Blog | Page 82 | Jean Galea

🛒 Best Online Shops that Ship to Malta

Last updated: January 12, 202335 Comments

With Malta being a small island, local shopping is pretty limited compared to what you find abroad. This has led to the Maltese quickly getting hooked on online shopping. While a few years back only a few websites offered to ship to Malta, nowadays there are many sites that offer European-wide shipping, in some cases even offering free shipping and returns.

Here are some of my favorite sites:

How to Buy Cheap Electronics Online in Malta

Malta has the most expensive consumer electronics in the EU. However, you don’t need to be paying the high prices at local shops for your laptops, sound equipment, hardware, etc.

The solution is, of course, to shop online.

Shopping for Electronics in Malta at Amazon

I highly recommend using Amazon for all your online shopping needs. You can not only buy books and electronics from Amazon, but pretty much anything else. Many Maltese buy clothes from Amazon too, for example. There’s much more choice than the local shops, and you can easily send the stuff you don’t like back.

Amazon has the most amazing support and customer service I ever encountered. Say for example you order a book and it’s received slightly damaged because the postman didn’t take good care of it, or it just got damaged during the shipping process. All you need to do is file an issue with Amazon and they’ll either give you a refund or send you another copy. It happened to me more than once and Amazon staff have always been super helpful in finding a resolution.

On another occasion, I ordered a piece of hardware that never got delivered, even though it was sent via courier. Again, all I had to do was contact Amazon, and it was them who dealt with the courier. In the meantime, they just sent me the hardware once again and apologised profusely for the inconvenience.

I hope that convinces you that there is absolutely no problem with shopping online at Amazon. If anything, you’ll get better support and customer service than you would at your local shop.

Which Amazon site to use

Now Amazon doesn’t have a site specifically for the Maltese islands, so you will need to choose a site dedicated to one the bigger countries in Europe. There are several options, but most people will drift to the Amazon.co.uk website, simply because it is in English and has the biggest range of products.

Beware that the prices on Amazon.co.uk are in GBP, and since the exchange rate between GBP and EUR is always fluctuating, you might not be getting a great deal. On the other hand, you might be lucky and profit from a weak British pound. The easiest way to check whether you’re losing or gaining from the exchange rate is to search for the same product on Amazon.es or Amazon.de (Spanish and German Amazon sites). It will take the same time to arrive to Malta and postage rates are the same for most products. However, since the Spanish and German sites sell their items in Euro you will be able to compare and see whether it make sense to buy in GBP from the Amazon.co.uk site or to buy in Euro from Spain or Germany.

Hope that helps. I have used Amazon for over 10 years now and I get all my electronics from there, including expensive items like photographic equipment and laptops.

If you have any questions about shopping online at Amazon just leave a question below, I’ll be happy to help out.

Visit Amazon.co.uk

🛒 A Simple Trick to Save Money When Buying From Amazon UK

When buying from Amazon UK and shipping to Malta (or any other country except the UK itself), you will be given the option to pay in GBP or your local currency (EUR in Malta’s case).

By default EUR will be selected, so make sure you switch that to GBP. Amazon uses an exchange rate that is worse than the one offered by your local bank, and you would, therefore, be losing money if you pay in EUR.

I then make the payment using my TransferWise Borderless Mastercard debit card, as it automatically takes my Euros and converts them to GBP to make the payment at the best rates. Not only that, but I can also convert Euro to GBP at any point in time and store them in the Borderless account. Then when I pay on Amazon UK it will use the funds in the GBP account I have.

See also: N26 vs Revolut

When traveling abroad you will encounter this choice when paying at shops and restaurants as well, and even in those cases, you should always pay in the currency of that country by using a card like N26 or Revolut. The amount saved really adds up over time especially if you are making larger purchases from Amazon.

Other Sites for Getting Electronics to Malta on the Cheap

Apart from Amazon, there are other sites that can be ideal for particular niches. I tend to use Amazon for any kind of purchase, be it electronics, shoes, clothes, or household goods.

