"Please mind the gap..."

For someone like me who comes from an island country having the size of Malta, the concept of distance is virtually non-existent. With a maximum length of 22km, one could drive along the entire country of Malta in just under an hour, even with decent amounts of traffic. Thus, when I first came to the U.K., the utterance, “We live only an hour away!” was totally absurd and beyond my understanding! I recall the first time I was in a car (i.e., a passenger) here in England during a drive from Guildford to Oxford with my cousin: the seemingly infinite motorway was driving me close to insanity! However, I quickly realised that England (and all other countries with the exception of Vatican, San Marino and the like) are larger, much larger, than Malta and it was legitimate to persuade myself that long-distance travel is possible.

The notion of travelling for me is limited since I live virtually on-campus and go the Imperial on foot (a 20 minute walk each way). I actually enjoy walking for various reasons: it is a healthy activity, it allows me to enjoy London’s architecture and (last, but not the least) it is free. Whenever it rains, I opt for the bus, a trip which, given the acute traffic in central London (despite the hefty £7 daily congestion charge), not surprisingly takes double the time required for me to walk! For busy commuters who wish to avoid the stressful traffic, there is the wonderful alternative that is the London Underground. A quick time for facts: London’s metro is the world’s oldest and the colour-coded Tube map is almost part of London’s identity as much as the London Eye or the Big Ben. The term ‘underground’ is somewhat misleading, given that most of the network is actually above ground but the Brits still affectionately refer to the capital’s metro as The Tube, a name derived from the tubular shape of the tunnels which form a maze deep below the busy roads of London.

Whenever I need to travel for reasonable distances, I take the Tube. It is (generally) fast, efficient and the many, many lines and possible combinations of interchanges between them almost ensure that one can get to any part of London via the metro. The Tube is managed by Transport for London (tfL), which, I must say, (generally, again) does a very good job at keeping the network running smoothly, with proper provision of information for commuters, maintenance scheduled and advertised well in advance and also improving the service. Now this whole idea of the post came about precisely after I first spotted the first advert or, I would say, propaganda poster regarding a major improvement being done on the Tube system: the extension of the Circle Line.

For the benefit of readers not acquainted with the Tube system, the network is organised into several “lines”, each with a particular name and colour, the latter easily identified on Tube maps. Thus, we have the District (green) Line, the Piccadilly (blue) Line, the Northern (black) line and so on and so forth. The upcoming tfL project is the extension of the Circle (yellow) Line. Again, for those not familiar with the Tube map, the Circle Line is, as the name suggests, a continuous line of track forming a loop around central London, effectively enclosing Zone 1 of the concentric zones forming London. Indeed, virtually all of the main London sights are within the perimeter described by the Circle Line.

I do not like the Circle Line. Let me rephrase: I do not like to use the Circle Line, for a number of reasons. For almost all of its length, the Circle Line runs in parallel with other lines (District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City Lines) and thus one could really use any of these lines rather than the Circle. Besides, there are too many stops and bends and turns in the Circle Line route, making trips on it slow compared to, for example, the Central or Jubilee Lines. Finally, the Circle Line is virtually closed off in its entirety during weekends “for engineering work”. Thus, from a purely transportation point of view, I think the Circle Line should be closed down altogether and the yellow colour used for some other new line.

However, I must say that I love the concept of the Circle Line. The very notion of having a train network around the core of the capital which easily allows the visitor to get within reach of the must-sees using just a single line: South Ken and its museums, Westminster, Embankment, Tower Hill, Monument for St. Paul’s and all around to Baker Street and Notting Hill. Thus, from a more romantic (in its dreamy sense, of course) point of view, I think the Circle Line is the authentic London Underground line.

The new extension to the Circle Line, due to open on 13/12/09, consists of the formation of a new branch off the Circle Line (by definition, a circle cannot be extended) down to Hammersmith. Once more, this is nothing more than continuing the Circle Line in parallel with the Hammersmith & City Line and thus, in effect, is not really necessary. My point is: with the extension, the concept of the Circle Line as a circle around central London will be messed up. Ruined. Screwed. Mind you, tfL have done a very good job at informing the public: the posters are a very attractive piece of marketing design, with a yellow loop mimicking the Circle Line and the pros of the project branching off in the fashion of station names on the Tube map. However, the new branch will disrupt the continuity of the original circle, effectively making the name “Circle” redundant.

