Saviour Balzan | Sunday, 21 December 2008

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Bizarre Christmas prezzies

Here we go again. Trying to draw up a list for my favourite friends for 2009. Please do appreciate that it has been rather difficult and stressful leaving out dear ones from this list, but once again please do note that anyone left out of the list are not even worth a mention.

Austin Gatt
To Austin Gatt, the soft-spoken, pensive and restrained politician who always thinks before he acts; who takes pride in waiting for the right moment to say something; who always finds the courage to correct himself when he commits a grave mistake.
To Austin, the man with a listening problem, I have chosen for this Christmas the perfect gift to improve his listening capabilities: a hearing aid!

Bertie Mizzi
To Bertie Mizzi, the man who will be remembered for his entrepreneurial spirit, his habit of living in places with chicken cheap rents; the man who respectfully acquired from Queen Elizabeth an award for services rendered; but more importantly, for making us appreciate how much he has given back to this country through his extensive business projects...
To Uncle Bertie, I have opted for a special present. That is, to offer him a low interest loan to enable him and his partners to finish the Midi project: the most wonderful blemish on our national landscape.

Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando
To JPO, the man who finds solace in the fact that everyone thinks that he is the most honest and truthful man south of Naples; the man who could, if he wanted, have sent the Nationalist to the Opposition benches but thought that he could not.
To convince us of his sincerity and of Alfred Sant’s evil plan before the election, he burst into tears and broke down in front of the cameras. In so doing, JPO lost the biological ability to secrete tears from his lachrymal glands.
For Jeffrey, I have purchased the ideal Christmas present: a bag of giant onions grown in Mistra.
(Simply cut the onions in half and place them next to your eyes. When you cut an onion, you break cells, releasing their contents. Amino acid sulphoxides form sulphenic acids. Enzymes that were kept separate now are free to mix with the sulphenic acids to produce propanethiol S-oxide, a volatile sulphur compound that wafts upward toward your eyes. This gas reacts with the water in your eyes to form sulfuric acid. The sulfuric acid burns, stimulating your eyes to release more tears to wash the irritant away).

Joseph Muscat
Joseph, the man they used to call Sant’s poodle; the man no one would have imagined leader of the Labour party.
Here is a man who is reserved and lacks the ambition to be Prime Minister. Here is a man who believes that the best way to win the election is to look like a Nationalist, act like a Nationalist and dress up like a Nationalist.
He does have one small handicap, though – his age!
And to compensate for this juvenile look, I have coughed up the ideal present for Joseph. It is a complicated sort of gift. It aims to help him in his ageing process, which inadvertently should help him with his maturing process and hence his popularity with the electorate.
The gift are all my libel suits. He can take their paternity, so that all the worries connected with them may help him to age quickly.

Charles Azzopardi
il-poodle
Malta’s foremost entrepreneur when its comes to fish; the man who will libel you if you even dare utter the word fishy; the man who likes to spend quality time on sailing boats with Fisheries Ministers... not that this is intrinsically bad, or even fishy (oops!)
The man who will be in the next list of potential candidates for beatification; and who was only this week he was waved a green card by the European Commission for his fishing activities.
To remember this great day, I have decided to award Azzopardi il-poodle, a giant fish hook to remind him of how Malta was let off the hook by the Fisheries Commissioner, the one and only Joe Borg.

Lawrence Gonzi
Dr Gonzi, the man who undoubtedly has the most superb smile of all world leaders, a smile that cannot possibly be taken for granted. That smile has won people’s hearts, allowing them to surrender to the Gonzi touch.
Here is a smile that will render you speechless, immobile and incapable of reacting. Here is a smile that makes all your opponents shudder and tremble in awe.
To Lawrence, my man with the smile, I have the perfect present for the perfect situation; a super anti-wrinkle cream to eliminate the crow’s feet.