When it comes to electronics, though, in addition to Amazon I also check the following websites:

These are Chinese websites, although they have a limited supply of their stock available in European warehouses. Shipping tends to be slower than Amazon, but you can use expedited shipping to get your items within 5 business days. Note that you will usually have to pay VAT on the products’ arrival to Malta. This applies mostly to the higher-priced items; on smaller items they just let them through usually. In the case that you’ll need to pay VAT, the delivery person will collect the VAT in cash when he delivers the item to you.

These two websites are also not limited to electronics, but you won’t find the same range as Amazon. On the other hand, if you know that the product you want is manufactured in China, the chances are that you’ll find it at a lower price on Banggood or Gearbest rather than Amazon, since you’re cutting out the middleman in Europe.

On Peak Performance

Last updated: April 05, 20243 Comments

This year I’ve been really challenging myself to improve at something specific: padel. This involved lots of training, practice matches and competition. Throughout this journey, I have, perhaps inevitably, become very interested in peak performance and how to achieve it.

We usually associate peak performance with top athletes, musicians or even successful business people. The first question is whether these successful people have completely different genetic makeups than the rest of the population. In short, are they uniquely gifted? Are they so different from the rest of us that we stand no chance?

As I dug into literature and observed the best athletes in padel as well as speaking to various top coaches, the surprising discovery is that in most cases, it’s not a case of superior genetics that leads to peak performance. Hence, we can all reach a state of peak performance.

Here are some of the most important realizations I’ve made this year.

The people who do extraordinary things have figured out ways to be very progressive about improvement and structure their life around getting better. No matter what the field, the most effective approaches to improving performance all follow a single set of general principles that can be termed “deliberate practice”.

Psychology is a key element in achieving success in any discipline. I had mostly been focusing on the physical, tactical and technical aspects of improving my padel game, before I realized that the way I think was perhaps a bigger factor in determining whether I win or lose any given game. Apart from being aware of the mind’s importance and training it, you need to get the right guidance from sports psychologists who can identify your blocks and point you in the right direction.

To achieve peak performance in sport you need to achieve a state of flow. Those who practice mindfulness have an increased attention and concentration, enhanced performance in hostile contexts, respond better to stress, have better parenting skills, improved sleep, enhanced mood, decrease in fatigue, and so on. These effects are all proven through various studies. The practice of mindfulness can help in achieving the laser focus needed for peak performance. The minimum effective dose is around 8 minutes a day and an optimal dose is 20 minutes a day. I’ve dabbled in meditation at various stages of my life, but I can’t say I’ve done it that rigorously on a daily basis. I’ll definitely be adding this as one of my goals for 2018.

I’ve also learned that success in any discipline is not something you can achieve alone. You need a team behind you. That might be the support of your spouse, friends and family at amateur levels, and involve a whole team (technical, physical, tactical coaches and psychologist, physio) for the elite athletes.

It is very important to write down your guiding principles or philosophy for life. What are you doing? This is a question you need to answer alone and be very clear about. This will be your guiding principle every day and will give you the right framework to be able to make short-term objectives and be able to evaluate your progress.

You also need to set aside time (15-20 minutes a day) to visualize and experience yourself performing at the highest level. You also need to split the visualization exercise in this way: 85% kicking ass and 15% of the time being in compromised positions and figuring out how to get out of that. That will help you overcome bad situations where your competitor has an upper edge in competition and you have to dig yourself out of a hole.

In padel, I’ve seen clearly that we kind of have two inner selves. One, the “I,” seems to give instructions; the other, “myself,” seems to perform the action. Then “I” returns with an evaluation of the action. For clarity let’s call the “teller” Self 1 and the “doer” Self 2. Within each player, the kind of relationship that exists between Self 1 and Self 2 is the prime factor in determining one’s ability to translate his knowledge of technique into effective action. In other words, the key to better tennis – or better anything – lies in improving the relationship between the conscious teller, Self 1, and the unconscious, automatic doer, Self 2.

