On our feet in Malta after a tumultuous summer.

Hi all.

Well, it's been too long since we blogged, as always, although this summer has been particularly tough, so I don't really apologize. However, I would like to get back to blogging more regularly, and I trust that at least a few out there in the ether enjoy reading about our adventures, so I think I'll just pound out this entry, bring everyone up to date, and then we can get back on track. (Advance Warning - it's long.)

May

Kes managed to get the visa issues sorted out, at some trouble and expense to both her employer and us, and got back to Malta, getting on with the job of being a smart person in a fish-related technology company.

On the 22nd, our rugby club in Norway hosted an international rugby game - Norway vs. Slovenia (odd bit of international confusion: In Europe, the home team is listed first - in North America, second. Huh.) In general, the whole operation came off without a hitch. Slovenia won, which was unfortunate, but I think that the club, thanks to the dozens of people who just kept on looking for ways to help, really acquitted itself well. I received a real honour from FIRA-AER, the European rugby association, in being recognised for rugby development. It was not fair, really, to single me out when the rest of the club (specifically, a core group of about 5 or 6, including Kes) had done so much, but it was a real compliment, nonetheless.

Kes continued her jet-setting, "I will soon be running this whole continent", ways with a day-long meeting in Brussels on the 25th. She and her company are helping to co-ordinate a team of companies and research outfits from around Europe on a major, EU-funded project. Don't ask me what the project does. It took me two years before I understood her thesis, I haven't had enough time on this one yet...

Further to that, Kes has also ended up becoming plugged in, to some extent, to the business community here in Malta. For example, on the 27th, she attended an event focussed on Small & Medium-sized Enterprise in Malta. I think that she is working for a company that is somewhat of an anomaly: Unquestionably a Maltese company (by which I mean that it's not owned outside the country, or simply a Maltese offshore branch of some larger international operation), yet it's primarily staffed by ex-pats and immigrants. As a result, Kes will sometimes be the only non-Maltese person at some of these type of events. It's an interesting factor to note - we seem to move from environments that are purely foreigners, to those that are almost entirely Maltese, with only a very few that are truly mixed. The particularly interesting thing that we find is that so many of the people we interact with live only in one world or the other, at least socially. It's sort of a "two solitudes" thing, with reference to the language communities in Quebec. Of course, there are many many people who cross over like us. However, the number who don't is large enough to be defining.

June

At the very beginning of June, my mom visited me in Norway, from Canada. She decided that she didn't want me to have left Norway without her having seen the boat I was working on. It was a really great 3-day visit (I know - all the way to Norway for 3 days!). I got to show her around the neighbourhood a bit more, and we had some great time hanging out together.

Meanwhile, Kes kept finding new parts of Europe to organise, and was off to Hungary for 3 days, from the 1st to the 4th. Yet another EU project. No, I don't know what this one does, either.

She returned to Malta just in time to see Malta play Norway at rugby league. I, personally, dislike rugby league very strongly (for the uninitiated, rugby union and rugby league are two different codes of rugby football - they originally split back in the 19th century). However, because there is some strong transferability of skills between the two codes, a good number of our rugby union friends from Norway travelled with the Norwegian team to Malta to play. I know that she enjoyed seeing them again.

Our good friend Courtney, who we had visited in Switzerland earlier this year, visited Malta for four days in early June, overlapping for one day with a weekend visit of mine. It was neat to see her. It is particularly great to have other friends, particularly when they're Canadian, with whom we can share our experiences - the aspects of enjoying all the learning that we're doing, frustration with foreign bureaucracy (even when it (rarely) works better than Canadian bureaucracy, it still doesn't work the same, dammit!), things we miss about home, etc. For example, I've ended up picking up a few British English words in my vocabulary - 'queue' is a simpler and honestly, better, word for 'line-up'. However, I fully acknowledge that if I come home to Canada using "queue" and "post" for "line-up" and "mail", I will come across as a pretentious jerk. It's that sort of mundane thing that it's nice to share with someone in a similar situation.

