HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

First things first… I wish all you mums out there a happy, sunny Mother’s Day! I hope you get to enjoy some serious pampering, because you deserve it!

PHOTOHUNT

Sorry, folks, I’m chickening out again. This week’s photohunt theme is In Memory. My very first thought was, quite naturally, of my mother, who hasn’t celebrated a Mother’s Day in 23 years. Time is racing so bloody fast! I decided against participating. Not because I don’t want to show her to you, but because I don’t feel like making her the subject of a photohunt. Another reason is that I have no time for visiting other photohunters. It makes me feel sort of bad, even though I know it shouldn’t. What can I say, that’s the way I tick…

HERE COMES THE SUN!

OMG, I can hardly believe it but it seems winter is really and truly behind us at last! A bright blue sky tickled me to rush out and buy all the stuff necessary for the first BBQ of 2009. Obviously I’ll still sit there with 3 sweaters and a jacket – but boy, am I looking forward to tonight! Actually, it takes me a little by surprise just how much I miss dining outdoors. I mean, I really like winter, clouds and rain… but I guess that’s just the same as with your favourite dish; if you gotta eat it every day for 3 months, it will be your favourite no longer!

ELECTION FEVER

As yo might have glanced from the update to my last post, the saga continues: With timing that’s nothing short of perfect – at the end of the day that was the deadline for foreigners to appeal against being struck off the electoral register – it was revealed that it was, in fact, unlawful for the Electoral Commission to throw us out in the first place. Hahaha. Did I just hear you mutter, “Mickey Mouse country”?

DISCOVERING TANZANIA

I’m not habitually using my blog to advertise my employers, but this one is too cool not to mention it:  Kempinski is just about to open a hotel, the Bilila Lodge Kempinski,  in the heart of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. I know… I’m as unlikely to holiday there one day as most of you probably are. Even with our fabulous staff rate, the airfaire is a little too steep for me. But as you know, I’m a dreamer, and there is this travel blog which Kempinski has set up, which will probably end up whetting my appetit for more… Of course that’s what it is meant to do, I’m not stupid. But I can’t help it: I just love this idea!

(“Which idea?” you’re asking, “that of going to Tanzania or the setting up of that blog?” Well… um… both! )

URLAUB UND LEBEN IN MALTA

And while I am at dishing out links… A few days ago, Tina commented on my blog, and nosy person that I am, I checked out the link to her blog, Malta Aktuell. Writing in German, Tina gives a lot of useful information about anything to do with Malta. It makes very interesting reading – and will come in very handy for all the German-speaking surfers, who land on my blog and don’t quite find what they were looking for!

GRIŻU (WHO JUST MIGHT TURN OUT TO BE GRIŻA!)

Griż is Maltese and means “grey”. The ending of -u refers to a male, -a to a female. As I mentioned a while ago, we have a new resident in our garden, who I call Griżu because the face looks male to me LOL! So far he hasn’t let me look whether he should actually be named Griża, so I’ll have to keep my mind open for now. He’s slowly starting to lose his fear of us, and miraculously has no major fights with Felix (a female!!), who usually is very fiercely protective of her territory.

Someone must have thrown to poor thing out and left him to fend for himself; the marks around his neck indicate that he’s worn a collar for a long, long time. I really hate these people who have it in them to not give a damn about what is going to happen to their pet. Griżu is hardly more than skin and bones, which looks kind of odd on the furry little thing. But once he’s putting on some weight (he will!), he’ll be a really handsome fellow!

Happy weekend!

I didn’t go out taking shots for the PhotoHunt – I knew a couple of weeks ago what I would post for the Walking theme! Taken in November 2007 with my old camera, it shows my hubby walking in the countryside behind our village.

Have a great weekend!

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Current Mood: just fine

The PhotoHunt theme this week is Protect(ion); I’m stretching this a little by showing you some serious lack of protection. I took these photos yesterday morning from my garden – it shows a worker on a construction site. Not sure if he’s got a death wish or maybe he thinks he’s invincible. This guy was standing right on the edge, some 3 storeys above the ground, without any protective gear whatsoever; it made me dizzy just watching him!

Maybe I should add that this is by no means unusual in Gozo. And deaths from falls are not exactly uncommon either. Makes you shake your head, doesn’t it?!