Another important element that we tend to overlook is proper recovery after training or competition. It’s very important to get your sleep patterns right, have the right nutrition and top that off with a proper psychological state of mind.

These are the best resources I’ve found and totally recommend if you’re interested in learning about peak performance:

What is clear from my experience in life so far, is that we have incredible resources inside of us and it’s just a matter of accessing those resources in order to achieve the best version of ourselves. Practicing this is a life’s work and is one of the most important reasons why I wake up enthusiastic about life every morning.

Hope that helps you achieve peak performance in whatever you want to focus on. If you have any experiences or resources to share, please leave a comment below.

Padel Courts in Malta

Last updated: December 27, 201912 Comments

Padel and tennis players frequently ask me if there are any padel courts in Malta.

Good news! There are two different clubs/courts that are open now with more opening soon.

I have created a site for all padel players in Malta, you can subscribe there to be put in Whatsapp groups and join matches of your level.

Join Malta Padel Club

~~Unfortunately, the sport has not yet been introduced in Malta, although I hope this will be rectified in the near future.~~

If anyone reading this is interested in launching padel in Malta and wants to partner up, I’d be happy to cooperate in the initiative. I think Malta could be a great location for padel and it would be pretty straightforward to bring over some tournaments like International Padel. Moreover, I think the local population will take on to the sport very quickly, also helped by the fact that there are many Spanish people in Malta, most of whom are already familiar with the sport and have played it before.

~~So once again, if anyone is interested in bringing this sport to Malta, get in touch.~~

How to Play Padel in the Rain

Last updated: October 15, 2018Leave a Comment

As winter approaches, we will have to deal with rain and wet padel courts. It is usually possible to continue playing under light rain conditions, but if a court is soaked then it is better to stop playing or not start in the first place.

Let’s consider a few factors that change drastically when playing in wet weather, and how you can deal with them.

Let’s start with your preparation for the match. Make sure you wear warm clothes, preferably water proof ones. Wearing a cap will prevent rain from coming into your eyes and thus enhance your visibility. If it’s cold apart from rainy, make sure your warmup is longer than usual. Please also ensure you are wearing shoes that have excellent grip, as the surface will be more slippery than under dry conditions and the chances of slips and injury are thus greater.

The ball becomes heavier and loses its bounce when it gets wet. This is the first thing you will have to keep in mind. Given these conditions, it will be much harder to smash the ball and take it out of the court, which in Spanish is called sacarla x3 and sacarla por 4. The same applies for returning the ball to your side of the court after a smash (traerla a tu lado).

With the ball and racket being wet, there will be no grip when you hit the ball. You therefore have to forget about using topspin or underspin/backspin/slice. Use plain shots to make sure you get maximum power transfer and give the ball as much direction as possible under these low grip conditions.

Next, we will have serious problems with the ball bouncing off the walls. Since the walls are also wet, we again have a no grip issue. This will cause the ball to bounce in unnatural ways. Usually a medium to low powered shot will just fall off a wall in a dramatic way, leaving you expecting a ball that never gets anywhere near your racket. The solution to this is to flex your knees even more and prepare your racket lower to be able to catch balls even after irregular rebounds.

If the opponent hits the ball very strongly, you might get a rebound off the wall that is even faster than what you’re used to under dry conditions, and therefore it’s another thing to keep in mind. Using the walls under wet conditions is very tricky, so it might be a better idea to try to avoid walls altogether and play a kind of mini-tennis.

With the walls providing us with little support and lots of menace, it is better to avoid defensive play and always try to stay in the attacking position, close to the net. Try to volley firmly and deep into the opponent’s side to force them into playing off the walls. As we have seen, the walls are very unpredictable and so you will have a much higher chance of the opponent making mistakes. The same applies when serving. Under these conditions, it’s best to serve less balls towards the T and to the feet, and more of them into the corner where the opponent will be forced to play off the wall’s rebound. It will be very hard to return such serves. If you are able to apply some underspin, serving with low power towards the T can also be hard to return as the ball will bounce very low, making it very hard to return.

