Promises broken

I just wanted to share this article about Arriva and the lack of AC on many of their buses. I would know! I use them everyday! Today I was going to take a bendy bus from Valletta because it was on the verge of leaving but I just couldn't stay on it! The bus was packed as practically all bendy buses are when leaving Valletta and the AC was either non existent or if it was on you could definitely not feel it. I got down and waited for another bus that would take me close to home.

This bus didn't have AC either. There was some sort of thing making noise, maybe an extractor or something like that but AC? not really! This is not fair because we are paying a lot of money compared to before and we are getting something actually worse because the windows and doors are shut unlike with the old buses. That's a serious health risk especially in Summer!

Contracts should be honoured.

What a mess. But don't take my word for it. You can have a look at the almost 300 comments that talk about Arriva's bad  commuting experience.

Thank you

These last few days the trips to and from work have been ok. In fact yesterday the bus driver who had just finished his shift got down at Floriana after thanking us (I guess for using Arriva) and wishing us (customers) a good day.

That was very nice. My reaction was automatic: a smile. I thought that if only people were courteous, polite all the time instead of rude and always in a rush whilst driving, taking over, not allowing pedestrians to cross using the zebra crossings etc the day would be much better. Our levels of stress would probably diminish.

Anyway, as I said, the bus rides are not always bad. The AC has been working on all buses (except for a bendy I took some days ago) and the regularity has been quite good. I haven't had to wait for 20 minutes at a bus stop for instance.

I guess it's one of those days as well when you feel that life is good when you are living in Malta :)

Ozymandias

So the exam is a thing of the past and studying for it is no longer at the back of my mind. My reading has been affected dramatically :) because of this so I intend to give "A Discovery of Heaven" a new 'push' so I can get to the last part of it. I hadn't realised how small the font is.

It is quite interesting but it's a bit too dragging in my opinion. I have about 200 pages to go.

Summer doesn't help either. It's so lovely outside. Don't you just love Malta in Summer? I particularly like it when I am walking back home or something, it's already 7 pm and the sun is still shining.

I will leave you with "Ozymandias" by Shelley here, maybe reflecting upon the inevitability of the passing of time.

England vs Sweden

What an amazing game! It was so exciting! I was on the edge of the sofa most of the time. The British goals were wonderful especially Welbeck's.

I hope the English team will win the Euro Cup. But Spain's team is really, really good. Oh well, we'll see.

Bendy Buses

An interesting article re bendy buses in Malta: "London's old buses are driving Maltese round the bend" written by Jessica Abrahams (The Guardian).

Nightmare

The new bus service will have its first anniversary in a few days' time and all I know is that I am paying more every month on transport and getting the same stuff or worse: unreliable service, not frequent and dirty buses, the AC does not work properly or at all and the windows can't be opened, the electronic displays are not working for all buses, many still have pieces of paper showing the route numbers, driving is not good with buses braking suddenly. I once saw a woman going up the little stairs to the back of the bus fall on her back. 

I really thought her head was going to break or something because the impact was so bad. The driver didn't slow down when approaching a zebra crossing and then he had to brake suddenly to avoid hitting a pedestrian crossing it. That was a while ago but everyday there is a story to tell so I am creating a label for my transport experience.

I don't know how many times the routes have changed but even I who uses the buses every day find many routes confusing.

Today for instance: I avoid routes 12 and 13 like the plague. They use mainly bendy buses to cater for this very tourist route (Sliema-St Julian's and Bugibba in the case of number 12 if I am not wrong) so they are very popular with the tourists. They are always packed. They leave Valletta with people standing, the AC is not good enough and they take ages to get anywhere close to Sliema.

But I had waited for other buses at the terminus that would take me at least close to home even if I had to walk for 15 minutes so I got into this 13 or 12 which after 15 minutes or so was totally packed, AC not working just to be asked to get down and take another one for who knows what reason, presumably some sort of fault but who cares. Time wasted.

