Native English Conversation: Life in Malta with Leonardo English

Hello, and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast, the listening

resource for intermediate to advanced-level English learners.

My name is Anna and today we have a very special guest.

You might even recognise his voice.

His name is Alastair Budge and you might know him from English

Learning for Curious Minds.

How are you, Alastair?

I am fantastic.

How are you, Anna?

I'm very well, thank you.

It's nice to see your face.

It looks like you're in a nice sunny place there.

I am, yes.

It is about 20° outside and the sun is shining, there is a blue sky, which I

understand is slightly different to the situation where you are at the moment.

Yes, yes, I am slightly envious, I have to be honest.

We do have blue skies and sunshine, but we also have minus numbers over here in terms

of our temperature, it's -5°, although it may have warmed up slightly, but it

was -5° when I went out this morning.

It's certainly different to your 20°.

I would swap with you happily.

The last time we worked together was on a very different project.

Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

That was a story-based podcast called Pioneers of the Continuum,

which came out last year.

It was a kind of collaboration between lots of amazing English

language podcasters and people from YouTube, including yourself.

And if people listening to this have not listened to that show then you

can definitely go and check it out.

It's called Pioneers at the Continuum.

There was a group of time-travelling friends and they all go back to a

certain time in history, and they experience some fun things; and Anna

plays, I've forgotten the name of your character, Anna, but you play...

Ellie.

Ellie.

Ellie, that's right!

You go back to the time of the suffragettes...

That's right.

...and have some fun.

So, if you'd like to hear Anna pretending to be a person in the

time of the suffragettes, then you should definitely go and listen

to Pioneers of the Continuum.

Yeah, that was a really good fun project.

It definitely kind of plays into my love of acting and,

you know, embodying characters.

So, I had a lot of fun.

So, thank you again for including me in that project.

So, you are in a place that has beautiful weather.

Where exactly are you?

So, I'm in a small country called Malta at the moment.

It is a tiny rock in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

If you imagine where Sicily is, so for people who can't imagine where

Sicily is, it's the, 'the ball', 'the leg' that is Italy is kicking.

And if you go almost exactly a hundred kilometres south from there,

you hit a tiny little rock in the middle of the sea and that is Malta.

Yeah, I have very fond memories of Malta.

It was one of my first trips abroad that I can remember as a child.

So, my mum had told me that we were going to go to Blackpool for Easter.

I was very excited about going to Blackpool.

And then she kept buying all these clothes for our holiday

that were all very summery.

And I was like,

"Mum, it's quite cold at Easter and Blackpool's quite windy

because it's on the coast.

Are you sure we're going to Blackpool?"

And she said,

"Oh, don't you know, Blackpool's always very hot at Easter.

It's like a phenomenon that just happens."

And I'm like,

"What?"

I believed her and then we got in the car to go with our cases.

And I said,

"Where are we going?

Because we don't seem to be going the route to Blackpool."

She's like,

"No, we're going to take a bus to Blackpool.

We're going to the station, the bus station."

Oh right.

Okay.

And then I kept seeing all these like vans and things with

Manchester Airport written on them.

I was like,

"Oh, that bus must be going to Manchester Airport.

And that bus is going to Manchester Airport.

And that one's going to Manchester Airport."

And then she went,

"We're at the airport we're actually flying to Blackpool."

And I was like,

"What we're gonna fly to Blackpool!

That's amazing!"

And then we get in there and obviously she couldn't hide it anymore because

we were going towards the flight that was being announced for Malta.

So, it's just this endless surprise that my mum kept bringing out.

And yeah, it was a fantastic holiday.

And so, I've got very fond memories of what a beautiful little country with

beautiful blue seas and beaches and you know, it was very nice, very nice.

So, why are you in Malta?

You're living there.

Yes.

It's not just a temporary thing.

I've been living here since the start of 2017.

So, yeah, for seven years now.

Right.

For nearly as long as I've been a YouTuber doing English Like a Native on YouTube.

I moved here with my then-girlfriend because she was offered a job

here at the university and it was meant to be a one-year thing

to kind of see if we liked it.

Seven years later, she's now my wife, we've got two little Maltese

babies and it has become a sort of temporary home for us, I guess.

And when you first had that discussion about, oh, I've been

offered a job, was there any doubts about whether you would go?

Were you apprehensive?

Did you have any reservations about moving to a new country?

