4th Day in Pervolia

This is the last morning session of the seminar. A group of students has taken it upon themselves to conduct an evaluation of this seminar / program, based on input from all participants. We discuss the outcome which was overall positive. Problematic were the lack of internet and some of the infrastructural arrangements (transport, food). But the students had the time to work on their thesis, to collect their thoughts, to find a new focus and determination. The evaluation goes until noon.

Then I am ready for a "cultural excursion". Early in the morning I had been at the bank in Kiti, to exchange my Cyprus pounds which I still had from 2 years ago. However they told me that the last day when they would accept them, was yesterday... now from 1.July on only selected bank branches would do an exchange of these Cyprus Pounds into Euros. So I will have to find a bank today or tomorrow... they mention a bank in Larnaca in the centre. But I had there been just 2 days ago, do not want to go there again.

Graham had recommended to go to the Troodos mountains. So that is what I do. But first I pay a visit to the Sultan Tekkesi Mosque which is right near the airport. Supposedly this is the 4th-most important sacred place for Muslems, after Mekka, Medina, and Jerusalem: a relative of Mohamed had died here and is buried.



Then on to the "Chapelle Royal", a medieval little church. The guide inside starts talking as soon as I enter, like a robot automat he points to all the fresque remains on the walls. They are indeed impressive, although not complete, with large gaps.



The further route leads through a dirt road into the mountains.



There is supposedly something interesting at Tamassos, but I follow the signs and just end up at a large reservoir lake... no further indications of any relevant object or sight there.



Driving further towards West, I decide that there is enough time to go into the Troodos area. There is a visitor centre up at 1700m elevation. It is not as hot here anymore, quite pleasant. Unfortunately the air is quite hazy, so one cannot see the coast from here. A guy from Romania offers rides on horses, and I decide to do this for 10 minutes. He walks ahead, leads the horse onto a short round trip.



Then down towards south, Limassol, back on the motorway to the bungalows. We all meet at 20:00 for a joint dinner in Pervolia.



The host from the restaurant Pyrgos recognises me - I must have made an impression when I ate there, coming from a bicycle tour, with my GPS and camera equipment...
This is our farewall dinner. Of course we have a Meze... the restaurant owner offers free wine. We also celebrate Reinhard's birthday (which is actually a day later, but who cares).

3rd Day in Pervolia

This morning session is very long: it ends at 3pm. All the students now had given their presentations, with pointing out their own work, the focus, the methodology, and the current state. The discussion takes a while as each student expects some useful feedback.

Today I plan not to use the car for anything else than just going to town to grab a bite. I sit most of the time on the bungalow terrasse, writing some software. Unfortunately the lack of internet prevents me from progressing in my web-based projects.

2nd Day in Pervolia

The morning seminar takes also place on Sunday. I realise that I have missed the evening session yesterday - for some reason I had thought there would not be one, but this is an "Intensive Program", so no free weekends are allowed. Again, the students present their abstracts and their concepts of their planned PhD thesis. Graham will leave today, so he gives his farewell remarks.

The morning seminar usually goes until 13:00. The start time has been set to 9:00, but due to the warm weather and the holiday atmosphere, this beginning slides a few minutes towards a later time. This time it gets a bit later, as there is much to be discussed.

I also have an opportunity now to use the printer in the office of the bungalow village, so I can get my voucher for the car rental.

Afterwards I use the time to catch up on my software for the MScape on my mobile phone.

I had reserved the car for 15:30, so that I would pay for exactly 3 full days when returning it to the airport. Now I take a taxi to the Larnaca airport. The car rental office is only reachable through the arrivals area, I have to pass a guarded entry where people come out from their planes.

CarHire3000 is only a broker; my car rental will actually be from AVIS. No problem there. But I have to pay the gasoline in advance, will be able to return the car empty. This is a bit annoying, as I will then have to plan exactly on how much gas to spend.

I mention the free upgrade to an A/C, which is noted nowhere on the voucher but which had been announced on the web page. Naturally, they agree that without an A/C, driving in this heat would be murder...

Now I finally have a car, and I enjoy the increased mobility. I first head to Larnaca, just to see what is there. In the city there are a few sights marked, and I follow the brown signs to the relevant points of interest. There is an archaeologigal dig, some ancient tombs under a church. I pass the Lazarus church where I had been a few months ago. While driving I see a glimps of a mosque, but the maze of one-way streets does not allow me to go there directly. Using GPS and instinct, I drive around a while in circles / spirals, until I finally approach the mosque from the other side. There is a relevant orthodox church nearby too.

Again, in the side streets there are many delapidated houses, ruins, broken. One can only imagine the stories of horror and dispair which must have happened in 1974 and before. Of course I only see the results here on the Greek side; I assume the same would be on the Turkish occupied side.

