To the friend who ghosted me

I miss talking to you

Sometimes I feel like you’re ghosting me...

And I wonder whatever the fuck did I do so bad 

to deserve being dropped like a rotten egg.

It hurts.

But yea, well.... another knock, I guess. 

So what; I can handle this too.

I’m a bit angry too..

Because I think I deserve some sort of explanation for 

total silence

....not left to figure it out for myself.

And heck, I did nothing as far as I know, to deserve it.

But god knows, other things happened to me, 

and I’d done fuck-all to deserve them.

So, I guess.... I’ll just have to deal with this as best I can.

I don’t regret having been in your life, 

or even telling you stuff.

I don’t regret that I came to enjoy 

our time together so much...

even though it hurts like fuck 

now that you have no time for me.

I just regret my stupid judgement.. 

thinking hey, here’s someone who cares 

disinterestedly, and unconditionally.

I still care, and yes, I’m fucking stupid, 

but if you ever call me saying 

hey sorry, it’s been ages since we last talked, 

but hey I need a shoulder...

...I’ll be there.

Because I truly think that caring about someone 

has to have no strings attached... 

otherwise you’re just using that person.

So.... I guess, you won’t be hearing 

much from me in the future

I’m sorry it got to this.

I’m still not sure why, actually.

Was it something I did, or said, 

or did not say, or did not do?

I said I’m angry. 

Well, I’m sad more than angry.

Sad because I care

And I thought you do too

https://www.facebook.com/madovermarketing/videos/1420224614710135/

This clip came up in my fb newsfeed this morning. Now I consider myself to be as much of a feminist as the next girl.. I regularly post on social media, calling out the oppression of women, in many different forms. I have lost count of the times I've written angry posts denouncing slut-shaming, victim-blaming, child-marriage, FGM, the inaccessibility of education for girls all over the world, lack of choices for women, the way religion is a crutch for men who seek to control. I've been called names too, for saying that real choice, real freedom is as unique as the individual, and it is may not necessarily be what we perceive to be freedom.

Yet, this clip floored me.. and made me think.  

I'm pretty sure the mom reassuring and comforting her daughter in the first few frames does not intend to normalise disrespect for her daughter; I have done the same with my own daughter countless times, and I definitely do not want to normalise disrespect for her. I definitely do not want my daughter to grow up thinking it is all right for a boy to be rude to her, that she is meant to be always a step behind a man.

And I'm sure I'm not the only mom who has done this with her kids.It is natural to want to comfort your child when she is hurting. It is how we have been 'comforted' time and again, when we were slighted and hurt by someone else. Ignore them. Rise above it.

It is instinctive to want to help prevent future hurt by being prepared. It is a natural defence mechanism and we all use it, to some extent...dumping someone before they have a chance to dump us, getting out of a job before we're actually fired, leaving a country before being asked to leave.

But it is time that we become more aware of the underlying subtext to our words, to the disturbing message behind our well-meaning words of comfort. And to call out that boy on disrespect.

For the past couple of days, I've been seething about the amount of people who are defending Mike Pence's misogynistic rule of not dining alone with women, other than his wife, and claiming that he is simply honoring his marriage vows. 

I personally think that fidelity within marriage, or even an exclusive relationship, should be a given. At the end of the day, it is basic respect to be honest with the person you claim to love. And, if Mike Pence wants to make a huge song and dance about his religious beliefs and how he lives his marriage, fine by me. 

But an inflexible refusal to dine with any woman other than his wife is not just about being faithful, not just about honoring his marriage vows. It is weird, misogynistic, demeaning, unprofessional and possibly illegal. How can you exclude half the human population from being alone with you in the same context, simply on the basis of their gender?  (Quite apart from the fact that with someone like Pence, I suspect that it is not only women who are on his list of people he will not be alone with....)

I should think it is obvious for anyone with any semblance of a brain, but seeing the vast amounts of people defending this particular choice, maybe all the things wrong with it, need to be spelled out clearly.

Pence's rule is under-pinned by the logic that women are vixens and temptresses, a danger to any married man who wants to be a good Christian and honour his marriage vows (like that is the exclusive preserve of Christians anyway).

The logic that a married woman has absolutely no relevance beyond being a wife and a mother, that she is not a person in her own right. 

The logic that married men are unable to enjoy a plate of pasta without being overwhelmed by uncontrollable urge to be unfaithful to their wives.

This is not simply a man wanting to honour his marriage vows.

This is a man who believes women are either Madonnas (like his wife), or whores (like the rest of the female population).

