HN’ers of Maltese origin: what are some interesting aspects of your country?
How much Malta fucked up transit and transportation is really interesting. It's as bad as the United States despite unlike the US the distances are short and the population density is high (the whole thing is 17 mi x 9 mi, the density of the entire country compares to Bellevue, WA and the towns themselves are ten times more dense). Malta is #10 country in the world in cars owned per people leading to constant congestion https://i.redd.it/fnrrri2k1n8b1.png, some sections of the roads are impossible to walk, some transit connections are near impossible to make because of the lack of crossings and sidewalks. Buses are infrequent and notoriously unreliable. And buses are all there are, not even a trolley bus much less a tram or something.
And they are not fixing this, I tried to do public transit to the nearest Lidl and the road was freshly rebuilt (not even fully complete yet) and they didn't add a sidewalk. The public transit mobile app is useless. This is not just me grumbling check https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/people-use-bus-reliab... for more.
I definitely recommend visiting if you get a chance. It packs so much in for a small country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithic_Temples_of_Malta
Apparently there's an even older contender in Turkey now, but, anyway you slice it, this stuff is old. The most recent of them (2500 BC) roughly equate in age to the oldest pyramids of Egypt.
Off the top of my head: 1. The country is constantly polarised. Politics and football especially. Voting based on your family's political legacy is very common. 2. The idea of being constantly ruled by someone else used to be s convenient excuse to steal from the colonists. The downside is that this attitude never left with the british, so tax evasion is rampant as if you're sticking it to the man by doing so... But in reality you're stealing from yourself. 3. While similar to Ireland in the sense that the economy grew very fast very quickly, it has the opposite problem when it comes to housing: massive supply is not managing to sate the massive demand, so housing prices are persistently astronomically high.
Happy to answer more questions.
2. Convenience and support structure: I have young children and their grandparents live 5-15 minutes away.
3. I have a vote here and therefore a sliver of a say. If I go elsewhere, all I'll have is my voice, which will be the voice of a foreigner.
My wife and I have resolved to leave, but not before our parents pass away. Its our one and likely only major blocker. In fact I shifted to working fully remotely during the pandemic to make this eventuality smoother.
Its an informal greeting, usually to someone with whom you're already acquianted with. It translates loosely to: "how are you my friend? Is everything ok?"
The x is pronounced the same way you would pronounce "sh" in "shell" in english (so KOLLOSH not KOLLOKS).
I asked ChatGpt to help with the pronounciations. This is what it said.
So, the phrase "Kif aħna xbin? Kollox sew" would be pronounced as "keef ah-na shbin? kol-losh sew".
Bonswa is very much an older generation term so I'm not surprised they enjoy it
maybe in this case for entire families, hence a cart.
off with their heads!
oops, that was the guillotine, in the French revolution. or was it Alice in Wonderland?
:)