Never felt so homesick before.

Hi there,

As written in the title, I've never felt so homesick before. Staying on Malta, I exceeded my personal record of time spent out of home.

Previous "personal best" had been established a year ago, when I went to Norway. However, when I was in Norway, I didn't feel too much homesick, because I was living at my Grandparents' house, and they would let me really feel like home. And it was only 35 days - I've been here for 52 days by now!

Here it's bad because (from most important to least important things):

1. My family is far away.
None of my family members is close to me to give me a hug, share the experiences with me, assure me that what I'm doing is right (actually, when I talk to them through Skype, they seem not to understand my decision to go to Malta), help me with everyday tasks etc.

2. My friends are far away.
I'm only spending time with one friend, Chris, none of the other friends is near to talk to me, to go to a party or anything. I'm not saying it's bad with Chris, because one of the proofs that we're good at keeping each other company is that we didn't have a fight even once (I mean, of course there have been some arguments, but we were never really mad at each other), but there should be more friends close enough. And colleagues are not real friends. Not only that; they are also so different in cultural reasons, and we can't understand each other properly, because we use our secondary language to communicate.

3. My country is far away.
I know it's "passe" to be a patriot and nationalist, but it's my country that I breathe with. Being in Poland is like sustenance or fresh air for me. I feel like put in a cage here. Or like a black sheep in a herd of white ones.

4. The food is worse.
I can't wait till I come to Poland to taste the real food again. Here the food is less varied, full of pasta (which I don't like too much), bread is stale since the moment it has been baked, butter is salted or very expensive, real hams start at 12 eur/kg (5 eur in Poland) and there are no sausages (except for the "maltese" one, which is just a spicy white sausage and tastes like polish jałowcowa), yellow cheeses are either stilton or cheddar (I hate both), there are no green vegetables, bread spreads, meat is either frozen or not fresh or very expensive, no fresh fish in this so-called island... Only good things are cheeselets (sing. gbejna, pl. gbejniet), rabbit (fenek) and kinnie.

In 3 days I'll start my holiday. I hope Malta surprises me with something, because I want to have more nice memories from my trip :)

homesick people

It's about time to write something.

It's been 6 days since I posted, so you'd perhaps want to know how things are going.

Mistral Cafe&Wine Lounge is still short on staff, which makes me work almost 60 hours a week. Everyday I start at 4 PM and end about 1-2 AM. Hopefully it's only 13 days left till the end of September, when we stop working - I can't wait till having the holiday.

Every day looks similar: I get up around 10AM, read a book or surf through Internet, I eat breakfast, then lay on the bed a little bit or go sightseeing somewhere, I eat lunch at about 2 PM (which consists of pizza olives or some different thing bought at a pastizzeria), and go to work at 4 PM. I come back at about 1-2 AM and go to sleep.

That's quite boring and tiring to live like that. That's why I feel happy looking forward to October.

The only matter striking me is whether we'll have sunny weather in October. Maltese people tell me not to worry about it (they say they have sunny weather all through to November), but I know what I'm telling you. I've seen a few rainy days here in September and I don't want to see them again. :)

When I have a day off, which is once in a week, I usually go to Paola to play football. As I observed, they have a completely different approach towards football; most physical contacts are considered fouls, which is not the same as in Poland where we play more brutally and physical contact is a normal thing. Another difference is with the injury approach - where they get hurt, they usually lay on the ground for 5 minutes and literally cry! After that, usually there's nothing wrong with them, they only had pain. In Poland usually people would first try to "walk the injury off" and play again, and if it wasn't possible, they would just sit on the bench and wait till the end to get to a doctor. I'm not saying we're especially tough: what I'm saying is that Maltese act like pussies from time to time. :)

There are lots of homeless cats on Malta. This one is headless as well.

Our everyday lunch - Sphinx pastizzeria

Solved.

We are paid 4,00 EUR now.

There could be two reasons why we got paid 3,00 per hour:

1. either it was some kind of a mistake

2. or Mark probed us: will they complain or not? ;)

The second possibility is quite an intrigue, what they call it: "conspiracy theory" :). But I don't have a problem with that; it would be quite intelligent to try this kind of thing on us!
;)

Mistake - or another cheat?

This won't be a funny post.

The next employer, even though the work itself is very nice and the atmosphere as well, seems to play same game with us as the previous one did with me.

Yesterday we got our first payment, for the first days we worked in Mistral. When I saw the cheques, I was very happy, because I knew that Krzysztof was out of the money. However, my smile dissolved after I saw the rate they are paying us.

3,00 EUR per hour.

For those who don't know, this is almost exactly the amount of money we can get in Poland for a work like that. And in Poland, everything is 50% cheaper. Then, the difference between working in Poland and Malta starts to look like that for me: I have to pay for plane tickets, I have to rent a flat, I have to pay for the food (which is worse than Polish, I can tell), and then I get paid the same money as in Poland?!

What is even worse, everybody except for us gets paid 4,00 EUR per hour.

I already chose a strategy to work this out with Mark (the head manager). I will tell him first, that there has been some kind of a mistake, and he typed 3,00 instead of 4,00. Naturally he will say this was not a mistake. Then I will seem astonished and I'll ask why. If he tells me that it's because we're Polish and he has to hide the expenses on us somehow, so the police don't sniff around, I'll speak to him differently. First I ask him if he thinks our work is worth less than the work done by Maltese. Naturally he has to say "no". Then I'll try to talk him into paying us the normal amount.

