Week 3

Work

At work, things continued as usual for the . Right now, I'm still unhappy with relying on others so much. Because my job entails a lot of delegating and using general knowledge of the system to help students with their requests, I often have to simply pass things on to someone else. While they do explain the context to me afterwards, there are many students who ask to speak in Maltese rather than English, making me miss out in witnessing the actual exchange. 

On the flipside, I've gotten quite good at catching the right snippets in a Maltese conversation to catch onto what's going on. Usually when people come in and state their request in Maltese, I know what they mean and can simply continue with them in English. Sometimes, they don't even switch alongside me until an issue arises! This is quite fun and also reflects the culture here very well, as even natives are used to this kind of conservation. Even when speaking Maltese, there is a lot of English involved in the process, and sometimes two parties will speak mostly different languages. Of course, people are mostly happy to switch for me when necessary. When answering the phone, at least half of the people respond to my greeting by asking which language to speak in. Unfortunately I did have a person who refused to switch, and had to be transferred. I have been told that I should be stricter in this regard, as MCAST officially uses English to communicate.

Other than customer-facing tasks, I've also had some other duties delegated to me. Making good use of my email access, I am often asked to check up on certain certificates and prepare them to be sent by post. I asked to be sent the email templates for these processes as well, so I can now notify the students, as well as Gozo campus if necessary. I am also now copied on relevant emails, which helps a lot to give me an overview of what has been said by who. It seems like a small thing, but being able to directly quote and reference these emails has eliminated a lot of questions I had to check up on with the officers in the past.

On Friday, we also decided to re-organize some of the files in our cabinet, so I created and printed out new spines for some of the folders, moved some files around and started new ones to replace the old overflowing ones.

Outside of my tasks, MCAST was also holding a series of political discussions during the day. Unfortunately I found most of it to be in Maltese, as I listened in during my lunch break one day. However, this did mean that some high profile people were visiting the campus -- including, as I found out, the (still) prime minister himself, Robert Abela! Which explains why there was so much security following him as he was led through the outside lunch area into a side entrance, as well as the fact that the entire student base was following and taking selfies with him. I do regret not stepping up and taking one as well, but in the end it matters much less for me than for people actually involved in Maltese politics.

Finishing up at the hostel

Suddenly, I am closer to the end of my stay at the hostel than the start of it. Even the hostess has to double-check how long I've been there, because it feels like forever. As both me and my new friend will be leaving next week, we've had a few more evening activities crammed into this one. We finally decided to patronize a food truck we've both had a curious eye on -- advertising 'German Comfort Food', with real German bread rolls and artisan, hand-crafted Bratwurst. Having chatted with the owner before, we did more or less announce our visit, and he remembered us. At the start of my stay, I probably wouldn't have been very impressed with the food. But knowing now how different the selection of available sausages is at the stores in Malta, it really did impress me. And it was legitimately a very good Bratwurst, above what one would expect at a random food truck in Berlin. While I don't think my craving for German food is strong enough to need this little 'piece of home', I did enjoy visiting it. 

We also decided to pay one last visit to the nice pub we went out before, enjoying the atmosphere before eventually walking home. Without people from the hostel, and the proximity to the place, I knew I likely wouldn't be back much, if at all, so it was really nice to visit one last time.

Much like last week, I then chose to take a relaxing approach to the weekend. I did go to a Wellbee's I hadn't been to before, mostly out of curiosity. This meant a much longer walk, most of it along the cliffside and enjoying the weather. But other than a nice walk in a now familiar area here and there, I didn't leave the house much this weekend. This was probably for the best, as it was Election weekend in Malta, and I was warned that there would be a lot of honking, celebrating and general festive noise.

One thing worth noting, is that on Monday I finally received my Tallinja card! While I did have some issues originally ordering the personalized prepaid bus ticket that would save me a lot of travel costs, the delivery was actually very fast once I was through with the process. This is definitely something I wish I'd done sooner.