Because Ronaldo Says So...

Whereas in the UK sport is class-associated, in Cyprus sport is politically-orientated. This is a current phenomenon that sucks the pleasure out of sport; divides rather than unites, thus creating more problems and (wrongly) states that if you support team X you must support political party X, rather than Y.

You can imagine the complications and frustrations this arouses.
I am a football fan. I am not saying which team I support but I will say that my attitude towards sport is free of my passions for politics. This is because a) my political opinion is fluid (as I constantly re-evaluate our nation’s political process and my political beliefs), whereas my loyalty to my team is not fluid; and b) sport never was ever linked to politics so why now?

I was shocked to discover that during out Presidential elections of 2008, several teams conducted a press conference stating which candidate they support. Why? For what reason? What would that have achieved? In a way it was a selling of votes. Yes, we all more or less follow our parent’s political inclinations (not me) but now, as football teams advertise, literally as well as figuratively, who they are supporting, thousands of half-brain dead football hooligans will go out and vote for that specific political party. Because Ronaldo says so!

Don’t you just love democracy?

It amazes me how we now come to identify our political beliefs with that of the football team we support; it’s like an outfit where all colours must match (but do not necessarily have to). People do not realise that with politics and sport, you do not need to wear the same colours all the time. You need to mix and match, and not follow the rules, except the off-side rule which no-one understands.

Can you imagine if the same thing happened with fashion?
‘Well I wear Gucci, so I support the conservatives.’
‘What? F. U! I only buy Juicy Couture because I’m a liberal!’ It would be complete mayhem. At least the fights would involve (fake) fur rather than fists.

(But one question remains: if fashion follows politics? Does that mean Oxfam is communism?)

Star Spotting in Nicosia... and LA

Living in Nicosia means that I get to see all these famous people. Well, famous in Cyprus that is, which really isn’t that famous. On my second night here a journalist was sitting next to me at the bar. And, being a complete nerd I was starstruck! I also saw some politicians and Greek actors. But eventually, it no longer excites you. Actually I really annoys you seeing famous people around as they act all high and mighty and piss me off. Although it is interesting to see what they look like in real life.

But it’s nothing like LA. Nothing could have prepared me for LA. There I bumped into Iggy Pop as my friends and I were leaving a restaurant in Westwood which sold Hebrew National. And then we saw Angelina Jolie walking a St. Bernard or Husky. I remember what type of dog it was. And my friends aren’t that sure that I saw either celebrity. Actually they think I am making it up as there was no press or bodyguards around them… but what do they know? They’re from the OC not from LA. Big difference. Believe me. I know. I was there!

But will tell you a truth. My other friend and I were clubbing and we met a pornstar. I can’t say which one, but we did. For real. I promise. Here’s a clue, she had blonde peroxide hair, big fake boobs and wore tonnes, I mean tonnes of foundation and make up. Now can you guess…?

Millionaire2B vs. BabyBusinessMan

When I was a kid, all I wanted was a twin. I imagined it would be so cool, to have two of me. Imagine the pranks we could play, imagine the fun we’d have and the compliments. Except that I didn’t have a sibling, until I was almost six. Not that I am complaining. In the end it turned out that my brother was Mini-Me and I was Dr. Evil (according to me parent’s anyway).

But now, ironically, my brother and I look alike. Not that I think so. I think we are chalk and cheese, but generally people not only think we are twins, but that we are in fact the same person. I was in a bar when this girl approached me. Which hardly ever happens, usually I approach them! ‘I saw you on Makarios avenue,’ she said. ‘You did? When?’ I said flattered that someone finally noticed how hot I am. ‘On Tuesday’ she replied. ‘Are you sure it was Tuesday? I never go on the Avenue on a Tuesday. I was there on Wednesday.’ ‘Definitely Tuesday’ she insisted. ‘Wait, Makarios Avenue Limassol or Makarios Avenue Nicosia?’ ‘Limassol’ she replied. ‘That was my brother. His name is Millionaire2B. I’m BabyBusinessMan’ I responded. She seemed disheartened. I felt upset. Was I not so hot? And what was so special about Millionaire2B. It’s not like he won the lottery and became a millionaire.