It's a pity that people in general are not vociferous enough to demand that the public transport live up to what it is supposed to be. At the end of the day we are subsidising it and on top of that paying more for something that quite honestly doesn't live up to the hype. As I said, all I know is that to move from A to B there isn't an improvement when compared to the previous system.

Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse

Oh yes, I forgot! I am also reading Robert Rankin's "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse". It's soo funny :D

Lunch Time Concerts Valletta

A wonderful part of working in Valletta has to be the lunch time concerts. If you didn't know about them: now you do ;) I particularly remember one when a tenor whose name escapes me sang so beautifully that he almost got a standing ovation.

The programs are really interesting and the performances are high quality.

What are you up to? I have just finished watching "Mad Men" and found this reflection (The Guardian) on the finale to be very accurate. "The Borgias" is almost over and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. 

I am reading "The Discovery of Heaven" as mentioned below as well as "The Swerve. How the Renaissance began" and Peter Ackroyd's "The Canterbury Tales" but I am struggling with my reading because I have that German exam on Monday :S arrghhh...I guess the weekend will see very little reading done and...I got to go...Ich habe eilig (I'm in a hurry if I'm not wrong, oh...I should really know that phrase by now... :S)

Reading

I think it was Borges who said that the books he had read constituted a far more important experience than the books he had written. The problem is that this idea comes from a quote I might have read a decade (or so) ago so I am not really sure that's how it goes but I remember the main point which I find rather fascinating.

This time I decided to google the idea but the search wasn't specific enough so I just came across this below which might be what I read many years ago...or it might not...

""What I have read is far more important than what I have written. For one reads what one likes-- yet one writes not what one would like to write but what one is able to write." 

Not that I spent much time searching mind you.

The second idea of the quote is a bit different to what I am reflecting upon right now but it complements it nicely.

You see, I was thinking about readers, assiduous readers I might add and I remembered this guy I saw for a couple of times who was angry at me for something really trivial. I was puzzled. He was surprised I had made him angry because....I read so much! He actually confronted me with that argument. I must say that the argument was original. I had never heard anyone telling me that because people are well read they should be as a matter of course...well, perfect.

Today I thought of that strange argument whilst reflecting upon the reading experience. Why do people read? What is their main (real) motivation? Does it make us better human beings in general? Reading...

For me it's...

                               necessary.

                                           The world 

doesn't make sense 

                                     without books....

and as you might have gathered, all this thinking has brought Mallarmé and his dice to mind.

Speak - Silence

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent". I was thinking of this earlier on. I think I came across it when I was reading some book or other some weeks ago. I believe it was Wittgenstein who said it. I might be wrong. It's a beautiful thought...and no, I don't feel like googling it right now.

Heat

Summer is officially here for me when it's just impossible to sleep with the fan anymore. If you don't know about Maltese weather, it's beautiful mainly because we have so many hours of sunshine but it can be very harsh mainly due to the terribly high humidity levels.

If you see this chart things might be clearer for you than for me. What I understand is that humidity levels vary depending on which town you live in. What I know is that it can be unbearably suffocating and the levels might not be 90% all the time or everywhere but it feels like that all the time both in summer and winter. At least that's what it feels like to me.

It's tough to wake up feeling that you have not rested enough especially when I have a long long day ahead of me. School awaits after the office...and I haven't done my homework yet. Arrghh...that's what happens when you are having fun I guess.

Time flies...one day you are skipping the rope and the next you are remembering you used to do it...

Loyal Customer

It's nice to feel appreciated as a customer, especially when you are a regular at a shop/restaurant etc it's always nice to feel a bit of a VIP.

Mondays are not easy for me and after work I usually feel like having a snack or something. So the other half and moi went to have something for dinner at a nice coffee shop in Sliema where we are regulars.

We had the food, dessert and coffee. When we approached the cash machine we were told that the coffees were on the house .

