"This is my dream"

I am aware of the fact that this blog was meant to be devoted to London and how my times in the city are unfolding. However, I broke this continuity in the last post since I referred to my last visit to Malta and described most of the events which took place over last weekend. I am afraid I am going to proceed with yet another post which is more or less Malta-specific but which I cannot help not writing about: the Eurovision song festival.

For the past couple of years (I could almost safely say "decades"), the Eurovision is the highlight of Malta's cultural calendar. There are 101 issues which need to be tackled in Malta from various aspects of life: social, economic, political (I will illustrate just one aspect later on)...but around the beginning of February, the country pauses all its operations in order for it to hold a Song for Europe festival. This usually features the same couple of singers singing songs written by the same couple of songwriters - a totally predictable affair of Mr.X singing a ballad-type song, Mrs.Y singing a pop-style song and so on and so forth. This year, the winning song was a ballad (surprise, surprise) and was won by a newcomer to the local music scene. Hundreds of minutes worth of airtime on all TV channels followed, discussing the song, the video, the dress, the singer's likes and dislikes and other such stupid waste of time devoted to these futile matters rather than discussing more useful matters relevant to the country's well-being. And all this built up a momentum up to May, when the real festival takes place.

Since last year Malta failed miserably in securing a decent placing, this year's song had to first qualify through a semi-final night and then be "promoted" to the final night. And, yet again, the country came to a standstill on Tuesday night when the semi-final took place. Unless you are Maltese, you might not know that Malta failed to qualify. I predict that once this poor lass returns back to the rock, another limitless array of TV discussions, analysis, debates and intellectual efforts consumed in trying to decipher why Malta failed to qualify will follow. My opinion about all this: stop this nonsense once and for all! Stop participating in this damn festival and set up our own annual music festival, in the same way the Italians have done with San Remo years ago. I can find a thousand reasons why we should not take part in this Eurovision anymore but will illustrate myself with one: financial.

Let me start off my argument with a set of case studies from the local context and which prove that one should not talk of absolute numbers but rather in terms of relativity (do not worry, dear reader, this is not a discussion of Einstein's theory of relativity).

For almost 20 years, the Maltese have been constructing a new general hospital which turned out to be a subject of controversy and debate but which finally was completed a year or 2 ago and is now one of the largest medical complexes in Europe. This monster of a project costs the Maltese tax payers about 2,300,000 Euro each week to run. This works out to be almost 300 Euro per minute (there is a specific reason why I am working out the cost per minute). Considering that this is a noble cause which provides such a service to the population, then I can safely conclude that it is money well spent.

Next, the Pope's visit to Malta last month. This visit of just 26 hours cost the Maltese tax payer 750,000 Euro. The 750,000 figure might be much less than the 2,300,000 I mentioned before but this blessed visit (pun intended!) works out at 480 Euro per minute. I will not even dare mentioning whether this was money well spent or not for I do not want to risk being banned from Malta for life, but let us say that the Pope's visit was of spiritual benefit for Malta and also "promotion" of the island on BBC and CNN (although this was more due to the famous Luqa phallus rather than Ratzinger himself). So far, so good.

Now comes the bombshell. Malta's participation in the Eurovision (or rather, attempted participation) cost us dear Maltese 400,000 Euro. This is almost 50% of the last figure but considering that there is a rule which states that Eurovision songs must not exceed 3 minutes, then this works out at 133,333 Euro per minute (thus this explains why I was considering cost/minute). Need I say more? The damn Eurovision costs Malta more than it costs to run its new state-of-the-art general hospital! It might be the smallest costs of these 3 case studies I chose, but it is by far the most expensive! Malta, wake up!

And considering the fact that Malta has a national debt of 4,000,000,000 Euro (in case you got confused with the many zeros, that is 4 billion), or almost 10,000 Euro per Maltese citizen, I am sure that we can find better things to do with 400,000 Euro each year rather than spending it on a festival which is nothing more than a political lobbying exercise disguised by some scantily clad singers singing crap songs to s****y tunes.

I am not a visionary like Martin Luther King, who had a very noble dream ages ago of a world where racism does not exist. I am not Malta's 2010 Eurovision singer with a song entitled This is my dream, which dream turned out to be a nightmare. I am just an ordinary Maltese citizen who has a very simple dream: the day when Malta bans Eurovision for good! Am I asking too much?

