Your view is not superior.

The majority has spoken. Spring Hunting shall be retained in Malta. We live in a democracy. Now let it go.

It’s easy to think that all the people who have voted against your will are demons. That’s natural, if a bit dumb and egotistic. But it’s not the case. Everybody has their own reason for voting what they voted, if you voted No, perhaps you want to protect birds, or send a message to hunters, or some other reason; if you voted YES, perhaps you’re a hunter, or you think that hunters shouldn’t all be punished, or you’re liberal and think that it’s not your place to interfere with what other people do. Either way, nobody is an idiot, nobody is a disgrace to Malta, nobody is stupid. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, and yours is not superior.

And this especially goes to the bashing of Malta on twitter by foreigners. We may have 2 weeks of hunting birds longer than you do, but we don’t have fox hunting, badger culling and every other pastime you have. And if we did, I can still think of a hundred reasons why even though I lived in your country I came back to mine. 

Who are we?!

I have occasionally heard Maltese people comment that large cities abroad are cold and heartless… often they exclaim that if you tripped and fell on a London street, people would walk over you without stopping to see whether you are alright. This is said to imply that it would not happen here. I have to say it’s true of villages… but what about our cities and busy towns? Are we losing our “small country” camaraderie? 

Last year, a very-heavily pregnant me, tripped on a pothole in Valley Road, and fell flat forward. I don’t need to tell you how many cars passed by until I lifted myself up slowly and calmed myself down enough to walk to my car. It was a wide part of Valley Road too… one where cars stop illegally on the side of the road all the time to browse through the various showrooms lining the street. Not a single car stopped to see whether I was alright that day, although a few did slow down to get a good look. 

Last week, I was involved in a  small collision in an extremely busy street junction at traffic peak hour. I took my 7-month old out of her car seat and went as far into the side of the road as I could, to avoid the small crash turning into a catastrophe. Until traffic wardens arrived, I can confidently say that over two thousand cars passed and had a good look at the woman with the baby whose car was smashed in the middle of the junction. Not a single person stopped to check whether my child or I were ok.

This morning I came across a Facebook post by a woman who graciously gave me permission to paste it here. 

 

Comments underneath the post are more of the same… so what happened to us?

Are our lives becoming so fast that we no longer have the time to stop for a minute to make sure somebody else is alright? Have we all of a sudden developed such an overinflated sense of self importance that our schedule takes precedence over general courtesy? 

My own reply to the above post is what triggered this blog post. I wrote: 

I think that to myself every morning, driving to and from work in what is known as an area that increases congestion. When I’m driving, I make it a point to always allow one car to join whatever lane/queue I’m in. If we all did that, there would be absolutely no congestion in side streets at all. But every single day, whoever I am letting out in front of me is surprised! They normally look at me until I actually have to signal that it’s alright for them to come out. 

 When I’m in standstill traffic in a road full of side streets, I make it a point to leave the exit from the side street clear, because I don’t really need to gain that 2 metres, and block people from going out, thus causing congestion myself… But cars who are behind me always hoot their horns at me when I leave that 2 metre gap for side street car drivers to go about their way. They prefer that I cram my car up the queue and block the side street…. Insane? Stupid? Egoistic? What on earth have we become?

 

If we lose our “small country” characteristics, aren’t we just giving up everything that makes us unique? Progress is not always positive. 

Riding the gravy train heading to Whine-upon-Welfare-State

Opening inewsmalta this morning I came across this article: 

http://www.inewsmalta.com/dart/20130726-kienet-qed-tistenna-isptar-qalulha-til-aq-tmur-tiekol-id-dar

Then I read the comments underneath. You’d think they’d be about the article… they’re not… they’re a blame fest on this government vs the last one. A tug of war if you will on whether or not shortcomings in this or that governmental department may still be blamed on previous government or whether this government has now had enough time to sprinkle its gold dust over the rock and turn it into what they both promised it would be. Oh and the tirades on how Malta is a third world country ( I guarantee you the author of this gem has never set foot in one), and how the service is worse than ever (yup! you read that right! Worse than when we had cockroaches running around us at the old hospital – under both governments!), oh and my favourite one, on how illegal immigrants are now getting better social services than the Maltese! I love this one! Apparently they get served before at Mater Dei! PS. I invite the author of this one to trade places with an illegal immigrant needing medical assistance for just half a day. What ignorance! Talk about missing the wood for the trees. 

I have been to Mater Dei gynae outpatients countless times these past 7 months. Never was the service less than brilliant.  Yet every time we were there, there was some self-entitled wise-arse who thought that they should be receiving better treatment than everybody else in there, There’s always one who decides the system is way beneath their expectations! One woman complained that they should allow for more than 1 family member to enter the ward with the patient in the same breath as she was saying that the place was too crowded! I suppose she wanted to be the one holding her daughter’s hand during her 4D ultrasound rather than her daughter’s husband. Every time you get some old ignorant hag complaining in there, regardless of the validity of her argument, you always have the village gossip 3 seats down wanting something to complain about to the village idiots at the ‘grocers’ when she gets home.

The incident this article is about was an unfortunate one, but definitely not your everyday occurrence and definitely not one for the papers, Either that, or I indeed get better treatment than everybody else! Rather than trying to look for things to dramatise and whine about, why don’t we praise our staff and make sure they get the encouragement they need to do a better job? Because then we’d have nothing to whine about, that’s why! 

We will not move forward as a country until we all learn to put our own agendas and prejudices aside, and push forward for the good of the country, and nothing  and nobody else. And please…that doesn’t mean that you twist your own agenda around to prove it benefits the country! 

 

 

Dear Malta Football Association…

The MFA has banned rugby clubs from training on synthetic pitches.

The only reason for that can be the fact that they’re scared shitless of somebody in the new government realising they’ve been pumping millions into the wrong sport. Dear MFA, you don’t get ahead by stopping others from participating, you get ahead by bettering yourselves. You haven’t managed to stop rugby from growing through the last 13 years, although not from lack of trying, and you will still not manage to stop it from growing now. Keep your pitches, our national rugby team could train on sand and gravel and still get better results….you’re a disgrace to sport, and should be ashamed to call yourselves Maltese. 

Where are all the keyboard cowboys now?

In a local newspaper last week, I saw a half-page notice advising the public of a consultancy meeting being held for the general public by the Commission for the Holistic Reform of the Justice System. The notice said that the public was welcome to submit its views by e-mail or phone, and more importantly to attend the meeting. 

In the interest of the fact that I plan to spend the rest of my career as a forensic psychologist, I felt the need to go to the meeting, and perhaps, given the chance, to air one or two of my own views, which after all, are not my own, but observations that I have gathered from the work I have done in the field so far. My views are many, but those are best left to another blog post. 

Judging by the amount of comments made daily on every article about the courts in every newspaper website Malta has to offer, I figured that I would not have the chance to speak. On the contrary, there were a total of 20 people at this meeting, four of whom were there to speak, and two of those spoke of personal issues, which defied the purpose of the meeting. You’d think the entire country was satisfied with the way the criminal justice system operates. Where are all the keyboard cowboys when they are asked to do something about their complaints?!