What colour is your brain?

Here's a little something to take a few minutes break from what you're doing... My brain's blue - funny, just what I expected: blue is my favourite colour!

Thanks for this, Qaminante! :)



BLUE:

At work or in school: I like to be with people, sharing with them, inspiring them, and helping them. I work and learn best when I can take into consideration people and the human element. I flourish in an atmosphere of cooperation.

With friends: I always look for perfect love. I am very romantic, and I enjoy doing thoughtful things for others. I am affectionate, supportive and a good listener.

With family: I like to be happy and loving. I am very sensitive to rejection from my family and to family conflicts. I really like to be well thought of and need frequent reassurance. I love intimate talks and warm feelings.


What Color is Your Brain?

Carnival at last!

Carnival weekend turned around quite nicely, thank you very much! :)

After a hell of a hail shower came down on us early afternoon yesterday, the weather became pretty reasonable later in the day. A couple of showers here and there were hardly worth a mention and could not do much to dampen the merry spirit!

The highlight of the weekend was without a doubt that several maltaforum users came up to Gozo! There were Drunkenangel and Toothwaste, Johnbull, and later we also met Sharatan and top-mods Phreakles and Tuxka - all of them made for great company!

After pigging out on D-Bar's delicious spare ribs in honey crust, it was off to Nadur to admire all those weird and wonderful creations. I'd say we had a great time; it's so amazing how much fun you can have with people who you've never met before outside cyberspace! I laughed so much that my muscles are still in recover mode today. Not to mention the hangover. Too many drinks making the rounds when you're in a group of many people...

Here are a few pics capturing the typical Nadur atmosphere. If you missed out on it this year - Johnbull actually admitted he'd never been to Nadur before and had no idea at all what to expect!! - well, I hope you'll be there in 2007. Don't miss out again! ;-)

Grey Weekend...

This view from my living room window perfectly describes our carnival weekend weather... It's wet out there, and stormy - in short: sad! It looks like we're going to pass once again on roaming Nadur's streets - does St Peter know when to bless us with bad weather?! The weather forecast for the next 5 days promises more of the same!

Gozo will miss out on a lot of weekend "tourists" from Malta. Not that I'm particularly missing such invasions, but the island as a whole heavily depends on them, and it's unfortunately such "action weekends" that draw the Maltese to Gozo.

What a let-down... :(

Prinjolata!

A couple of weeks before Carnival weekend, the local carnival sweet starts appearing in the shelves of sweets shops and supermarkets around the island. It is a very sweet and rich kind of cake, which I'm soooo looking forward to every year! It is instantly recognisable by its peculiar shape and icing, but the quality varies considerably.

<< Prinjolata in its virgin state...

<< ...and on the inside

(Explanations are obviously for the benefit of my foreign friends!)

After buying one a couple of days ago, I have for the first time looked up prinjolata recipes on the internet and was surprised how many references to it I found. I don't expect to feel adventurous enough in the near future to try it out myself, but I really wanted to know what actually goes into it - I don't really know why I've never bothered trying to find out in all these years...

If you are interested too, you can find recipes here and there!

Sting is coming to Malta!

Hey, some good news for music fans in Malta and Gozo: The Times of Malta carried an article yesterday, announcing a concert by Sting in Malta on June 6th!!! (Please note newspaper link will be active only for one month after publication!)
[Photo (c) Times of Malta]

In the article, Herman Grech calls Sting "one of rock music's foremost icons", who along "with Elton John, ... is arguably the biggest music name ever imported into Malta."

I think that's arguable indeed... Now, don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about, and looking forward to, Sting's concert. I'll definitely be there! But other than Elton John we had Jethro Tull, Fish, Steve Hackett and last (but definitely not least!!) Roger Hodgson coming over a couple of years ago - none of whom could be classified as "small fish"!

Truth is, I'd actually prefer Roger to return to Malta, instead of Sting... I skim every news item about forthcoming concerts of his, alas Malta hasn't been on that list so far. However, I'm still hopeful as the list continues to grow! This is my favourite photo of Roger that I took standing just a few metres away during his concert, which took my breath away:

Ticket prices for Sting's concert range between Lm15 and Lm50, pretty steep in my opinion. I mean, you wouldn't go for a 15 bugs one... might as well stay home and watch a video!

Anyways. It's really good news that the "stars" are considering Malta as a venue. Let's hope that many more will follow! Oh, and Roger, don't forget that you promised to come back!!!

:-)

N. B. In connection with this, I'd like to invite all Roger Hodgson fans to log into Indelibrella's fansite chatroom tonight, from 8 pm (Malta time) onwards. Would be great seeing you there!

