Last Saturday we tripped off to the military town across the border. Well it is military no more and ever since the Franco-German hostilites over Alsace-Lorraine cooled down the city of Metz has been trying to reinvent itself. The Centre Pompidou inaugurated this year goes a long way in placing the beautiful city back on the map of “visitable” destinations in France. Metz is hoping to have the “Bilbao effect” in this quiet north-east corner of the hexagon.
It’s worth visiting. Not just for the Pompidou centre but also for the magnificent cathedral, for the lovely architecture that is a mélange of the attempts of the French/German occupiers to stamp their imprint on this outpost. If you do visit this corner of the world then you would not be amiss to try out the Italian restaurant on Place de Paris in Luxembourg called “La Voglia Matta“. They have an incredible choice of pastas – with the additional benefit of a copious choice of home made gluten-free pastissimi. I’m in love with the gf gnocchi quattro formaggi or the sugo di cinghiale.The restaurant is also worth visiting because of the kitschy fifties decor and magnificent view over Avenue de la Liberté – book a window seat to really enjoy the experience!
Skip dessert at the restaurant (you’ll have no space for it anyway) and drive/bus to the City Concorde in Bertrange for one of the best ice-creams on the face of this planet. It’s another Italian establishment called Franky. My favourite is a fiordilatte/chocolate mix though you cannot be disappointed by any of the tastes on sale.
The Pompidou Photoshoot (feat. LL & the innocent bystanders):
This one is mainly for the transfrontaliers living outremer. The quest for a “cheap flight” connection to Malta is becoming like a game of “hot & cold”. As Flyunfair and Flimsyjet CEO’s throw darts across the European map selecting airport links to Malta au hazard we can now happily announce that the “cold, cold, cold” has become “tepid”. Flyunfair have a new flight from Eindhoven (Holland). It’s around three hours away from Luxembourg and the flights are Thursdays and Sundays (and yes, the flight back is at 6am so think of it as a Thursday to Saturday trip to Malta for your urgent needs that cannot wait.
Three hours’ drive plus two hours’ leeway before getting on the plane (Flyunfair’s quirky ideas about queueing ppl like animals simply because the flight is “cheap”) and a three hour flight. That’s still eight hours door to airport (MIA). Things, they say, can only get better. Frankfurt airport is the same driving time away (prices slightly more expensive) and a wellplanned flight from Dusseldorf (also around three hours away) could turn out to be cheaper (and more luggage space). The French are still obstinately refusing to make Metz-Nancy airport amenable for international flights (which might just be ok given the penchant of French air traffic controllers to simply sod off and cause absolute chaos for the plane schedule ). Germany has introduced an aviation tax making ALL flights slightly more expensive p.p.
We’re not really after the deal. A well priced (not Luxair style) price from an airport that is a convenient drive away would just be the ticket. Until now the closest airport with relatively normal prices is still Brussels – a good two hours away (not counting possible upsets at the last stage of the car trip on the black hole that is the Ring). Open market my arse.
Gode di Immunità Ecclesiastica
The sponsors of the anti-divorce billboard erected by the Zebbug Parish are performing all sorts of cartwheels in order to make it clear that they are actually fence-sitters of the prime order and are neither for or against divorce. I guess it is important to know that Mega Tech of Mdina Road, Zebbug, fine purveyors of electronic gaming, have absolutely no opinion whatsoever in favour or against divorce though I am sure you could buy a copy of The Sims (check out the Guide to Marriage in the Sims at the end of this post) from the establishment – complete with married couples and all.
I like the way Jason Grech of Mega Tech used the smoking metaphor for an analogy as to why sponsors should not be associated with the message. Rothmans used to sponsor the football league, he says, but it does not mean that smoking is good for footballers. Bank of Valletta are into their tenth year of sponsoring the MFA’s premier league and we are inching towards legislation that bans advertising of cigarettes completely. That’s the thing about advertising Jason, it’s full of those irritating messages you can’t control. You should stick to the PLPN way – you give them the off the books bung and the Curia/Parish will give you a highway to heaven.
