Introducing... Ezekiel

No, we haven't found another cat.

This is Ezekiel:

- my new Mac mini. It arrived on Sunday by a fairly complex route (If you're interested... Richard ordered it from Amazon UK a couple of weeks ago, as they had the best price. Macs are extremely expensive in Cyprus. It was sent to the office of his sailing friend, who was in the UK for a couple of days last week. Richard was in Egypt for the past week, and flew back on Sunday. His sailing friend collected him from the airport, and passed over the Mac mini, plus various essential connectors. )

If it looks small for a computer, that's because it is. Amazingly small. Here's where we put it, initially, on top of my previous computer, Elisha:

Why the exotic names? Well, thereby hangs another tale. Our first computer was originally lent to us by an organisation we were working for at home, about 18 years ago. Their computers were all named after Old Testament prophets, and the one I had was called Elijah. When we finished the work, we were given Elijah to keep. It went with us to the USA, and - with a few modifications here and there - back to the UK, and then to Cyprus. It probably lasted about nine or ten years before it finally gave up the ghost in July 2000. By that stage it had become my computer. Daniel and Tim were given my parents' old one (which, naturally, we named Samuel, after the boy prophet) and Richard had a laptop.

We'd been given some extra Christmas money which we hadn't used, so we went ahead and bought another PC, for my use. The obvious name was Elisha (the prophet who succeeded Elijah in the Old Testament, and who was greater than him in various ways).

Elisha has served me very well. It, too, has had various organ transplants over the years, but has been remarkably reliable. It ran Windows 98, and then Windows 2000, and has never needed re-installing.

But the rest of the family went over to Apple Mac notebook computers about three years ago. And slowly started working on my resistance, telling me my next computer would have to be a Mac. Elisha carried on working, and my general philosophy is that if it ain't broke, there's really no need to fix it, and certainly no need to replace it.

However, Richard started to get concerned that Windows 2000 won't be supported much longer, and will then be potentially dangerous to run. And in the past month or so, I've found it running more slowly; I even had programs - reliable ones, like Firefox - suddenly lock up on me. And then, three weeks ago, I saw - for the first time ever on that computer - a 'blue screen of death' when I closed it down. I was able to re-start, and in fact it's been fine ever since. But it did alert me to the fact that, at nine years, it IS an old computer. And I really didn't want to get to the stage I did, nine years ago, when trying to rescue files and information from the old computer was extremely difficult.

And I had a lot of accumulated birthday and Christmas money sitting in a bank account. So I finally gave in, and said I would have a Mac mini.

And when it arrived, I felt it should be called yet another prophet starting with E. The obvious choice was Ezekiel, whose book in the Old Testament is fairly metaphorical and graphical, full, so to speak, of bells and whistles.

So much for how the Mac arrived and how it got its name.

Yesterday afternoon, Richard attached it to my monitor, mouse and keyboard, and switched it on. We downloaded Firefox, using the built-in browser (Safari). We installed the Canon camera software (from CD) and Picasa for the Mac, and checked that I could upload photos. We installed Neo Office, and Avast! anti-virus, and Yahoo! Messenger, and KompoZer. All of which worked fine, to my great relief. We even installed our little webcam, and waved at Tim in the UK, who happened to be online at the time. Oh, and we installed Crossover Mac, since I have to use Internet Explorer for our online banking in Cyprus, and also wanted to continue to use Quicken.

By then I'd had quite enough of installing and clicking and moving files, so we gave up and I read email, and looked at Facebook, and generally got used to a different computer. I was very glad I had read, a couple of days previously, Real Live Preacher's thoughts on the Mac, because I found exactly the same (minor) problems as are mentioned in that article.

This morning, Richard plugged Elisha back in again. I then moved all my documents, and websites, and photos, and Quicken data to my external hard drive which I hadn't used much at all, other than for video editing. Tim told us how to transfer all the Firefox settings from PC to Mac too (and if you want to do it, here's how: use START then RUN on the PC, and type %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles - with exact upper and lowercase as given. I couldn't even find the backslash key at first! Having done that, a bizarrely named file appears, which had to be copied onto the external hard drive. Then, back on the Mac, the contents had to be copied into ~/library/Applications support/Profiles)

This afternoon, it was back to the Mac. We did that Firefox thing, and suddenly Firefox looked as it used to on the PC, with all my bookmarks and sites on the top bar, and the same selection of home pages, and even the Firecat add-on skin.