Carnival!

Now that New Year's and Valentine's Day are over, the next milestone of the year's passing is carnival. This morning I dug out old photos; you know, those real ones that you stick into an album, which you can browse even in times of power cuts. This one (more exactly, it's 2 pics merged into one) is of my first carnival in Gozo in May 1984. For the first night of the carnival weekend, George had dressed up as a woman (pity my skirt he's wearing doesn't show!) and I tried to portray the image of a tough male, not quite successfully as those curls didn't want to stay under that cap!

In those days carnival was celebrated in May because the weather had been considered more accommodating; celebrations were put back to their rightful place before Easter by the Nationalist Party, once they took over government from Labour.

I must admit, the weather was rather more pleasant in May; I hope temperatures will not drop too steep at the end of next week. In the last couple of years we didn't bother to go to Nadur because of the cold weather. Nadur is the main hub of the carnival action! The "spontaneous carnival", which is scattered throughout its streets, has become pretty famous. There are no rules as to what you have to wear; you don't even have to dress up. But it truly is a stage of the weird and wonderful, many revellers transforming themselves with amazing imagination, often leaving you to guess without success who is behind the mascerade.

This photo was taken in Nadur; we spent quite some time in the company of the masked guy - he only communicated by means of gestures and didn't utter a single word. In fact, we never got to know who he actually was!

In all these years - my goodness, it's twenty-two of them!! - the local carnival traditions have remained the same. I am looking forward to the next crazy weekend and hope the weather won't let us down!

St. Valentine's Day

Hello - and a happy St Valentine's Day to every one of you!

This morning I stayed in bed a little longer than usual - that's one of the luxuries one enjoys when no boss is expecting you to show up in the office at 9 am sharp! ;-) At about half past eight George brought me a cup of coffee and a red rose; unfortunately the latter was in grave danger from attack by Simba, who just loves gobbling up flowers and greenery... So that meant I had to jump out of my cosy bed to bring that beautiful flower to safety! And that was the start of my day.

I know a lot of people are against those "celebration days", like Valentine's, Mother's & Father's Day etc. Well everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion of course. The most-quoted argument against is - rightfully so - the over-commercialisation of such events. The "contra" people reason that appreciation should be shown all the year round. That is true, but let's face it: it's nice to be pampered on Mother's Day, or have a nice dinner out on Valentine's Day. Who would be able to enjoy such extravaganzas every single day of the year anyway? And would it remain special if you had these treats as a matter of course??

Well, whatever you might think about all this, I will definitely enjoy our special meal out tonight - while knowing that I will still be appreciated tomorrow and all days ever after!

The page cannot be displayed...

Today is one of those days... Every third or fourth webpage results in this most-beloved display in my window:

Poor soul who's new to surfing the net and attempts to follow the instructions in that silly message. Why can't a sophisticated operating system (as Windows pretends to be) simply tell me that I'm apparently not connected to my friggin' ISP any longer? The first sentence in that page should read: "Make sure you're connected to the internet"... Instead, it sends you off dabbing in your connection settings. It's tragic!

Have you ever attempted to peruse the Windows help system, by the way? Although I know by now that I cannot expect any real help, I sometimes follow all those step-by-step instructions just for the pure masochistic fun of it. In the end I always win, of course, as Windows gives up and does what it should have done half an hour earlier: admit its failure and advise me that I really would be better of contacting the vendor of the product I have problems with... You have got to have a very calm personality to remain sane in such a situation.

And even though Windows just took the brunt of my misgivings, it's really the customer service - or lack of it - that's freaking me out. This morning my internet connection was not active, for some reason I'll never get to know. By the time I dug out the telephone number of my ISP the connection was restored, and by then I didn't want to know any longer why! Then it went off at around 2 pm: about an hour after office closing time of the said ISP... So I'll have to swallow my frustration until Monday morning. Customer service my foot!

While I'm writing this (online), I save every sentence by way of copy/paste into notepad. Because Murphy dictates that when I press "Publish Post", that dreaded window (see above) will re-appear! Yes, it's in part due to me being blond that I'm not using notepad or Word for writing it in the first place!! I've even downloaded the Blogger utility for Word, but posts only appear correctly when it's just plain text I'm typing.

Oh yeah, just now Blogger displayed a message on the screen's bottom inviting me to test my connection because it can't connect. Now there's artificial intelligence! Microsoft please note, Google just might catch up with ya!

I'm giving up for today. I'm going to click on "Publish Post" now. If you see a big "BOOM" on the screen it'll mean I blew it. LOL!