I try to find the ruis of Kition which are mentioned; the road signs are a bit misleading, often I miss a vital turn. But I finally find the site. Is closed, only open until 14:30. Maybe one of the next days...

I head now along the coastal road, further towards East. I want to reach the ultimate point in the South-East of this island. Passing a power plant. I do not go to Agia Napa, but pass it on the moterway. Then I reach Capo Creco. Large antennas from a British military installation. A large rock at the corner, a few 100m high. The road becomes now a dirt road, the main road would make a turn here towards north, to Famagusta. But I have no time anymore to explore further north.





Then I head back. Through Agia Napa. Now this is a real touristy town! Young crowds head for dinner, the primary mode of transportation appears to be quad bikes. Around Larnaca there is suddenly a stop-and-go traffic; it is all traffic which turns up north towards Nicosia. Today is the European Soccer Championship final game: Germany-Spain.

Before going home I head to the Internet cafe, to check emails and do some work. The game already starts when I leave. I watch the remaining game in my bungalow, with a desperate commentary in German from the ARD.

Transfer to Pervolia

The night before, just after midnight, I had reserved a car for the last three days of this stay, using the internet from the room. I just had done a very quick search for "car rental cyprus", and had come across the Carhire3000 site. I reserved a car, 3 days, 67 Euro all inclusive. With a free upgrade to an airconditioned vehicle. The confirmation email stated that I would need to print the voucher and present it at the counter... well, is not so easy done without a printer. I replied, explaining that I could not do that. It appeared that their office was in Manchester; I wrote done the phone number, just in case I would have to call them.

The morning seminar went well. The idea of using Survey Monkey for setting up a review of submitted abstract worked reasonably well. We discussed some of the abstracts, then closed the session.

It was again hot, and also getting more humid. As I was very thirsty, I walked for the last time to the Convenience Store to buy a few drinks, for the road and for the evening. Not sure how the options would be in Pervolia.

The bus arrived shortly before 16:00 near our dormitory at the University of Cyprus Campus. I had packed my stuff, but somehow was not able to fit everything into suitcase, computer bag, and photo bag; so in addition to these I had 3 plastic bags, with some drinks and towels. When we entered the bus, the driver was afraid that we would not be able to store everything in the bus - there was no luggage compartment. But we just piled everything onto the back seat row, and off we drove.

At about 17:00 we arrive in the "Journalist Village" in Pervolia. I wanted internet access - something that the bungalows would not provide. So I stay in the bus, together with a few others, to drive on to the Faros Hotel nearby where a few rooms had been reserved.

Beach near the Journalist Village

However, for me there was no room reserved there - instead there was only a bungalow flat in the "Journalist Village". And since that had been reserved, there was no way of bailing out of it. I almost considered just swallowing the double booking, until I got details about the internet access in the hotel: there was a phone dialup only, and the cost would be quite significant. So I decided to go back to the bungalow afterall. There was a PC in the hotel, 2 Euro for 15 minutes. There are also a few internet cafes in the town centre, so I gave up the idea of having internet in the room and settled for a few days without the web.



Christian and myself decide to take a taxi to Pervolia Centre, a few km west, to find out about internet access and to get some cash. The taxi trip costs 17 Euro. There is a cash machine in Kiti. The taxi driver asks a few kids around where the next internet cafe is. They point to a bar one block down the road. There are two PCs, coin operated, one coin machine is broken, so only one can use the PC at a time. 11 minutes cost 50 cents, appears to be reasonable. I am able to read a few emails and reply to the most important ones.



Slighty problemating with updating this blog is that blogger always adapts itself to the native language. So this means that I have to guess where to enter my blog entry (the previous entry was done through this).

At 20:00 there is a joint dinner at the restaurant "Enalia". Rudi Kaufmann from University of Nicosia joins us. We have a nice chat about students, PhD pursuits, and worldwide relocation.

Last Day in Nicosia

Today the whole group will move to a place near Larnaca, to spend the remaining days of the "Intensive Programme" seminar. The workshop about publishing a paper is almost done; 5 sessions have been organised, one is remaining. But the time limit is not handled very strict, as the advising and consulting goes on an individual basis. Each of the student has a different background and status within their PhD progress, and one cannot give a general approach which is suitable to everyone. So I have tried to sit down with each student individually, to go through their status, their work, and distill ideas for a paper. Some of students who are more advanced in their PhD progress are ready for publication and have already writen abstracts. Others have still to find their focus of the work, so they need to study more on the literature. What we did today: I set up a pseudo-review on SurveyMonkey, with one of the abstracts from a student. This allows all other students to review this abstract as if they were members of a program committee. I hope that this is useful for each of them.