How about shots where we hit the wall on our side to return ball? This move is called contrapared in Spanish and is quite common in padel. When the walls are wet and the balls that heavy, you need to hit the ball in a softer and more controlled way. If you hit a backwall shot as you normally do in dry conditions the effect will be incredibly exaggerated, so nice and gentle is the way to go.

The so called globo is one of the best shots to use on rainy courts. Remember that it is really essential to position ourselves in the attacking position, since defending on wet courts is a loser’s game. Globos can help us gain the attacking position from our rivals, who will be forced to drop back into defensive positions.

For those of you who can understand Spanish, here’s a good video that explains how to play padel on wet courts:

Of course, if you can avoid playing in wet padel courts, do so even if it means paying a bit extra for indoor courts or covered ones. You will enjoy your games much more in dry conditions. If it rained before you start the match but the sky is now clear, it’s a good idea to dry off the walls so at least you’ll have an off-wall bounce that is similar to dry conditions (the ball will still be wet and affect the bounce). If you can’t avoid playing in wet conditions, then use the above tips to your advantage and gain an edge over your opponents.

Do you regularly play in rainy weather? Do you have any other tips to share?

My Favourite Contact Lenses

Last updated: March 21, 2023Leave a Comment

I’ve been wearing contacts for a long time, and even though I considered Lasik, I’ve stuck with lenses for now. After trying many brands and types, I’ve settled on the following three as my current favourites:

Acuvue Oasys with Hydraluxe

These are my absolute favourite lenses. They are daily lenses, so you pop them in your eyes in the morning and throw them away in the evening before you head to bed. I sometimes re-use them for an extra day or two if I only wear them for a sports event (1-2 hours), but in general I stick to the daily use and throw away cycle.

The comfort I get from these lenses is unparalleled, and I don’t even feel like I’m wearing lenses. They really shine in sporting events when I need absolute accuracy and clarity. In winter when the air is dryer I have problems with other lenses as my eyes dry up and I consequently lose clarity with my lenses. Not so with the Oasys brand.

Power Range: +8.00 to -12.00
Base Curve: 8.5 and 9.0 in all power options
Diameter: 14.3
Material: Silicone Hydrogel/ senofilcon A with 121 Dk/t (oxygen transmissibility)

The ACUVUE OASYS Daily Contact Lenses with HydraLuxe Technology has a Dk/t of 121, and water content of 38%. The secret to the comfort of these lenses can be found within the HydraLuxe Technology
which is tear infused. This integrates key tear components aside from water alone, and because it is not blink released, works consistently all day long.

Dailies Total One

These are also very good daily lenses and many people report that they feel they are more comfortable than the Acuvue Oasys ones. However so far I definitely prefer the Oasys lenses (perhaps they are a better fit for my eye shape), so when I have the choice I go for those. If for some reason I can’t get them, the Dailies Total One would be the lenses I fall back to.

Alcon’s Dailies Total 1 was the first and only water gradient contact lens manufactured, with a silicone core, sandwiched between an outer and inner layer of an ultrasoft hydrophilic surface.

These contact lenses are comprised of over 80% water content and are extremely breathable with a Dk/t of 156. With these contact lenses, you get both comfort and breathability, which addresses two major concerns for all contact lens wearers; wearability, and maintaining health of the ocular surface.

Air Optic Night & Day

These are monthly extended wear lenses which means that you can wear them for a maximum of one month without the need to remove them. Most eye specialists prefer dailies as its easier to avoid infections in this way, but some people do have the need for extended wear lenses, and these are very comfortable indeed.

I’ve been using them for many years, although I like to remove them before going to bed as a precaution. Nowadays I prefer the Acuvue Oasys Dailies, but I still keep a pack of these around just in case I feel like switching to them for a while.

Other Lenses I Tried

Bausch & Lomb Biotrue

These were not a good fit for me, they felt very flimsy and my vision was not right, especially at night. Definitely can’t use these regularly.

Which are your favorite contact lenses?