Here I am with a couple of Couch Surfers, Jane from Queensland, Australia, and Jenna from St John's, Canada, who stayed with me for a few days shortly before Christmas. They were followed by a couple of young men, Josh from the States and now resident in Germany, and Malik from Pakistan, now resident in Sweden.
I'm a big Couch Surfing fan. Like many others, when I first heard of it I thought "great - a free place to stay!" I quickly discovered that the 'free' side of it was the least important. The best aspect is making new friends and getting to know a place from the point of view of a local person, especially when your host has some free time to show you around.
Now that I'm largely housebound, hosting Couch Surfers has become a significant element of my social life - this is how I travel and meet new and interesting people. I pay a price. One of the worst ME symptoms I have at present is 'brain fog'. This is a kind of fuzziness - like a combination of a really bad head cold with your worst-ever hangover - that invades my head. The more I talk, and the more noise there is around me, the worse it gets. One moment I'm enjoying an animated conversation about the horrors of loud snorers in youth hostels, the next moment the snoring is reverberating inside my head and I'm forced to retreat like someone with migraine. But it doesn't go away. And even though I only enjoyed having guests for five days my poor old head is still buzzing and fizzing and pining me in place, glued to the couch all on my own, wondering when the fog will clear.

I was on the phone for almost an hour, gazing out the window the while, watching nothing more than a couple of ships. Turned to go make my breakfast, and, a mere 15 minutes later as I'm setting the plate on the table by the window, look up in shock to see this enormous rig passing by. It is far larger when seen from my window than how it appears in the photo (I went up to snap these shots from the roof).

And just in case you're wondering - I know it looks lovely and sunny, but the temperature today is 15C/59F, and indoors without heating it feels quite chilly!

The View From Where I Sit

We're having one of those days I love here - a balmy 19C (66F), sunny, and only the lightest of breezes. So I dug out my camera and snapped a few shots to show you what I'm looking at as I gaze out the window.

To my right the view is partially blocked by an apartment building, but partially hidden from view beyond it today is what looks like a fishing vessel that has been sitting there for several days now. The ships come and go. I enjoy all the traffic, from the tiniest one-person one-sail boat, to the ginormous cruise ships and container ships. The cruise ships are more frequent in summer and look like white apartment blocks floating past on their way to or from the Valletta Grand Harbour without stopping. Other working ships of all sizes frequently make anchor here, waiting for a storm to clear, waiting for a berth in the container port? I'm never sure.



Today is a public holiday here, so there are some sail boats out on the water, and early this morning before I was up I heard the sound of a small motor boat headed somewhere - Gozo? On sunny weekends in the summer and early autumn the blue water is full of white sails and luxury white motor launches.


This is the street in front of my flat. To the left, a couple of miles further down, is the original resort area of St Paul's Bay. It has been overtaken in popularity by the area of Bugibba/Qawra where I now live. Opposite my flat there's a semi-abandoned house (you can see the peeling yellow paint). This happens a great deal here. Many people own two properties, one inland, one by the sea. As they get older the sea-side property is used less often and gradually not at all. Then someone dies, inheritance battles ensue, and in the meantime properties quickly decay. Saddest is seeing old street front buildings lining the popular urban bays such as Gzira, Sliema, St Julians where the peeling paint, rotting window frames, and weed-sprouting walls of abandoned buildings lend a seedy air to otherwise prosperous resorts. In the meantime over 50,000 unsold newly built units in bleak modern blocks of flats sit empty.


This photo was taken with the zoom, so what you see here I'm not able to see with my own eyes. What you see in the mid-foreground is St Paul's Island, with a statue of St Paul, where the disciple Paul landed, shipwrecked, while being taken to Rome. Thanks to him Malta became an early outpost of Christianity and today there are (apparently) more churches than days of the year for a population of less than half a million people.

In the distance what you're looking at is the island of Gozo (known to Maltese as Ghawdex (aow-desh), and the enormous (and hazy in this photo) church to the right is the rotunda of the parish church of St John the Baptist in the village of Xewkija. The dome is higher than St Paul's Cathedral in London and the nave can seat 4000 people (around three times the village's population).