Wednesday evening Graham arrived from Leeds Met. We walked as a group to the cafe "Indigo" to have dinner and to watch the soccer game Germany-Turkey. Thursday then was again my workshop in the morning, also Graham contributed with a lecture.

In the evening, there was finally internet in the dormitory room, so I could upload my pictures. Graham, Verena, and myself wanted to go into town, to go to the Turkish part for dinner, but the taxi that I had called did not arrive within the next 60 minutes... so I decided to stay in the room and use the web for the Flickr upload. I also designed a new interface for the mobile GPS application I had in mind.

Today we will depart in the afternoon at 16:00.

4th Day: Seminar

Today the main focus was on individual coaching of each student towards writing their paper. There was a deadline for a joint paper submission, in which I myself was involved with two other students, and we had to submit the contept outline today - done now.

There was still no internet in the hotel room this morning, so internet only works here on the campus.

3rd day: Excursion to Limassol

On the 3rd day of the "Intensive Program" (IP), the plans had changed: the excursion to Limassol which had been scheduled for Wednesday, will take place today on Tuesday.

I leave the hostel in the morning at 7am to walk and finally to buy a towel, as there are no towels in the dorm (I had to improvise a bit...). But the supermarket (2km away by walk on a dusty road) is still closed, and the convenience store does not have any towels...

We meet at 9am for departure at U.of Cyprus. In Limassol there is a lecture at the University of Technology of Cyprus. The speaker there, Christina, had lived in Manchester for many years, and here in Cyprus she misses the Manchester weather, with its rain showers and cool temperatures. I never heard anything like that...

After that talk, we have a few hours to walk around in Limassol or to go to the beach. I go with Richard, Martin, and Christian towards the beach, walk a few steps into the really warm water. Then a short snack at a pub bar, Moussaka salad, then I walk with Christian back towards the town centre, just to see what is there. We walk to the old castle which has Byzanthinian roots. Also visit the "sea sponge exhibition", a great tourist trap! The bust leaves back at 4:15. Monika and Julius had expressed an interest in seeing an archaeological site on the way back, therefore we left earlier than 5pm. But somehow the info was not conveyed to the bus driver... as I woke up from having dozed away, I see that we long have passed that location.

The Limassol Castle

This evening I am going to do a bit of work, for my geo-software. No excursion planned.

Seminar, 2nd Day

The seminar starts again at 9:00 am in the morning, and it is again my turn to begin. The students had the assignment to identify conferences, but due to the time constraints and the lack of internet in the dorm, there had not been much progress. So I give a few pointers, then organise each of them into groups according to their topic, so that they can do a joint search for those "outlets" for their paper which they would produce.

A few students identify clearly suitable conferences, while others still struggle with their topic. This makes it difficult to apply a homogeneous lecture, and I will have to do significant individual tutoring.

In the afternoon there is "self study" for the students. My lack of sleep catches finally up with me, and I have a rest in the dorm and sleep for two hours.

Then at 5pm, I head back to the campus to participate in an interview, which a group of students has prepared for an evaluation of this whole seminar. There is an evening session as well, and at 8pm we meet again for heading to dinner into town.

This time I call the reliable taxi driver Nikos; he organises 2 more taxis, as we are now 10 people. We drive directly to the Ledra Street, walk towards the border, and cross it. Fill out that paper which serves as the "visa" for the illegal part of Cyprus, then move across. Much more empty there on the other side. Bright lights, but few people. I buy a cob of corn from a street vendor. I realise that the Cypriot money which I have with me from the time when Cyprus did not have the Euro, is also not valid here... I must have spent all those bills two years ago.



The Mixed Kebab is good, as always. Afterwards we walk a bit further into the Turkish part. A few guys in T-Shirt stand around, but suddenly there is a commotion, and two of them attack two others, pull out a gun, and put hand cuffs on them. Then they push them into two cars, and speed off. Police action? We are puzzled. I had not dared to take pictures of this, as I was not sure what was actually going on. Later the restaurant owner nearby mentioned that this was a police raid.

He noticed that we are Germans / Austrians, and invites us to come on Wednesday evening to watch the soccer game Germany-Turkey. This would be great and certainly fitting... will see if we actually do this.

Seminar Talk

On Wednesday, 23.4., the weekly staff development session (15:00-17:00) was devoted to research. However, as it happened often, a short half-hour "hijack" took place just before this seminar: there was some important news about marking and plagiarism which needed to be discussed.
Then, at 15:30 I gave an overview over the recent activities in the Centre for Creative Technology. Mostly the web site and the online collaboration tools were discussed, in addition to the partnerships.
This was followed by a talk given by Tony Renshaw about his eye tracking research. Afterwards, Tony Partingtion showed a demonstration of object tracking in the Motion Capture room.