February summed up

I have such a bad backlog with posting but the past few weeks were totally crazy! In a positive way, of course. I will try to summarise all that was going on here as far as I can recall and as long as I do not think this is becoming excessively boring!

After two consecutive weeks of playing host in early February, I did considerable progress in my Ph.D. work after many days of troubling mathematics, journal paper hunting, scribbling, gnashing of teeth, yells of, "Eureka" and what not...the end result: 5 or 6 pages of equations, 6x6 matrices with each entry being 2 lines long...all trying to describe how a material strains as its response to load. Sounds simple, but it is not that simple. Mathematical job done, "all" that is left to do is implement it as a FORTRAN program...but I believe I will stop here because this is getting way too technical. Summary: I reached a goal right in time before my trip to Malta at the end of the month...

A very short trip of 70 hours, most of which were spent driving all over the island, covering probably 200km (which is the equivalent of the length of 10 Maltas), but it was precisely the motive of my trip and, besides, it was good fun! Needless to say, being my first trip since Christmas, I had to consume some of my favourite foods, pastizzi on top of the list. And the weather? 24 degrees in February...unbelievable! It was a trip with a particular 'first' and 'last': it was my first trip from Luton airport with Ryanair and it was my last flight travelling alone Malta-London. Obviously one is far more exciting than the other...alas, I returned to London on Monday night and resumed with my routine here! I landed back in my place at 1am and had to get up at 5.30am since (off all days!) they decided to do a fire alarm drill on the night between Monday and Tuesday...argh!

This first week of March was quite interesting: on Wednesday I went to a concert with some office mates at Cadogan Hall which featured the brilliant guitarist John Williams, the interpreter of the tune Cavatina from De Niro movie The Deer Hunter. It was a good concert indeed - if only I had more time (and money!) to exploit all of the cultural events in London! Thursday presented a dinner outing in Covent Garden with old friends: had awesome linguine with vongole which reminded me of Malta. Friday was the usual trip to the pub...actually was a number of trips to different pubs, finished off by a Lebanese kebab as a midnight snack. Saturday was the first official office event which I, taking up my usual role of master of ceremonies in whichever workplace I am, tried to organise: an international food night. Not a very varied cuisine (Italian, English, Maltese) but it was a good and fun night of food, chit-chat, gossip, games and a late night/early morning taxi trip back home!

Now that Sunday is drawing to an end, it is time to get ready for another week...in my case, my final week as a bachelor since, on Friday, I head back to the smaller island precisely to wed! Yes! It is finally happening! It is the final countdown! Right now, as I get ready for what I think is the 2nd biggest decision of my life (the 1st being one I will take in the future, i.e., fathering children), I am a complex mixture of emotion: joy, excitement, fear and whatever other feeling I cannot describe with words, but whose overall resultant is definitely positive. I am afraid I will not have time in the next few days/weeks to post anything and so I believe that the next time I will drop a few lines, I will be Mr. & Mrs. Karl Micallef! And that transition will deserve one hell of a post!