The land of smells, yells and bells

In my last post, I hinted out that I will be soon visiting Malta and indeed I did! This was the first trip back after the wedding, almost 2 months to the day since the last time I was there in March. The trip was relatively normal, albeit that the flight was from Luton and not from the convenience of Heathrow, but luckily there were no delays and the flight itself was not cancelled due to the famous Icelandic volcanic ash which recently caused distress to thousands of travellers. Three hours after leaving Luton on Friday late afternoon, I landed in Malta and there began a 3 day trip on the rock....

Saturday morning kicked off with an interesting errand which, once more was related to the wedding but, in this case, a post wedding affair: collecting the fully edited and finished wedding video! This provided entertainment for a couple of hours and the repeated viewings of the hour long movie in no way did bore me! Such good memories now set for posterity on a cool Blue Ray disc which will be useful in future narratives (in the style of How I met your mother) to the "kids" down the line. Back to 2010. Lunch consisted of a typical Maltese bread (ftira) garnished with tomato paste, tuna, olive oil, fresh mint from the garden, goat's cheese, olives and pickled onions - heaven! Nothing in London could ever compete with this! The "smells" part from the title of this post are definitely most enticing (unlike the smells referred to by the author of that phrase which was meant to describe Malta in the 19th century). A power nap in the afternoon got me ready for the highlight of the day: the final of the Champions League, i.e., Inter vs Bayern Munich.

For the non-football-follower, it is noteworthy to state that Inter have not been in the CL final for the past 38 years and last won the CL 45 years ago! Never in my lifetime! The team's recent track record has been fantastic: first Inter won Coppa Italia, then only last week won the 5th scudetto in a row and now, to complete a treble, needed to win the CL! My friends booked a table at a local football club which was going to show the game on a big screen and there we headed on the Saturday night. The setting was typical Maltese: cheap beer (think of it, a round for 8 people for 12 Euro!), constantly-topped-up small platters free nibbles, marinated bread, chicken wings, pasta and pizza to accompany the beer and the notorious Mediterranean sounds of agitation and service which thus forms the "yells" component of the title. One particular yell stood out: as soon as we got in the venue, I inquired for the reserved table and the bloke serving us replied, "Ha niccekjalek, siehbi" (Let me check, mate) and then he called his colleague, "Malcolm" or rather, "Mell-kimm" in a harsh Maltese accent and so loud that I thought Malcolm was still at home rather than at work! To cut a long story short, the game ended up as hoped: Inter won 2-0 and there are the new European champions! And thus a perfect ending to a great Saturday!

Sunday started off with Mass (and thus the "bells" aspect of the title!) and followed by a massive lunch at home: Maltese pasta bake wrapped in pastry or timpana. I still wonder why the Brits abstain from pasta so much! I love pasta (and anything which has carbs, really). Another power nap followed and then a short trip by the sea, although I must say that the weather was not terribly appealing and/or hot - it was far hotter back in London! The evening started off with dinner at the in-laws', once more, a generous helping of pasta to make up for my lack of pasta consumption back in London (this time farfalle with smoked salmon and cream). At this point in time, I could not move an inch, but this did not restrain me from a drive to Tigne' Point, where I visited the newly finished multi-million Euro project there which I must say is reminiscent of the well designed, well detailed and well finished projects of Liverpool Street and/or Canary Wharf in London. Well done, Malta. Welcome to the world of 21st century architecture.

Finally, a new week started. I did not do much, except for paying a visit to grandma and visit a furniture showroom which was opened a few weeks earlier and for which I had done the structural design back in 2007. Yet another project which I had formed part of its design team which is now a landmark building in Malta. This is the best part of my profession: seeing a building shift from being a drawing on a piece of paper to real-life structure built of concrete and steel (in this case, loads of steel!) In the evening, off the the airport and aboard another Ryanair flight which landed on time in London in the early hours of Tuesday. And Tuesday brought about normal routine life, although it was somewhat unusual since I had to visit the DSTL facility down in Salisbury for a project meeting, which started off as an intense physical challenge but then turned out to be very fruitful...