The weather is very kind to us this weekend; it seems this is the first real spring day we’re enjoying. So please don’t take it personally if I don’t visit you – or if I do might not comment – because it’s a crime not to go out there and get some sunshine into my face!!

Wish you all a happy weekend!

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PS: I haven’t forgotten about my promise to tell you how to do a triangle collage…. just was a little late with it: please scroll down to the next post!

A few of you knew, via facebook, what I was up to today. I was invited to give a talk about my experiences as an author at the library in Victoria. Hesitatingly I accepted. I hesitated because when I speak in front of people, silly things happen to me, over which I have no control whatsoever – shaky hands/legs/voice… I don’t know why but I suspect some wicked fairie must have cast a spell over me, a long, long time ago!

Spell or not, I agreed to do it, and wiggling my way out of it was no option, seeing that chickenpox or measles didn’t materialize! Thankfully my hubby joined me, even though he’s not too keen on such events.

Hereunder you can read what I told the audience… at least it’s what I attempted to tell them because once in a while I was was hit by little waves of courage to try speaking freely – and I promptly lost my place on the page. Oh well…

This year is only 4 months old but it has already been filled with excitement and strange things happening to me. I missed a flight home from holidays, broke a wrist, met my favourite rock star in person and celebrated my 50th birthday. And now I can add  “giving a speech” to my list of things I’ve done for the first time in my life.

You’ll notice I’m a miserable speaker – if you haven’t noticed that already! There are people who have the gift of mesmerising you with what they have to say. BUT: many of them – even presidents of the United States – need someone else to write the speech for them! I thought I’d be quite good at doing THAT – so that’s what I did (*waves her papers*) and I’ll read it to you, if you don’t mind.

I am supposed to tell you about my experiences as an author. I’m not sure I can fill the 12 minutes allotted to me… I’m not even sure that you actually want to know what I have to say! Because, you see, writing a book, being an author isn’t anything glamorous at all. Well, unless you’re someone like Danielle Steele or J K Rowling… but most authors are NOT like them at all!

I wrote Angelina’s Ghost when I literally had nothing better to do; it was a weekend in late October, I think. The weather was dreadful; you know, the kind that makes you want to stay on a sofa reading a good book… a bit like today, actually. Others might watch a DVD, listen to music… for me it has always been books. And on that weekend, I had run out of reading fodder, and as you know it isn’t so easy in Gozo to just go out at any time of the day or week and buy books. So I thought, I might as well start writing my own.

The idea of writing a book had been in the back of my head for ages. And I always imagined to write something on the lines of “Fawlty Towers” – that’s because I had worked in hotels for many years, and I can tell you, there ARE funny stories to be told!  But then I started writing, and something weird happened… the story took on a life of its own and went into a completely different direction. Angelina introduced herself to me – please, don’t ask me where she came from; many people asked me that… but believe me, I REALLY don’t know!

In effect, the book became a description of Gozo, of LIFE in Gozo. Obviously I’ve drawn on my own experiences a lot – but still it isn’t my story at all! Angelina’s Ghost received one review, and it was a rather bad one. I  was interviewed for the “largest English-speaking newspaper” in Malta, and apparently I frustrated the journalist because I refused to tell her what was fact and what was fiction! Today I can laugh about it, but at the time I was hugely disappointed. —

OK, to get back to the author experience… I continued writing every day, and finished it in a little less than 3 months. Then the actual work started, and frustration by the bucket-load. I sent a synopsis and the first 3 chapters of the manuscript (280 pages with about 65,000 words) – to several literary agents and publishers in UK. Several refusals later I just gave up on that avenue. Locally, it was just as bad. Actually worse, because nobody even wanted to know what it was about, leave alone read it. I knocked quite a few doors, tried to get a sponsorship… but failed miserably.

Two years later, I read the manuscript again, just to see if I’d still think it was good enough – and I decided to self-publish it. I started with a “printing-on-demand” company through the internet which worked a charm, but because of the high shipping cost from USA the price was way too high for a paperback to sell locally. In the end, I came to an agreement with a printer in Gozo, who agreed that he’d get paid after a certain grace period, in order to give me time to sell some books.