I think 13/12/09 is a sad day in the history of the Tube: a deliberate rape of my least favourite line, making it now prey to my pity. My suggestion in an attempt to restore the circular route would be to close off the Circle Line between Gloucester Road and Edgware Road (the 2 are linked by the District Line anyway) and instead link Gloucester Road with Hammersmith, making the ring complete once more. Thus, my final plea to tfL is fix the circularity of the Circle Line and my message can best be delivered using its own jargon: “Mind the gap!”

Cousin of the bride

Note:

This post might, at times, seem to be a lesson in demographics, wedding planning services or even a genealogical research project, but is generally not intended to be anything of the sort. The occasional commentaries are necessary simply to help the non-Maltese reader get better acquainted with my own background and that of Malta's culture.

Maltese families tend to be quite big, mainly due to the extensive number of relatives one will have from the Baby Boomers generation, i.e., that of my parents. Possibly the strong Catholic culture, which, till very recently, moulded the Maltese society, led to couples having vast numbers of children in the post war years; families with 8+ children were not uncommon! In fact, I have a total of 15 uncles and aunts. Out of these, 3 had settled permanently in the U.K. before I was born and, consequently, having grown up in Malta, unfortunately failed to be present for virtually all major events in the lives of my 7 U.K. cousins. However, now that I am in the U.K. myself, things are, of course, slightly different! All but 2 of my U.K. cousins got married before I moved to London and 4 of them now have children of their own; indeed I have attended christening ceremonies and birthday parties of a few but this week I managed to attend one "big" ceremony: the wedding of my cousin Anna to Paul.

Generally, I do not like ceremonies at all: I hate formalities (though always seem to bring on more of these unto myself due to my persistent academic ventures), I am not a fan of picture posing (though many say I am photogenic) and I get claustrophobic feelings when I button up all of my shirt buttons AND, even more so, when I wear a tie (and there is no "though" appendage to this fact, period). This time, I was quite excited about this ceremony: it was going to be a good occasion to meet all of my U.K. relatives at once (and all 'live', beyond Facebook and email), it promised to include bounteous food and booze (more on that later) and I was going to wear, for the first time, a cuff-linked shirt. The latter I bought especially for the occasion and, since I had wanted to wear one of the sort (as opposed to the conventional type) for a while, I was looking forward for the 'dressing up' bit. Besides, this was going to be the first English wedding I will be attending (not to mention that, being on a Friday, it meant taking a day off and enjoying a long weekend). All these factors combined together made 04/12/09 a day to look forward to.

The weather on the eve of the wedding was rubbish: cold and rainy. I dreaded the very idea of having to travel up to Harrow in typical winter weather. But Friday morning was beautiful: sun and blue, cloudless skies. Perfect. I opted for the cleanly-shaven look - very unusual for me, but since the Brits are such hardcore conservatives, I knew that all men will be lacking any form of beard and me attending with facial hair, albeit groomed, would make me stand out like a sore thumb. Morning shower, after shave, hair fixing, careful dosage of Burberry perfume so as not to tickle my nose unnecessarily, trousers, socks, shoes, shirt, belt, tie and jacket and off to the Tube. I was not running late but simply had not enough time to clear up all the mess in my room; for the first time in my life, I left home without first putting all in place...

I arrived at the church bang on time at 1pm (the bride was almost half an hour late anyway) and after the first couple of greetings, I made my way in. The service itself was quite similar to what a normal Roman Catholic wedding ceremony would be in Malta, except that no Communion was administered. Alas, yet another bearer of the Micallef name in the U.K. was gone and Anna had become Mrs. Brennan. I later pointed out to my uncle that unless my 2 male (Micallef) cousins have boys of their own in the future (after having both fathered a girl each), the fate of the Micallef name was essentially dependent on me! The guarantee of the survival of the name for at least another generation would be left entirely in my hands to have a boy at some point! Well, not exactly my hands, but you know what I mean! Quite a responsibility placed on me there!

By the end of the service, the English sun had already retired for the day and thus the day got a bit fresher. A short drive down to Ealing and the reception was about to begin. Now this is where things get different from the stereotypical Maltese wedding. Most wedding functions in Malta take the form of a standing up cocktail reception with passed canapés and that sort of food items and usually served with an open bar with free flowing booze. After 2 or 3 hours, the couple make their first dance, they cut the wedding cake, the bride throws her bouquet and off they head for their nuptial night. The course of events which were to follow in the English wedding differed slightly, as I soon was about to start discovering as the night unfolded.