After I returned to Norway on the 14th, it was into the full-pressure final two weeks before delivery of the boat, with sea trials and final sign-offs. I won't go into all the gory details, but suffice to say that I worked a hell of a lot, so did many other people (including 7 of the rugby team, who were all on the same project), and the boat was delivered on time, fully successfully. Here's a link to the final product sheet.

Kes had another day in Brussels on the 23rd. If only Air Malta were part of the Star Alliance, so that we were earning Aeroplan miles! Air Malta does have a frequent flyer program, called "FlightPass". However, as far as we can tell, it's completely useless. For example, they don't give members actual membership cards. Members are supposed to print out and clip out the membership card on their own printer. So far, there has been no evidence that any of our flights have been registered properly in their system.

July

On the 2nd of July, the boat was christened "Oceanic Vega", and was officially delivered to its owners. In fact, there was a long list of work that still needed to be completely cleaned up over that following weekend, but it was still a day of celebration.

In the following week, Kes expanded her scope of enterprise to include Asia Minor, visiting fish farms, both salt water and fresh water, in Turkey - in Bodrum and Kahramanmaraş (apparently, the site near Kahramanmaraş wasn't actually there, but somewhere in the countryside accessible from there.)

The week after that, the 12th to 16th, was my last at Ulstein Verft. I had arranged to take my vacation time in the last two weeks of July, so that I would terminate my contract of employment on August 1st. However, on the last two days of work (15th & 16th), with some mad shuttling around between various offices of HR executives and other important people, I managed to come to an agreement to stay on with the Ulstein Group. I offered to play a role as a sort of "on-call" electrial engineering employee, working largely from home, but with travel as necessary. The only real limitation that I set was that I would not be willing to travel more than 50% of the time - after all, the reason I was leaving my existing position was because I wanted to sleep under the same roof as Kes!

While this was a great solution, and I was (still am!) very happy with it, it was immediately followed up with "Oh, yeah, and we'd like you to start the first of these on-call projects on Monday!" It turns out that one of the vessels that Ulstein Design was working on had an electrical engineering co-ordinator who was headed for vacation, and the company could really use someone to cover for him. As a result, I spent the first five weeks of this new assignment working from home on a vessel being built in Dubai - the Polarcus Asima - which has now been delivered.

Of course, this then meant I wasn't taking vacation, and we agreed that I would take it in early September instead. Thus, I immediately booked tickets home to Bella Coola - It had been too long since I was home!

On the 14th, I managed to finally sell the *@&*&@*& VW Polo which, though it had gotten us many places, had also caused us many many headaches. After all the problems it had been through, I only ended up getting about 15% of the amount I had paid for it in the first place. What a frustration!

On the 15th, I boxed up what I couldn't pack in the suitcases, and wasn't going to donate to goodwill, and mailed it to Malta.

On the 16th, I boarded a plane at Hovden Airport, headed on to the next phase of life.

On the 20th, against my better judgement, and against my advice, our new rugby club in Malta, the Birkirkara Alligators, named me treasurer. Here we go again!

On the 25th, I attended the opening of the Alligators' new training pitch, a little artifical turf area only 5 blocks north of where we live. In doing so, I met the Prime Minister of Malta. A bit surreal to have been in the country for such a short period of time, and be shaking hands with the PM...

In the middle of the night on the 26th, we received the kind of phone call that no one ever wants to get - Kes's father had been killed in a car accident. I really won't discuss this here - it just isn't the place. Suffice to say that the world has changed because of this, and nothing will ever be the same. Everything we do going forward will be shaped by this.

We travelled home to Rothesay, NB, immediately. I stayed for a week, and Kes for two. By the time we got back to Malta it was August. I won't go into details of the trip or continue making references to this through the rest of this entry - the purpose of this blog is to keep you up to date with goings-on and travel experiences, not to go into any depth about our emotional states. Thanks for understanding.

August

Rugby training was now in full swing by the time we got back. The coach of the Alligators' senior men's team is an experienced coach, and he ran us very hard through August, trying to up our fitness to prepare us for the season. I can tell you that by the end of August, I was probably as fit as I have been in years, if not ever.

During this time, we also decked out the apartment with a lot of the stuff we shipped from Canada. Thus our art, including a lot of the wedding presents and little details like Alphonse, the china bull, are now in place in the apartment, and it feels a lot more like a space that we have helped to shape.