Because even for a year, it's quite a big step to take.

There were a few doubts, I guess, at the start.

I was in a period of my career where it was possible to work remotely and to have

a bit of a break from what I was doing.

So, from my perspective, I thought, you know, "Why not?"

What's the worst that can happen?

That you go to somewhere for a year and you don't like it.

And then, you know, it's only a year, things are always reversible.

And at that point in time, you know, it was just the two of us, we didn't have

a huge amount of stuff, we didn't own a house, we didn't have much, so it was very

easy to kind of pack up our life in London and come over here for a little bit.

Things are a little bit different now, we've got a bit more stuff, including two

humans, so leaving would be slightly more complicated, but it was a relatively easy

choice to take at that point in time.

So, you mentioned that you didn't own a house because that would be

the first thing that would come to my mind if I was doing a temporary

suck it and see kind of move for a short period to see if I liked it.

If you're selling a house in this country, a lot of people own their house.

There's a lot of expectation in society that you would at some point

buy your own house, but selling is expensive and you know, a slow process.

So, then if you're doing it just to move out to somewhere for a year,

then you don't like it, you have to come back and then you have to buy a

house again, get back into the housing market, which is very difficult.

In this country we call it getting back onto the ladder.

So, you get onto the housing ladder, the property ladder.

And so, you didn't own, but do you own in Malta?

Do people in Malta buy their houses?

Yes, people in Malta...

it's sort of a national sport, buying and selling houses.

Right.

Yes.

But, I'm not partaking in that national sport, no.

Okay.

So, it keeps it quite easy for you, footloose and fancy-free.

You can pick up and go as long as you take your children with you.

Indeed.

Yeah.

I gotta remember them.

So what was your experience in terms of language learning?

Do they speak English in Malta?

When you mentioned your story of your mum kind of suggesting you

might be going to Blackpool and actually you arrived in Malta.

If you first got off the plane and you thought you'd actually landed in

Blackpool, it wouldn't be so far wrong.

Malta obviously looks very different to Blackpool, but there are a lot

of things that are very similar between the UK and Malta for

reasons I'll explain in a minute.

But one of the things is that English is an official language of Malta.

There are two official languages, Maltese and English.

Right.

It wasn't particularly difficult at all because literally everyone speaks English.

And this is not like some perhaps pretentious Brit going to, you

know, Madrid or Berlin and saying,

"Oh no, it's okay, everyone's going to speak English."

It is actually an official language; the main newspaper

in the country is in English.

All the signs are in English.

It has such a high population of foreigners now that you're

in lots of areas, including the area in which we live.

If you go to any bar or restaurant and if you were to speak Maltese,

lots of people wouldn't even be able to speak Maltese back to you.

Really?

So, it is interesting in terms of, with my, you know, background as a

language learner and being involved in helping people learn English,

one part of me thought, you know,

"I've got to lean in and learn as much Maltese as I can."

But the reality is that even some of my Maltese friends here don't speak Maltese.

It's really in the category of things that I would have done only

for my personal enjoyment really, rather than any kind of utility.

It's a very hard language.

It's a very complicated language from a grammar point of view to such an

extent that because so many people in Malta, so many Maltese people, have got

such good English, there are certain things they do in English, even if

they're speaking Maltese to each other.

For example, counting.

Numbers in Maltese are very complicated.

And so if you hear two people speaking Maltese to each other, and

then they're talking about a number, they'll use the English number.

Because numbers in English are easy, right?

You learn 1-10, or 1-20, rather, and then you say 20, 30, 40, and your hundreds,

and then you, you've got them all.

In Maltese, it's a lot more complicated, so people even who are speaking Maltese

will use English numbers in general.

So, my long-winded answer to your question is that I understand some very basic

Maltese, but I am not a Maltese speaker because I've not really attempted to be.

It was in the category of things where I thought my attention

is better used elsewhere.

I guess that was a bit of a relief for you because if you are moving to

a new place and you have to get over the language barrier that's quite a

big barrier to get through as well as having to then settle into a new culture.

But if English is widely spoken there, then that makes at least

one part of it quite easy for you.

You mentioned there were some differences.

There were some cultural differences.

What are the major cultural differences that you've noticed between between

where you are in Malta and the UK?

What was hard to adjust to and what was quite nice?

Maybe I'll start with the quite nice things, or the easy things first, because

maybe it's easier to pinpoint them.