This happened a few times. People mistaking me for Millionaire2B. But then there was a ray of light! I was talking to another girl which said that I went to return a shirt I bought from a shop she ran, that I never heard of… called Louis Cruises, or what it Vuitton? Anyway… I never return things because a) I usually order from Amazon or eBay or b) if I buy, I can never be bothered to exchange thing. Oh the hassle! And although this shop was expensive and posh, as is Millionaire2B, I like to think I have better taste. I mean, the vintage outfits I used to find in Oxfam… amazing! And H&M is an fashion understatement!

Google Yourself

Cake sent me this email at work:
***I just googled myself and there is absolutely nothing on me… so depressing. I have made no difference in this world even my bloody gorgeous chiropractor has google results.***

So then I googled myself, hoping I made it onto the BabyBusinessMen Rich List. I wasn’t on the list. Because there wasn’t such a list. (If I was where would I chart at?) Plus my balance of €285.36 wouldn’t really qualify, would it? Could it?

However, the google results were interesting. I had come up as a captain and someone who works in biomedical research (sexy!) and some other people that I won't discuss now… but the most interesting result was when I google’d image’d myself. Guess what… I came up as a ship! A tanker to be specific!

It could have been worse/funnier; Cake came up as… well… a cake. And one of my other friends came up as a dog. I won’t tell you her name though!

Sophia Loren Wannabe

I went on a date the other day. I wanted to pull my hair out!

She was Italian and apparently thought that she was Sophia Loren (but at the age of 26 rather than 60-something). It didn’t go well. She thought I was too raunchy. I thought she was a Sophia Lauren-wannabe. We didn’t get along. It wasn’t a match made in heaven.

I was a gentleman though. I did the ordering of the wine thing, to which she responded that she hated Cypriot wine. I told her that she had been trying the wrong types, and that this was a good bottle. She then banged on for about half an hour about the merits of Italian wine. If I remember correctly, when I lived in Italy I bought wine there for a euro! €1! Solo un euro! You can guess where the wine ended up after a couple of bottles!*

Being the gentleman that I was, I kept her glass filled. It showed attentiveness and class… not an attempt to get her drunk. My intentions were honourable as I couldn’t stand being with her! Then she said in her faux euro-chic accent, ‘you know, you should only fill up the glass when it is empty.’

‘Listen Ralph Lauren’ I said confusing the name with Sophia Loren ‘it’s been a long day… SO I’M GOING TO FILL UP MY DAMN GLASS!’

I guess it takes two types of people in this world; those who view a glass as full (as they keep filling it), and those who view it as full, until it’s empty. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds poignant, don’t you think? Email me with your thought won’t you?

As for Sophia Loren. Well… she is still searching for that elusively tasty wine from Cyprus. Hope she hasn’t become an alcoholic trying them all…

*On the pavement, in the toilet. My housemate actually fell asleep by the fridge after he drank it. Not good!

Cravings at Work

I totally got cravings at work today, partly because all I had for lunch was a frappe and all I had for breakfast was a cigarette. So around 3.30 I got crazy cravings, like a pregnant woman. So I had a grapefruit juice and the cheese pie. I didn’t get no satisfaction. So I went and bought €12.59 worth of chocolate, liquorice and M&Ms. And I still wasn’t satisfied. Now I know how the Rolling Stones felt.

Then I started daydreaming about what to eat at home, when I remembered that I had nothing in the fridge and would get take-away. Who can be bothered to park the car, walk to the deli or whatever it was you got food from (supermarket?) and get back in the car? Then again who can be bothered to cook? Especially for me, who is neurotic, never puts on weight, treats eating like a chore and would much rather than a glass of wine and ciggy over a five course meal. My poor Mum, how she despairs when I prefer a Mars Bar or vodka to her cooking. Plus, my fantasy of a chilled glass of dry white wine quickly dissipated when I remember that I had to clean up the two cockroaches I killed this morning. Maybe I can have them for dinner?

Except I can’t… I only eat Kosher.

Gossiping on Yahoo

Why is it whenever I log onto the internet to do some research at work, I always get sidetracked by useless information.

Today I needed to do some research on some shareholders of a particular company. Eager to get on with it, I somehow fell prey to the glitzy but unnecessary ‘news bulletins’ on yahoo. Today I was attracted to an article on ‘the world’s most expensive home’ and the ‘world’s first billion-dollar home.’

Who could resist not wanting to read an article that made ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ look like ‘Prison Break’?

