My New Life in Malta

Now for a much lighter topic.

The one-year contract one our cable system finally expired. (This nearly coincides with the first anniversary of my arrival in Malta , an event which passed without any fanfare).

One of the nice perks of life in Europe is the ability to watch TV from many different countries. However, our cable provider did not have the Spanish or French stations, which are the two I really would have liked (in addition to Maltese, Italian and BBC, which come standard in Malta ). So, we switched to the other company. There might not be too much consumer choice on these islands, but there is at least enough competition around to provide an alternative in some areas. And so, a few days ago we got hooked-up to a new array of channels.

I can finally listen to Spanish television, as well as brush up on my French which is a bit rusty. But we got more than we bargained for… there are also two German channels, more Italian channels than we had before, different English language stations and even two in Arabic. You have probably figured out by now that I am a language dork, so this is heaven for me. I sat in awe going from channel to channel, but wound up being particularly fascinated by the Arabic station.

A commercial showing a woman with a veil trying a facial soap really caught my eye as pretty hilarious. Wouldn’t she remove it, so as not to get it wet? Soon, the Arabic version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” came on the screen. Then some melodramatic telenovela came on, M joined me on the couch, and we were hooked. I keep hearing that Arab speakers can understand Maltese, but definitely not the other way around. However, I was able pick up words and phrases here and there. And since M is a native Maltese speaker and studied a bit of Arabic, he picked up a lot more. It was amusing that I was able to understand some of the commercials, however. During another program, I picked out enough words to figure out that the woman being interviewed was the daughter of Egypt ’s deposed King Farouk. Looks like Maltese winds up being useful outside the islands as well!

But the fun did not stop there. We also have access to several international radio stations! A bit odd, perhaps, to receive radio on the television. The main Maltese ones are all there, as well as many European ones. I will now publicly embarrass both myself and M by stating that when we discovered that we have the Bollywood Greatest Hits station, we celebrated by doing a little dance reminiscent of Hindi movies in accompaniment to the music.

They say the key to happiness is finding joy in the little things in life…

And as the year cycles around, tonight marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) once again. I wish a happy, sweet and healthy new year to all my blog readers of all religions.