But there are so many just very basic things about life in Malta and the way

that Maltese society is structured that make it very easy for an English speaker

and a Brit to exist in; ranging from the very practical but helpful thing

that you don't have to learn another language even through to things like,

you know, the plugs are the same.

People in Malta drive on the same side of the road.

There are the tiny things that a non-Brit might not necessarily notice.

But things like the buttons for the road crossings come from the UK, right?

They're exactly the same as the ones that you probably press if you're

taking your kids to school in the morning; the post boxes looks the same.

The phone boxes look the same.

Because of the fact that the cars drive on the same side of the road, lots

of, for example, lots of the rubbish trucks are just ones that have kind of

got past their sell-by date in the UK.

I was walking the other day and I saw a rubbish truck that said

Bromley Council on and, you know, that's a council from the UK.

So, that's probably a rubbish truck that has, like, gone to however many

hundred thousand miles, got past its useful service in the UK and

is now being shipped off to Malta.

There's lots of these very strange kind of slightly familiar things about

life in Malta that can be comforting to a certain extent to Brits.

And that's also why it's a big holiday destination for people

from the UK, because you kind of get on your plane, arrive here and

kind of slip very comfortably into life in Britain, just a bit hotter.

You can have your pint of beer and your full English breakfast, and there's

even pubs that serve Sunday roast.

So, there are lots and lots of British people here.

Fewer in the past few years but it's always been a very popular destination

for people coming from the UK.

In terms of the harder things, I mean, kind of bad saying it perhaps, but

because there are so many foreigners in Malta, the working population of people

in Malta is, there's only slightly more Maltese people than foreigners.

So, it's so expat-driven and there are so many areas that are dominated by

foreigners that most of my kind of friends and friendship group are non-Maltese.

And, so you have this slightly peculiar scenario where kind of not Maltese

culture, but I will say the culture of people who live in Malta is influenced so

heavily by people from other countries.

So, we have lots of friends from Spain, lots of friends from Latin America,

friends from Germany, from Russia, from the UK; lots of Swedish friends as well.

So, you have this kind of strange cultural melting pot where for lots of

people actually kind of jumping head on into Maltese society and culture, unless

you're working in a Maltese-speaking company, can be quite difficult.

So, we always sort of existed more in the expat world, I would say, rather

than in necessarily the Maltese world.

You mentioned before we started recording that Malta is also, has another big draw.

It's not just a draw for people in the UK to come and find some sun, finally,

but also a draw in terms of learning English, that there's a big draw for

people who want to learn English, either having that choice of coming

and immersing themselves in life in the UK, in Ireland, or indeed, Malta.

So, I'm guessing that was quite useful for you as an English teacher, coming

to a place where there are lots of people gathering to learn English.

It was useful, it really came as a surprise to me.

I didn't realise before that it was such a popular destination for

people coming to learn English.

Yes, I mean, there are lots of different categories of people who

come to Malta to learn English.

During the summer, there are lots of teenagers from France and Italy and

Spain who I guess have managed to persuade their parents to not send them

to Dundee or Blackpool or somewhere like that, but have actually said,

"Send me to Malta where I can go to the beach and perhaps attend a few

English lessons if my schedule allows."

There are lots of people from East Asia as well, lots of people from

Japan and Korea who come for extended periods, often because their companies

are paying for them to come here.

And it's a lot more affordable than going to London or, or

even Dublin or places like that.

And recently there's also a lot of people from Latin America.

We have a lot of Latin American friends who came in this way.

Because they are able to come and get a kind of student visa and because

the Maltese economy is doing quite well at the moment, it's very easy

to kind of transfer that visa into a working visa and essentially have a

new kind of working life in the EU.

Fantastic.

Did you ever consider like opening up a school or do you provide like

face-to-face workshops over there?

I did not really, there are lots and lots of English schools here.

I'm sure lots of them doing a very good job, but I don't do any kind of

face-to-face stuff or anything like that.

There have been people who've come to Malta, kind of listened to the

podcast, who've told me about their experience and I'm actually arranging

to meet one at the moment, but I don't do any kind of face-to-face

school or anything like that, no.

How do you find the internet connection where you are?

Because you are virtually a digital nomad.

You're able to work remotely as long as you're online, but how do you find

like the internet and the power supply?

Do you ever have to deal with like power cuts or anything like

that or problems with making your podcast where you're living?