And although I was fascinated to read about this grandiose cottage in Mumbai, India, I realised that my addiction to pointless news and gossip had spiralled out of control. Instead of concentrating on stocks and shares, I was thinking about who lives where. But that's not all. I have completely gone overboard with the amount of pointless articles I read on the net...

Here is a sample of some of the articles that have captivated me:
· Why America hates Jessica Simpson
· 10 signs that your spouse is cheating on you (and I’m single at the moment!)
· P. Diddy and Gucci
· Photos from Mars
· Paula Abdul and her dog on Total Request Live (we don’t even get that show here!)
· Something about an iPhone… or Wii...
· The Red Socks (and even after I read the article I still don’t know whether they are baseball or American football team)
· What Silvio Berlusconi has got up to now (at least this has a political flavour; except it turned out that he prefers good-looking women to ugly women. Who’d have guessed?)

All this while dreaming of becoming the CEO of a major company.
At least I am CEO of my own blog.

Below is the link for the Billion-dollar-home article.
In the end I didn’t read it. I got distracted by an article about Britney Spears eating at Nobu. And then about what sunglasses are in for the summer. And then about what sunglasses Britney is wearing this summer… it’s a slippery slope…

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/104984/Inside-the-World

A Cave with a Stove

Since I moved into my bachelor pad (also known as my one-room apartment / crummy flat / glorified cave with a stove) it’s been one issue after another.

I moved in late last year, two days before Hannuka (and roughly two weeks before Christmas). In the last few months that I was living there my flat has slowly been falling apart. Although it is only five years old, it is falling apart due to shoddy work, I’m either destructive with the building (usually I’m destructive with myself) or someone comes in, while I am at work and purposely wreaks havoc. If there is a suspect for this theory, then it must either be the extreme right-wing pensioners who live downstairs, or the dog that lives upstairs.

Seriously, when I moved in I had no heating (in December!!!!!)… in Nicosia, which might as well have been Antarctica and Siberia combined.
In January, I had cockroaches coming up the plugholes. Then I discovered my neighbour on the second floor (not the right wing couple) began receiving small packages with the occasional sprinkling of white powder on the brown paper. Maybe it was a special type of cooking powder?
Then the air-conditioning didn’t work and neither does the heating (although I won’t need it now as the sun boils everything in the apartment as I don’t own curtains). Shortly afterwards I discovered that when I turned my immersion heater on all the lights would go out.

Then the drought got so bad in Cyprus that the authorities cut the water off, and for three consecutive weekends I had no water. It’s very hard for someone as dirty as me, to try and keep clean from Saturday morning until Monday 10pm. I used to shower at Cake’s mansion or in the gym. At least I got fit. And last week my toilet cracked and flooded my bathroom and seeped into the bathroom of the guy downstairs (who I believe is on the receiving end of those neatly-packed packages).

Seriously, in that hole it’s like I am experiencing the re-enactment of the Bible: insects, drought and flood… and no central heating. I mean they didn’t have that either back then did they?
So I with my rent I also get an adventure, which includes:
1) no heating
2) cockroaches
3) strangers in my building with odd parcels (why not use Akis Express?)
4) no water
5) water everywhere and cracked toilet
6) still more cockroaches and pesky neighbours screaming in the night
7) no hot water
8) no air-conditioning
9) no functioning toilet
Oh… the joys of independence.

Then I got thinking: Would this ever happen in Limassol?

Who exactly is Cake?

Cake liked to have here cake and eat it. Which is why she so often go in trouble. She got fired from her last (government) job for getting into a fight with the cleaner and then dyeing her hair bubble-gum pink. After she smashed her computer, the office she worked at 'had to let her go.'

So she did. When her boss fired her she went sunbathing in Protaras and got a job as a barwoman there for two weeks. Her boss fired her from there as well because she poured a glass of beer over a girl she didn't like. And so she moved back to Nicosia and opened up her own cake shop.

That's not to say she didn't get up to her old tricks again. She baked cakes, and sold them to customers she liked. To customers she didn't like, she put a little farting powder in the batch and sold them at extra cheap prices. This explained why the Nicosia Housewife often felt uncomfortable at her various get togethers...