Upon arrival at the reception venue at around 3pm, us guests were greeted by a welcoming drink and light canapés; I opted for the warm mulled wine option, given that (a) it smelt wonderful and (b) needed to warm up slightly from the external chill and (c) I prefer wine more than anything else. More greetings with my relatives followed, with me giving updates from Malta and I getting news from each of my fellow U.K. family members. My cousin's husband Rob immediately found out that I was pretty much a virgin attendee at an English wedding (no pun intended!) and promised to be my personal tutor for the night. After the welcome drinks, guests headed to the bar, where they started with pre-meal drinks. Most opted for beer - typical English behaviour. Thus, I had my first beer of the night, a Guinness by default.

After the pre-meal drinks, we made our way to the banqueting area, where the guests were seated and ready to start dining. A 3 course meal of warm soup, roast and Yorkshire pudding (what else?!) and finally Baci cake, all washed down with constantly-topped-up wine (definitely red in my case) and finally a coffee. By 7pm, I sensed it was going to be an early night but Rob promptly indicated that the fun part was about to begin. I found out that 3 speeches would follow, 1 by each of the following: the bride's father, the groom and the bestman. Before the speeches, every guest had to guess how long all speeches would take and put money on the gamble: a mere £1. After all was said, the person who had made the best guess would then get all the money in the kitty. Not bad. From my inexperience, I guessed 27 minutes (I later found out that I was WAY out by a factor of 2).

The speeches were hilarious but I strictly do not wish that these were part of Maltese weddings since they tended to be heavily biased on attacking the groom, so definitely no thank you. After the speeches, all headed to the bar area again or, more precisely, to the bar, where some serious drinking started going on. To fit in handsomely with the English way of doing things, I opted for gin-and-tonic, on the rocks, with a slice of lemon and this was to be the fixed beverage for the rest of the night (actually I lost count of how often I hopped to and fro fetching gin-and-tonics amidst lively conversations with my cousins, uncles and aunts and other guests I met that day). In the meantime, the banqueting area was stripped of all furniture, creating a fully fletched dance floor, complete with DJ and lights. As I was instructed, people would now start dancing...disco dancing that is!

I am not an avid dancer but, greatly aided by my body's gin-and-tonic content, managed to spin to and whisk to Billie Jean and a number of 1980s classics: Fame, Eye of the tiger and many others which I (understandably) fail to recall at this point in time! Dancing makes you hungry and, thankfully, there were a few munchies provided in the bar area, to which I helped myself generously as the night progressed. Alongside the ever-present G+T. By 11pm, I realised I had to return home by Tube and started to bid my goodbyes, Happy Christmases, all the bests and all that jazz. A quick venture to the Tube station (which, given the context of the mission at that late hour turned out to be a success) and somehow landed at Earl's Court safe and sound. I made my way painfully up the 3 floors, stripped (alas to no one's amusement) and literally fell on my bed till 10.30am the next day.

When I opened my eyes, all I could see was chaos. My first recollection was a scene from the movie The hangover. No, there was no tiger waiting to devour me and I did not lose any teeth. Neither did I have a hangover. The room was just so untidy! I then realised that I had left the day before without putting all in place and returned with no intention of clearing up the mess: clothes, shoes, socks, clothes hangers, towels, shirt packaging, shower gel/deodorant/perfume bottles and what not on my basin. A quick shower brought me to my senses and in no time my room was ordered as usual till it was time for me to leave again for a post-wedding get-together at my uncle's house!

And that was my first English wedding! So, if you had to ask me whether I like English weddings, then rest assured that you would get nothing but one, very wedding-ly answer: "I do".

A cheesy incident

I am fond of food, quite fond actually. For me, the consumption of food is not simply a matter of supplying the body with the necessary amounts of energy, vitamins and whatever is required to keep it going; food is one of my few pleasures in life. I do not smoke, I do not do drugs, I do not drink, I do not gamble and I am not promiscuous and thus food is my only source of hedonistic activity. I will stop talking about food since it is making my mouth water and get straight to the point: an incident which occurred last week related to my well-known food-consuming antics...