We held a barbeque on our roof for our friends on the rugby team. I definitely think that a barbeque on the roof in about 27-28 degree weather is one of the best things on earth. A few days later, we went to a waterslide park with the team. I was shocked to discover that the water in the waterslides was saltwater pumped from the ocean. I mean, it made sense as soon as I realised it, but having grown up in North America with fresh (chlorinated) water doing the job, it seemed strange!

We have continued to go out on many Friday nights (evening cocktails) and the occasional Sunday (boat daytrip) with a group of ex-pats who set up social events. It's nice to hang out with other people who have had some of the same experiences we're having, and in some cases care about the same things back home.

September

On the 1st, I began my vacation by travelling to London for the playoff round of the Women's Rugby World Cup. There, I got to spend some great time with a couple of friends, and met the father of a good friend of mine, with whom I watched the semi-finals. Canada was unfortunately NOT in the semi-finals (first time since 1994!), but we enjoyed the matches anyway.

I spent the next couple of days wandering around London. I really enjoy the city. I'm sure many who live there have much to point out that isn't to the standard they might want. However, in the global picture, I find the public transit, general civility of people, and quality of the pubs (not just drinking holes - restaurants, community centres, sports clubs & meeting rooms, all rolled into one), among other factors, to be wonderful.

Kes joined me on Friday the 3rd, and we had a great weekend. We stayed in Hounslow - not because of Hounslow particularly, but because it was conveniently located for transit, airport and rugby.

On Saturday, we went to Twickenham Stadium, where we saw the four top London-based pro rugby teams play their season openers as a double bill. We also visited the World rugby museum. The most striking thing to come out of the museum for us was the fact that women's rugby has only really been played for about 30 years. There were isolated matches as early as the 20's and "pioneers" (notably at universities) playing in a more organised fashion in the 1960's. However, for example, the first club (USA & Sweden) or provincial (New Zealand) championships were about 1980. The first official international match was 1982, the first international tournament 1990, and the first World Cup to be actually backed by the International Rugby Board was 1998!

Coming of age in Canada, and learning about rugby at university, I think that we both had a picture of women's rugby as fully equal to men's rugby, with the only real difference being overall player numbers. Sure, the budgets weren't equal, but neither were the player numbers, so that's not unfair, right? We would have expected commitment, budget, interest and so on to be vaguely proportional to the number of participants, and certainly for it to be seen as a positive thing to increase female playing numbers. However, when we got to Europe, we were surprised to discover that in many parts of the rugby world (not necessarily geographical parts - I'm thinking of social and age distinctions, too) women's rugby is not really on the agenda, and no one is really very concerned. When we realised the degree to which this was true, we were really shocked, and a bit disheartened. However, seeing this display at the rugby museum, and realising how young women's rugby really is, brought some of these problems into focus - it doesn't fix them, but it does make it clearer why some of them exist. On the other hand, it makes the achievements of rugby in places like Canada and the US, where women's rugby is much more equal, even that much more impressive.

At the end of that great weekend, where we caught up with more friends, watched the final of the women's world cup, and just generally had a great "escape", Kes went back to Malta and I headed onward to Canada.

I won't go into great detail about the trip home to visit my parents, but it was great to be home with them, and back in Bella Coola. I got to visit the Fall Fair, muck around in the creek clearing out windfalls and other brush with my dad, help my mom organise a whole bunch of photos, and generally felt useful and anchored. It was good stuff.

Meanwhile, Kes took a rugby tour with the Alligators women's team to the heartland of Italian rugby in northern Italy, flying in and out of Bologna, but visiting Parma and Modena, as well. She had a great time, but as with every proper rugby tour, isn't allowed to tell me about half of it.

...And now we're back together in Malta! I'm awaiting the next assignment from Ulstein, she's going from strength to strength at work, and the rugby season is fast approaching. While, as mentioned above about Kes's father, the world has changed in a very negative way, there are still many things that are going right in our lives.

So - now everyone is caught up, and hopefully we'll be able to maintain this blog a bit better!

Cheers,

Ashley