David’s blog

Stung by the Congestion Charge

2008-02-15T14:06:29Z

Today I discovered that the capital of Malta, Valletta, has a congestion charging scheme. I learned the hard way - I received a bill for having driven there in November. It wasn't a terribly hard way though - I owe them a total of 0.83 euros - abo...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

The No-Hunger Diet

2008-02-12T17:17:01Z

This morning marked the glorious success of my new diet. I've been on a 'No Hunger' diet of my own invention. It's based on the theory that if you put yourself through a lot of hunger then your body will react by thinking it needs to store more fa...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Church of St Paul the Hermit

2008-01-27T17:38:27Z

Even though Malta is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, there are nevertheless places you can walk that take you into the countryside and you can feel as though you are far from the madding crowd. One such place is a walk down ...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

January Sunbathers

2008-01-27T17:17:30Z

I went for a walk around the local bay today and was surprised to see sunbathers on the beach. They were mostly older people - I think that older people don't feel the cold so much - at least my granny didn't. I think it's a bit too cold to be sun...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

An Old Joke

2008-01-16T09:14:20Z

I've been reading a book lately called 'On Food and Cooking' by Harold McGee. It explains the chemistry, in layman's terms fortunately, that underlies cooking. It debunks some received wisdom about cooking techniques, and explains why others are c...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Cable Outage

2007-12-20T14:54:15Z

As I rely on having broadband Internet to do my job, I had two suppliers: cable as the main supplier and ADSL as a back-up in case cable went down. But the ADSL one didn't work especially well and in the first 3 months of being here cable worked f...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Frank Pharmacists

2007-12-05T08:28:45Z

Malta is a very prudish country; much more so than Britain and America. It has laws that American social conservatives can only dream of: no topless sunbathing, no pornography, no lap dancers, no prostitution, no abortion, no divorce, no gay marri...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Malta's IT Exhibition

2007-11-07T20:43:46Z

A couple of weeks back I went to an IT Exhibition at Malta's main exhibition centre. It was a really impressive event. All Malta's main technology companies were there and I found out the whereabouts of the country's computer shops. There was a m...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

The Golden Rules of Maltese Shopkeeping

2007-11-05T19:45:37Z

There are many really good things about Malta, but its Retail Sector isn't one of them. The apparent reluctance to sell anything at all constantly reminds me of Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch. I have studied the behaviour of shopkeepers and, th...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

The Change Wars

2007-10-02T18:25:24Z

As a young school boy with no bus pass, long before the days of Oyster cards, I was forced to pay for my frequent bus rides in cash. The bus drivers had a large float of small coins to ensure that they would have enough to give change. Rather more...

Read and post comments | Send to a friend