Top 10 Things I Like About my Internship on Malta

This post has been lying around for quite some time, I officially apologize for being lazy and promise to post more often in my last three weeks on Malta.

So here we go: As promised here's finally the list of the Top 10 things I like about Malta and my internship here:

10. Short Way to Work

 

Some interns here have a rather far way to their work and have to drive for about an hour. Luckily, my workplace is pretty near to the apartment so I can usually get there in about 10 minutes. That's cool because I don't want to spend the rest of an already long working day on the bus. Still, the drive back from work is longer because I have to change buses in Valletta, but that's OK because all buses have air condition.

9. The Maltese

 

The Maltese people are very friendly and courteous, you can ask anybody about anything and you'll usually be rewarded with a smile and a helpful answer. Although in some cases I, as a German, feel like their social behavior is a little twisted, all in all the Maltese are very nice people. You just don't want to be inside a supermarket with a hundred of them because they have next to no understanding about when they obstruct the way. They seem to have no problem with putting their shopping cart next to another, blocking the way and looking for some pizza while there's already 10 other people waiting to get through. Maybe that's just the little German stickler for law and order inside of me talking but still I'd appreciate it if I could just walk through a supermarket without having to stop and wait every two meters. But this is a minor concern that can't stop me from liking the Maltese attitude. ;)

8. New Internet Router

 

This week we got a new Internet router only for our apartment, so now we actually have WiFi in every corner and not just specific places in the living area. Also the connection doesn't collapse all the time and we don't have to share the bandwidth with who knows how many other people anymore. Woohoo! :-D

7. Lidl

 

Yeah they have Lidl on Malta and I like Lidl because it's cheaper than most of the other supermarkets and I can find a lot of groceries that I like.

6. No Rain

 

I know the last weeks Berlin saw a whole lot of rain and storms. I can't really say I miss that, here it's 30°+ every day and you're even lucky if you see a single cloud on the sky. I couldn't wish for better weather and that's even sweeter because I know how much it rained in Berlin recently.

5. My Colleagues at Work

 

Everybody at Intercomp is really nice, by now I already know at least 20 coworkers by name and it's always nice to talk and joke with them. But even people from other departments that i rarely ever see greet me friendly and chat with me when I take a cigarette break. I guess my colleagues are the main reason why I like my job here and sometimes time just seems to fly by at work.

4. The Beach

 

This one is obvious, who doesn't like a nice beach? :) Although the good beaches are all a bit far away, the drive is worth the trouble, because the beaches are really nice and clean. I just wish I could go there on a weekday in the morning for once because on weekends and in the afternoon there's always a whole lot of people there and I prefer remote and quiet beaches.

3. Paceville

 

In Paceville there's always something going on in the evening. There are a lot of clubs and bars, the prices for drinks are relatively low and there are many tourists and locals that just want to party and have fun. (mostly tourists though)

2. Isle of MTV

Isle of MTV is a huge concert that has taken place on Malta for the last couple of years. This year there were more than 50.000 people attending the event. That's about 1/8 of the Maltese population, all crammed in one place in front of a stage. The artists included Flo Rida, Nelly Furtado and will.i.am. Although it wasn't exactly my kind of music it was still a lot of fun and the entry was free. I suppose the Isle of MTV has to be one of the biggest events on Malta and it was cool to be there when it happened

1. My Workplace

Maybe I complain a lot about many things here on Malta, but the most important thing, the reason why I'm here, my work, is the one thing I can't say anything bad about. I like going to work. Like I said on #5 my colleagues are great, but that's not everything, I also like to have a new challenge almost every day because in the world of computers there's always a new problem which you never encountered before but you still have to do something about it. All to make the customer happy ;) I like figuring out a strange problem by thinking about it, asking colleagues [or Google ;)] or just trying stuff out. Every PC is different and although some things do get repetitive there's rarely ever a day where i don't learn something new or encounter a new fancy error :)

Looking at this finally finished article after more than 2 weeks since I started writing I'm not really happy with it anymore but i sure as hell won't start it all over again, so there you have it. Maybe I'll add some pictures later if I feel like it.

Top 10 Things I Don't Like About my Internship on Malta

Like with all things on earth there are good sides and bad sides to everything. Today I'm a little moody and that's why I decided to complain about some things here. So here we go: This is the Top 10 list of the things that annoy me on Malta:

10. The Illusion of Holidays

I have been travelling quite a lot and i always appreciated the comfort and  pleasantness of leaving cold and rainy Germany to explore sunny countries, their inhabitants and beaches. I thought this internship would at least be a little bit like holidays, but it's not. I realized it's not about the weather or the place where you are, but it's about the freedom to go wherever you wanna go and do whatever the f**k you want. Don't like your flat? Just leave and take a new one. Don't like anything else around you? Pack your bags and go to a nicer place. Well all of this is not possible here, the flat has been paid for and my working place is here so i have to stay for better or worse. I work from 8 to 5 and it's a 45 minute drive to the beach (if the buses play along, which rarely happens) so i only get to swim on weekends and even then the beach is crowded and i guess i'd be better off at Strandbad Wannsee in Berlin. Yeah, well all in all it just doesn't feel like holidays (the worst part is, I would have had 6 weeks of holidays if I had stayed in Berlin).

9. The Lack of Supermarkets

In Berlin there are dozens of supermarkets everywhere. From my home i can reach 5 different ones in 5 minutes. Here on Malta there are dozens of small mini markets, but they're much more expensive than "real" supermarkets. So until now i have found out about 3 different big supermarkets and all of them are at least 15 minutes away with the bus. And you can't drink the tap water here so in addition to the groceries I also have to carry my drinking water. A colleague of Matze was nice enough to take us to a big Supermarket by car and we bought a whole lot of water, so at least we don't have to carry tons of water for the next weeks. But still I'd really appreciate a big supermarket in the vicinity.