Apparently the church billboard did not need a permit because it fell under socio-religious classification which means it can be erected for 21 days without a permit. I wonder if some company is willing to sponsor the J’accuse Billboard that we could erect in Zebbug square for 21 days – it would state “God has no vote/ Alla m’ghandux vot”. Anonymous bungs accepted.
Tut Tut Flies and Aedes Albopictus
Image via Wikipedia
No new sightings have been made of the dangerous Asian Tiger Mosquito in Malta. The albino-like varmint had shaken a few feathers with two sightings in September and November. It is a carrier of such niceties as dengue and yellow fevers. Thankfully the committee specially appointed by the government for the search and destroy mission did not make any further sightings. What Malta is still full of is the local “tut tut” fly. People complaining endlessly about the heat (justified), prices (not entirely justified) and anything they can complain about in mid conversation. Speaking of mid-conversation, J’accuse spotted fellow a fellow Luxembourg dweller bravely wearing these pink crocs at the Embassy in Valletta.
Driving Maniacs
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why we should wonder at all the accidents happening this summer. How can you marvel when walking or driving involves exposing your self to manifest danger for life and limb. Students equipped with almost half a brain pop out at the most improbable of places to cross the road. Yesterday I risked a head on collision from behind in order to slow down for two absolute nincompoops who were crossing a dark road on Regional Road at Saint Andrew’s right at the blind corner after the lights at Jessie’s Bar (direction Qawra). If I was not risking a mad bus ramming my rented 107 I would have got out of the car and given them a good beating myself such was the anger they provoked with their nonchalant attitude towards safety.
Students living at the Coastline hotel are waiting for the lights to turn green before crossing. (Green for them not for the cars of course). Which does not mean that an accident will not happen there any time soon. It just takes one hair brained crosser or worse one of those arseholes who think that the coast road is Le Mans revisited and boom you have your “tilef il-kontroll tal-vettura” and “ghal xi raguni ma hix maghrufa” all over again. Bugger to all that. We should reintroduce impaling as a punishment for serious traffic offences.
Valletta & Paceville
The capital is getting nicer and nicer what with all the embellishments and road works. At least they are worth something ad maiorem popoli commoditatem unlike the cacophonic chaos that are the works in the streets of the suburb that never sleeps. Check out my funky snapshots of the city (on my facebook album). I enjoyed taking them with my little Nikon Coolpix. You’ve just gotta love the Public Convenience in Strait Street. I also managed to be in VLT at midday to witness the St George’s Square spitting to music thingy. Water bounced and jumped to Charles Camilleri.
I think I like what they’ve done to the square (whose surface looks like an Olly and Benjy football pitch) but it still will never justify the expenses that were dispensed for the launching concert. It’s benches, lampposts and a couple of water spitters. At least we can console ourselves that urban planners have finally discovered the pleasures of open spaces. Slowly, slowly.
A gay proposal in The Sims (yes, it also means happy)
“The Sims” is a fun simulation that gets some parts of life right. We all get cranky if we don’t have enough fun, food, and rest. But when it comes to marriage, the game is very different.
Steps to Getting Married
Friendship is a requirement for Sims to get married. They have to have a relationship score of 70. Then it is safe to turn on the heat, by lots of kissing and hugging. The proposal action becomes available once the relationship score is met. In order for a proposal to be accepted, the potential spouse needs to be in a good mood. They can easily refuse the proposal just because they aren’t hungry or need to empty their bladder. Once you are sure they are in a good mood, then propose. But even then, nothing is guaranteed.
The Wedding
When the proposal is accepted the Sims will immediately have a wedding. They change into wedding clothes and that’s it!
After the Wedding
The visiting sim will move into the home adding their assets to the bank account. The last name of the Sim moving in is changed. Children of the new spouse will move in as well, except if there is another adult at the original home.
Divorce? New Spouse?
