The torrent of rainwater that every time there is a heavy downpour turns Xlendi into an Alpine river is an example of our wasteful ways.

Apart from the danger posed to the unwary, the damage to property and to cars left to be swept away into the bay could easily be averted with proper measures.

This was not a once a century storm - it happens every year and seems to get worse as more streets are added to the catchment area and more fields are lost to construction.

We know all this and yet do nothing to counteract. 

We have to take the long-term view and learn Malta originally had two main rivers - Wied il-Kbir, and Wied il-Qlejgha - plus some ancillary offshoots. Together, they formed the basis of our ecological system.

Yet, go and look today and you will not find them - the farmers built retaining walls and dams and farmed the water. After, they finished using the valleys and rivers to dump their rubbish. The rivers were gone.

Thus the countryside grew parched and dry, the trees were chopped down and the summer heat produces the desertification of the land.

Add to this the enormous construction that's been going on over the years and the absence of any counter-action. 

Then nature takes its vengeance. We blithely continue.

Let's focus on rainwater collection - there was some sporadic action some years ago to collect rainwater in big roadside reservoirs but we seem to have given up on this. It cost too much labour and effort.

A past government dug a tunnel to divert the rainwater from flooding the roads but I ask myself why we have not heard it mentioned recently, seeing the same roads keep getting flooded every year just the same.

We don't have many resources - scratch that. We don't have resources at all. And yet we keep wasting.

Take the way we tackle drinking water. We were saved by the introduction of the reverse osmosis process despite the cost and thus could go back to our wasteful ways.

The smaller we are the grander our dreams keep getting, we boast of getting equal to the big countries. Joining the Commonwealth fulfilled one such dream - remember the national angst when Borg Olivier was going to be deprived of a coach at Queen Elizabeth's coronation and was going to be lumped with the black nations?

Then came membership of the EU and Labour stupidly opposed that, and lost. 

The EU and PN won but only after promising bucketfuls of money... and then spent most of it on practically useless beautiful roads in the North, leaving the most intractable problems to be tackled by the succeeding administrations such as Msida, Marsa, the airport, etc which they are painfully doing now.

We seek the glory and forego the practical - isn't this the reason why every little village gets its own cathedral as the parish church?

We are now exporting these dreams of glory - this summer more and more village bands have taken to travel abroad and show the others our dreams of glory - whether that means playing for the Pope, playing in the streets of Naples, marching in Sicily, etc.

We have to 'bribe' our youngsters to continue studying and yet they have been complaining they hardly have time for themselves after facing the delays of public transport and getting some small job to complement the stipend.

In some areas where they have to compete on international standards, such as medicine, they work hard and many succeed. 

But other areas which are not so exposed to international scrutiny, especially with everything else being done internally, they might as well use their certificates to wrap up their fish 'n chips. 

Need examples? Look around you and open your eyes. For all the graduation ceremonies we will have from now to Christmas you would expect Malta to beat the international stakes.

And yet we fail, time and again.

I am writing on Thursday afternoon waiting to see how Hamrun will do in Poland. At a considerable cost, supporters have accompanied the team to the North-East of Poland, just across the border from Ukraine, a novelty for Maltese teams yet something that other supporters all over Europe have long been doing. (Remember too that most other teams are nearer central Europe so have less distance to travel).

And I am sure they will sing till they're hoarse, 'San Gejtaaanuuu' leaving the bemused Polish supporters to ask who is this player Sangejtanu and what's the number of his shirt.

That's our cultural export, exporting dreams of glory. With our resources getting depleted, that's what we are left with.

A brief historical note 

Ardian Muhaj: The revival of the anti-Ottoman projects in the Balkans after Lepanto.

Turkish Journal of History.

The sixteenth century was a time when projects against Ottoman power were diminishing. But this trend changed dramatically after the battle of Lepanto (7 October 1571) when the Holy League coalition forces inflicted a significant defeat of the Ottoman fleet.

This study investigates how Venice responded to the growing anti-Ottoman trend in the Balkans in order to keep a long-lasting peace with the Ottomans.

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