This is a man saying that a woman's sole purpose for even existing is to bear children.

This is disrespect.

 And like the disrespect inherent in the boy being rude to the girl in the clip, it is buried under assumptions and cliches. 

Cliches that boys will be boys. And that men are somehow unsuspecting victims - of the women they have victimised forever. The age-old story of Adam being led into temptation by Eve. That women are evil, and need to be controlled and kept in check by the very men, whom they are supposed to victimise.

What bollocks!!!

Disrespect is disrespect and it is about time we start recognising it for what it is. If we don't, very little will ever change.

Happy Woman's Day

Happy Woman’s Day to the woman whose partner slashed her face with a knife over a missing fifty euro note, and got off with a suspended sentence.

Happy Woman’s Day to the woman whose partner was incriminated of defiling her daughter, as well as other girls, only for him to be put on with probation.

Happy Woman’s Day to the woman who lives in terror of her husband coming home to demand of her things that she does not dare to deny him.

Happy Woman’s Day to the girl who is currently being sexually abused by her dad, her grandad, her uncle, her brother .. the victim who does not even think of telling anyone about it, because she has been told time and again, and in so many ways that it is her fault, that she has no rights, that she must do as she is told.

Happy Woman’s Day to the woman who is a rape survivor and who has never told anyone. Because the shame and stigma attached to her ordeal are too great. Because sexual crimes are the only ones where, unlike other crimes, the victim is blamed, not the perpetrator. Because no one would ever believe her anyway. Because if she told, people would rip her to shreds; questioning her clothes, the amount she’d had to drink, what she said, what she did. Because even the case made its way to court, chances are he would walk, and be free to come after her again.

Happy Woman’s Day to the woman who deals with snide jokes and sexist comments on a daily basis, who when she complains of harassment, is told she is ‘reading too much into it.’

Happy Woman’s Day to the woman whose bosses impose a female dress code, which goes beyond anything they would expect of a man.

Happy Woman’s Day to women in Saudi Arabia and Iran - both countries where the hijab is obligatory, whether you want to wear it or not.

Happy Woman’s Day to Muslim women in France and Belgium – both countries where the hijab is 

banned, whether you want to wear it or not.

Happy Woman’s Day to the one in every three girls in developing countries who is married before she is eighteen, often to a much older husband.

Happy Woman’s Day to the girl whose family flew her out for a ‘holiday’ which resulted in her being cut (FGM) so that one day, she will be an attractive marriage prospect.

Happy Woman’s Day to the girl who will never get a proper education, who will live her life dependent on the goodwill of a man, first her father, and later her husband, with no rights whatsoever.

Happy Woman’s Day to the sixteen-year-old girl whose “overprotective” father puts up posts on social media saying things like “MY little girl” or “What you do to her, I’ll do to you” in an only semi-jokey ‘warning’ to potential boyfriends

Happy Woman’s Day to the teen girl whose family are organising a purity ball for her, giving her a purity ring, and expect her to remain a virgin till marriage.

Happy Woman’s Day to the woman who has found her reproductive rights curtailed by the various new legislation that has been passed in recent months.

Happy Woman’s Day to lesbian and transgender women.. Kudos to you for being true to yourself, for not giving up in face of injustice, hatred and even cruelty, and for being an example to the rest of us.

Happy Woman’s Day to women everywhere in countries that profess equality but in reality, are still a very long way from proper equality.

Happy Woman’s Day to those women among us who cannot understand that the oppression is anything that curtails our choice, that the freedom to choose is real equality. To those who still think that you must have certain beliefs, make certain choices, smash certain ceilings in order to be free of oppression.

Happy woman’s day to my daughter…may you always have the freedom to make your own choices without any constraints, from anyone or anything.

The freedom to make the choices we want to make is our greatest victory. Let us support and help each other in our quest for fulfilment, regardless of what shape that fulfilment may take. The choices we make should be the ones best suited for us, as individuals. To quote one of my heroes, the late Dr. Maya Angelou we are all phenomenal, phenomenal women.

My treat...

https://twitter.com/JosephMuscat_JM/status/827873430976479232/photo/1

 For the love of God...Can someone explain to our PM that work colleagues are NOT friends or family.
You take friends and family for pastizzi and te' tat-titotla, not PMs.

I am not much of an expert on protocol, but look at the bemused expression the guy on the left has...he clearly is not exactly overjoyed. And please, no one says he's got resting bitch face, ta.
Maybe the decor was not to his taste (let's be honest..a table that has seen God alone knows what, tiles that are either chipped or cracked, and a waiter wearing a stained tee...if they were lucky enough not to catch him in a string vest.... with chest hair poking out of the neckline).
Or maybe, he did not quite like the pastizzi and te' tat-titotla (heqq..that can happen too)
Or he was just wondering why the hell was someone taking his picture in this dump, presumably to put on social media later.

