Raphael Vassallo | Sunday, 21 December 2008

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The gas man cometh not

The other day, I ran out of gas. And I don’t mean the type of gas that normally emanates from my mouth during heated conversations about local politics... that, I am sorry to say, appears to enjoy inexhaustible reserves. (As for the gas that sometimes emanates from the other end... well, I can’t exactly help it if they put too much brandy in the Christmas pudding, can I?)

But in any case, I am talking about altogether different type of gas here: one which comes in bright yellow cylinders, and is delivered by secret convoy to a maximum security bunker somewhere in Marsaxlokk... from where it is loaded onto trucks belonging to a limited number of privileged dispensers, who in turn might – but only if you ask them very, very nicely – let you have one for around €5 per cylinder (provided you have an empty).

You know the type I mean. And by a huge coincidence, it is remarkably similar to the gas that other European citizens get delivered directly to their homes via a network of underground pipes, which can be connected directly to one’s heater (or cooker, for the few who actually know how to use such esoteric contraptions), and accessed by simply flicking a switch or opening a tap. You know, “Il metano ti da una mano”, and all that gas...

But hey! Let’s not get bitter about the domestic comforts enjoyed by our neighbours to the north (and dare I say it, to the south as well). The point is that I lit my heater last week – on the first slightly chilly day in this otherwise glorious age of global warming – and: phut, phut, phut, phut, POUFF! Out when the blue flame, and in set the panic.

Yes, panic. For how is a poor sod expect to heat his humble abode, without a bright, shiny yellow cylinder with which to potentially blow himself up (and all his neighbours with him)?
And so commenced the Great Hunt for the Golden Bomblu... made all the more urgent by the sudden drop in temperature experienced over the past two weeks... as well as the fact that there’s this obscure midwinter festival called “Christmas” (or something like that, anyway) just round the corner... and there, in a nuthsell, is the great tragedy of our time, staring us all in the face.

In the year of our Lord 2008 – soon to become 2009, by the way – acquiring something as basic and essential as fossil fuel with which to heat one’s home, now entails a superhuman undertaking second only to ‘The Odyssey’ for the sheer extent of trials, tribulations and invocation of pagan deities involved.
(Note: for those unfortunate enough not to have been brought up in the healthiest of heathen traditions, ‘The Odyssey’ was the name of an epic poem written by Homer.... Homer Simpson, to be precise... full of “d’ohs” and “donuts”, but ultimately signifying nothing.)

Anyhow. The first of several labours was to solve the “Riddle of the Qajjenza Sphinx”. It goes something like this: what shoots down your road at around 5pm, honks its horn uninterruptedly for about 15 minutes, and then vanishes without a trace the moment you finally make it down to the ground floor of your apartment block, with all your gas empty gas cylinders, at 5.25pm sharp?
Oh, that must the good old neighbourhood Cyclopes, who also doubles up as our local gas distributor (oh, and please note I use the epithet quite literally: he lives in a cave with a bunch of sheep).
This brings me to the second labour, which is to acquire the Cyclopes’ secret mobile number: a test of guile and subtlety, which often as not entails a little espionage of the ‘Mission ImPBOssible’ variety.
Once acquired, the third labour is to convince the Cyclopes to let you drop by his cave with your empties, to pick up a cylinder in person. This is usually where the difficulty begins.

“What?” he roared over the phone when I finally got through after around 90 attempts. “Why didn’t you replace your empties while the last one was still half-full?”

“Erm... because I... um...”

“Well, tough luck! It’s too late now: I already passed by your street three weeks ago; you should have left your empties out back then, like everybody else. But I might pass by again around March or April, if you’re lucky...”

I tried to explain that I didn’t need any gas three weeks ago, and that by March I would long have congealed to death... but by this time the Cyclopes had already hung up.

So onto the fourth labour, which was to embark upon a long and pointless trek to the nearest gas distribution point beneath the House of the Four Winds: only to belatedly discover that out of sheer respect for the historic vicissitudes of our proud nation, there was to be no gas distribution on that particular Saturday (which happened to be 13 December).
Yes, I thought bitterly as I drove back home empty-handed. What better way to commemorate the establishment of the Republic of Malta, than to freeze one’s butt off in an unheated apartment?

