Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration then more practice and more concentration." -- Mildred Ella ("Babe") Didrikson Zaharias (b. 1911-06-26, d. 1956-09-27), American athlete (basketball, track & field, golf) and musician (vocals, harmonica) (via Jone Johnson Lewis' collection of quotations on about.com)

In reach of WiFi tonight; on the move again tomorrow. (Came back to Nicosia this afternoon, heading toward Paphos in the morning ... unsure of how much Mom will want to stick to the schedule in her head, so dunno whether we're going straight there or stopping at various sights she says she wants to show me for long enough that I can actually look at them. Just before she went to bed the answer was that I could take all the time I like, but let's see if she remembers she said that in the morning.) Trying to catch up on a few comments and post photos, but I need to try to get to sleep early (wish me luck!) so might not get to everything I mean to.

Paralimni was nice (I uess we saw more of Protaras than Paralimni) and I finally got to swim in the Mediterranean Sea ... which was even more different from the Atlantic Ocean than I'd been told to expect. (For one thing, I didn't realize "more bouyant here" meant I cannot swim down more than a meter and a half below the surface because I'm not strong enough to push against that much bouyancy or that I have to re-learn how to kick when doing the breast stroke because my legs keep winding up too high in the water so my kick splashes more than it pushes. Eep!) I have to get a waterproof housing for one of my cameras if I ever get to come here again.

Before we came, we spent dozens of dollars to download a map of most-of-Cyprus into Mom's GPS (a TomTom unit). The map is incomplete (possibly just out of date; not sure. It does have a lot of "unnamed road" streets on it, so it at least knows there's a street there ...). It doesn't cope well with drive-on-the-left countries, which Cyprus allegedly^[1] is -- half the time it tells me to go the wrong direction on roundabouts, it wants me to turn right across a median with a guardrail, some of the time it shows a left turn but speaks an instruction to turn right (and roundabouts are a real crapshoot in that regard -- all sorts of combinations become possible) ... and most frustrating of all, no matter where I tell it to go, it wants to take me to Agia Napa^[2]. Getting to Agia Napa on purpose was fine. Trying to get out of Agia Napa, a half hour trip took two hours and much turning around.

I did finally start to get some semblance of a sense of direction in Paralimni -- unreliable but at least I had Some Idea. I haven't tested whether it works in Nicosia ... I guess tomorrow I'll find out whether it works in the direction of Paphos. (It probably helped that in Paralimni the closest -- and often visible -- water was to th East of me, like at home.)

Okay, photos, then sleep. Posting to FB (because it's convenient), then Twitter if I'm up long enough; I probably won't get them anyplace more generaly convenient for DW users tonight but that's certainly on my to-do list. (Maybe I'll have WiFi in Paphos, if I'm lucky.)

PS: I'm coming to detest words that contain only letter-shapes common to both alphabets -- ABEHIKMNOPTXYZkoptuv and in some fonts a and e (but at least C only shows up on churches and F went away before Homer's time) -- especially in names of businesses, where just recognizing or not-recognizing an English word might not be enough of a clue.A

[1] I'm finally starting to internalize what my cousins tried to explain to me: Cyprus is not so much a "drive on the left" country as it is a "drive in the middle because both sides are full of parked cars and the streets are narrow" country. But it does still mean you go left when entering a roundabout (that is to say, traffic circlesgo clockwise) and to take an off-ramp from a controlled-access highway.

[2] Not sure of the correct transliteration there. I think I've seen "Ayia Napa" as well.