I know that this blog was meant to be devoted to my London life, but there were a few Malta-related events worth recording. The British David Niven had once described Malta as the land of smells, yells and bells, as I earlier pointed out. A few incidents from last weekend have provided an alternative perspective of how Malta can, indeed, be the place of smells, yells and bells! Apart from the replacement of Niven's unpleasant smells associated with unhygienic slum areas of 19th century Valletta by heavenly Mediterranean food which was my indulgence for a few days, I dare say that the yells and bells have not changed and are there to stay! Truly, a case of onlyinMalta.com!

A fistful of events, mk II

I almost cannot remember the last time that I dropped a few lines in this blog...I have had so much to do that I did not even have time to think about the blog, let alone write any post, so apologies for that. I will do my best to remember all that happened since mid April (well, that merits writing about, anyway!) and be concise in keeping track of my life at London...

At Imperial College, the month of May is associated with the annual graduation ceremony. This brought about two aspects to me: a looking back at the ceremony of 2009, when I received my M.Sc. and first D.I.C. (hopefully a second will follow when I complete my Ph.D.!) and a looking forward to the ceremony of 2010, when my old room-mate and "bro" was about to receive his D.I.C. and thus a reunion of 2 old roomies. A reunion which came about only a few weeks after a previous one, for this same good old buddy traveled all the way from China to Malta for our wedding. Needless to say, the reunion meant a recollection of the many adventures shared in London, a re-enactment of many a trip to the pubs in the W8 area of London and also lots of food and talk.

On the Graduation Wednesday, we headed off for a fishy dinner at Victoria, courtesy of the graduate, where I experienced some of the nastiest alcoholic consumptions ever; some sort of Portuguese variant of grappa which was utterly awful and alcohol content whose numeric description was nothing but disturbing, to both mind and liver alike. A night finished off at one of our favourite pubs, which trip was concluded by my receipt (and not theft!) of a very interesting Guinness pint mug which now forms part of my own collection.

Friday night was somewhat different from the usual trip to a pub, for some Chemistry society at Imperial threw a free party, with food, wine and live music. The first was limited, but the wine was flowing and good, while the music was...well, after wine any music sounds good! It was good fun but was not enough, for after all was done we headed to yet another of our favourite W8 pubs and finished off the night there...till the bell rang, of course.

On Sunday, I had an unusual trip to an unusual pub near Waterloo. I discovered the concept of an "open mic", where aspiring musicians can sign up to play in a pub hosting the "open mic", for free. For the past couple of weeks I had been playing with 2 colleagues from Imperial and we created a number of our own songs and decided it would be good to play in public. And there you go, we headed off to this place in Waterloo for a debut performance. One minor detail: I had to use the piano at the venue since my instrument is stranded back in Malta. And this piano was probably last tuned in the last millennium, literally speaking of course! The piano and guitar together were way out of tune and thus I had no choice but sadly not play! Any disappointment was soon forgotten since the night ended up with a good Chinese meal!

Before my dear friend headed back to China for his mission there, he handed me a design task which I welcomed with great pleasure. More than the design itself, which was limited to formulating an architectural layout for 3 floors of offices and 1 floor of apartments within an existing block (which is terribly boringly shaped with the most unattractive elevation ever), I was yearning to do some real design amidst my focused Ph.D. work which does not entail any design work at all. So it was really a blessing to spend a couple of days sketching, designing and draughting plans for this project. A project which turned out to be well liked by the client and which hopefully kicks off, making it my first solo project overseas and in the Far East!

And on a similar note: some time last week, my wife and I attended this presentation by William "Bill" Baker, who was the mastermind behind the tallest building in the world, the Burj Dubai (or Khalifa as it is now referred to). The talk was well delivered and not boring at all, and it made me somehow yearning structural engineering and design much more than ever! If I could only design a highrise which is 10% of the Burj! What a dream! As Baker said, "A tall building is a dream realised in steel and concrete"...so true...

In the meantime, I was working hard on my Ph.D. work, with some heavy mathematical computation work being done...obviously I will not bore anyone with describing all the stuff I am doing, but let me just say that it is quite intensive: even computers are finding it hard to keep up with the work...I was handling thousands of numbers a day, compiling data, plotting charts and interpreting results of my models and equations...I simply cannot imagine what people did back in the days when all was done by hand...God bless computers!

I think this is all I can recall from the last couple of weeks...but I think I will have a bit more to say in the upcoming post...for it will include my first trip to Malta since the wedding two months ago! Oh yes, by the way, two months already! Watch out for this space - more coming up soon!