8. The "Subway"

The subway on Malta is not an underground train as one might think. It's just a couple of tunnels under the streets that make it possible to reach the other side of one of the many speedways without dying a horrible death. In principle that sounds pretty good, but in practice the subway is often flooded with a stinky greenish liquid that drips straight out of the walls and smells like the worst filthy honey bucket ( = Dixi-Klo, a portable toilet) at a festival that I have ever seen .. squared! So you have the choice of risking your life by crossing the road or risking your sense of smell and losing your stomach contents by using the subway. Yay!

7. The Long Way to the Beach

Like mentioned in the Illusion of Holidays part the way to a nice beach is very long from where I live. All the good beaches are in the north of Malta and sadly, I live in the south. So I have to drive for about 45-60 minutes to the beach and that means i can only go on weekends. The beach is OK, but I haven't found a good place to snorkel yet, it's just sandy and packed full of tourists. But who knows, maybe I'll find a better place to swim nearby eventually.

6. The Traffic

Malta is full of cars. And there are roads everywhere, but sidewalks only appear occasionally so as a pedestrian it is sometimes quite difficult to get from A to B. You either have to deal with the stinking subways, risk your life by crossing a speedway or waste your time by making a huge detour to get somewhere. An example: The bus station i have to go to in order to get to work is about 500 meters away, but i cross the speedway every day because it would take me another 1000 meters if I'd like to take the subway (and i don't, because it smells). So I need 5-15 minutes to get to the bus stop, depending on the traffic and the willingness of the drivers to let me pass the speedway.

5. The WiFi

The WiFi in our flat sucks. Not only the reception is horrible and the connection is lost regularly, we also only have a certain amount of traffic before our line is shut down for the rest of the month. Oh and nobody bothered telling us how much that is, they just told us not to use YouTube too much and not to download big files. We probably have about 500-1000GB traffic per month, but no one really knows and everybody has to be careful not to ruin the line for everyone else for the rest of the month. Another intern here at Intercomp once used up all the traffic and the whole flat didn't have internet access for the last few days of the month. I don't want this to happen at my flat, but I'm not used to thinking about the traffic use before doing anything online, I thought that was something from the last century before we had flat rates...

4. The Organisation

With this, i mean the whole organisation of the internship. It started in Germany where I was told I'd get a job interview by phone to get to know the company I'll be working at. In the end I didn't know where I'll work until I was already on Malta. More or less the same thing with the accommodation. I didn't get any information on anything until it was too late to change something if I didn't like it. Then there's the organisation     here, I sent an email with my concerns to them but they just didn't answer. I don't really feel like anybody cares at all about what happens here as long as I go to work and don't damage anything in the apartment.

3. The Buses

The bus system on Malta sucks. Even the Maltese think so. It was one of the first things i heard here in the introductory presentation. And now after 2 weeks i can say: Hell yes, it's true! I guess I'll have to write another separate post about the buses because more or less everything that can go wrong did go wrong and it would be too much to tell in this Top 10 list. So here are the highlights: 

• Buses are never on time
• Sometimes the line number on the display outside is another one than on the display inside, so you don't even know on which line you are
• Sometimes the displays don't work at all, but show something like TestScreen1234
• Bus drivers usually don't speak English very well (or at all)
• For some reason the buses don't stop at the same stations every time, so I can never be sure if my bus is going to let me exit at work

 At least the guys at work know about this and don't bother if I get to work late because they know I can't do anything about it.

2. No Air Condition

Our flat doesn't have air condition. That sucks because it's very hot all day, all night and I have a little trouble sleeping well in the heat. And because there are up to 8 people cooking something in the living area/kitchen it gets even hotter in there and we can't do s**t about it. A fan just isn't enough sometimes. It annoys me even more because i know some other interns do have AC, I just had bad luck :-/

1. No Privacy

This is my No.1 complaint. I live in an apartment for 8 people with 2-3 beds per room. In Germany I was asked whether I'd want to live in a student apartment together with other interns or if I would like to pay an additional 100€/month to get a place of my own. I immediately chose the 2nd option because privacy is kind of important to me. I didn't hear anything about my accommodation until a few days before i left and even then i only got the address and a few "example pictures" that showed a completely different apartment. So you have to understand I was pretty pissed because my wishes were ignored and i was crammed into a flat with 7 other interns. It's not like my roommates aren't nice, but I still like to have a bedroom of my own, especially when i was offered one and chose to take it.


So that's it. Those are the things that I don't like about my internship here. But don't get me wrong, of course it's not all that bad. Soon I will write a list about 10 things that are great here including my work, the party district, Isle of MTV, and many more. So stay tuned ;)

After two weeks

So I've been here for two weeks now and I thought now it's time for another post. Kevin, the guy I was working with most of the time, was on vacation since last Tuesday, so work has slowed down a little for me. I still analyse and repair laptops, but because no one is really responsible for me right now, I have a lot of time for myself. I just help out wherever i can. I'm quite familiar with a few laptop models now, but there's a billion more which are all different (even though most of them are from Dell), so I still need supervision to deal with most of the laptops. I would try to do more on my own, but I'm a little afraid to break anything because a) the parts are expensive and b) we don't have all parts on stock so the client might have to wait for quite a while if i make a mistake. Of course this only applies to hardware issues i.e. if i have to dismantle a laptop and replace some parts or clean it. When it's only a software issue, i can work pretty independently by now. Tomorrow (Tuesday 3rd July) Kevin is coming back from vacation and I think I'll keep on learning more about the secrets of laptops ;)

So that's it for now. A rather short post because I plan on making 2 more posts with 10 things I like and 10 things I don't like about Malta, my flat, my work and everything else here soon.