On a sunny morning I went to Victoria to take a photo for my book cover; I designed the cover, bought an ISBN, formatted the manuscript for printing. I’ll spare you the story of getting that book out of the printing press. It was – sorry to say that – a typical Gozitan story of countless instances of “phone me next week” . By the time I finally held Angelina’s Ghost in my hands, I started believing in miracles!

So now, I became a sales & marketing agent and a delivery person. I had some posters printed, for display in bookshops, stuffed my car boot with hundreds of books. The largest quantity I managed to get rid of in one go was 10 (on a sell or return basis, obviously), because space is always an issue – sadly there are no bookshops in Gozo that are just… bookshops!

Have I made you breathless with my story? Well, it made ME breathless at times! At the end of it all I sold just about enough books to be able to pay for the printing; about 400 are still sitting in a bedroom cupboard…  But I AM aware that selling almost half of those thousand books wasn’t actually bad at all. And looking back at the WHOLE experience, I feel it’s a big achievement to have it done all by myself, and I’m quite happy with that.

***

So far my “experiences of an author”. I can’t tell you how surprised I was, when I received Irene’s phone call last month – that’s almost 3 years after publishing Angelina’s Ghost – inviting me to speak on World Book Day! My first reaction was to refuse. I mean, I’m REALLY not made for public speaking – and I’m not even a writer any more. Writing for a living is mission impossible in Gozo. I’m not bitter or anything, because in fact my “normal” daytime job involves a lot of creative writing, so in a roundabout way I’m still doing what I love doing, for a living.

In the end I agreed to come here because of my passion for books. I love reading just as much as I do writing, perhaps more so. And I thought I’d give you my two cents’ worth on reading…  When I have the choice, I’ll read a book rather than watch a film. While reading, I watch my own film, so to speak. When I read, the house could come crashing down around me and I wouldn’t notice – just ask my husband (*points at George*), he’ll confirm that for you!

I know that reading plays an important role in the development of vocabulary; to widen our horizon; to learn about other cultures. I mean, I know that TODAY – when I was a child, I simply enjoyed reading. And thankfully nobody ever tried forcing books on me. – When I received books on birthdays or for Christmas it was because I had asked for them!

I’m not an expert in education, but I think when we talk to our kids about reading we’re putting too much emphasis on how important it is. And what is more, we give them books that WE think they should read. In effect, we are taking the fun out of the whole thing; reading becomes yet another chore that must fit in with all the other tasks they HAVE TO do in a day. Don’t get me wrong, of course literature is important. But reading just for fun is – especially for children – much more important, to instil a love for books in them in the first place!

THE END…

Current Mood: Creative

I’m afraid I got carried away a little this week; fiddling with my photos is one of the best ways for me to clear my head from the stress at work. (Only going out taking them works better!)

My PhotoHunt Triangle post has loads of triangles… I’ve created this post on Thursday night, but I’m hoping to add a second set of triangles Friday night or Saturday morning. But just in case my plans don’t work out (they do have a habit of changing when I least expect it!), here is my set showing a few of my favourite views of Gozo:

Back with more – hopefully – later!

Just in case you’re getting a little fed up with my Rogermania, here’s a refreshing change – my PhotoHunt Stripes pics.

If on the other hand you can’t get enough of Roger, I’ve thrown together 20 minutes of little bits of Roger Hodgson’s concert. Nothing professional, but seeing all the hits I’m getting from fans who google Roger, I thought it might brighten their day! :)

Happy weekend!

Just a quickie rant, which has been on my mind for a while.

There has been no rainfall in Gozo for 7 days (and for the past couple of days the weather has been wonderful!!). Yet if you see the stream of water coming from the fields and crossing the road just by the aqueduct in Victoria, you would think there has just been a major downpour a couple of hours ago.

That “puddle” (to put it mildly!) is a nuisance for motorists – especially cyclists and motorcyclists – not to mention pedestrians. Gharb Road is rather popular with walkers, who risk being showered every time they pass by that stretch, and there’s no escaping it.

The road, by the way,  just over a year old, was built at a cost of over a million euro per kilometre. I wonder by how much the price would have been inflated, had a little culvert been planned for. But it seems the word planning isn’t well-liked in this country…

This might be my last post this week (if not this year!); there aren’t enough hours in a day to cope with everything that needs to be done (a) before Christmas and (b) before going on holiday next Sunday (and that our flight is at 03:50 hrs in the morning, doesn’t help either!). A couple of days ago it suddenly occurred to me that this is the first time in many, many years that I’ll be working on Christmas Eve. We always had a “big” dinner at home on the 24th, which I don’t see how I can possibly handle this time. I was already panicking when an idea hit me – this year we’re going to have fondue, so everyone simply cooks his/her own food LOL! Still, there are preparations to be made. But I’ve already started feeling better since I had this idea!