Then we installed the printer and the scanner, and ArcSoft Photo Studio (all from CDs), and I moved all the documents I wanted onto the main Mac hard drive, and checked that everything worked. To my astonishment, it did. And while navigating around the hard drive isn't the same as Windows, and I found myself in a bit of a muddle once or twice, I mostly figured out what to do.

I was slightly shocked to see that I had already used up 30 gigabytes of a 120 gig drive. That does include 10 gig of photos, but even so, it seems a lot. On the PC, my main hard drive was only 9 gig, and the larger internal hard drive was about 30 gig. I struggled to keep the main one to have less than 8 gig stored on it, but the larger one never had more than about 20 gig on it (including the photos). I had thought a Mac would use less space for its operating system and software, but apparently not.

My only worry - and this is what I really intended to blog about - was that the Mac Mini was still sitting, a little precariously, on top of the PC. A place where cats like to sit. So I suggested that, perhaps, we could move it to the shelf where the broadband router sits.

We had a look at the back of the computers, where there was an extreme muddle of wires:

Thankfully, Richard understands wires. So, after switching everything off, he started dismantling everything, in preparation for removing Elisha and moving Ezekiel. The shelf where the router was sitting was on an old white TV unit, perpendicular to the main computer desk, with the printer on top.

Unfortunately, we discovered that the cables for the speakers and (more importantly) the screen were not long enough to reach around to the place where we put the Mac.

So, I suggested, we could move the white unit to the place where Elisha sat, just shifting the desk a little to the left.

So we moved the wires again, and moved the unit in place. It looked good, and we realised that the scanner could go next to the printer - which is where we had wanted it to go before, but it couldn't because it, too, had a wire that was too short.

So Richard started plugging things in again:

Everything was fine, until he came to plug in the router again. And discovered THAT wire was too short for its new position, since the phone socket is in the wall behind the desk. He did contemplate going to the office to get the tools he would need to build a longer wire... then realised he could make an extension using the phone wire.

Looks nice and tidy, doesn't it?

Except that the phone wire didn't work. He had wondered why there was so much phone wire lying around... perhaps it was faulty all along.

Then I thought I might move a little unit where I keep computer CDs into the corner where the printer unit used to be. And when I'd done so, Richard realised it would be the perfect place for the router, back approximately where it was, so the wire would be the right length.

Of course, it may be a problem if one of the cats decides to sit there, but it's not such an obvious place for them.

So here's how it looks:

The printer looks ENORMOUS compared to the little Mac. And there are a few untidy-looking wires for the router hanging down there - but no doubt I'll get used to them in time.

My desk has more space now, too, since the scanner is no longer on it. Instead I have the external hard drive sitting in the corner. There's much more room for the mouse, and - no doubt - for the kind of paperwork clutter that seems to accumulate on desks when one isn't looking.

It's hard to get it all in the same shot, but here's my best effort:

- and as I come to the end of this lengthy post, I realise it's the first thing I've done properly, on my own, using Ezekiel (ie uploaded photos, reduced their size, imported them to Blogger, and written a post). Doesn't seem to me that Macs are much different from PCs, really, other than the few minor irritations mentioned in the post I linked to.

Oh, and one other thing. My PC had a little digital clock in the bottom right-hand corner. I kept track of the time using it, more than I realised. There is no such clock on the Mac, and for some reason I didn't put on my watch today. I have glanced around at the clock and see to my horror that it's after 11pm. I usually switch the computer off by about 9 or 9.30, so I can wind down before sleeping. Evidently I need to move the wall clock, or wear a watch more often.

Update five minutes later: Tim read this post, and then pointed out to me, over Instant Messenger, that there is in fact a clock which is in the top right of the screen rather than the bottom, and not so obvious, if only I set it correctly.

What a relief.

Cool cats... probably impossible in Cyprus summers

It's hard enough for humans to stay cool when the shade temperature is 30C or more, and the sun temperature several degrees hotter. Summer came later than usual in Cyprus this year, which was wonderful. But I have little hope that it will get cooler again for at least three months now.