George Pullicino
To George, the man who would have lost his seat had John Dalli worked a little harder in the Sliema district. The man who was unfairly demoted after having had MEPA removed from his little empire.
Here is a man who should be remembered for the way the Maltese townscape has been disfigured, and the way Maghtab still burns.
We should be grateful to Saint Benno of Meissen, the patron saint of fishermen. It was he who saved George’s life when George very astutely quit the chartered sailing yacht with his friend Andrew Calleja, then MEPA chairman, and il-poodle Chalie Azzopardi. The yacht later ran aground and by Jove, we could have lost poor old George.
At first I thought of buying him a life jacket, but I could not find his size. I ended up spending a bomb and bought an EPIRB in other words an Emergency Position Indicating Radiobeacon.
That way, Malta will track down George and save him from the savage seas.

Paul Borg Olivier
The man who really is not as bad as he looks. Here is an intrinsically good guy, so good that his wife is his secretary, and he her boss. Here is a man who really and truly means no harm and only would like his party to rule us for another decade.
He has also contributed a very important phrase to the world-wide lexicon, “I did a Borg Olivier.” You utter this every time you send an SMS or an email to your wife instead of your mistress.
Surely, a difficult choice. I asked myself what I could possibly give Pawlu. Then, gee! I was reading through the newspapers and there I saw an advert: ‘Basic computing skills for learners’ – For beginners or politicians who want to keep their tracks a secret. Course duration: 5 years. Cost: Depending on performance.

Joe Azzopardi
Joe, alias Peppi, is perhaps the easiest person for presents.
He told me the other day that he had run out of his most useful item: masks.
The last one he had, he lost at the Labour party’s HQ. He was there with Joseph in a meeting pontificating on ethics and the media.
An insider told me that it was like a scene from the sketch ‘the kettle calling the pot black.’
So this year’s present will be... yet another mask!

Richard Cachia Caruana
Richard, the man for all seasons. The great altruist, the man who does nothing for himself and everything for others. The man who would not mind being European Commissioner, even though he knows that he does not deserve it.
Here is this unelected cabinet minister who does not believe in networks, the concept of friends of friends, and even in the existence of freemasonry and/or in nepotism.
I first thought of inviting him to take a course at the Alliance Francaise to improve his French and Maltese. Then I thought that a more appropriate present would be the full Hollywood DVD series: ‘Friends.’
I am sure he will appreciate this.

Jason Micallef
Yes, yes, this is my man, last but not least. The man who was no match to Joe Saliba but surely is a match to Pawlu Borg Olivier. He asked Pawlu to resign, but only to realise that Pawlu was about to ask him why he was still in his seat after losing the election.
Jason is just the guy Joseph Muscat needs: loyal, intelligent, open-minded, organised, a strategic planner, a teetotaller and secretive.
I cannot stand hearing that every time he meets Joseph Muscat’s right hand man James Piscopo, he ends up being thrashed and rubbished and threatened.
So the choice for Jason was very simple. A pair of boxing gloves.

The gentleman
I last met the ‘gentleman’ at the Phoenicia, in that beautiful lobby. He arrived in his black Discovery jeep – ideal for Malta’s ‘cool’ summer.
We met over a drink and we agreed that we would respect each other’s patch and avoid stepping on each other’s toes. Nothing diabolical, just a simple gentlemen’s agreement.
The meeting came to an end with a handshake. In other societies, the word of mouth is significantly more important than the signed document or contract.
Months later, the same gentlemen goes back on his word. I decide to buy myself a present, it is a three-inch needle, to stick up my backside and dutifully remind me to stop believing that there are such things as ‘gentlemen’s agreements.’

Disclaimer: All the above-mentioned Christmas gifts, with one exception, have not been purchased. The credit crunch has simply robbed me of the opportunity to make most of my dear friends a happier bunch. The only present I have purchased is the 3-inch long needle to remind me of what a real gentleman that gentleman is.
A merry Christmas and best of health to all my fans and detractors!

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