If he declines, I have a different option. How about signing a deal with us, that he pays us by the normal rate, and in revenge we keep the risk of paying a fee to the police? This seems reasonable to me. Of course the risk should be his, because it was his decision not to get work permits for us, but there has to be some solution for an unfair situation like this.

The whole situation makes me sick. I don't want to fight with those people because they have been very nice to us. Nor I don't want to blackmail the managers by saying I'll go to the police if they don't pay me normally. But again I have to be assertive. We can't be treated as slaves, or the same as they treat Black people on Malta.

I'm really starting to wonder why Malta got in the EU. The wage problems look more like in Africa than EU.

Wage neverending story

20 euros were stolen from me by my previous employer.

It was like that: I came to get my money for working 2 weeks (1 full week + 1 additional day) at my previous employer. As I counted earlier on my own, I should get 184 euros (46 hours overall). They told me that 20 minutes or less over one hour doesn't count - so still, I should get 180.

Salvu, the co-owner, told me I'm getting 160. I said it's not right - I should get 20 euros more. He said "then leave the hours you worked and we'll check with the punchcards". I agreed and waited for the money. He started counting and... gave me 400 euros. I said to him: "Salvu, what's wrong?"; he answered: "oh don't bother me, just bring the hours tomorrow and they will be checked!". I said "it's not that" and started counting the money in front of his eyes. I took a 100 note and six 10s, I showed him the rest (a file of 20 and 10 notes) and said "what is this about?". He looked at me in astonishement and he said: "wow, you're a real gentleman". Later I agreed to call him the next day and get to know about the missing 20 euros.

I was calling and "stalking" him in the restaurant for more that one week. He kept dismissing me, because "he's busy", "his wife took the punchcards", "he went to buy some fruit", "he's off today" etc. Finally yesterday his daughter answered the phone and she said "he's not here, call tomorrow". I said: "I'm not going to call him tomorrow, I'm going to go there and talk to him. I don't have money nor time to call him everyday, so I'm not going to fuck with him anymore and I'm coming tomorrow." She replied: "I'll arrange it for tomorrow".

Finally, today I stalked him the last time and he greeted me by saying:

"I think you have to pay even more".
"Pardon?"
"You have to pay the taxes, so it's even more than 20 euros."
"So you mean you pay taxes for me?".
"We have to hide your wage somehow. So we payed taxes for it differently. If they knew you were working here, we would both have problems"
"Well ok" - I said with an ironic smile. - "Maybe you should've told me this earlier?"
"What?"
"I was said I'm going to get paid 4 euros per hour. If you said it will be less, I wouldn't get annoyed and nor would you".
"Maybe you have some point here. But really, I can do nothing about it."

So apparently I have been robbed by my employer. I can do nothing about it either. I don't have a contract, I don't have the punchcards, nor any evidence I should get paid 4eur/h. If I went to the police, we both would have problems. So it's best to just shut up and curse inside...

Maltenglish and the Maltese mentality

First thing I'd like to tell you today is the English language used on Malta. Just because this language is here for a long time, and people use it daily, they've produced some kind of an English dialect (which I start to adapt too much, I assume ;).

Not only they speak English with a Maltese accent, they also change the grammar and vocabulary. For instance, normal Maltese greeting is not "hello" nor "hi", it's "allright?" - at first I though I'm obliged to answer this question and respond with a similar one, now I know this question doesn't need an answer. Also, asking different questions: an English person would say: "Do you want...?" or "Do you know...?"; Maltese person says: "You want...?", "You know?" - they simplified asking, so it's quicker.

They have a funny habit of using the word "even" - in English you can say for example "even the Maltese speak English", to express your astonishment; you can use it also to say that some things are the same: "all Maltese are even". Maltese use this word as an equivalent to "as well" or "the same", but they use it differently. For example when a Maltese person says "even me", it means "it's the same with me".

Another thing is using Maltese words in a sentence. They usually can't say an English sentence without putting in some Maltese words. A normal example of a sentence would be: "Mela, I can't help you gbin, Alla, I have other things to do." (mela = so, gbin = bro, Alla = God); or even "Allright, habib, me tajjeb hafna today" (habib = friend, tajjeb hafna = very good).

Second thing I'd like to write to you today is Maltese mentality. From what I've observed, most Maltese act like a village-men (or as we say in Poland, "małomiasteczkowi" - small town inhabitants): they treat they own neighbourhood as the centre of the world, and when a stranger comes, they act xenophobic. Don't understand me badly: I'm some kind of a xenophobe myself, but I try not to have prejudices towards strangers until I actually get to know them. Most Maltese are racist as well: people they really don't like are Arabs and Blacks, also they act with prejudices towards them. They justify their racism by saying that Arabs come to Malta to steal, kill, rape and just act violently towards Maltese; one of my Maltese friends told me, that 2/3 of Maltese prisons are inhabitated by Arabic people! The Blacks on the other hand, come to Malta because they run away from their countries (mostly Libya, but other countries as well); most of them are on a very low level of education, so they not only don't know how to read and write, they also sometimes don't speak English and behave badly. Malta has a big problem with illegal immigration, and most illegals are Black. As I wrote once, they usually do rotten or light jobs - they're on the bottom of the social ladder.

They used the parking space really good, didn't they?