given the game of Dixit by some friends, who brought it from the US although it's available in the UK too.

Dixit is easy to learn, and we find it ideal to bring out after a meal with friends who would like to play a game, but can't decide what to play. The game consists of a set of 84 large cards with brightly coloured and somewhat stylised images on them. There are also voting cards and little rabbit scoring markers. It's not a game we want to play every week, but when we do get it out, people usually enjoy it - particularly if playing for the first time. It's best for 4-6 players.

The easy part is choosing a colour (I have yellow if I can) and placing the rabbits at the start of the board:

Each player is dealt five of the large picture cards, the others being placed face down on the table to form the stack. One person is allocated as the first ‘storyteller’. Not that they tell a story - the idea is to select one of their cards, without letting anyone else see, and then say a word or phrase that is in some way connected with the image.

The aim is for some - but not all - of the other players to guess correctly which of several cards matches this phrase. So the storyteller must choose something which is neither too obvious nor too subtle. As the storyteller says their phrase, the selected card is placed face down on the table. Then each of the other players selects a card from their hand which they feel is also, in some way, connected with the word or phrase, and places it face down with the first one.

The storyteller picks all these cards up, glances at them to see what has been chosen, then lays them face up (including the original one) in a row on the table, without comment - other than numbering them from 1 to however many cards there are.

All the other players then try to guess which card was the storyteller's. Which might sound easy, but it’s surprising how often there is at least one card which seems to fit the theme rather better than the original. I don't recall what the phrase was for this particular set, but - as usual - everyone had to ponder awhile before using the little square cards to cast our votes.

Here's a set from a different game, on a different occasion, with mostly different people. One card (the centre one in the lower set) happens to be the same as one in the top set - but was evidently selected for a completely different phrase.

Scoring is the most complex part of the game, in my view; we refer to the scoresheet almost every time for the fine details. Basically, if either everybody OR nobody guesses the correct card, then the storyteller gets no points. If just one or more (but not all) of the others guess it, both they and the storyteller score. Also, if one of the other players has their card chosen by another player, they also score.

Each player’s coloured rabbit is then moved the relevant number of spots along the scoring track:

Everyone picks up another card from the stack, so that they have five to choose from. The next player, counting clockwise, then takes over as the storyteller, and the game continues until all cards are used up. This means that in the final rounds, players will have fewer than five cards, and in the last round each will only have one. It’s amazing how often even that final card will somehow have a connection with the storyteller’s phrase.

I’m not a visual person, and I find it difficult, sometimes, to come up with a word or phrase that suits any of my cards - usually I either make it too obvious, so that everyone guesses, or too subtle, so that nobody gets it. But it doesn't matter; I'm not particularly competitive and it's a fun game that only lasts about half an hour. I do quite enjoy the guessing part which often prompts discussion, once the story-teller's card is revealed. Of course. each player must be careful not to indicate in any way which of the cards they have played so we tend to stay quiet until everyone has voted.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes board games, although it might not appeal to those who tend to be literal in their language, or to people who only like strategy games. It’s ideal to play at a small, relaxed party, or for a bit of socialising with good friends.

Terminating a phone contract... eventually!

Many years ago when we first moved to Cyprus, there was only one phone provider, the national organisation, known as CYTA. We needed a landline and (as I said, this was a LONG time ago) a modem with dial-up Internet connection. Since we were foreigners with no owned property, we had to pay a deposit - and presumably a connection fee - and after a few teething errors, it all worked.

Well, most of the time.

Our bills were initially sent to the PO Box of the organisation Richard was attached to. When that box was closed, we thought it would be straightforward to get everything sent to our own PO box - and it was, for the other utility companies, who still used the efficient method of jotting down notes randomly on ancient sheets of blotting paper or post-it notes.

Unfortunately, the phone company had computerised, so it took about three months for them to get it right.

Over the years we upgraded to broadband, and went through various routers. Mostly it worked; occasionally the service would go down, but - shrug - this is Cyprus. We couldn't understand why we received three different bills in the mail every month: one for the phone, one for the Internet, and one for the connected service. We asked several times if they would put them on just one bill, and the helpful people we spoke to assured us it was possible... but apparently not. Eventually the phone and one part of the Internet service were put on the same bill, so at least we were down to two per month.

Nearly eight years ago when we moved house, everything was straightforward and re-connected quickly. We were impressed.