In the attempt to stay reasonably cool, we have naturally exchanged our jeans and fleeces for shorts and tee-shirts, our socks and trainers for sandals or flip-flops. Moreover, being people of the 21st century we use ceiling fans, and - when it's humid, or when a computer is on - air conditioning set to 28C. We are, of course, quite spoilt. Even thirty years ago we would simply have had to survive the heat... although, of course, we would not have had computers at home.

The cats are not so fortunate. They can (and do) tend to follow us around in the hope of air conditioning. They also sleep a lot more during the summer. And they are moulting (shedding) fur all the time... but not as much as they would probably like to. I am very thankful not to have to wear a fur coat.

Sophia, most sociable of the cats, often sleeps on the back of the sofa in my study:

Cleo has always liked high spaces. Here she is on top of the DVD bookcase, perhaps hoping that the ceiling fan will waft some cool air in her direction:

Tessie really doesn't like high places, but even she will jump onto a lowish bookcase and hang her paws over the edge:


Sophia isn't impressed when Tessie does this, however, since she considers the dining room bookcases to be her particular spot. It's where she likes to sit when we're eating:


Cleo isn't usually interested in such low spots - here she is on another occasion, on top of one of the non-fiction tall bookcases in the living room. She's very beautiful, but not particularly photogenic:

Tessie, on the other hand, is remarkably photogenic. This time she's trying out the bottom shelf of a dining room bookcase (the last one... authors beginning with W on the bottom shelves). Perhaps she's figured out that heat rises, so it might even be cooler down lower. Or perhaps it's that she really does not like heights:

One thousand books in ten years

I have just entered the 1000th book review on my book reviews blog.

I don't know exactly what it was that made me decide to keep short reviews of everything I read... I'd done so periodically since I was a child, but never kept it up. However I determined, at the end of April 1999, that I would write down notes about every book I read. Perhaps I was getting irritated that I couldn't remember whether or not I enjoyed something when I thought about re-reading!

I managed to keep it up. Eventually I started blogging reviews rather than writing them down, and over several months transferred all the ones I'd written in a notebook onto my blog. In 2002, 2003 and 2004 I didn't read many books at all - less than 75 each year - but in 2005 I managed 90, and since then have read well over 100 per year.

If that sounds like a huge amount of time spent reading... it isn't, really. I read quite fast, and usually only for about half an hour in the morning, and perhaps half an hour in the evening. Unless, of course, something's particularly gripping or I need to relax during the day. I don't watch any television at all, and watch perhaps 20-25 films (on DVD) at most in a year.

Since Cyprus doesn't have libraries with good selections of English books, I have a good excuse to keep on collecting more. Particularly since I have four or five friends who like to borrow books regularly! I was delighted to be invited onto the panel of reviewers for The Bookbag site a couple of years ago, since they regularly send me new books to review for them (I usually put shorter versions of these on my book blog).

And, although I've probably used these photos before, here are a few of our bookcases. These are the first four fiction ones in the dining room:

.. and here are the two non-fiction ones (secular on the left, Christian on the right) in the living room:



I can recommend a blog for anyone wanting to keep track of books they read, with longish reviews. I also keep much shorter reviews in four places online: Visual Bookshelf (which is part of Facebook); AllConsuming (a bit buggy, but it also enables me to track DVDs watched); Bibliophil (the first one I found online, which has a facility to input corrections, and an export option) and my current favourite, GoodReads, which is what provides the reading widget in the sidebar of this blog.

In praise of the Cyprus froutaria

When we first moved to cyprus, nearly twelve years ago, we did almost all our food shopping at a supermarket (Metro). We bought bread at a bakery (Perseus), but although I knew there were some 'froutaria' shops (roughly equivalent to UK greengrocers, selling fresh fruit and vegetables) there weren't any particularly close to where we lived.

Then we moved. Within easy walking distance are two froutaria shops. At first, I went to one that's about two minutes walk away. These little shops tend to sell other groceries too, so they're a quick place to pop to for milk, or butter, or anything else we might run out of between supermarket shops.

But I was never entirely comfortable with the fact that people smoked in the shop. Besides, the prices - and quality - seemed no better than the fruit and vegetable section in Metro. So I didn't go there very often.