OMG, this is really not good for my nerves... :-(

On the Edge

I thought I'd buffer the effect of this morning's distasteful photo a little by showing off the nicer side of Gozo again...

Enjoying a public holiday with near-perfect weather we were drawn out into the countryside again. A little less wind would have made it just a tiny little more perfect... but you can't have it all, can ya? This time we even thought of taking along some goodies for a picknick, something we sorely missed during our last walk and gobbled up ravenously almost as soon as we arrived at a suitable spot!



We parked the car just outside Kercem and before reaching Ghadira went off into the fields to the left. Ever since I came to Gozo for the first time, I have been intrigued by how easy it would be to just walk off over one of the island's numerous cliff edges. When George took the photo below I felt like killing him (well, just one very timid push would have sufficed...). I would have preferred going home without that picture, rather than watching and nagging him to stay away from that edge! Care for a dose of my hubby's humour? He left the car keys with me, "just in case", so I wouldn't have to go home on foot...



Apart from that little episode this afternoon was quite blissful!

A tourist's impressions of Malta & Gozo

Jumping from blog to blog this morning, I came across an entry by Sharon Buttrey on Wired Temples that I liked. Apart from that interesting description of her vacation in Gozo and Malta over the Christmas period, the autor also shows off her holiday photos. According to her, she chose 34 out of a total of 650 photos. In view of that it is especially sad that this one should have made it into her album:

Quote: "Yes, this is a photo of dog poop. The reason? Well, first, Troy stepped in a nice pile of it, and it was then that we noticed that there is an unusually large amount of dog crap all over the whole country! Some serious poop-and-scoop laws need to be introduced."

It reflects badly on the general attitude in this country that a "poop-and-scoop" law has been introduced a long time ago! Now that we also have the brand-new anti-littering laws I can't help suspecting that the enforcement of those will go the same way... Oh well, time will tell.

In my humble opinion it is a shame that a visitor considers a holiday snap like the above worth taking home as a memory of her vacation.

About Appreciation and Apprehension

Sorry, yesterday I really didn't feel like writing about anything - except for the one topic, which I promised I wouldn't mention! And so I didn't.

Today was nice and sunny again, but unfortunately full of things to do, tomorrow being a public holiday. Among other things, I had to cash that little precious cheque and do some shopping that was long overdue. And just putting the shopping list together for the long weekend ahead took about half an hour. But that's because I am a person with a short attention span!

In the afternoon I went for my second stint as volunteer at Dar Guzeppa Debono (I wrote about this at the end of January). The home is in a wonderful location, and I'd have loved to just sit up there on a wall and watch the ferries come and go. Obviously that wasn't an option, so I just took a quick snapshot, disturbing wires and all, to linger over at home:

My job at the home is filing... I feel really good about it, even though I'm not doing anything out of this world. But the funniest part is: I hate filing. My home office is a disaster zone and if I had some money to spare, I'd employ someone to file away the mess!! I reckon that has something to do with work being appreciated by others. Well. Perhaps it's time I started appreciating myself a little more?

My son went to Malta with friends after work and is going to spend the night over there. I always feel a little apprehensive about that... blissfully ignoring the fact that when I was his age I was renting a small flat on my own, and went abroad with friends! But then, where I grew up that was considered the normal thing to do, and part of becoming an independent person.

Mmmh... a thought worth pondering! Why the heck should it be different here and now, and what am I worried about?? It's not that I don't trust him, because I do. It's too late now to ask my mother what she thought about my wandering off... Do all mothers feel like that?

Ramblings of an Addict!

(Kathy, stop roaming my blog so often, that makes me feel like a real slug!!! LOL!)

It looks like I just might be taking the smoking habit right there with me where it's taking me... into the grave! While I was still bragging here yesterday about being smoke-free, my downfall was already in the making. I'm not giving up on it just yet... but I don't really believe that I can kick the habit anytime soon. I feel like one big failure!

Today's cold weather spell had everyone talking over here. Maximum was less than 9°C, even though it was sunny (or probably because of the clear sky!). I know that I will complain bitterly about the heat in a few months' time, but right now I really could do with a little heatwave!

With all my concentration on the no-smoking issue, life literally passes me by at the moment. I should try to get out of my 'cave' more, but of course the cold out there doesn't exactly help it. I can see you chuckle - yes, you over there! Of course you're right: once it's nice, warm and sunny out there, I'll find other excuses. Pathetic!!

