Expat in Malta: Back to Boston

         

            My Favorite Museum in the US

Of everything I missed being in Malta, this is the place I missed the most.  There’s nothing like it in Malta.  So I had to wait to come back to the US to see it. 

There’s no admission fee, but it can end up being quite costly to go there and look at all the exhibits.  You’ll see why:

 

Yes, this is it. Staples. No, it’s not a museum to most normal people, but it is to me. Most of the products I love—fancy paper clips, special Post-Its (even gigantic ones), colored index cards—don’t exist in Malta.

Malta does have office and school supplies, of course.  But they’re the bare minimum and they’re carried by small private shop owners.  They lack the variety, color and imagination of the Staples supplies.  I even love the staplers at Staples.  These are the touch-staple types that can just go through 20 pages like nothing.

I usually hate chain stores, but Staples is one of two exceptions. The other is Best Buy where I’ve gotten all my computers in the past couple of years.  That’s not in Malta either.  And there’s a third—The Body Shop—which is in Malta. 

Anyway, I never saw the staff at Staples in Brookline, Massachusetts, so happy: I told them I came all the way from Malta to shop at their store.  They couldn’t believe that someone would come from abroad to shop in a chain office-supply shop.  But, what the hell…I let them think it was just like that. I didn’t go through the whole story that I had left the US to move to Malta, or that I had shopped at Staples all my adult life.

I got all the things I wanted to use for teaching EFL in Malta.  Except for one thing:  any paper supplies or folders.

Guess why not?

Wrong.  It’s because Europe’s paper sizes are different from  that of the US.  Everything is different by a half-inch or so. I don’t have the exact measurements, but the standard 8.5 x 11 inches in the US is a little thinner and longer (called A4) in Europe.  And what we call the legal size (called A3 in Europe) is different. And so are business envelopes. 

This really bothered me at first.  Being a writer, I thought there was only one paper size in the world.  And I thought I would never get used to the wrong European size of paper.  But I did.

Just goes to show you that you can get used to almost anything when you need to.

But I’ll never get used to being without my Staples.

Comments

[Sennuwy (an ancient Egyptian name)]

Hi Dee--glad to see you back. How are you two doing? So--Im not the only one who noticed the difference! xx Ilene

Comment:

[Dee Owen]

Yes, that annoyed me when I first went to the USA to do my master's degree. All my notes from England were in folders on the English size paper...then I had USA size...made the file look a mess!

[Sennuwy (an ancient Egyptian name)]

Hi Mary, I do think the English still use the old system. But I think the paper size in England is the same as in the rest of Europe.

[Mary Bartolotta]

Actually, several years ago the US did try to switch and they were teaching the metric system in schools. The citizens revolted, refused to use it and so we still have the old English system. Don't the English use the system they created anymore?

[Sennuwy (an ancient Egyptian name)]

Hi Joe--youre snarky but cute.  Yes, I actually agree with you; thanks for the info.  And thanks for loving my blog--Ilene

[Joe Sarsero]

I don't want this to sound snarky but this is just another example of the US refusing to adopt the metric system, which is used by every country in the world except three (Burma, Liberia, and the United States). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system

The A (and B and C) paper sizes are part of the ISO 216 international standard (ISO) used in most countries in the world today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216

I'm afraid to say that is the US Letter and US Legal sizes are 'wrong".

Regards,
Joe (Australian-born Maltese living in Melbourne)

P.S. Love your blog!