Buying our own house meant that Richard could, at last, have a mobile phone contract in his name without paying a huge deposit. Previously it had been in the name of a friend who was already a home-owner.  He went to register... and, bizarrely, they could not find any details of our landline contract. So they set him up a new account which - for some reason - had his two first names reversed.   So we were back to having three bills in the mail each month, two to Richard James... and one to James Richard...

There was a slight hiatus about six months ago when we received a bill with both Internet services on the same sheet - hurrah! - although the landline phone bill was still separate.

The problem was that they insisted we were in arrears with our Internet payments. On the other hand, our phone was apparently in significant credit. Happily the amounts were the same, but they had no way to transfer from one part of the account to another.... I paid what they said we owed, and it evened out over a couple of months while our phone bill stayed in credit.

All that is mere introduction to the confusion of trying to transfer from CYTA to another phone provider. It's six weeks since I wrote about getting rid of our CYTA router (and the unexpected benefit of my backache vanishing). Returning the router meant that our Internet contract was finished at the end of February.

Backtracking a little more to the middle of February: if we had wanted a new phone number, we could have had that from the start of March too when it was all installed. But we've kept the same number for over sixteen years, and lots of people know it. And it should have been quite straightforward to transfer it to our new provider...

Except that when Cablenet looked into it, they spotted that Richard's passport (used as ID for many things here) did not have the same number as the one he was registered to with CYTA. Hardly surprising, since passports only last ten years. So they told him to go to CYTA and get his passport number updated.

Unfortunately, CYTA said they could not do that, because there was already an account registered to his new passport number.

'Yes,' he said, when he looked at it. 'That's the account for my mobile phone'. This, of course, explained why they could not find him in their system when he registered the mobile: his passport number had changed. He assumed it would be straightforward to merge the two accounts....

No.

The helpful person at the desk understood the problem, but the computer would not allow them to do it. No problem, they said, they would get someone to do it manually.

But, surprise surprise, when the new provider tried to do the procedure to transfer the phone number, CYTA said they couldn't, because it was the wrong passport number.

So Richard went again, and went through the same process, and another very helpful person said the same thing, and even phoned him an hour later to say it was all done. The new provider asked for copies of both the old AND the new passport, so they could put in two transfer requests, one for each, in case CYTA still hadn't done it.

And it still didn't work. It was getting frustrating. But they kept at it, and eventually, on April 15th, our phone service was transferred from CYTA to Cablenet. Yay.

All's well that ends well, even if the path is a little bumpy en route...?

But no, it wasn't that simple.

CYTA bills are paid in arrears, so I knew we'd still have to pay the February bills (phone and Internet) at the end of March, and the March phone bill at the end of April. I duly paid the February bills online on March 24th and filed them away. I thought no more of it until, in our PO Box a couple of days ago, we found this:

Essentially it says, 'You haven't paid your February Internet bill, and we're a bit worried that you might not, since the service is discontinued.' Dated April 10th. Yes, mail is pretty slow here.

So I checked the online banking and printed out the receipt for that exact amount, which I certainly had paid. It occurred to me that perhaps they had made the account transfer BEFORE I paid the bill. In other words, the bill was to Richard James.... and I paid it to that account. But they now thought it was owed by James Richard...

We went into CYTA on Friday, yet again. We talked to another very helpful person, who totally understood the problem, and could indeed see that the payment had been made - but couldn't do anything about it. So she had to go to the accounts department and get them to deal with it. She couldn't give us any kind of receipt, either, but assured us they had taken care of it.

Richard double-checked that our phone account is now fully terminated, and we were told it was. It then occurred to me that there might still be a deposit - I couldn't remember if we'd claimed it back when we bought our house and moved. So the lady on the desk had a look and said yes, there was indeed a deposit of 150 euros. Richard muttered that it was an odd amount, given that we paid in Cyprus pounds all those years ago; but we weren't going to argue, since we hadn't been sure if the deposit was still there at all.

We had to wait another five minutes while forms were filled in, and the accounts department had to be consulted at length again... but finally, when the phone bills for March and April were deducted, we were handed - and signed for - just over 125 euros in cash.

So it seems that there was, after all, a happy ending.

Just so long as we don't get a summons for an unpaid February bill in the name of James Richard...

The end of Lent

Given to us in Advent, our poinsettia, now outside my study, is still thriving at the end of Lent:

We don't usually do a whole lot during Lent, other than (if we remember) eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and hot cross buns on Good Friday.

