Gabi as a Maltese Guide

Guess what! One of my most awesome, smart and funny friends is here visiting me! Dajana arrived last night and this is what I have showed her so far.

Occationally being lost

The house of our Lord

The historical sites

A book club.

I so wish that I had come up with this joke

The Cure?

You might wonder why I am at wake at this hour. There are many reasons why I shouldnt be. For one, it is 2 o´clock at night. Another is the fact that I start working tomorrow at 7 and my alarm is set on 5.30. Also a good reason to be asleep right now is that I only slept 2 hours last night and are absolutly beat! Yes, all of those reasons are valid, but Im not asleep because I have a fucking acute ear infection!

And I have no pain killers at home.

So I googled ear infection  HELP ME LORD and found this website that said that you should put an onion in your ear. First I could only find a leek, but there was a fitting problem there.

So now, Im awake. With a garlic in my ear!

(Jag ser lite lökig ut)

Update 03:04 Now I have the tast of garlic in my mouth. Namnamnam.
Update 09:00 Just to clarify, the garlic taste in my mouth came through my ear, I didnt eat it afterwards! Also, I have been at work now for 2 hours and still no one has said anything about the garlic smell from my ear. But at the same time, no one wants to sit next to me...
Update 12:28 Now Im high on Latvian drugs at work. WIIIIHII!

Enjoy?

At work, we never have our lunch at the same times, which means that you often sit by yourself while you eat your food. I don't mind, I often read a book or think about what I should blog about. Anyhow, people often come into the lunch room to get coffee or whatever. Many of them have a tendency to look at you a bit awkward and then proclaim: ENJOY!

Enjoying life

This confuses me so much. What are you supposed to say to that? "Yes I'm enjoying the food", "No I'm not enjoying this food", " You can also enjoy". It doesn't make any sense!

After thinking about this a whole lot longer than should be appropriate I today decided that "Thank you" is the best, but also the most boring, answer. So about 30 minutes ago, when I was in the lunch room, I was prepared.

Stranger: ENJOY!
Gabi: Thank yo...

And at this point I see how a half-eaten macarone comes out of my mouth and catapult itselfs through the entire room and lands on the strangers back.

Next time Im just going to nod, because I dont think that experience was enjoyable to anyone.

Romantic sunsets

The god Lord knows that Im not a romantic person at all. My body kind of chrinches when I hear about long walks on the beach, candle light dinners and writting love letters. I cant deal with the couples who just have to declare their eternal love for eachother all_the_time in the cheesiest ways possible.

Maybe that is why my romantic sunset experiences has not been that traditional. For one, it was not with the looooove of my life, it was with a 19-year old that I always call PP (and when we told people what Pierres nick name was, the seriously told him where the bath room was at). And also, the watching of the sunsets didnt go like planned. Both them were in Cambodia, and the other day I got reminded of this little memory and decided to write to Pierre about it:

Gabbis remenice:
A memory that came to mind:

Once upon a time BB and PP were in Phnom Phen and read in the guide book about this really romantic place next to the riverside. They went there just before the sunset, very very happy, looking forward to some beautiful scenary. The ended up next to the city dump, in like the poorest neighbourhood in Cambodia. At least they didnt get robbed.

And they live happily ever after. The end.

Pierre answers: A memory that came to my mind:We are seating on a temple in Siem Reap (the temple of death) and I really want to take a shit. No paper, nothing! Nothing but my guidebook about south east Asia... If you're planning to have a lesbian trip to East Timor Gabbi, just buy another guide!!

I can see now why Pierre said that the only song that could describe or relation was Bad Romance.

Malta ABC

Todays letter is N like in NOT A PLACE FOR A SHOPAHOLIC (or for any kind of shopping really).


Malta is an interesting country, but if someone say that you should go here and do some shopping. Dont. These are the reasons why.

1. It is impossible to find where the shops are located. Ok, there are two city centers (Valetta and Sliema) where you can find between 3-5 shops located at the same place. The other stores are located at strange places - upon mountains, down in valleys, behind strange corners, probably in caves. And they are as far from eachother that they virtually can be on a small island like Malta.
2. They are never open.  Some of them open maybe at 8, but the close again for siesta maybe around 1 if you are lucky. If you are not lucky, the close at 10, or whatever time the shop owner feels like it. And then they open again, like in whenever. But not after 7 in the night, and forget to go shopping at sundays. It is a freaking mircule actually that anyone can buy any kind of food in Malta, because the shops and even the food stores are always closed at normal hours.
3. IF you find a shop, and IF they are open, they dont have what you want. On saturday, I had a desperate hung over-craving for pizza. I walked around for almost an hour before I found a pizzeria that was open. I went inside and the following scenario took place:
   - Hi, I would like to see the pizza menu please.
   - No, we dont have pizza.
   - What? But you are a pizzeria right?
   - Yes.
   - But you dont have pizza?
   - No.
   - Why dont you have any pizza?
   - Why you come here at 2 o´clock in the afternoon on a saturday and think that we have pizza?
   - Eh, because you know, you are a pizza place?!
   - No. We already said we have no pizza. I can give you meat pie instead. Very good.
   - No thank you.