Back to the foreground and you may have noticed the odd-looking items in the water. These are fish farming ponds, full of tuna being fattened up for eventual sale in Japan. Raw tuna is very popular for sashimi in Japan (and Hawaii!) at this time of year.

That's my view today. I hope the weather stays good for the visitors I'm expecting!

Addicted to Reading

One reason for not writing more blog posts is that I get caught up in reading other people's blogs, or Face Book posts, or the news, or whatever else is in front of me. "I'll just read this" is what I'm thinking, and before I know it a few more hours have slid by. I'm the sort of person who'll sit and read the back of the cornflakes packet rather than eat without reading.

This week I began an on-line writing course based in NYC. This will now force me to write every week, although I know I'm going to spend hours reading the other participants' work too. Our first chat session was Monday evening NY time - which was 2 am Malta time. I managed to get myself up, but then my cats woke up too. Fynn was convinced that if I was up then it must be morning and therefore I should let him out. He proceeded to yowl and push pens and papers off the desk, so I ended up playing with him while trying to participate in the chat (which, fortunately, was written). Actually I'd imagined that 'chat session' meant we'd all be talking to each other and there'd be a row of video faces on my screen... but it seems technology hasn't quite come that far. Given the cat problems, not to mention problems arising from getting up at 2 am, I think I'll skive future chat sessions. After all, I can still read them later.

Orthostatic Intolerance

After a few good rain storms we're having perfect weather right now - if I could freeze Malta's climate at any one point in the year, this would be it. Today we have blue skies, a few puffy white clouds drifting here and there, 25 C, around 70% humidity (lower would be ok too), and a light east northeast breeze. I'm enjoying the weather from my patio and the couch, but frustrated because I had really hoped that with the cooling weather I'd be able to get out more. As it is, on-going dizziness has kept me tethered. I may have worked out the problem: orthostatic intolerance (OI) is a chronic state for many people with ME. OI is a condition in itself (there's a reasonable discussion of it on Wikipedia), but it's just one more of many symptoms experienced by MEites. One solution to chronic OI is to drink a very large amount of water, more than two liters per day. Now, I'm only 5'2", and I find it quite challenging to drink that much water - not to mention the hassle of keeping track, and all the bathroom breaks, and the vast amount of toilet paper used up in the process! Oh, and the cost of water - here in Malta tap water is undrinkable, and I buy mine in 19L bottles which are delivered, collected, and reused. Nevertheless, now that I'm aware of the problem I'm chugging the stuff down just as fast as I can, and hoping I'll be back on my feet and out taking afternoon walks again soon.

Picking up... cooling down.

After my 'crash' two weeks ago I'm gradually picking up again - I won't say "returning to normal", as there is no "normal" for me any longer. At least I'm not spending all day on the sofa (just a couple of hours), and I've been able to go out for a walk along the sea-front again.

Evening walk along the Qawra sea-front.

This morning I was browsing the "Life as we know it" blog and found this link to an "open letter to those without invisible disability or chronic illness" which I think is worth sharing: http://notdoneliving.net/openletter/id

Tourists are still here in abundance, enjoying breakfasts in the open and lining up for the buses; the locals are still parading on the sea-front on cool Sunday evenings - I know, because I can see them from the roof of my flat. But we've had a few short rain storms, the wind is up, and temperatures are dropping rapidly. I call it the start of the rainy season; 'autumn' or 'fall' doesn't quite fit here, as there are no leaves turning yellow, and this is the season when farmers begin putting compost on the fields in preparation for planting.

Another Qawra sunset photo!

Where in the World?

If you could choose to live anywhere in the world, where would you like to be? Why do you live where you are now? Is this where you were born and grew up, where your parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles live? Or have you been transplanted here in the search for work, for security, for a better life?