It was an ordinary weekday and I had one of my usual tutorials with the M.Sc. group, with the latter including 2 Maltese students. After the tutorial was done, I decided to join the Maltese bunch for lunch rather than my usual Ph.D. colleagues and us 3 headed to the cafe found in the foyer of the Central Library building. On that day, I was totally famished, not an unusual feeling for me, especially after an hour of 'structural analysis' tutoring. As we stood in the queue (you see, the Brits love queues!) for the servery, I stood adjacent to a huge refrigerated display of baguettes with all kinds of filling varieties. The constant stomach grumbling, the smell of freshly baked pastries, all combined with the sight of the baguettes, made me impulsively go for a baguette. Not just any baguette but a baguette which immediately caught my fancy...

I told my Maltese colleagues, "This is it!" as I pointed to the particular baguette I was about to have. A honey-coloured, notoriously larger-than-usual baguette, both in length and in width, with protruding tomatoes of remarkable diameter (I would swear genetically modified!), attractively coloured lettuce and rucola leaves. Irresistibly appetising. "What is it?" inquired my colleague. "I don't care, I want that one!" was my immediate reply. I glanced at the label on the package and saw that it read "Bacon and *******", with the latter word beyond my vocabulary and which I am not revealing as yet since it would alter the course of the narrative. I did not care that I was not even vaguely aware of what the *** word was: Meat? Filling? Cheese? But the baguette looked too good to be true and I was having it just the same! I clearly indicated which one I wanted to the attendant, who promptly handed me my prized lunch and impatiently headed for the cash point, paid, hurriedly filled in a glass of water from the jug (which needed refilling and thus prolonging my wait!!) and finally sprinted to the first available table in the crowded cafe to encounter my lunch.

The 2 other Maltese eagerly waited for me to indulge in my baguette. I was even more enthusiastic to unwrap the (un)lucky baguette which was about to be my lunch for the day. Wrapper gone, I got hold of the thing and took one, large bite. And then: the curtain was drawn, my eyes were opened...but it was too late!

The unmistakable, characteristic and overwhelming taste of blue cheese. And loads of it. Enough to fill the largest baguette the Library cafe has ever seen. The *** word was none other than: Stilton. Now this deserves a quick explanatory note.

One of my favourite foods is cheese. Cheese of all forms and varieties: Brie, Camembert, Mexican, goat, Parmesan, Grana and all the rest; the process of cheese eating is almost an art in itself, combined with the right wine and choice of cold-cut meats, in a warm Maltese wine bar, with candle light and soft jazz playing in the background: heaven. BUT...I abhor blue cheese. The very sight of it. Even more the smell of it. Never had the misfortune of enduring the taste of it. So much so, that I never acquainted myself even with the varieties of blue cheese, such as the actual word "Stilton"!

So back to the Library cafe...as I chewed the first bite of my baguette which had caught the attention of my Maltese friends, they stared at me, waiting for my reaction. "So, is it good?" was the obvious question. "Too good," I lied, not wanting to embarrass myself. "Be right back, grabbing a Coke," I said as I left the table to get a bottle of anything which could aid in subsiding that horrible, horrible taste. Returning to my table, I was faced with the rest of the baguette, which now seemed even larger than ever before. The concave shape of my bite looked like a smiley face: the baguette grinning at me, as if saying, "Now finish me off, you bitch!" A task which I did, with a gulp of Coke after each painstakingly-made bite.

Lunchtime for that day was martyrdom. Dessert had to be half a pack of Polo mints to neutralise the taste of the Stilton. I was ashamed that I had fallen victim to a food item which I always insisted would never find its way in my stomach. To be honest, I always try to experiment with new, unusual foods and have succeeded in having most: snails, urchins, horse, tripes, black pudding...and might have succumbed to blue cheese at some point. But definitely not such an intense baptism of fire. Definitely not an enormous baguette loaded with Stilton!

Now, that the Stilton is out of my system and I have come to terms with the reality of me having consumed blue cheese as a result of my ignorance of the subject, I can confidently say that a well-known saying usually restricted to people can be safely extrapolated to foods: "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer!"

Meddling with the Floydian past

Anyone who has even a very fair knowledge of what my interests are will immediately associate me with buildings, music and food. And sleep. This post is (indirectly) related to one of the contributors to my musical interest: the British band Pink Floyd. Of course, I will not even attempt to discuss PF today; the subject matter is too vast to even fit within the limitations of even an entire blog, let alone a single post. However, this particular post was somehow inspired by a Floydian song, which inspiration has led me to drop these few lines.

