Frank and Joan's Adventures in Northern Cyprus
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Our adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....

January 21

- Yesterday it absolutely poured down all day long so we were very glad to have planned a day and an evening in. Dinner for two and a bottle of nice red, this to celebrate Liverpool's win over Chelsea, now all we need is for Arsenal to beat Man.U tonight just to keep the points steady and ensure that we have a good chance in Europe again next season. Yipee, Arsenal did it in the last 30 seconds of the game. Good game, good game as Brucie would say.

The papers say that there is a possibilty of a direct trade decision as early as next Monday. This would be a very serious step for the EU to take and is a possible step in the direction of the promises made by the EU in April 2004. Lets just hope it happens and that the Greek Cypriots are finally unable to stop the EU from adhering to their

promises and manipulating of things to suit themselves.

Dry Winter bodes bad times ahead.
There are great fears of a summer water crisis in North Cyprus unless we get lots of rain between now and the end of March. The total reservoir capacity in the North is 16.5 million cubic metres and we are currently down to 5 million only. Normally the heaviest rainfall is between January and the beginning of March but so far we have had very little. Fingers crossed.

Does anybody remember the introduction of "Tax Free Shopping" here in TRNC. Well many of us thought that it was a fairly usless idea as there is not really anything to buy here that you would want to get tax back on. Since the scheme started in July there have only been 144 transactions. Now, from all but two offices, the staff have been withdrawn.

Big article in the paper about inflation here. The cost of living has risen dramatically over the last year by 19.2%, this in comparison with a figure of 2.7% in 2005. Some of the big changes are:- Food and non-alcoholic beverages, up 19.7%. Housing, water, electricity, gas etc, up 29.4%. Transportation up 26.0%. Restaurants & Hotels, up 15.0%. Against this the minimum wage has risen from 780 YTL to 800 YTL per month.

At lunch time today, Joan and I went to Liz & David's out in Karsiyaka. They have spent a lot of time over in the UK during the last six months, sorting out family things, so we had not seen them for some time but hopefully now we will be able to get together more often. Thanks for the Sunday roast Liz, really great.

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