Last weekend was quite a hectic one. I did get the most important shopping done. I even did my grocery shopping at the Duke – but I’m not sure when I’ll do that again. You see, they have underground parking – fabulous, eh? It wasn’t even busy, and I’m still thanking my lucky stars for that. Because to get two storeys down below, you drive on a single lane, which would be fine if it wasn’t the same lane you have to take to get back to daylight. In any other country on this globe the traffic light system would probably even work: if one has a red light, one stops and waits. But in this blessed country it’s different (like so many things…); since when do people here stop at a red light if they don’t see a reason why they should wait? And sure enough, I had almost reached the end of my way out when I met a Maltese vehicle head-on. Oh the joy! It wasn’t that bad, but I shudder to think how the system will cope with a really busy shopping morning…

Late afternoon I finally got to see Chasing Pandora live again, who had a gig at Arkadia. It was nice, but too short, and the atmosphere on the whole was a little too “cool” – not the music’s fault, but the crowd’s! But hey, it’s a shopping mall (albeit a small one!)… I uploaded three photos to my photoblog, but more can be seen in my facebook photo album. It just takes too long to do them one by one on the photoblog. One of these days I’ll have to see how I can improve on that site… (yeah, right!)

After the gig we went off to admire Bethlehem in Għajnsielem, at long last (again, photos are on facebook )! The “village” is very pretty, and the idea a great one, too. Silly me wished for a stand with mulled wine though LOL! But I reckon they didn’t have that two thousand years ago… :D Baby Jesus probably wished for something warm, too. I don’t think it’s great fun to stay in one place for hours as the “actors” did. So a big prosit to all involved – you’re putting up a truly wonderful show!

After Għajnsielem it was pizza at Smugglers’ again (they ought to give us some kind of frequent visitors’ discount!!). They had this little Father Christmas that from a distance looked like a real person sitting at a table (as a matter of fact, it was only half life-size and standing behind the table). Although hubby gets annoyed when I do that, I couldn’t resist snatching a shot…

That’s all for today, I think. I wish you all a very happy Christmas and hope you get to enjoy it in peace, with your loved ones – and without too much stress!

…or SOOC for short. This new meme has just been created by Jan, and I really like her idea: “Do you ever take a photo that you love; it comes out so well, straight from the camera, that you’re not tempted to do a thing with it, once you’ve downloaded it. It’s wonderful and you want to share it.” I really don’t have the time to browse yet more blogs… time will tell if I’ll be able to keep this one up!

So without further ado: here’s the unadultered Xlendi sunset shot I took on New Year’s Day 2008, and which I liked so much that I had a large print made by my son (who happens to work with the people who are the agents for Canon printers in Malta ):

Please respect my rights as creator of this image; do not use it without my written consent. Thanks!

The theme of this week’s PhotoHunt is Scary, probably in honour of upcoming halloween. The 31st October isn’t a hugely celebrated occasion in the Maltese islands, although it’s getting more popular as more returning emigrants – and most notably their kids – bring this custom with them. And of course various bars jumping on the bandwagon of a business opportunity.

What is big over here, is carnival – and particularly popular is the so-called spontaneous carnival held in the streets of Nadur. It’s anything but spontaneous; many participants prepare themselves and their theme painstakingly for weeks, even months in advance! But it isn’t organised by anyone as such;  everybody just knows to “be” in Nadur.

I didn’t mean to waffle on and on about the Nadur carnival, so I’ll stop right after remarking that for the uninitiated it can be a pretty scary affair, even though it is all very harmless and in good spirits.  So without further ado, here’s my scary entry, taken – you’ll have guessed it LOL – at the last carnival in Nadur :)

(There’s a whole photo album of pics I took at last year’s carnival in Nadur on slide.com).

Finally, here’s a bonus shot of my scary son all “dressed up” for carnival, a few years ago – no larger version available:

I wish you a happy weekend and photohunting – and an interesting Halloween, too!:)

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