It took about a year before I tried the Froutaria Achna, which is five minutes' walk from our house. It took me about five minutes to be convinced. It's an excellent shop, with a wide variety of seasonal fruit and vegetables, at good prices. Better still, as with most of these little froutarias, there's always a row of produce at greatly reduced price. I go there usually twice a week now.

I always look in the reduced section first. Until about a year ago, it was outside; then they remodelled the shop, so it's now inside, meaning that it keeps better as it's out of the sun. The plastic bags for selecting produce are colour-coded: green for the main section of the shop, pink for the reduced section. There are also extra-reduced bags, already packed, in clear plastic bags, at one euro each.

Yesterday morning I walked there at about 7.20am, before the heat of the day. I wanted a few oranges, a few tomatoes, and perhaps some cucumbers.

I saw a one-euro bag of carrots that looked very good quality. We can always use carrots....

Then I saw some nice looking french beans, in the reduced section. I knew I could freeze them....

Then I saw some peaches that looked extremely good, also in the reduced section....

... I was limited only by what I thought I could carry home. This is the problem with visiting a Froutaria: I always buy more than I intend to, because the fruit and vegetables look so good.

This is what I bought:



That's 2kg strawberries, about 3kg carrots, around half a kilogram of vine tomatoes, about 1kg french beans, about a third of a kilogram of cucumbers, six oranges, sixteen peaches, and six kiwi fruit.

The cost? Just over eleven euros. The only things not in the reduced section were the oranges and the kiwis. I don't know how this compares to other countries, but it seems pretty good value to me.

The mains water was on yesterday, so at about 10.15 I decided I'd better sort out the fridge and freeze some of the vegetables. I'd bought a bag of reduced bell peppers at Metro the day before, and also some mushrooms. I knew I wouldn't use them this week and they won't keep that long.

So I washed, cut, blanched and froze all the french beans. I did the same (without blanching) for the mushrooms and the peppers. I sorted through the strawberries; a few were too squashy to use, but at 99c per kilogram, I can hardly complain. I decided to make a large fruit salad with some of the peaches, and the better strawberries, and a couple of oranges and kiwis, and a can of pineapple, since we were expecting several guests for our evening meal. Then I froze some of the slightly squashy strawberries to use in smoothies.

I did take a half-hour break, about noon, to sit down and read, since my back was starting to ache. And I took a quarter-hour break for lunch. But with that, and also preparing potatoes and ice cream and one or two other things for the evening, I didn't even get in the shower until nearly 4pm. It always surprises me how long it takes to do simple jobs like freezing vegetables. Probably more so in the summer when I tend to work more slowly, although I did put the air conditioning on in the kitchen for a couple of hours.

I'm glad I did it, though. I love fruit salad, and there's half a bowl left for me to eat this week. I'm also very pleased to have portion-sized bags of beans, peppers and mushrooms, which will make them so much quicker to use when I want some to go in (or with) our meals.

A little hint of ecological awareness in Cyprus

Cyprus is not very good from the ecological point of view. There is almost no recycling, for instance. There is a lot of over-packaging in supermarkets. People waste water, even though it's severely limited many years, and run their air conditioners far cooler than necessary. They replace things rather than mending them, and prefer new cars to second-hand. The excellent thrift stores (we know of three in Larnaka, now) are mainly used by ex-pats and refugees rather than Cypriots.

It's cultural, of course. And so, if anything is going to change, it needs to come from Cypriot groups, in a way that makes people take notice.

A few months ago, we were surprised to receive a piece of junk mail informing us that Metro (our favourite supermarket) was 'going green'. A little ironic, given that this was printed in full colour on glossy light card, both sides (one in Greek, one in English), and delivered - I assume - to every mailbox in the town, where the majority would go straight into the bin.

Intrigued, I read it. Metro, it seems, had decided to make an ecologically sound long-lasting bag, which would be available for several euros (or equivalent in loyalty card points) so that people would not have to use the plastic carrier bags so much.

A good start. And, to be fair, Metro is a long way ahead of the other supermarkets in its supply of organic and health food produce, even though it seems limited compared to what we're used to in the UK.

