The common factor "level 2" is, in actual fact, deceitful, since for us to navigate from working zone to feeding zone, we actually have to go up to level 3 in the Skempton building and then, after a pleasant walk in a sunny corridor, go down a flight of steps to find ourselves in level 2 again, but this time in the Sherfield building. Quite a remarkable feat of ingenious British architectural design, which, instead of providing a direct link at level 2, created a detour in users' daily routine, either consciously to encourage a daily dose of exercise or (more likely) it was a Friday afternoon job which the architect carried out with utmost enthusiasm. Any how, enough said - I am quite an optimistic person and, thankfully, this prolonged route to the canteen allowed enough time for a conversation, which will be the subject of my post today, to develop...
I really do not recall how it all started but I do know that, soon after the dialogue began, I soon became very disturbed about a recurrent pattern in my life. Many a time in the past, I have gone through various "phases" of (more often than not) severe fixation about a particular subject matter. This would lead me to become almost obsessed to the point that I could easily engage in discussion about the topic in question and be equipped with a database of knowledge that would suffice to write a PhD thesis on the subject from memory! What would then follow will be that that particular item will, as a result of being translated into a major media hit (namely, a movie, music or literature blockbuster) and become a worldwide craze, making me reduce to nothing but a mere apparent fan of that specific hit who, apparently, would be a "more of the same" aficionado. The disturbance is best illustrated with the examples used during the actual conversation.
When I was about eight or nine years old, I had become somewhat infatuated by dinosaurs. I spent all of my time reading magazines and books about the extinct reptiles, sketching an endless amount of T-Rexes and Brontosauruses, decorating my room with figures of these scary animals and memorising the names of the dinos. Of course, back then I depended on adult-sourced funding for buying all of these items and would eagerly negotiate getting some dino-related gift for my birthday, Christmas, passing exams and any other occasion worthy of a gift. All was well in my dino world until, in the summer of 1993, Mr. Spielberg rocked the world with his "Jurassic Park" and suddenly everyone, children and adults, went dino-mad. Whatever "fun fact" I could share with my friends suddenly became popular knowledge and I seemed to be nothing more than just a product of peer pressure.
Later on, I started to become more and more interested in the world of engineering. My interest led me to learn about one of the greatest engineering marvels of its time: the RMS Titanic. As had happened with dinos, I would strive to find any available time to sink into my desk chair (no pun intended) and let myself be bewildered by the dimensions, features and unlucky maiden voyage of the liner. Once more, I had notebooks with sketches and all of the data I would collect over time from various resources in an age when Wikipedia was still non-existent. What comes next? You have guessed it: James Cameron's movie of 1997 became possibly the greatest movie of all time and everyone went "Titanic"-crazy and I, with my immense knowledge of the subject, suddenly became perceived as nothing more than an apparently ardent fan of Di Caprio, at an age when I was supposed to display my first signs of manhood and thus my dislike of any soppy movies.
(P.S. I suddenly recalled that this whole conversation started when one of my Italian colleagues started that she had been to Southampton and, upon hearing that word, I screamed, "Have you been to the quay from where the Titanic departed?" which then led to this whole topic!)
At the dawn of the new millennium, I finally started my lifelong dream of enrolling the architecture/engineering course at University. This academic step led to yet another phase of fanatic behaviour which, unfortunately, seems to be a permanent one: buildings and structures. One particular pair of buildings became part of my database of buildings I should know about: Yamasaki's Twin Towers, which had already caught my attention a few years earlier when they featured in the De Laurentis version of "King Kong" (of which I was also an ardent fan!) but had now resurfaced as the example par excellence of tube framed buildings and became one of my favourite structures. What happens next? Mr. Bin Laden dreams of destroying these icons on 11/09/01 (or 09/11 in American notation), making the ill-fated structures a household name all over the world.
The most recent example (and final one for this post) occurred just a few months ago. Soon after I bought my iPod, I started feeding it with some of the world's best musicians' produce, including the album "Michael Jackson: King of pop", which was launched in June 2008, soon after MJ turned 50. In all fairness, I am not the world's most intense MJ fan, but I do love his best tracks Thriller and Billie Jean and his album found its way to my iPod almost by default. At one point, I had become so fond of Billie Jean that I had started sketching an orchestral version of the song (a project still uncompleted to date). In May 2008, I returned to Malta from London and, a month later, MJ sadly passed away. A few days after his demise, my sister happened to be going through my iPod playlists and, as soon as she found "Michael Jackson", she yelled, "Ohhhh, my bro is suddenly a fan of MJ!" when, in fact, the compilation had been there for almost a year!
This has been going on for ever and ever and has been tormenting my life! Anything I lay my hands upon soon becomes the subject of public interest #1 as a result of some Hollywood blockbuster, pop star sensation or even terrorist act! Now that I started my PhD and, for at least 3 years, will be in one of my typical brainwashed routines, I wonder what is next: a box-office wrecking movie about a giant tent fabricated from a cutting-edge hybrid composite material which gets erected to cover the entire area of the USA and, as a result of its superb blast-resisting performance, saves the world in the days of Armageddon! Well, let us hope not!
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