*****

Cake though wholly Cypriot in her attitude and outlook, was completely unlike most Cypriots. Not that there is anything wrong about most Cypriots, I love my nation and my people, but she was more ‘pregresive’ so to speak. Not one to stand in a club posing, Cake often was the antithesis of how Cypriots expected Cypriots to behave. She was loud, aggressive and full of opinions. Of course at her core she retained aspects of her nation, the more traditional aspects. Don’t tell me that a 25 year old women who opens a Cake shop is not traditional, even if she does it with a pink hair-do. She just managed to merge Eurotrends with Yiayia-style, and this is what put her at odds with both worlds. Hopefully for the better. She deserved 10 points for originality and 11 for guts.

Force-feeding Cupcakes

I'm at Cake's house now! She is force-feeding me Cup-cakes. That woman and food!

Oh yeah... and she just told me cupcake is one word.

Smart ass!

Fashion Show by the Nicosia Housewife

So Cake invited me to a fashion-show that her neighbour Nicosia Housewife (who lived in Engomi) was organising. Apparently, Nicosia fashion-shows are the best way to see who is who and who is not wearing the right stuff!

Of course, although I looked good, I was dressed inappropriately. By that I mean that, I wasn’t wearing black or Gucci or sunglasses indoors. I was wearing a sexy checked shirt, blue jeans and snazzy silver trainers. I’m surprised people didn’t faint when I wasn’t wearing couture. So what? I was wearing couture jeans!

Other than my clothes that were designed by Tommy Hilfiger (and Marks and Spencer’s underwear) the clothes for this fashion show were designed by Femme Fatale, a 40-something, who was Nicosia Housewife’s best friend and recently divorced her husband called Filthy Rich. You see Filthy Rich was just that; filthy (he was caught by the maid sleeping with… I can’t say just yet) and Rich because he is… actually was. Nicosia Housewife took half of what he made and then some and then started dating Alpha Model.

Alpha Model is a 26 years old, from Athens who came to Cyprus to make it (but if you leave Athens to make it in Cyprus, you know that the only place you are going to make it is with the over 40’s crowd of Nicosia Housewife) but only made it into her clutches and then her bed to which Alpha Model is probably chained to at night so he won’t escape.

Anyway, so we saw Alpha Model walk on and off in his red underwear (only someone as deranged by FF could design such an abomination). Other models, male and female came and went and the show was hailed as a success (because they were all doped by with champagne and cocaine). By the end of the show, we all stood around eating finger food.
I was standing next to Cake who was scoffing down caviar.

‘Damn! I’m so hungry’ she yelled as she jammed her mouth with the food. Nicosia Housewife approached and gave her a filthy look but too embarrassed not so say anything she asked ‘so how did you enjoy the show?’
‘Yuuuuh, mmmm, it wooooosssh goood’ said Cake eating like peasant and trying to speak at the same time. Nicosia Housewife was shocked; even I was… now I know how everyone felt when they saw me walk in with blue jeans and trainers (correction, couture jeans!)

Moving to Nicosia

As a Lemesian (Greeklish for someone from Limassol), we are trained from a young age to hate our nation's capital, Nicosia. For our coastal-city, and as most people would agree, is the most developed and pleasant on the island, with beaches, bars and sun, and is a far-cry from the car-congested, bureaucratic, stressful capital city.

But I always liked Nicosia, the way you like spending time with a friend who would get along with, but without spending too much time. Nicosia, represented, a world-divided, between the affluent Greek part and the occupied Turkish area, where all the executives and politicians ruled over the land and style for Cyprus was set in the fashion-house of Nic. It was a city, with tall trees, long avenues, the presidential palace, and chic-high-class people. And the shopping wasn't bad either. And so, since I was a kid, a day trip with my friends to Nicosia was always a fun time.

That is why, when I was offered a job at a law firm there, I didn't think moving there would be a problem, as I always liked the city. And now, a few months since I moved, I am still enjoying it (and also enjoying leaving).

This blog, charts my newly adopted home-town, desribes what's on and off, in and out, in Nicosia, what's on offer, who's on offer and different perspectives on Nicosia, Limassol, and Cyprus. It introduces you to different types of Nicosians, such as Cake (a neurotic bohemian), the Nicosia Housewife (the name says it all), the endless fight between good and evil (known as the left and right wing - you decide who is good/evil) and the age old rivalry Limassol vs.Nicosia... who wins... you decide! With me, as your host...

Enjoy...