The Land of Aphrodite

As per the greek mythology; after a peculiar event happening between the gods, the waves of the see began transforming into a figure. The woman who was created was more beautiful than any the whole world had ever seen. The place where the foam woman chose to come forth was the island of Cyprus.

Today, I am returning back to Amman after a 4 weeks business stay in Cyprus.
Landing at Larnaca airport on May 20th; the first thing I noticed was the smell of the sea in the air. This nice smell that comes with the sea breeze in all the Mediterranean countries. The second nice thing I noticed was that the people working in the airport passport control, were a bit more welcoming and chillaxed than the employees of this job in the other countries I have seen. Rikos (Microsoft Cyprus Taxi Driver) was waiting for me at the airport. We went to get in the car, and as soon as we reached it. I found him coming to my side and handing me the car keys !!! After getting over the first few moments of surprise, I looked inside the car form the side where I was standing and I found the steering wheel !!!! They actually drive on the left side of the road in Cyprus!!!! After laughing with Rikos and going to the other side of the car, I thought that this country will still have a lot left from the days of the British occupation and that proved to be right many times later.

Nicosia (the capital were all the businesses are) is 50 KMs from Larnaca. The road is nice and scenic and the people are overall a bit laid back in this country, so driving is not a stressful, adrenaline producing process like in other places. I had researched a little about the country but wanted to make sure of one thing from the taxi driver...the population :) Turned out that what I read was true and the whole island is inhabited by just 700,000 persons !!!

The language spoken there is Greek (with the Cypriot dialect). Having learned Coptic language at church very early on, I could read the words fairly ok (but not understand anything of course). All Cypriots understand English, but most of them have a heavy accent speaking it. I was staying at a hotel in town center for the first 2 weeks. It was nice to go for a walk after work everyday and watch the people having a coffee or a drink at the numerous open air cafes and restaurants of Makarios avenue (Makarios was the name of the first president after the independence so you find the main road in every town called Makarios avenue :) ).

The currency is CYP which is worth a bit over 2 USD. The price of everything here is almost double Dubai (except for drinks, half Dubai :)). Pork Souvlaki(grilled pork chops in pita bread with salad) is the popular sandwich here which I relied on as one of the daily meals.(Like Beirut's grilled chicken in Dubai and Shawerma Reem in Amman :) )

I managed to go Aiya Napa for the first weekend. I heard a lot about the place and thought I go check out it myself. Guys, this is the wildest place ever. This is a beach town with mostly British and some Russian tourists. The beaches are amazing, the weather is perfect, the water is clear, jet-skis, banana boats, parasailing, Bungee jumping everywhere and even live DJs playing on the beach (and Foam Party on Sunday). In the night, there is one street with tens of open air clubs next to each other. These work from 11 pm to 2 am then the crowd goes to the indoor clubs which open from 2 till 7 am (and all is full). It is unbelievable !!!!

There are some beautiful but quiter beaches in Lemasol as well. There is also a mountain close to Nicosia called Trodos mountain where you can get a look at the old villages and the farmer's life style(but unfortunately my camera's battery died and the charger was in Amman :) )

3 Months with MCS

Today marks exactly 3 months of my joining MCS. Oh boy...does not time fly when you are too busy...
I feel like I actually need to pause my life for a few days and take a break of this big challenge that I chased so badly...Don't get me wrong, No complaints at all, I just need to get some sleep(with all the afterhours of preparation and administrative tasks a consultant needs to do apart from his normal, customer facing, 8 working hours; I barely get 4 hours of sleep on weekdays). I would like also to take some time to reflect on that past period(I am trying to do a bit of that here on this posting)

So far all my engagements have been partner training and workshops. I have to say this was a very wise decision from my boss. He hit quite a few birds with one stone by doing that. Trainings are considered low risk engagements, so even if I screw up, then the worse that could happen would be a bad feedback from the partner. On the contrary, if those engagements were real projects or Proof of Concept pilots, and things went wrong, then we could loose a deal or even worse...a customer. I need to say also that these engagements had helped me to improve many parts of my myself which I thought needed some work, but never really got real life situations to help on that before joining MCS. For one thing, I am now totally over my stage fright; I can talk to groups of people for days now :) My presentation skills are better also I guess, but most importantly I think, is the ability to become a people's person, to know how to build relationships with everybody, from junior developers to CIOs of companies of different nationalities . For e.g. anyone who has worked in that field will tell you that having a demo fail or a lab not work in front of your students is not an uncommon thing, but one lesson I have learned is that if you have established this personal relationship with the people then basically they will forgive you for that, and you might still actually get good feedback as well :).

As for the travel, unfortunately I missed a couple of role trainings that I was supposed to attend since my work permit was delayed a lot in Jordan, and without that I couldn’t apply for any foreign Visa. However, fortunately the guy in the Cypriot embassy was so nice to give me the visa to Cyprus without requiring that. I have been in Cyprus for the last three weeks delivering trainings to partners here as well. Cyprus is a nice place (I will definitely put a separate posting about this trip, with pics ;) ) but to stay for 4 weeks completely alone is nothing easy at all. I managed to make some friends after the first couple of weeks so at least I don’t eat dinner alone on the weekends now.