We didn't buy one of these new 'green' bags, because I already have about half a dozen re-usable cloth bags which I take with me when walking to the local Froutaria, or Orphanides Express. But when we go to Metro, we like getting plastic carriers, since we re-use them as bin liners. In a country where toilet paper generally must not be flushed, it's important to have closed bathroom bins, emptied regularly. Supermarket carrier bags are ideal to line them.

I don't think the new green bags have really caught on. We go to Metro about once a fortnight, and haven't seen anyone toting one of these re-usable bags yet, although no doubt there are some people who bought them.

Today I was even more surprised to notice that the carrier bags at the tills no longer bore the blue Metro logo and text that we have become accustomed to. Instead, the logo was in a green circle, with the slogan 'eco-friendly Metro superstores' around it.



Eco-friendly plastic carrier bags? It seemed like a contradiction in terms!

Looking a little closer, we saw in the little box at the bottom:

This bag is made of Polyethylene containing a special degrader. It is recyclable just like all plastics and has a limited life when left in the environment, since it degrades by light, oxygen and heat and then along with humidity it becomes food for microorganisms (just as happens with all natural elements, ie wood, leaves, branches etc).

We're a little cynical. The bags may be recyclable, but since there is nowhere to take plastic (or, for that matter, glass or paper) to be recycled in Cyprus, other than the army base, it's not a lot of help.

Moreover,'Limited life' could theoretically mean anything from a few years to a few hundred thousand years. Still, it seems like a step in the right direction. This kind of thing might help Metro customers to become a little more aware of the importance of environmental issues - and perhaps the bags do degrade more rapidly than the ones they used to use.

The only problem is that they are thinner than the old bags. Which means that they break more easily.

Which means that we needed to use nearly twice as many as we used to...

Summer in Cyprus - time whizzes by

Ten days since I last posted. I had to check my Google calendar to remember what we've been doing - and it's not much. Summer is undoubtedly here. My jeans and trainers have gone away, and I'm in shorts, a tee-shirt and flip-flops. The air conditioning is running in my study at the moment, as the computer is on and computers don't like temperatures over 30C.

There don't seem to be any more mosquitoes about - they don't like hot weather. Instead, there are cockroaches. Ugh. Since we're up a flight of steps, we only get flying ones that manage to get in the house, and they're the ones about to die anyway, or so rumour has it. The last couple of mornings I've come down and both times discovered two roaches, lying on their backs, giving a last wiggle. The yogurt pot technique works well, and has even been adopted by a couple of friends.

So.. a summary of the past ten days.

Monday 1st June: last proper meeting of the Larnaka Christian Writing Group before the Autumn. A half-hour walk to get there, but one of the members kindly offered me a ride home. I accepted gratefully since the weather seemed to have turned into summer overnight.

Tuesday 2nd June: I helped out at Tots, as usual - the local church-run mother-and-toddler group. I mainly work in the kitchen, plus clearing up at the end, but also chat to some of the mums when I have a free moment. I enjoy it, but the hall is warm. It closes in July and August, which is just as well. A ten-minute walk to get there on a good day, but it took me more like fifteen in the hotter weather. I was offered a lift home which I gratefully accepted.

Wednesday 3rd June: I change the sheets, wash sheets/pillowcases and towels, and clean the bedrooms on Wednesdays. And we have the bookkeeper at Richard's office to lunch. So cleaning and lunch preparation (even though it's just bread and cold things) takes most of the morning, now it's hotter.

Mid-afternoon, Richard took the older son of some friends sailing as a birthday treat, and I spent the afternoon with the rest of the family. Then we stayed to dinner, and a game of Carcassone. Very enjoyable, but I was shattered by the end of the day.

Thursday 4th June: my last morning until the Autumn for looking after a home educated boy who lives in Nicosia, while his mother attends a meeting in Larnaka. Not that I do very much - he brings some work, and some books, so I just offer space, chat a bit, and make him a drink. But it does mean I have to be up, dressed and breakfasted before 8am.

Friday 5th June: In the morning, we did a biggish shop at Metro supermarket, and I did some ironing. In the evening, some other local friends came for a meal, with their visiting young adult nephew. We had a good evening, and played a round of Tabloid Teasers, which they hadn't played before.

