I haven't yet tried out the bus service, and it's unlikely I will do so soon, since a bike is always more fun than any other form of transport. When it rains, I'll be tempted to have a bash.

The advantage of this is that the service should have settled down by then and I'll be spared inane comments about how things used to be better when they were worse, it loses something in the translation but that aphorism somehow encapsulates something in the Maltese psyche which is seriously disturbing.

Equally disturbing is the apparent glee with which people are greeting the teething problems Arriva is having. Some are obviously motivated by political pique, the same sort of pique that is inspiring the ill-disguised joy permeating some quarters at Air Malta's problems, for instance, while others are simply externalising the sad inadequacy so many Maltese seem to espouse as a natural consequence of being in Malta.

Look at the facts: a significant number of drivers, in defiance of their own union's direction, failed to turn up to work, demonstrating an arrogance with which commuters had become familiar, even if now some weird people are demonstrating a faux nostalgia for the old system. At the same time, while a completely new system was being bedded down, everyone and her brother seems to have decided to take to the buses, eager to try out (and in some cases to find wanting) the new system.

And this all in the context of a traffic situation that borders on the insane on normal days anyway.

It would have been surprising, frankly, if there had been no problems.

The piece carried in this morning's Times was telling: a bus operator who had just sold his banger for something in excess of €100K smugly predicted that the service would soon fall back into his and his cronies' hands.

If only to wipe this guy's nose in it, I hope Arriva will succeed.