In 1971, Floyd released the album "Meddle", probably the album in which the shift from producing purely psychedelic material to more progressive rock made its initial appearance (I apologise for the unnecessary details, but I could not help it) and amongst the songs in this album was the epic Echoes. At almost half an hour long, it is definitely close to the top in the list of the longest rock songs ever written in history; I reckon Floyd tend to feature prominently in this list! Around the time when "Meddle" was composed, the band lived mostly in London and, although certain things undoubtedly changed since the early 1970s, I believe certain aspects of the city's life have not. I can safely draw this conclusion from the content of this song (or, at least, my interpretation thereof) and comparing this to my current experience of living in London...

Unless you happen to be a PF maniac to at least one unit of magnitude less than I am, you will not know the lyrics of Echoes and, to save you the hassle of Google-ing it, I will reproduce the relevant part:

Strangers passing on the street, by chance two separate glances meet, and I am you and what I see is me.

Now please do not tell me that this is some crap band! Surely somewhat more serious that the persistent bull**** we were presented by short-lived pop icons in the likes of Mickey Mouse star Britney Spheres...I mean, Britney Spears. Anyhow, I promised I will not delve into musical debates and stick to my point. Whenever I hear Echoes and, especially this verse of lyric, I reassure myself that Floyd songs in the like of Echoes were not composed in a state of mind simply driven by uninterrupted, many days' consumption of LSD or other illicit substances, well at least not in their entirety. A considerable amount of thought was spilled out from the mind of Roger Waters when he penned the lyrics.

Back in the 1970s, I would imagine Waters, in his daily commuting up and about on the Tube, walking around in north-west London on the way from Abbey Road studios to the nearest tobacconist and from his apartment to the nearest food store, might have noticed the patterns of fellow Londoners, particularly during rush hours I would say. People moving frantically on London's wide pavements, with no time to show any sense of humanistic communication, where any sort of encounter would be purely random and coincidental. People sitting on the Tube, deeply lost in their newspaper, scribbling notes on paper diaries or crossword puzzles. People almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown, engulfed in nothing else but getting to the workplace on time, completing scheduled tasks and returning home in the same delirious manner only to resume the following day. Day after day, until their retirement and eventual death in a few years' time (perhaps this truly disturbing concept was explored by Floyd in their next album, The dark side of the moon; again sorry for the detail).

Fast forward by almost four decades and, instead of Roger Waters (presumably he is happily living somewhere quieter than Central London), you find me moving around in London. Funnily enough, Roger and I both studied architecture but, other than that, I am not comparing myself to Waters; I simply believe that I find myself in similar situations which led to his observations in Echoes. On my daily routine walks to Imperial along Cromwell Road, past Earls' Court and Gloucester Road stations, I observe scores of people struggling in their race against time, completely distracted from the rest of the world, like a swarm of ants heading to the small-sized opening leading to their hideaway of underground blackness. People lost in their own Blackberry realm, feeling the constant need to "be online", check e-mails, update their Facebook status and chat with a friend or two. People completely shut off from the aural world around them, except for the sounds provided by their iPods which, although providing a potential playlist of several GB worth of music, will somehow only be limited to the same few songs they deliberately select. People sitting on the bus, smiling stupidly at their mobile phones as if the 1234567890 buttons provide the best entertainment possible. Luckily, I do not commute by Tube everyday but, when I do, I see people squeezing themselves onto a seat on the Tube, scanning their PDAs for the next appointment or striving to finish up their Sudoko game on their copy of Lite and struggling to get a copy of The Evening Standard to pursue another game.

And what about human communication? Reduced to the absolute minimum: self check-out points in supermarkets, Oyster cards instead of papers tickets to eliminate commuter-driver interaction, colleagues preferring e-mail correspondence more than anything else. No one dares to talk to anyone else, lest s/he is accused of infringing in the other's privacy or be interpreted as flirting and soon be engaged in a law suit for sexual harassment. And so on and so forth. Everyone is happy to live in his/her own little world, entirely submerged in individualism with no apparent concern for interaction with fellow members of the same human species and completely shut off from the rest of society, which could be fast approaching the sterile, totalitarian world predicted in Huxley's shocking Brave new world or as illustrated in Orwell's provocative 1984. Perhaps this is a far-fetched image of contemporary society, but which was first noticed by PF in the 1970s and which could be more of a reality now in the first decade of the new millennium.