Once married, that’s it! No divorce for Sims. They can, however, marry other Sims. Each Sim can have multiple spouses. A male Sim could have 7 other wives living with him, as long as he proposed to each in his own home.
There is of course the adage about lies, damned lies and statistics but it is inevitable that in a discussion on divorce the dreaded ‘s’ word will surface time and again to prove the point of one side or another. Now J’accuse has long declared that its vote in the divorce issue is a thundering “about effin’ time” so our bias in the matter is clear. Having said that it does not mean that we will not fulfill our journalistic duty of presenting you with subjects that might serve to feed the debate further. So here goes one of those instances:
Yesterday’s L’Essentiel (a luxo metro-style journal) carried two articles related to marriage. The first was a reproduction of various articles that have been appearing in the syndicated press about a recent study at a US university concerning the links between divorce and social networking (SN) (geek warning: this is classic social networking not SN of the facebook type – the latter would fall within a smaller circle of our imaginary venn diagram). It would result, from a scientifically conducted experiment, that divorce can be “contagious” along the lines of social networks. Enter the short catchy statements destined to become modern day old wives’ tales as they result from the study:
Divorce tends to spread among the networks of people having already divorced. (Basically divorcing becomes less difficult if everybody else around you is doing it too). Luxembourg seems to follow this rule since the number of divorcees has increased to 45% nowadays from 9.6% in 1970.
Now for the SN effect. Friends of divorcees see the chances of themselves getting divorced within the next 2 years (from their friends divorce) increase to 147%.
If it is your brother or sister who isdivorcing that increases the chances of your own divorce by 22%.
Married parents with children are less influenced by divorces within their social network than childless couples, and the more children the couple has, the less the influence. “Interestingly, we do not find that the presence of children influences the likelihood of divorce, but we do find that each child reduces the susceptibility to being influenced by peers who get divorced,” the report says.
But is the contagion factor the only reason for divorce in later years? Edward O. Laumann suggested that it may also have to do with our age, health and longer life span. A sociology professor at the University of Chicago, he is the analyst for the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behavior, a survey of 27,500 men and women 40 to 80 years old in 29 countries.
Dr. Laumann explained to me that “in the early 20s those who marry exhibit a two-year age difference. If you plot a graph, you begin to see differences as time passes. Between ages 18 and 45 the gap widens between women and men with regard to age difference in marriage. “At age 44 it becomes interesting, the lines cross at 44 which is when women become less likely to be in a sexual partnership. By age 70 we find that a full 70 percent of women will not have a partner. But if you take a look at the men at age 70, just 35 percent will be without a partner.” He added that “men trade up for younger women. And the more sexually active will die in the arms of a woman, whereas older women often die alone in nursing homes.”
If divorce is looking too good to men, what is wrong with marriage? A theory making headlines these past few weeks is that we simply do not know how to be married. Therefore, the federal government and the military are funding marriage-education programs that are being called successful. A strong dissenting voice sounded in Psychology Today from Bella DePaulo, a social scientist and visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She is the author of “Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After.”
When I spoke with Dr. DePaulo, she expressed some frustration with media misinterpretation of studies, in particular the Building Strong Families (BSF) program. “BSF studies were conducted in eight different locations, and the participants were unmarried couples who were expecting a baby or just had one. What was the bottom line from scholars who summarized the results from the more than 5,000 couples? Fifteen months after entering the program, the relationship outcomes of BSF couples were, on average, almost identical to those of couples in the control group.”
She added, “In one of the studies, people were more likely to have broken up and less likely to be living together and not married.” As for the contagious-divorce theory, Dr. DePaulo thinks that “the idea of social norms is potentially important. What people around you do does influence behavior.” If divorce is contagious and marriage programs are failing, here’s hoping that newly divorced and divorcing women are not suddenly looked upon as today’s Typhoid Mary — infecting men with their single status.