So this little pathetic human failure is going to sleep now. When I sleep there's no urge to smoke ;-) On the other hand, sleep has not exactly been coming easy these last three nights. Have a lot of catching up to do. Tomorrow I'll turn over a new leaf: While I'll still make an effort - I vow that I won't bore you stiff by telling you all about it. Expect to read something totally different... Do I hear a sigh of relief? That's ok, I totally understand.

See you tomorrow!

A cheque in the post!

I just received a cheque... not just any cheque (and not a huge one either!): it is the payment for an article I wrote for the December issue of a local Sunday magazine. More exactly, the first ever payment for something I've written. Yes, for me that certainly is a big deal!

I feel like framing the cheque and hang it on the wall over my desk, but my financial situation dictates that I cash it and frame a photocopy instead! ;-) May many more follow...

Smoke-Quitting Update: Day 3 without nicotine!

Smoke-Quitting Update!

This one deserves an entry on its own! Would you believe it (can't quite believe it myself!!): I have been smoke-free for almost exactly 24 hours. No shoulder-patting please... I'm very far from over the hill!

I was quite fine yesterday, between noon and 4 pm. Then I started to get itchy when I realised it was the time when the shop opposite my home opened for the afternoon. However, Nicorette gums and all kinds of food stuffs got me over the next few hours. At 7 pm - shop closing time! - another little panic attack as the last chance to buy another pack of coffin-nails withered.

Cooking and dinner time were ok, as expected. But then... No internet, no Eurovision song contest could provide me with the relief I badly needed. The only thing I could do - except for buying cigarettes - was going to sleep. I actually managed to stay in bed from about 9 pm till 9 am... even though it wasn't a restful night. I slept fitfully, had the weirdest dreams and awoke every couple of hours. I wonder whether these were psychological or physical symptoms - not that knowing would have made a difference!

It is said that the first 24 hours are the worst, after which things are bound to get better. I sure hope so because another night like this and I might just call it quits!!!

Photography in Malta and Elsewhere

Phew! Good to see that blogger is finally online again!! Was afraid I'll never get this uploaded...

If you want to enjoy some really great photography I recommend you visit a duo exhibition to be inaugurated on 9th February 2006 at Il-Forn in Birgu, which is open for public viewing between 10th February and 9th March 2006. Kenneth Borg shows his amazing photos alongside Roderick Abela's oil paintings and pencil drawings. To put you into the right state of mind, visit Kenneth's website, which is a brilliant showcase of his talent! (Can you tell how much I've been impressed??)

While on the subject of photography, this is probably a good place to thank a cyberfriend of mine, Wade from Washington/USA, for always sharing his latest productions of beautiful photographs with me. He usually also shows them off on this page. However, momentarily that has fallen victim to the all-American obsession with the Superbowl XL (sorry Wade, couldn't resist :-p), the extent of which exceeds even the Maltese hysteria connected with the Song for Europe! But do visit the page every now and then because it is updated with new photos frequently! Here's just one beautiful example of his work:

(Photo copyright Wade B Clark Jr.)

Smoke-Quitting Update: Nothing new on that front... but my resolution for the weekend still stands (yeah right: it stands until I fall!). Can you tell me just how an intelligent person can be so stupid?

To blog or not to blog...

...not a very imaginative title, I know. It's a strange thing with blogging - for me at least: During the course of a day I happen across a hundred things worthy, in my opinion, of mentioning here. I would take mental notes, but by the time I finally get down to writing, there's not much more than thin air up there!

Then there is also a strange kind of pressure: When I check my blog stats I find that some folks are dropping in several times a day. Imagining their disappointment when they don't find anything new, I feel coaxed into writing more. That's when I draw a total bank!

It also came as a huge surprise to me seeing how many of you have been reading this practically from day one - not to mention the fact that you actually keep coming back for more! Perhaps a little naively I thought I'd keep some sort of private diary here, which might or might not attract the attention of a handful of surfers out there. Coming to think of it... are there any publishers among you, by any chance? I'd love to sell the novel I wrote a couple of winters ago and haven't managed to find a publisher for! Only serious requests by e-mail please ;-)

I'm glad to report that the gloomy weather that tormented me since last Monday has decided to call it a day! There isn't the slightest breeze out there, and the sky as blue as can be - and should be, this being Gozo after all. Lovely! Amazing how the weather always lends itself as a willing subject when other ideas run dry...


Smoke-Quitting Update: Oh that... Yesterday I was a good girl, with the count going only up to 8. Today 2 so far. Maybe it's time to go for total elimination - I'm targetting the weekend for that. I do hope George won't file for divorce by Monday!!