It feels nice.

The opposite is also true. It feels like a slap in the face when you are a regular and the shop owner doesn't even hint that he has seen your face before. That happened to me a while ago when I went to return a couple of old DVDs I had rented and that I was returning with a day overdue.

That was a place from where we had been renting religiously practically every week for quite a while. I can't think of even one time when the DVDs were overdue for a day. I had been sick and I couldn't go and return the DVDs the previous day and I volunteered the information to the owner mainly so that he would understand why the DVDs were not at his shop the previous day.

He still charged me the penalty, he didn't even say anything and in the process he lost a customer. He never smiled anyway and I had to wait for the whole town to watch the movie first because they had this system whereby a new release would be "booked" in advance by the whole village haha :) Many times the DVDs were also faulty and no refund was given.

I don't think I need to put it clearer than that but just in case: it obviously wasn't about the extra euro or whatever the fee was, it was the fact that the guy always treated me as though he was about to ask for my ID card to open an account for me. It's like I was invisible. That's hardly what a customer cherishes and the world moves on....and so do we...

Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec

It's a quiet Saturday for me, which is what I usually like. Quiet indoors day: catching up with my books, my tv series and movies. And well, a bit of work is also unavoidable: Housework is never-ending and I also need to study a bit. An exam is just round the corner but I couldn't avoid the temptation of watching one of the movies on my "To watch" list: Luc Besson's "Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec".

It's a very sweet story but I won't spoil it for you. You can watch the trailer here if you want.

The weather is beautiful but then again, the weather is almost always wonderful in Malta except for last winter which was extremely harsh and long. Back to...oh...lunch awaits...to be prepared :S

A stroll through Valletta

Malta's capital city, Valletta, is a wonderful jewel in the Mediterranean and it's apparently bidding to become the European capital of culture in 2018. I came across this video about Valletta today and I hope you will enjoy it:

A stroll through Malta’s capital - timesofmalta.com

The Island

I am thinking of islands that have a place in world literature, music, cinema or television.

"Lost" comes to mind although I don't think the island actually had a name. I guess it was just "The Island" but I can't remember. I was so disappointed with the last episode that I am trying to click on "Delete" in my mind.

What about "Laputa", you know, not only Jonathan Swift's Laputa but Miyazaki's film which I thoroughly enjoyed?

I believe that Thomas More's "Utopia" was an island. And what about "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" and its Cephallonia? Or Gilligan's island?, Azkaban?,Avalon? "The Count of Montecristo"'s Château d'If?, Isla Tortuga?, "Treasure Island"?

What about "The Beach Boys": "Aruba, Jamaica ooo I wanna take ya, Bermuda, Bahama come on pretty mama" and of course, the song that came to mind when I was quietly minding my own business and the creative energy just rushed through my veins making me want to write about this island which is my home.

The song, you might have gathered by the little twist on the title, is Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" which unless you have been living under a rock especially in the 80s you would be familiar with. If, for some unfathomable reason, you don't know it, I will leave you with this version from Alizée which I quite like.

I would bet that there is some list of islands in literature, music, etc around here on the infinitely fabulous binary world of the internet if you want to give it a go. I can't be bothered right now.

So, what's the name of the paradisiacal island which has the honour to be called home by moi? Clues? Mediterranean sunny island which was home to the Knights of St John and survived the Great Siege of 1565...I need to say no more...yeah, you got it! Malta!

And since summer is practically on us once again, and it's a public holiday of which I am glad to say we have quite a few (how many is it? 15 days a year?) I am off to the seaside with one of the several books I am reading at the moment "The Discovery of Heaven". Or I might just stay at home for now and go for a walk when it's not too hot.

In the meantime Mozart's Requiem is waiting for me to click on "play".

By the way, just in case you are wondering what we commemorate today: It's "Sette Giugno" and we remember the death of 4 Maltese men during riots in 1919. You can read about it here on Wikipedia.