There are power cuts, yeah.

It does seem strange for there to be kind of nationwide power cuts.

But there are sometimes power cuts.

The whole country, power goes out.

I have to say, not so frequently, but that does happen.

The main issue is that there is a sort of ongoing construction boom.

There are practically no laws relating to sounds levels.

The law is anyone can kind of take a drill and do whatever they want at any

time of the day, which is problematic for someone whose career relies on them

being able to record good-quality sound.

And actually there was a period after I had a child, where there was construction

happening during the day, a child who was crying like children do, in the mornings

and the evenings, and I would have to wait until, you know, 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock in

the morning to be able to record anything.

So, there's probably, I can't remember the episode numbers, but there's

probably, I don't know, between episode number 80 and 120, where people think

that I sound a little bit croaky then, it's because that was being

recorded at 2 o'clock in the morning.

I now have an even more complicated situation where the crying child is a

bit older and doesn't cry in the evening, but there's the construction, and I also

live very close to quite a rowdy pub.

So, during the day if there's construction, it's all cancelled.

In the evening, that's cancelled because there are people drinking

beer and singing 'Sweet Caroline' and doing all that kind of stuff.

So, I would have to wait till very late in the evening.

Luckily, the construction is not going at this very moment in time, So I'm okay.

It's just so frustrating, isn't it?

I get so cross.

I've had this for years.

I used to do voiceover work for companies in America.

I'd be recording over here and then sending everything over.

And at that time when I was doing that, I lived in pretty much in central

London and I had the same thing.

It was just constant noise.

And at that point, what I would do was I would literally record in my wardrobe.

So, I, you know, completely coat the wardrobe in clothing because

obviously the soft surfaces absorb the sound so it doesn't bounce.

And so I put clothes down on the base of the wardrobe and made sure

everything was hanging around so that there was no hard surfaces.

And then I'd open the wardrobe doors, but have a huge duvet

over the top and down the back.

So, I was just in this cave of cloth and it was very hot.

And it was very dark and I'd be in there getting hotter and hotter and there'd

be less and less oxygen, just trying to escape that, that constant noise that

you don't realise until you're recording something, you don't realise how noisy

a general kind of town or city can be.

And then I moved out to the country and I thought,

"Oh, thank goodness me.

I'm just, I'm just going to be able to record whenever I like."

But then we have the problem with very noisy birds.

Oh no.

I mean, the sound of birds in the background of your recording is

not as bad as a pneumatic drill.

But, again, you know, you think the country is always so peaceful, but

when you think about it, actually, no, it's very noisy even in the country.

I think your best bet is to completely soundproof a room.

As much as it's expensive, it will make such a difference to your working

life, I think to just soundproof the entire space, shut the door

and then all that noise is gone.

I think that would be my next step if I ever get the chance.

Yeah, my problem here is that I've got floor to ceiling windows.

Right.

Which would be very attractive for anyone else but not attractive for someone who's

trying to block out sound from outside.

Yeah, I have it where I record now.

I'm in a glorified shed.

So, it's the studio in the bottom of the garden.

But it's a flat roofed, wooden structure with bifold doors.

So, it's full glass on one side.

And what I didn't take into account when we were planning to

do this, because we were like,

"Do we do a brick building?

Do we do a wooden building?

Well, you know, it'd be cheaper to just do a wooden building."

I forgot about sound and rain.

And so whenever it rains, it hits the flat roof and it comes against

the windows and it's just this noise, this cacophony of noise.

And I can't record anything.

Even the slightest little shower, I have to stop recording

because it's so noisy in here.

My purpose built studio is not fit for purpose.

That is frustrating.

Yeah, so you've obviously made the move.

You've been there for seven years and now you're about to embark on another move.

You're about to pick up and go and put a stake in another country.

So, where are you going?

I'm actually moving to Sweden, to Gothenburg in Sweden.

Wow, that's going to be very different.

In a few months from today.

That's going to be a very different experience to Malta.

I'm guessing that they don't have English as an official language over there.

No, they don't.

They do have Finnish I just found that out, but I'm

learning Swedish at the moment.

Okay.

With some great Swedish podcasts and I found some good Swedish

resources, but it's a new experience for me kind of starting to learn

a language again from scratch.

Yeah.

From, you know, absolute zero, but I've really enjoyed it so far.

It's been a lot of fun.