Waters wrote Echoes so many years ago and, yet, today I feel similar emotions escaping from the spirit of the same London. So have things changed at all? Yes, they did - they have only become much worse. What if Floyd had to write Echoes today? Would they still talk of strangers passing on the street? Will they write about these strangers' glances meeting at all, even if by chance? And what do the strangers see? Will they see themselves mirrored in each other, both running the same insane race? I am sure I am going to sleep in a few minutes' time but am even more sure that all of the above questions will have "Yes" for an answer.

The glorious English weather

The stereotypical image of someone living in London would certainly be that of a white-skinned individual with serious solar exposure deficiency and longing for sunshine more than anything else in life. Besides the persistent talk of weather, very likely to be done over a warm cup of tea after having consumed a helping of fish-and-chips or the other English national food: sandwiches. The subject of the English weather is surely a prominent part of English culture. To quote Samuel Johnson again, "When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather" and the Brits have certainly lived up to this statement. And the common perception of most people is that the outcome of this weather talk will certainly be that, more often than not, everyone is complaining about the weather here.

From my limited experience of living here, I can boldly say that this is not true in its entirety. Certainly there are days when it is wet and cold and windy but, unless you happen to be in the Sahara, I suppose everywhere else such meteorological phenomena do, inevitably, occur. It actually has been quite challenging to be convincing in stating the the weather, so far, has been quite mild and surprisingly pleasantly sunny, given that we are midway through autumn. Contrary to what many people instinctively associate London with, most days have been sunny, dry and not that cold; the odd drizzles did not fail to make their appearance and the utterly dreadful overcast skies too. When it comes to the latter, actually, I feel quite startled since the overall grey sky which lingers on from sunrise to sunset (actually, there is no sun in such circumstances) simply retains my well-known morning sleep mood throughout the whole day. Result: alarming rates of yawning, worrying levels of productivity (or lack thereof) and severe lack of insomnia symptoms.

Other than that, I love the weather here and feel quite comfortable with it. Whereas virtually all of my office colleagues wear layer upon layer of long-sleeved clothing which I would, maybe, wear only in winter, I go to uni with a short sleeved shirt (and a jacket when I am outside). While some colleagues yearn to switch on the heater in the office (which I wholeheartedly detest with a passion), I often long to return to my room which has had open windows since the day I moved in and heater strictly switched off permanently. During one of my daily jogs, I recently noticed that part of my route includes a street from which I get a view of my residence's building. And a few days ago, whilst happily jogging by and looking up to quickly identify which is my room before I jog by, I realised that my room was actually quite simple to spot: the only one with the window open! It seems like I am quite immune to the cold and, according to theory I myself devised, this could be due to one or two reasons or a combination of both: (a) I have excessive thermal insulation in my body provided in the form of fatty tissue; (b) during my quarter of a decade living in Malta, I have so much latent heat stored within my system that I never (or rarely) feel cold. I often strive to delude myself that it is more of case (b) than (a)...

Actually, to be honest, this week I happened to fancy wearing a long sleeve shirt and, as soon as I turned up at the office, I was not greeted with, "Good morning" but with, "Hey Karl, are you OK? Are you sick?" People actually start worrying whenever I say that I am feeling cold! In fact, I have rarely complained of being cold in my 18 month stay in London so far. Probably the only time I really felt cold was on 01/02/08, when I visited Hampstead for the first time and, after successfully climbing up Parliament Hill to get a full view of the London skyline, I thought that my body extremities (i.e., ears, nose and fingers) were about to chip off my body. But I suppose this is perfectly justified given that, a few hours later, London was about to experience the heaviest snowfall in the last 18 years!

As I said earlier, I have no objection whatsoever to the cool temperature; indeed, the perfect day would be sunny, no (or little) patches of white cloud and a fresh air temperature not less than 10 degrees: bliss! And in the unlikely event of me feeling cold, this is no serious threat to my well-being: I simply wear more clothing! On the other hand, there is nothing I can do to make myself comfortable if I am feeling too hot. The converse of the former solution does hold: wear little clothing but there is a minimum level of clothing I need to wear which is the socially-acceptably threshold of public decency. And I would rather not violate that! So, bring on the cold!