The tiny country of Luxembourg might have been tempting for a comparative idea of what would happen in Malta. It is not the case though since attitudes to divorce and marriage here are extremely different to the situation in Malta. Even insofar as entitlement of couples to certain rights – such as tax benefits for the purchase of a house – all that is needed is an official declaration that two people live under the same roof or consider themselves a unit. Cohabitation? C’est quoi? As for the PACS – a social contract for couples that is not marriage, the news yesterday is that the Luxembourg PACS has just been strengthened legally with more rights:
Les couples pacsés auront désormais davantage de droits. Les députés ont voté, jeudi, une loi qui attribue certains droits d’un couple marié aux partenaires.
Ainsi, ils pourront bénéficier de congés pour la mort d’un membre de la famille du partenaire ou prendre un congé sans solde après la naissance d’un enfant. Une Union civile, contractée à l’étranger, sera reconnue au Grand-Duché. Pour les socialistes et les Verts, les changements ne sont pourtant pas suffisants car des inégalités par rapport aux couples mariés subsistes.
Telle la succession qui doit être réglée par un testament entre les partenaires. Depuis l’introduction de l’Union civile en 2004, 92% des couples pacsés sont hétérosexuels. Un projet de loi pour rendre le mariage civil accessible aux couples homosexuels sera déposé la semaine prochaine.
In short the new rights include: bereavement leave upon death of partner, unpaid leave in case of birth of child, civil unions contracted abroad will be recognised in the duchy. Changes still remain to be made such as in the field of inheritance. Since the introduction of the PACS (Civil Union that is not marriage) in 2004, 92% of the couples that have benefited from the union are heterosexual.
You have just been exposed to a flood of statistics. The debate continues….
J’accuse is anything but a personal diary but sometimes we do take a little snapshot of the j’accuse life out of a mere desire to experiment with the more conventional way of blogging (as well as an indirect justification
as to why j’accuse has not been so engaging over the weekend). In short it’s just been sunny, sunny, sunny.
Saturday was BXL day. A quick scappatella into the bowels of the city of stink. Walking along a sun drenched Place Stephanie and Avenue Louise we played a game of teaser window shopping. It’s NOT ok to only look – not for shopaholics like myself but I had to find a way of avoiding monetary dispensation since the NY trip is now only weeks away. A weird exhibition was to be found in a square bang in the middle of Avenue Louise. It represents all the things that have not been said… ever and is an itinerant Mexican exhibition that is also commemorating some jubilee anniversary of La Rivolucion!
Muted on Avenue Louise
Just after the muted giants we discovered the newly refurbished Toison d’Or shopping centre complete with Scotch & Soda and all the brands that make your shopping euros tingle. The pièce de resistance was the Desigual (yep, Desigual… we still love it on the ladies notwithstanding the recent bad publicity it might have got) store (ladies only for now but mens will be open in a few weeks time). Embargos on purchases were thrown out of the “It’s not the same” window and we walked out of there a couple of euros poorer (thank Haysus for the fidelity discount).
It
Back in LUX there were two splendid sunlit days to kill. Sunday began with the downer of no Brit papers delivered. Shock. Horror. Survival without the Independent would require some inventive creativity. No worries. Shorts, tee and sunroof open – one hour drive of pure greenery to the idyllic surroundings of Vianden and the piscine communale. The tanning began in earnest and with sundown a banquet fit for kings on the mosellan riviere (cote allemande) with a festival of spare ribs and scampi washed down with copious amounts of Riesling. Hot. Scrumptious. Relaxing.
Vianden, Piscine with view of Castle
Monday. Pentecost. Public holiday and all shops are firmly fermées. Which only leaves us with one thing to do. A second trip to the Vianden castle for a second coating of the by now Mediterranean tan (with the soleil des ardennes). Olive skinned and well coated we return to the Duchy in the evening for a terrrace mixed grill overlooking the Parc de Merl and its menagerie of singing volatids. Tuesday (aujourd’hui) is a day when we return back to work with the laid-back goodwill of a Mediterranean bon vivant. Even the Court of Justice can spare a smile….
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