I'm also doing it with my wife and trying to get my oldest son to kind of watch

some cartoons in Swedish and get him to kind of enjoy the learning process.

If anyone has any tips on how to do that, then I am very, very open to them, but

I will be doing that in a few months.

So, I've possibly got the opportunity to move abroad this year, and when

I think about moving abroad, I feel like I'm a little bit of a tortoise.

I initially think it's a good idea, but then I slowly kind of back away from it

when I think about all the difficulties that I may encounter — the unknowns.

So, if anyone listening is considering making a move to a different country

and completely different culture.

What would you advise or what kind of tips would you give them in order to

embrace and make that experience easier?

Well, I think if someone is considering doing it in almost

every case — just do it!

I've done this quite a few times, less permanently.

So, I lived in different places as part of my university.

I lived in China for quite a while and every time I've done these sort of,

you know, mini adventures or larger adventures, I've never regretted doing it.

I'm 36.

So, it's not particularly old, but I think of kind of my life so far in, you

know, six to seven-year-like adventures.

And they've all involved being in different places and kind of starting

afresh, which probably seems daunting for lots of people, and I think it

takes a certain type of person who embraces that rather than someone who

prefers stability and kind of creating a little nest in a particular place.

I'm definitely in the category of people who like this kind of stuff,

who like kind of starting afresh and going on these new adventures.

So, in terms of my advice, after the advice being just do it.

I heard a really good expression, this must be going back 15 years, to someone

who had been living in China for quite a while and I think I was having a bad day

or something where everything goes wrong and she referred to it as a bad China day.

Where just like everything combines to kind of put you in a bad mood,

whether it's like the bus goes wrong or whatever it might be, the

peculiarities of where you are, all unite to kind of fight against you.

And I have this joke with my wife that we have bad Malta days, and I'm sure we'll

have bad Sweden days and so on, but as long as you're kind of thinking of it

as an adventure, something that you're kind of going on and you're thinking,

"If I wasn't doing this, I'd be kind of continuing my life as it was before."

I think that has certainly helped me get over those periods where, you know,

you're not necessarily so happy or things aren't going quite so well for you.

Of course, there are the sort of, I guess they're like table stakes

type bits of advice, like, you know, learn a language and make sure

that you've got all your adequate insurance and all that kind of thing.

But in terms of preparing myself mentally for these things, I think just not going

into it thinking it's all going to be completely marvellous, but understanding

that some days will be rubbish, but it's all part of the adventure and especially

I think if you're doing it with kids I think trying to kind of get them involved

in the adventure side of things as much as possible I think that's a positive, yeah.

I say this not having moved to Sweden yet, so we'll see, we'll see how that goes.

I always say to my son, who is a little bit averse to trying new foods,

he's got quite a limited diet really, what he will accept as safe food.

I always say to him,

"Look, if you don't try it, you never know.

You'll just end up eating the same thing every single day and you might try

this new vegetable and really like it.

Just like ice cream.

Can you imagine if you'd never tried ice cream?"

And he'll go,

"But I like ice cream."

I'm like,

"Exactly.

Can you imagine if you looked at ice cream and said, that looks

yucky and decided not to try it?"

So, I think that's good advice.

There are always options.

You can always go back.

You can always return to the way life was before, but unless you try, you

never know what amazing adventures or fantastic people that you'll

meet and that you'll experience.

So, yeah, just get out there and do it!

Don't be a tortoise.

Don't hide your head.

It's always fun.

It's always fun.

Yeah.

Yeah, fantastic.

Well, I do hope that your move goes smoothly and that you integrate into

society quite easily and that the language learning progresses and you

feel confident and comfortable quite quickly, but all the best of luck with it.

And thank you so much for sharing all your experiences and knowledge with us.

For my listeners, where can they find you?

Well, everything I do is on my website, which is leonardoenglish.com.

Leonardo like Leonardo da Vinci.

And if you're a podcast listener, you might like to listen to the

podcast we make, which is called English Learning for Curious Minds.

And if you want to hear Anna in a podcast that we've made, it's

called Pioneers of the Continuum.

So, there we go.

Yeah.

And we just recently recorded another conversation, didn't we, for your podcast

where I am revealing some, some of my insights into being a podcaster and a

YouTuber and general content creator.

So, I will put links to everything that you've mentioned

down below in the show notes.

Thanks again for joining us, Alastair, and very best of luck with everything.

Thanks so much, Anna.