But if you could choose, and had the freedom to move, what would the criteria be? A good job, never mind the environment? Or clean air, quiet country lanes, a mountain view? Maybe the excitement of city life with theatre, concerts and shopping close by?

My own itchy feet are beginning to tingle again. The flat I'm renting is in the process of being sold and I'll have to move out around six months from now. I thought I'd just look for another flat close to this one - until I saw a notice of planning permission sought for the building next door. Construction in Malta is no joke, and is impossible to avoid. It's noisy - really, really noisy - thanks to the machines used to cut limestone blocks and tiles; it's dirty for the same reasons, the thick grey dust coats my windowsills even now; and it's slow and never stops - even in this recession. Ernle Bradford, writing about the Knights of St John in 1972, noted "Malta is in fact a giant stone-quarry... and from neolithic times onwards it seems as if this mass of easily-quarryable stone has induced a paroxysm of building in the island's inhabitants." (The Shield and the Sword: Ernle Bradford, p.204)

If you have the perfect place in mind: peaceful (in all senses of the word), with green trees, a blue ocean, glorious mountains, and - of course - affordable accommodation, let me know where it is!


Sun setting behind Gozo, viewed from Qawra, Malta - not as peaceful as it looks.

Buses take energy

About once every four to six weeks I feel like I've saved up enough energy to undertake an activity more demanding than my usual routine. This always, without fail, ends in another crash - but I go anyway. Yesterday I took the bus into Sliema, a 25-minute bus ride from here. There is actually a printed schedule for this service, posted up at the bus stop. I arrived ten minutes early, because you never know your luck. The bus came ten minutes late. I sat next to my neighbour, an American who lives in Paris and is working here for the summer at the Mediterraneo Marine Park which the bus passes on the coast road towards Sliema. He and two other park employees rang the bell for their stop. The driver, ignoring the bell, rattled past and only slowed down several hundred yards later. The three young people were not amused, but didn't waste their time complaining.

Two hours on, well into the heat of the day, my shopping done and visits concluded, I headed for the bus stop at the Sliema Ferries, only to see the bus I was hoping to catch pulling away - on time, of course! The next bus was due in twenty minutes. It never showed. The scheduled bus after that finally came along ten minutes late. The driver must have done his training in a dodgem car and I seriously wondered if we'd make it back to Qawra without hitting another vehicle.

My brain was fried for the rest of the day. For hours I gazed stupidly and unproductively at the computer screen instead of taking a proper rest. For dinner I ate half a packet of corn cakes with butter instead of eating a sensible salad. When I went out to drag in my unwilling cat from the garden I almost got into a fight with a neighbour because I had difficulty explaining that I had not done what she thought I had done... and now I'll begin saving up my energy for the next escape from my prison with a view in six weeks' time.


Maltese bus - photo taken by a friend visiting in January.

Polish Couch Surfer Writes Malta Blog!

My two Polish Couch Surfers moved into their own flat last night. One of them, Peter, is a 21 year-old student of International Relations and has begun writing a blog about his experiences here in Malta. I often find it interesting to read about what other people find quirky and strange in a place that I know well. If you're interested in such musings too, Peter's blog can be found here: http://www.maltasmellsnice.blogspot.com/

I'm impressed by his writing skills in English. I wonder how many British, US or Australian 21 year-olds can write as well in a second language? The general lack of second language skills among young native English speakers is a sad indictment of the arrogance of the English-speaking world.

Hot and Humid

This is the time of year in Malta that reminds me of Timor. I'm pouring sweat just sitting still. Yesterday I was out for my fortnightly trip to the supermarket in Birkirkara (often written B'kara) with my friend Lenore, and we were reassuring each other that the end of summer was in sight, "only four more weeks of this weather", and "the sun's setting earlier these days". Yes, I complained all winter about how cold it was, and now I can't wait for summer to end! But at the moment I'm stuck indoors most days from around 9 am until 7 pm because the sun is simply too strong and too hot for my body to take - even equipped with dark sunglasses, hat and parasol (well, my umbrella). Roll on September!