Saturday 6th June: Richard went sailing with two youngsters. I washed and hung out the throw on my study sofa, as it was looking pretty grubby. I went to the Froutaria and bought some more fruit and veg, and made us three more litres of lemonade (lemon squash) since we were running low. In the evening, Richard and I watched a DVD.

Sunday 7th June (Greek/Eastern Pentecost): Richard went sailing with some people whom he met at a gathering of Larnaka home educators. I decided I would go to the service at the new building leased by the Larnaka Community Church congregation. It's a little further away than the Greek Evangelical Church, where services used to be held, but I got there, walking, in fifteen minutes, which wasn't too bad in the heat.

Can't say I enjoyed it, other than the part where the nine-month-old baby of some friends wanted me to hold her for about twenty minutes. It was too hot (air conditioning is not yet installed) and sticky (chairs still have plastic covers, since there's work being done on the ceiling still). There were far too many people for me to feel comfortable, including, I suspect, quite a few visitors. The PA system howled around three or four times, which was very painful, and the whole atmosphere was too emotional for my liking. Still, it was interesting to see the new building, converted from a gym in the past few months, and to catch up with one or two people I had not seen for a while.

Monday 8th June (Kataklysmos): this is a major public holiday in Cyprus, celebrating not just Pentecost but legends to do with Noah's flood, since Larnaka was, reputedly, founded by one of Noah's grandsons. Booths selling local sweets and cheap toys (etc) are set up along the sea-front all week, and it seems that half the island is present. That doesn't include me. I went once, years ago. Never again.

Richard, however, went sailing once again, for the annual Regatta. Yes, that's three days in a row. It's a good thing I like my own space, and am very happy being at home with just the cats for company. I didn't do anything much - I did some cleaning and laundry, reviewed a couple of books I had finished reading on my book blog, did some more reading, wrote some email, spent time on Facebook and forums, and so on.

Tuesday 9th June: Tots in the morning, again. Even hotter than last week, so I was very glad of a lift home with some friends, who came in for a drink of lemonade and a chat for an hour or so.

Wednesday 10th June: I went out to the Froutaria shortly after 7.30am and noticed that there were some apricots on special offer. They will probably get cheaper still as summer progresses, but I decided that if I was going to make apricot jam it should be now, rather than when the weather is even hotter. So I bought a couple of kilograms of apricots, among other things, and made double quantities of my jam recipe, which produced about eight jars. I think we now have enough jam to last the next year or so, which is good.

I also made another jar of lemon curd although it looks as though lemons won't be available for much longer. They're basically a winter/spring fruit.

I didn't finish all that until midday, which gave me an hour to do my sheet-changing/laundry/bedroom cleaning, plus taking a shower, and organising cold lunch for Richard and the bookkeeper. I banked on them not arriving until at least 1.15, which is just as well as I wasn't ready until then.

This morning: I finally got around to ironing and folding the sheets, pillowcases and duvet covers from the guest flat, and also defrosted the little freezer in there as it was getting iced up, and didn't have anything in it anyway.

So.

Interesting.

I had felt as if I'd done almost nothing in the past ten days, but checking the calendar and completed task-list, it's more than I thought. The problem is that when I've been busy in the mornings, I don't seem to be able to do anything constructive in the afternoons - well, other than filling water bottles and watering the plants, when the mains water is on (every other day), and catching up with email, and Facebook, and forums. And chatting, from time to time, with Dan or Tim online. And of course sorting out our evening meals, but there are so many individual portions of leftover food in the freezer that I haven't been doing a lot of actual cooking.

Tomorrow evening we'll be going to a local independent house group, Saturday Richard will probably sail again, Sunday we're invited out to lunch with yet more friends, Monday I'm out for lunch again, this time with the Larnaka Christian Writing group. Oh, and I need to ensure the guest flat is clean, and make up beds, and buy a few groceries for it since our next visitors are arriving early on Tuesday morning.

Summer in Cyprus. Again.

Spring appears to have morphed into summer, rather neatly, as May came to an end. For the first time this year, temperatures were above 30C in the shade in Larnaka yesterday.

For the first time since last autumn, we turned on the air conditioning for an hour as we went to sleep last night. A trend that will probably continue until at least September.

For the first time since last autumn, I wore shorts rather than long trousers or jeans today. Something else that will almost certainly continue until September, at the earliest.