So yes, Malta I like you, but WTF, please give me pizza, not some strange meat pie! 

If Malta was a TV-show...

An anecdote from Gabbis life

The other day I was listening to a radio show and they were talking about waking up in strange places. That made me associate to the one time I woke up on a bus, which is not the strangest place, but the circumstances around it was a bit.. ehm.. different, if we say it like that.

Last fall was a crazy time for me. I had three different jobs, wrote my bachelor thesis and was the president of the european studies program student union, active in every kind of sub-organisation of the student union etc. On top of that I tried to manage to keep my social life alive. Anyhow.

This particular day, I had worked the morning shift (6-9), spent some time at the library, probably had some meetings, before I was going to make an appearance at a masquerade. Me and two of my best mates decided to do a concept out-fit. A very good concept. We even got a little prize.

Around 2 oclock at night, after eating some cheese burgers (yes, this is a very important part of the story), I decided to make my way home. I decided to wait for the bus for 20 minutes instead of taking the tram that left earlier, just to avoid walking. Ofcourse, because I had gone up at 4.30 in the morning I fell asleep on the bus. The tragic is that I wasnt even that drunk. And all of a sudden, a concerned voice woke me up. I was at the end station, and now I had to walk home, which took me longer than if I would have took the tram.

At least I wasnt afraid that anyone would molest me (except maybe the USA), because this is what I looked like that night:

So yes, I can understand why the bus driver, looked a bit nervous when he woke me up.

Hablo espanol?

A long lost dream of mine is to some day learn spanish (for some reason, I dont think that Donde esta Jose and Jose esta aqui will be enough when I move to latin america). So every now and then I decide that Im going to take an online course or buy a spanish learning book or whatever. My latest thing has been to listen to a spanish teacher recordings on my phone. Ever since I came to Malta, I been listening to this on the way to work, learning to say tengo hambre (and not tengo hombre).

The other day on the way from work, a car with an elderly couple stopped.

Man: Hola. Hablas espanol?
Gabbis: Ehm... solo un poco.
Man: Donde esta San Julian?
Gabbis: Ehm... ehm "ponting to him to go back on an other road".. calle alli, ala derecha... roundabout... circulo... el coche... grande autostrada...thinking of when the hell am I supposed to use tengo hambre
Man: Si?
Gabbis: Y autostrada... WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! *making airplane movements with hands to describe that you would go really fast on the high way*
So yes, maybe I should change that learning tape because I dont think that that description brought them to the right place. I have just simply spread the curse of being Lost in Malta.

Me, 4 years ago, lost in Barcelona.

Livets betapet

Sorry my english speaking readers, this one is only understandable in Swedish.

Jag har haft många perioder i mitt liv där jag varit beroende av betapet. Sen jag kommit till Malta har detta återigen skett, eftersom det är den största underhållningen på jobbet när saker är långsamma. Därmed har betapet återigen blivit en referens i mitt lilla liv.

Chatt med Malin (eller som Malin sa häromdagen att man borde försvenska chatt och kalla det för snack - vi ses på snacken).

Malin: nej det är i sig en sanning

jag måste jobba på att gå upp i td

td?!

VAR ÄR MINA VOKALER?!
Gabbis: Du kanske tror att vi spelar betapet och inte blir tilldelad några vokaler? Så kan det vara ibland. Med vokalerna alltså.

Malin: Vadå, livets betapet?
Gabbis: Haha. Ja! Vad gör du om livet ger dig konstonanter?
Malin: Då flyttar jag till Finland.

Gabbis: Hahahahaha! och om man bara får vokaler får man flytta till Kina!

Im back from that mountain

To be honest, I have had the computer back for a while now, but so many things have been going on in Malta (like work, work, a little bit of alcohol, work, work, being lost etc. You get the picture). But after some complaining from my dearest friends I will start blogging again.

We start where we left off. I got the computer back after a week. During that week I went out for walks, read a lot, wrote a bit on my new project (since Im not a big blogger that needs to keep anything secret, my new project is a chick-lit) and went to sleep much earlier than usual.

So you can say that that week wasnt boring.

IT WAS WORSE! IT FREAKING SUCKED!

But now Im back, I watched all the jersey shore episodes I missed, even started to watch an even worse TV show called Jerseylicious. Yes.

And do you guys want to know the funny thing about that week from hell. There was no problems with my charger, there is just a radial clerance with my adapter.