Sick flick!

This is a post which, in a way, is not quite related to anything occurring here in London in particular. It is simply a random piece of written gibberish which I felt the urge to write following an unusual conversation I had today with 3 of my Italian colleagues on the way to lunch from our level 2 office in the Skempton (civil engineering) building to the canteen in the Sherfield (common facilities) building, 2 blocks within the Imperial campus.

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!

London calling

Being in London, for whatever reason imaginable, is exciting. A friend of mine refers to London as the (current) capital of the world (current, since he believes the status of world capital will, sooner rather than later, shift to China, but that is world politics, in which I have no particular interest, at least in this post). Oh, and, by the way, this guy is French and for a Frenchman to say anything which offends France and/or places any other country in a better position than France, then it must be true! After having been here for over a year and a half, in many ways, I think I have made up my mind as to whether this is a valid statement or not...

London is truly a cosmopolitan jungle. Brits just make up some 30% of London's population and the remaining 70% are virtually from every part of the world. I was amazed (and still am) by the diversity of nationalities I encounter here. Imperial has students from every corner of the globe (is that a valid comment since the globe is a sphere and spheres, by definition, have no corners?) Beyond the campus, there are millions of people who visit or live here and contribute to making London society such a colourful one. Going for a walk or a ride on a bus or on the Tube will just give a glimpse of the variety of Londoners: the languages you hear, the dress code (if any), the literature being read, food being eaten...and this brings up the next point.

Of course, many are residents here and have families with their own culture, backgrounds and requirements. The communities of people from different nations felt, over time, that they have common needs which need to be satisfied and, since it is not convenient to travel back to the country of origin to (quite literally) "feel at home", then if Mohammed won't come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed. Thus, you find here in London areas which are associated with different ethnic groups. China Town is the most obvious example: bi-lingual (Chinese and English) street-name and shop-name signs, Chinese food outlets, Chinese pagodas, Chinese newspapers, Chinese talk, Chinese music and, of course, Chinese people. You go up to Edgware and you are amazed by the Jewish and Muslim presence there. Moving eastwards to Brick Lane (or Banglatown) and you are forced to doubt whether you are still in London: curry houses, Bangladeshi street names and shops and anything which does not make you feel like being in an English city. I could go on and on pinpointing different zones and its particularities.

The beauty of all these different cultures is that they are all concentrated within the same city, within a few square kilometres, sometimes within the same blocks sharing even a postcode! Take China Town, for example. One minute you are in Gerrard Street and your brain is seduced to think you are in Beijing then cross Shaftesbury Avenue and land in Soho with all its neon signed shops and teasing girls at club entrances! You can stroll down Brick Lane and the market there, ending up smelling wonderfully of curry and spices and, by the end of the trail, find yourself in Bishopsgate and the financial district of Liverpool Street, with its stainless steel clad buildings and high-tech finished office towers which are state-of-the-art exhibits of 21st century architecture. Or consider Embankment, where virtually all the London landmarks - the Thames, the Eye, Big Ben and HP - are found and then you go down to take the Northern line from Embankment station, travel northwards within the bowels of London and surface again at Camden Town station; a cultural shock is possibly the most diplomatic way of describing the sheer difference between the last time you saw daylight at the start of your journey and now that you landed in one of my favourite London areas: the totally liberal, Bohemian life of punks and fellows who choose to lead a more alternative lifestyle.

(Not to mention the beauty of being in a city where one minute you are amidst crowds of people who are willing to walk all over you simply to make it to work or a department store during the sale season, and the next minute you are in any one of Regent's, Holland, Hyde, Green, St. James, Greenwich or Richmond Park and find yourself immersed in an oasis of peace, away from traffic noise and fumes, and enjoy nothing but greenery).

A picture is worth a thousand words but, even better, a first-hand experience of London will, by far, exceed in any way whatever I tried to say, but I think I have made my point. So back to our original premise: London is the capital of the world, or not? In London, there are people from all over the world and, within this city, they all find a place they can call "home" (except us Maltese - blessed will be that day when I will come across a place selling pastizzi and/or Kinnie!); this city is a magnet which attracts people to travel to it, for one reason or another, and find in it a haven, a niche where they are comfortable. So I can safely say that my French friend's presumption is, indeed, correct and I, too, believe that London is (albeit not permanently) the capital of the world!