It's no surprise, of course. Summer in Cyprus is pretty predictable, and while July and August are unquestionably the hottest and most humid, June and September do tend to be pretty warm as well. We've been spoilt this year, with a much cooler than usual May, and even a few rain showers. I really can't complain.

But I always forget just how draining the heat can be. I don't know why it is that 28C is fine, so long as I'm not actually in the sun, while 32 is exhausting. Why would four degrees make so much difference, I wonder?

We haven't had to use the electric water heater for about a month now; solar power gives us all the hot water we need. I haven't worn a sweatshirt or fleece, or even socks for a couple of weeks, even in the evenings.

Everything winds down in Cyprus during June. Schools have another week or two before they close for the summer. The Tots (toddler) group where I help each week will be closed in July and August. Some of our friends will be leaving the island to travel to the UK, or perhaps the USA, and neighbours will depart for a few weeks in the mountains. The only people who will be busier than usual are the hotel and restaurant owners, who will - we hope - be swamped with tourists, who are very happy to be in a country with guaranteed sun. Cyprus relies heavily on tourism.

I need to get back into the habit of doing housework first thing in the morning, then popping to the local shops, if necessary, before 8am, so I can aestivate for the rest of the day.

Mobile phones in Cyprus

Until 2007, I didn't own a mobile phone. The rest of the family each had one, and used them extensively, but I find them intrusive, and many of them feel uncomfortable in my hands if I hold them for more than a minute or two.

However, I was almost the last person in Cyprus without one, or so it seemed. And there were a couple of occasions in the spring of 2007 when it would have been very useful to have one. Slowly, my resistance was broken down. Richard's mother was staying here for my birthday that year, and wanted me to spend my birthday money. So I thought about a phone. We went to a local shop, resisted all the blandishments of the assistants to buy a highly expensive phone with inbuilt phones, databases and (probably) coffee-makers, and chose a nice, neat-looking simple Sony Ericson model:

It wasn't worth getting a contract, even though they're as little as about one euro per month for low usage, so I opted for a pay-as-you go Sim Card. There were only two mobile phone providers in Cyprus, and we decided, for no particular reason, to opt for Areeba rather than CYTA. I had, as far as I remember, a five pound (in old Cyprus money) card initially, and they told me that my first top-up would be worth twice as much as I paid for it. So I also bought an eight pound top-up card, worth sixteen pounds with the doubling, for a total of twenty-one pounds of credit.

Since I only used the phone about once a month, and phone calls are very cheap in Cyprus, I still had about twenty pounds of credit by the end of 2007 when Cyprus joined the Euro-zone. So it transferred itself to about thirty-four euros.

By the end of April, I started receiving text messages reminding me that my credit would expire unless I bought another top-up card, since they only last a year. I still had about thirty-two euros of credit, so I didn't want to lose that.

I was slightly confused that I could not find Areeba cards advertised anywhere, until someone kindly explained that they are now under MTN.

So I bought a five euro MTN card, the smallest available, and topped up my phone. Unfortunately, I hadn't realised that a five euro topup only lasts 30 days, so around the end of May I started getting more messages... and had to buy a ten euro card to extend my credit by another year. So by the end of May 2008, I had about 47 euros on my phone.

During the rest of 2008, I did use the phone significantly more. When I was in the UK, I sent texts to Richard. When we returned to Cyprus, I sent texts to Tim in the UK. And when Richard travelled to Australia earlier this year, we had several text conversations, all of which cost a great deal more than the Cyprus texts that are just two or three cents each.

And about a week ago, I had a text message on my phone informing me that I needed to buy another top-up card, or I would lose my credit... which stood at €29. My goodness... I had actually used €18 worth of calls and texts in a year.

So, a couple of days ago, I popped into a local periptero and shelled out another ten euros for another top-up card:


Apparently I get 44 free text messages with this.

So I now have €39 on my phone. Even if I use up another €18 in the next 12 months, I'll still be well in credit.

In a little lightbulb moment, it occurred to me that when I phone Richard's mobile to remind him to come home for a meal, it would be better to use my mobile to call rather than the house phone. The cost won't be any different, and I might as well try and see if I can use up at least half of my outstanding phone credit...