I would not be surprised if this ruffled a few EU feathers. This is like our PM making a state visit to the US and Donald Trump takes him for a burrito from a street vendor...though, it probably wouldn't be a burrito, would it? What with America First, and all that.

I am no snob.. I can slum it with the best of them, and as a Malteser living abroad, I was quite happy to see Angela Merkel scarf a hobz biz-zejt, like we do.

But this....this makes us look like idiots. And it's  not even a true slice of genuine Maltese life... how many of us hang around the pastizzeria, eating our purchases after we pay for them?
Imho, this is WORSE than Chris Cardona visiting a brothel.. because Cardona is a free agent, to a certain extent (even though ultimately, it's up to the PM to keep him in check - which he obviously is not doing atm). This was a stunt condoned and carried out directly and solely by the PM.

Is it that they do not know better?  Are they that parochial and provincial to not see this for the faux pas it is?

Is it that they do realise but frankly do not give a tuppenny damn?

Is it that this whole thing was meticulously planned, a thumbing of the nose at the EU PMs; enough to raise eyebrows, but small enough to pass off as a kind of "joke"? Was it a petty gesture to show that yea, we may be the smallest member state but hey, we're no less than you?

Whatever the reason for this latest stunt from our "unorthodox" government, it doesn't make us look good.

#kemmsendumunaqghughannejk

OMG! Are you serious???

Wtf reason should a Maltese person living in the UK have to vote for Brexit...?

One of the issues in this very-hot IN/OUT referendum is about EU migrants. HELLO ...that's us, KMB. 

Brexit will change nothing for us Maltese, Karmenu assures us... How do you know? Because I am living in the UK and I can tell you that NO ONE knows what will happen in the event of Brexit, neither David Cameron, and much less Boris Johnson. 

Such a statement coming from a Maltese person beggars belief.. you are telling Maltese people to vote against their own interests. What kind of mindless idiots do you take us for?? 

Although maybe it is to be expected of this douche...at least he's consistent...unlike our menu-tweeting PM who is now offering to help the UK IN-campaign, conveniently forgetting how vociferously he campaigned to keep Malta out twelve years ago.

Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici urges Maltese living in England to vote in favour of Brexit - The Malta...

Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici urges Maltese living in England to vote in favour of Brexit Tuesday, 1 March 2016, 11:53 Last update: about 43 seconds ago

WWW.INDEPENDENT.COM.MT

Under Pressure pt.1

It is that time of the year again....exam time. The time that any student dreads. Everyone, from little children in Yr. 4 all the way up to University is busy studying furiously and waiting for it all to be over... Hopefully for students all over the island, by the time this is oublished, it will be all over for them.

As a parent, and a teacher myself, and obviously as one-time student, it makes you wonder...

Why do we have so many exams in our educational system?? Children as young as seven are sitting for exams in at least five subjects, twice a year.. Comparisons are odious, but seeing that I am currently living in the UK with two children in primary school, maybe they cannot be helped.....

In all of their primary years, UK students experience exams twice, at the end of yr.2 (English and Math) and at the end of yr.6 (English, Math and Science). Why is it absolutely necessary that Maltese children have at least double that, each year? Why not have a system of continuous assessment that lasts throughout the whole school year? Rather than an one or two-hour exam with so much riding on it? When the actual day of the exam may simply be a bad day?

How relevant are all the subjects that students have to study? What practical use is it to an eight-year-old to learn stuff like the finer points of the compass? How many of us ever use all the extraneous stuff we learned at school in our daily lives? Stuff we very probably hated too? Sometimes, you can barely find a practical use for the stuff you loved...

Even the whole concept of 'studying for exams' is suspect... If exams are in core subjects where the main focus is on concepts rather than on facts to be memorised, there should be no need to study..once you understand a concept you only need a little practice to consolidate it, and as a test approaches you need only revise.

Studying for exams is the symptom of an educational system that is still tied to paper and pencil, to sitting at a desk, a system based on book learning, without giving any importance to other ways of learning. A  system based on cramming, on stuffing our students full of knowledge without leaving space for much else.

Teachers are under enormous pressure to deliver a too-vast syllabus within a set time-frame.. Teachers are human too, and there is only so much you can do. In addition to the pressure with the syllabus, teachers also have  vast amounts of paperwork (which parents never see). All this is detracting from what teaching should be about...helping each student achieve his/her potential.