But at the end of February, while chatting over the dinner table about food in general and the cost of groceries, Richard made an idle comment that perhaps we could try giving up meat for Lent. Since I have decidedly vegetarian leanings I thought this was a great idea, and Tim said that in Anglican tradition, Sundays (and other feast days) are excluded from Lenten fasts, so perhaps we could stop eating meat for six days a week only...

As it happened, in the first week of Lent we had friends staying, one of whom is a vegetarian anyway. So it made a good excuse for me to experiment with a few new recipes, as well as making some old favourites such as Spanokopitta, or vegetable and nut cobbler.

It doesn't help that Richard and Tim are both dairy-free; cow's milk products cause their ears to block up. Goat and sheep cheese are fine in moderation - perhaps once or twice per week - but it meant that I had to experiment with other forms of protein, primarily beans and lentils. Some of the things we ate were pretty good; others less successful, although I don't think anything was inedible.

It's been interesting, but although I haven't felt any cravings or inclinations to eat meat for the past six weeks, Richard definitely has. I'm convinced that some people actually need meat for their metabolism and general health, and he seems to be one of them. So we'll be back eating meat four or five times per week as of tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Daniel and some of his colleagues in the UK were producing a series of mini videos which they released during Lent; one per week at first, and then several this past week. They are in the form of a modern video blog, taking the events leading up to Easter as if happening in the 21st century, from the point of view of the apostle Matthew.  This is the trailer for the whole series:

It took me a little while to get used to the style, but I've liked it very much. It's quite thought-provoking, and certainly helps to understand a little better what it might have been like to be one of the first disciples.

Links to the whole series can be found (with the most recent at the top) at the Matt's Blog, or the related Facebook page.

When we first moved to Cyprus, Lent was quite a big thing: the Greek Orthodox (who are the majority in this country) are supposed to fast from meat and various other foods during Lent. But even in fifteen years, secularism is growing stronger, and there seem to be fewer and fewer who take any notice of Lent.

Well, other than some teenagers and young adults, presumably bored and unemployed, who collect wooden items from around their neighbourhoods - not always with permission - and have bonfires each evening, usually culminating with a huge one on Easter Saturday. Here's a site of an unofficial bonfire site near where our friends live:

In recent years these have become more competitive, and are often accompanied by home-made firecrackers, which are extremely dangerous as well as illegal. Every year there is an accident of some kind; last night our friends' neighbour, a young man in his twenties, was rushed to hospital after a firecracker exploded in his hand. The police were involved, and the bonfire site cleared, later on; but how terrible for the young man and his family.

Hello and Goodbye...

Two weeks into April, and I'm enjoying the fact that the weather is still relatively cool; it hasn't been more than about 21C [70F] and today was quite grey, so I have worn a sweatshirt all day. It even rained this afternoon, for the first time in weeks.

The past couple of weeks have seen a series of 'goodbye' scenarios, something which is all too common in Cyprus.

But first, a couple of days before the end of March, there was a surprising new arrival on our utility balcony, which I discovered when I went to get our vacuum cleaner out. There, sitting in an empty box, was a rather pretty grey tabby cat.

Alas, her temper did not match her appearance:

She hissed and spat, and let me know that I was not at all welcome. I assumed she had simply slept there, and would vanish... but she was still there when I returned to put the vacuum cleaner away. Since I didn't really want my hands ripped to shreds, I put it somewhere else.

Gradually I realised that she had kittens in the box, and was being very protective. I gave her a bit of food and some water, but she was not appreciative, although I noticed later that the food had gone.  

She stayed about twelve days, hissing viciously every time I went near, batting away my attempts to give her food (although she did eat it). She terrified our cats, who still don't want to go on the balcony, even three days after her departure, and she didn't use the cat litter that sits on the balcony. However she didn't make any messes or smells, and when she finally removed the kittens - we have no idea where - she left her temporary lodgings quite clean. 

Meanwhile, our good friends Mark and Joan returned to Cyprus for just a few weeks to close down their apartment, since they are returning to the US. They spent their last couple of nights here in our guest flat, since most of their belongings were sent by freight. 

We're going to miss them.

The day after they flew, another good friend called in to return some books she had borrowed... but she didn't take any more. She and her husband are also leaving Cyprus, returning to the UK. They're keeping on their apartment here, so will be back for holidays, but it won't be the same.

Then on Friday we said a temporary goodbye to Tim who flew to the UK to spend his Easter break with various family members, and is then going to be the 'best man' at a wedding early in May.

So our nest is empty again, for a few weeks.