And so, after several futile attempts, I finally got through to a Nausicaa-like telephone operator at the Enemalta complaints department... who bravely endured my passionate remonstrations and loud threats of violent retribution on all involved in Malta’s energy provision sector... only to offer some much-needed comfort and consolation, when I finally collapsed into a sobbing, weeping mess on the phone.
Thus, with a whimper, the Great Hunt came to an inglorious end.

***

Looking back on the entire cathartic experience, only one thing still truly astonishes me: the remarkable lack of sympathy with which the human tragedy of my gaslessness – with all its butt-freezing implications – was received.
“What were you expecting?” one acquaintance dryly commented, “the gas to come to you?” (To which I was tempted to reply: “Erm, yes actually. Like it does in all civilised countries in this day and age...”

But no matter. It seems we have long acquiesced to living in a country where it is perfectly normal to have only one importer of gas – i.e, the government – and a closed shop of licensed suppliers (who, it seems, can decide to withhold that supply on a whim or idle fancy). And if the customer happens to miss out on his or her weekly or monthly delivery slot – depending on which particular Cyclopes happens to deliver to his or her street – well, there’s no other option but to wait until the distributors open the following Saturday... or to drive all the way to Qajjenza with your empty cylinders in tow, and then drive back home in the equivalent of a suicide bomber’s getaway car.

Some people would describe all that as a primitive, crude, uncouth and uncivilised system, which should really have been phased out soon after the last convoy put into harbour at thew height of World War II.
I, on the other hand, think it’s an absolutely fabulous way of doing things, and there’s not a day that passes but I sink to my knees and thank the good lord Wutan for having consigned me to such a sophisticated and forward-looking society, Amen.

Surely gone fishing

How remarkable. I have just watched the eight o’ clock on Television Malta: you know, that Oracle of a station that always, always tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth... like when it announced the “outstanding success” of the storming of the Egypt Air in 1985, when over 60 passengers were killed in the worst-ever... or when, more recently, it decided that the main news of the day was a visit by Minister Austin Gatt (complete with helmet) to the Power Station in Marsa, on the same day as all Malta’s trade unions joined forces for an anti-government rally. (Plus ca change...)

In any case, it seems that the European Commission, “in reply to questions by TVM”, has discredited allegations made “by a section of the press” about last year’s exports of bluefin tuna.
This is wonderful news, because it means that the European Commissioner Joe Borg has finally got round to analysing Japanese trade figures for the second two quarters of 2007 and the first two quarters of 2008, which have now been in the public domain for weeks. (In fact, I sent him a copy myself over a month ago).
Unfortunately, however, the above announcement was broadcast on Friday evening: far too late to contact the Commissioner’s spokesperson in Brussels to ask all the obvious questions.
Like: how does the Commission explain the inclusion of bluefin tuna processed on board a double-registered ship named Tuna Pro 1 – previously Melilla 1, under which name it is still listed on the ICCAT’s register of illegal vessels – and then sold to a non-existent Spanish company based in (of all places) Belize, in the official list of “Maltese exports to Japan”?
Did Malta ever provide the Commission with import documents for all the tuna it claims to have imported from Morocco in 2007? And if so, why haven’t they shown up on any of the relevant Eurostat documents for the same period?
Did Commission inspections corroborate the Ministry’s claims that an individual 50-metre cage in one particular ranch contains a ratio of 4.5 kg/cubic metre - and that all the tuna claimed to have been carried over since 2007 is being held at similar density?
If so, how does the Commission explain that the Environmental Impact Assessments for all Malta’s tuna ranches clearly indicate that the biomass density cannot exceed a maximum of 3 kg per cubic metre... otherwise the fish will most likely die?

Of course I am sure that Joe Borg will have answers at his fingertips for all these questions, and countless others beside. But I guess it will just have to wait until Monday...

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