Within families, tensions rise, as adults become more short-tempered and snappy, and children are overwhelmed by the pressure. 

These days school holidays are hardly holidays anymore.... My niece is 8; she got a Holiday Extra Work Pack over summer (ending yr.3); she got a Revision Pack of about 20 double-sided sheets for each core subject (Maths, English, Maltese) over Christmas. In addition, she started exams last Friday, meaning she spent the Carnival holidays revising/studying... My sister took a couple of days off from work,and instead of spending decent quality-time with her daughter over the 'holidays', it ended up being a stressful time for both of them.

Pressure pressure pressure.

In spite of this, many of us parents grit our teeth and plough ahead with studying with their children. To be fair, this is the only strategy that we learned from our own student years.

But is it not short-sighted to think that our strategies are automatically applicable to our kids?

Children today are different from what we were at their age. Nowadays, a child can find whatever s/he is interested in with a few taps on a touch screen. Their childhood is fundamentally different from ours. The world we inhabit and its messages have changed too... Shouldn't an education system be ever-evolving and take that into consideration too..??? 

The concept of expending time and energy on something that does not interest us has become obsolete in today's world. As adults we're told, "If it doesn't interest you; move on". Why should it be any different for children? 

So, maybe we as parents, educators and policy makers should question the wisdom of a system that still applies the logic of yesterday to the world of today. Who knows, it might be the solution to easing the pressure?

Since I moved abroad, I've had frinds tell mee wistfully 'Hekk sew (That's nice!)' when we talk about our different educational experiences as parents.... Is it not  ludicrous that moving becomes a "solution" to the pressure in our educational system?

Of lettuce and hot air....

Emily Slater has autism. Like most people on the autistic spectrum, she has significant difficulty in learning more than one language. And this shows in her exam results…while she struggles with her Maltese O-Level, she has satisfied all the other entry criteria. Last week, Emily took her case to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Obviously, this made the news, and fuelled plenty of facebook debate.

There were all sorts of comments and opinions, ranging from the insensitive to the plain stupid….

Let’s get a few facts straight.

Malta is a bilingual country. Both Maltese and English are the official languages of the country. Having said that, English is the lingua franca in many countries of the world. Our bilingualism comes as much from financial expediency as from our time under British rule.

The Maltese language with its very specific niche is what is truly our own. I live close to one of the world’s most multi-cultural cities. Any time, any day you can hear different languages, different accents ..and yet, I repeatedly get asked, often by strangers, to describe Maltese as ‘it is different from any other language’.

The fact that as a nation, many of us fail to perceive the uniqueness of our language is a great shame. So yes, I do understand the initial indignation expressed by some.

But….

This is not a story about national pride or about our language. A sarcastic round of applause to the media who depicted it as such!!

This is not about doing away with the Maltese language. This is about a young person with a learning issue, and about working around that issue for her to achieve her potential. This is about inclusion.

It is about questioning the established patterns, things which have been that way forever..

We are a bilingual country, so why can’t we have either one language or the other in cases like this?

If University feels strongly about keeping Maltese as an entry requirement (as it should, after all) why is it that foreign students applying to study there are excused from knowing Maltese? Anyone who’s ever applied to study at a university in a foreign country knows that prospective students are asked to demonstrate competence in the language of the country. The books in university libraries abroad are usually in the local language.

Why do our students not have suitable textbooks in Maltese? Why does English persist as the language of Physics, Chemistry, ICT, Psychology?  Indeed, this is the case with most subjects from senior school right up to university level.

I am all for cherishing our unique language… but sadly, there is no logic to having Maltese as a university entry requirement. Beyond maybe an obvious and rather ham-fisted attempt to give some dignity to something that should be a matter of national pride, but is often treated like a poor relation.

This is a story about inclusion (and in this case, the lack thereof). And sadly, this is not limited to this particular case. How is a student with ADHD supposed to succeed in an education system that is based on cramming, long hours of studying and rote-learning? Make no mistake, for all its wheelchair ramps and notices in Braille, university is far from inclusive.

Invisible disabilities are still disabilities, and when people with such conditions work hard to overcome obstacles, they should not be punished by a system whose inclusiveness only extends to visible disabilities.

Emily has been to Strasbourg to protest over what she justly perceives as an infringement of her right to continuing her education. Hopefully, things will move in the right direction now and adequate concessions will be made, not just for her, but also for future prospective students with invisible disabilities.

As to what will happen after she does graduate is a story for another day…..